Bronwyn pressed a baggie of ice to Nico’s face. He winced, cracking open a cut on his lip which began to bleed again. She tsked.

We were in Nico’s “apartment,” which was one big room above the gym floor. He had a dresser with a fat TV on top, the kind I hadn’t seen since I was a kid at my grandma’s house. There was also a small fridge and a rusty sink. Shelves covered the empty wall space, full of books, baskets, clothes, shoes, dishes, as if he had a whole houseful of stuff crammed into one room. Bronwyn and Nico were sitting on a low bed, and I perched on the corner of a wooden rocking chair. Sitting in these always made me think I should be knitting something, not that I knew how.

“Shouldn’t you go to the hospital?” I asked, grimacing at Nico’s beat-up face, the red cuts marring his light brown skin. It was a mess now but it would look even worse tomorrow.

“No!” they said at the same time.

“No hospitals,” Bronwyn added.

“Can’t afford them.” Nico rubbed his chest. I hoped he didn’t have any broken ribs. Bruises would heal on their own but broken bones could lead to internal bleeding, couldn’t they? Nico needed professional help, not ice and a tensor bandage.

“You should’ve seen your girl here,” Nico said to Bronwyn. They sat close, legs pressed into legs. His hand rested on her knee as she took care of him. It seemed an unconscious thing, as if he didn’t know which parts were him and which were her. I’d been like that with Hank, once.

Bronwyn shot me a look. “What did you do?”

“She stormed right in,” he said. “Told Jay where to go and how to get there.”

“Fat lot of good it did.” I couldn’t believe this was Bronwyn’s boyfriend. He was slightly shorter than her and a bit on the pudgy side, with a round face and an easygoing smile. He wasn’t what I’d pictured at all.

“I especially liked it when you threatened to call the cops.” He laughed. “Classic.”

I frowned. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do when you encountered bad guys? Too bad it hadn’t worked. I should’ve called before taking the picture.

Bronwyn shook her head. “Don’t get on the wrong side of Jay Thornton. Seriously.” She leaned back and inspected Nico’s face.

Like I needed a warning. I’d already seen what this Jay guy could do with his bare hands.

“He’s not that bad,” Nico said.

Bronwyn gave him a withering look. “You’re an idiot.”

There’d been a moment when Jay held me, his touch like fire, his eyes searing into me, and I didn’t know whether to run or stay and be consumed. Maybe I was just as much of an idiot as Nico.

“He just kicked the crap out of you and ‘he’s not that bad?’” I asked.

Nico shrugged. “Okay, he’s bad. But there are worse out there, believe me. And it’s not like I didn’t know this was coming.”

I leaned back in the chair and began to rock. I felt like Mrs. Win, a lady back in Hillstone who I swear had always been old. No matter what time of day it was, you could find her on her porch in a rocking chair, rocking and watching. That’s what I was doing now, rocking and watching a world I wasn’t a part of. I wondered if Mrs. Win felt like a spectator too.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why the beatdown?”

“Money,” Nico replied.

Bronwyn sighed. She left Nico clutching the ice pack and took the stained cloth to the sink. She rinsed it out, blood tinting the stream of water red.

“Nico borrowed some money from a loan shark,” Bronwyn said, her back to us. “Jay’s job is to make sure Nico pays him back.”

I stared at Nico’s purpling face. “By beating you up?”

“A reminder,” Nico said, “of my deadline. Well, missed deadline.”

Yeesh. And Jay had called himself nice. “Is this normal?”

“Borrowing from a loan shark or getting beat up by his enforcer?” Nico asked. He eyed me. “The butt kicking, yes, the borrowing… I don’t know. Not for someone like you.”

I didn’t take offense to that. “Why did you do it?”

Bronwyn returned to Nico, taking up the task of holding the ice baggie. “He needed the money, duh.” She seemed annoyed and I didn’t know if it was with me, with Nico, with Jay Thornton, or the universe in general.

