Page 147 of Break Away
“Maybe I like being consistent.”
“Maybe you like being a pain in my ass.”
Marv looked at me again, his eyes surprisingly clear for a man who smelled like cheap whiskey. “He gives lectures when he’s worried. You should hear him about socks in winter.”
“I’d rather jump into traffic.”
Easton shot me a flat, furious look. “Tempting.”
“Keep bleeding and I might push you.”
Marv laughed harder, coughing around it while Easton turned and started up the stairs without another word. I followed, my boots ringing against rusted metal, my anger climbing with every step because even like this, furious and wounded and determined to cut me open, he still gave money to the drunk man at the bottom of the stairs.
I hated him for that too.
He reached the second-floor door and shoved it open with his shoulder, the metal groaning in protest. “Stop following me.”
“Stop bleeding.”
“It’s my blood.”
“Then stop leaving it where I have to look at it.”
He pushed into the hallway, and the noise of other people’s lives swallowed us. A baby cried behind one door while a couple fought behind another, their voices slipping through walls too thin to keep anything private. Cigarette smoke, fried grease, cheap cleaner, and heat trapped too long inside old pipes clung to the air.
I caught up with Easton halfway down the hall. “This building is depressing.”
“Yep. You can leave.”
“I’m trying to insult your life choices, and you’re ruining it by agreeing with me.”
“That must be hard for you.”
“You have no idea.”
His mouth tightened like he wanted to say something worse, something that would draw real blood.
A door cracked open, and an older woman in a purple robe looked out, her eyes sharp beneath a row of silver hair rollers. Her gaze went directly to Easton’s bandaged hand and the ice pack he now pressed against his ribs.
“Wade, you bleeding on the carpet?”
“No, Mrs. Alvarez.”
“You look like hell.”
“Working on my charm.”
She looked at me, her assessment quick and thorough. “You his girl?”
“No,” Easton said again, the word a flat, final stone.
This time, I answered at the same moment, my voice overlapping his. “Definitely not.”
Mrs. Alvarez looked between us, deeply unimpressed. “You both sound stupid.”
Easton sighed through his nose, long and weary. “Thank you.”
“You clean that hand.”