“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Nico said. Bronwyn’s lips tightened. “I lost my job. It was a little over a year ago now. Haven’t found a decent one since. I already had a loan with the bank that I couldn’t pay off. Lost my apartment. I needed the money and this was the only way I knew how.”

“How are you going to pay him back if you can’t pay back the bank?” I asked.

Bronwyn snorted. “Good question.”

Nico put his head in his hands and Bronwyn rubbed his back.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “You can’t pay so they, what, take the cost out of your flesh?” It seemed almost Biblical. “How will that help?”

“Motivation,” Nico replied through his hands. “A warning when I miss a payment. A reminder that the interest has gone up.”

“Can’t they just tell you…with words…?” Borrowing money from a loan shark in the first place seemed like a dumb idea, but what did I know? I’d never been in dire financial straits before—who knew what I’d do if it came to that. But hurting someone to get the money back, how would that help? It was bad business in my opinion.

Not that anyone cared about my opinion.

“That Jay guy is a piece of work.” I got up from the rocking chair and went to the window that looked down on the gym. It was dark; I could barely make out the ring, but it was easy to remember Jay Thornton’s intense gaze holding me in place. How he’d laughed and the warmth of it had caught me completely off guard. I bristled. It annoyed me that I’d been afraid of such a low-class jerk.

“Jay is the one who set me up with the loan in the first place,” Nico said. “He works downstairs.”

I turned back to him. “I don’t get it.”

“I needed the money, I knew he worked for a loan shark, so I asked him to arrange a meeting with his boss. He didn’t want to. He warned me not to do it but I was desperate. I knew what I was getting into before I signed the contract. I knew Jay would be the one. If you get on the wrong side of a loan shark, trust me, Jay is the guy you want to come knocking. The others aren’t so nice.”

I looked at Bronwyn but her face remained impassive.

“Those other guys with him?” Nico said. “Tweedledee and Tweedledum? They would have put me in a coma.”

“So this loan shark sends Jay because he’s…nicer?” I asked, incredulous.

Nico laughed. “He sends Jay because Jay gets the job done. Tweedledee and Tweedledum don’t get the same results.”

“I feel like I’m in the middle of a noir movie,” I said. “Or something by Quentin Tarantino…” Fraze and I had been caught watching Pulp Fiction once and Dad had grounded us both for a month.

Bronwyn growled. “I hate to break it to you, but this is real life. And getting in the middle of Jay Thornton’s business could have gotten you worse off than Nico.”

An apology rose to my lips but I stopped. I’d been there to meet Nico like we planned. And I was only trying to stop him from getting hurt. Why should I apologize for that?

Nico lay back on the bed, groaning. “Sorry we didn’t show you a better night.”

I grabbed my bag. Clearly they wanted to be alone. “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” It was Jay Thornton and his crazy sweatsuit goons who had ruined this night, and my view of the whole world while they were at it. “It was nice to finally meet you, Nico.”

Sort of. I mean, it was. Nico seemed like a good guy, and Bronwyn was clearly crazy about him. But if the whole meeting had gone down a little different, I wouldn’t have complained.

I headed for the door. “I’ll see you later,” I said, though it didn’t matter because Bronwyn had lain beside Nico on the bed and they were talking to each other in low voices.

Outside Nico’s room was a giant open space. The wood floors were worn and lighter in big square spots, as if mats used to lay there. It must have been part of the gym once but the room was empty now. Such a waste of space.

I circled the floor, tiptoeing so I wouldn’t bother Bronwyn and Nico. The space wasn’t big, but it had plenty of room. If they put mirrors up on the far wall, the gym could have classes in there—aerobics or kickboxing or something. Maybe they already used it for that.

As I headed down the stairs to the door, I noticed my phone sitting on the front desk. Jay hadn’t kept it. I scrolled through the photos but the picture of him was gone, like it never happened.

If only I could forget so easily.