Chapter 4: What happened to you
The morning sun painted warm stripes across the flour-dusted chaos of the kitchen. Kenzie hummed something tuneless under her breath, a glass of milk in her hand as she navigated around a bowl of proofing dough. She set the glass down on the worn wooden table with a soft clink, right beside the chipped “World’s Okayest Chef” mug.
“Surprise practice session.”
Joseph’s voice came from directly behind her, low and close. “Three. Two.”
She barely had time to turn her head. “One.”
His arms wrapped around her waist, firm and sure, and he spun her once, a half-circle that ended with her back against the sun-warmed wallpaper. He pinned her there, his body a solid line against hers. Her hands flew up, landing on his shoulders, fingers curling into the soft cotton of his t-shirt.
“Remember what I showed you?” he asked, his voice a gravelly murmur near her ear. His breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple. “If I try and kiss you?”
She nodded, a quick, nervous jerk of her chin. Her heart was a frantic bird in her ribs, but it wasn’t from fear. The scent of vanilla and his clean sweat mixed in the air between them.
He looked down at her, his blue eyes intense. He cupped her chin, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. He leaned in slowly, deliberately, until his lips were just a breath from hers.
She moved.
Her left hand shot up, grabbing the wrist of the hand that held her chin. At the same time, she twisted her hips, breaking his line of pressure, and drove her right hand under his arm, leveraging his own weight against him. In one fluid motion, she had his arm pinned behind his back, his body turned awkwardly against the wall.
“Gotcha,” she said, her voice bright with triumph.
For a second, he was still. Then a grin spread across his face. “Nope.”
He dropped his weight suddenly, his body going slack and heavy, pulling her off balance. Before she could adjust, he reversed the hold, his hand circling her wrist with ease. He spun her again, this time her back landing flush against his chest, his arm coming around to lock across her stomach.
He held her there, pinned against the solid heat of him, her own heartbeat thudding back through his chest. The playful energy of the kitchen sharpened into something else, something still and waiting. She could feel the lean muscle of his forearm tighten just below her ribs, a reminder of both his strength and his restraint.
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. His expression was unreadable, a practiced neutral, but his eyes were dark.
In one smooth motion, he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, breaking the hold only to pin her against the wall facing him. His other hand settled firmly on her lower back, keeping her in place. They both let out a breath, a synchronized release of air that hung between them.
They looked at each other, and his gaze dropped to her lips. Hers found his. He leaned in, his lips a whisper from hers, so close she could feel the faint warmth of them.
“My lips look moisturised?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.
The question was so absurd, so utterly him, that it shattered the fragile tension. She put her hands flat on his chest and pushed him back, putting a foot of cool kitchen air between them.
“Screw you, Joseph,” she said, pulling her hair behind her ear with a slightly trembling hand. A faint smear of flour from the counter dusted her temple.
“I’m serious, though,” he said, crossing his arms. The casual pose didn’t match the intensity in his eyes. “You can never let your guard down. Even if you think you’ve got the other guy pinned.”
She watched him. “Well, maybe we should try again.”
She took a deliberate step closer, erasing the distance she’d created.
“I can’t,” he said, and she saw the shift in him—a withdrawal, the shutters coming down behind his eyes.
“Why?”
“I gotta prep for my fight tonight.”
The words landed like a stone. Her father’s voice echoed in her memory: fighters die in the ring. The half-finished pie, the sunlit flour, the normalcy of the morning—it all felt like a thin veneer. “Can I come?” The question left her before she could second-guess it.
He looked at her, a long, assessing look. “No.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t go either.”
A harsh, short laugh escaped him. “I need the money, Kenzie. I can’t live in your little castle forever.”
He was already turning away, heading for the doorway that led to the rest of the house, to the closet where he still slept. She felt a sudden, desperate need to anchor him here, in the sunlight.
“Okay,” she said, the word stopping him.He glanced back. “We’ll be home by ten.”
He shook his head, a faint, reluctant smile touching his mouth. “Whatever you say, boss.”
Then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the hall. The kitchen felt immense and silent, the humming refrigerator the only sound. She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding, leaning her head back against the wall.
She closed her eyes, the phantom pressure of his hand on her lower back still lingering. Slowly, she ran her tongue over her lips, tasting the faint, medicinal cherry of the lip mask and something else, something like the salt of her own fear.
She spent the afternoon in a strange, suspended state, jumping at every creak of the old house, her mind constructing vivid, terrible images of what “prep” might look like in a damp basement or a hollowed-out warehouse.
By evening, the anxiety had settled into a dull, buzzing thrum behind her eyes. She picked at a dinner she didn’t prepare, listening to her father’s phone buzz relentlessly on the table beside his legal pad. “Anything new on the fighting case?” she asked, pushing peas around her plate.
“You’re unusually interested in my work tonight,” he said, not looking up from a highlighted transcript. “Just making conversation,” she mumbled, her knee bouncing under the table. The grandfather clock in the hall ticked each second like a hammer fall. Ten o’clock came and went with only the sound of rain starting to patter against the windows.
She headed up to her room, the mansion feeling cavernous and echoing around her. Hours passed, marked only by the steady rhythm of the rain thickening against the glass. She changed into soft pyjamas and pulled her guitar onto her lap, strumming aimless chords and humming fragments of songs she couldn’t quite remember, just to fill the silence.
The door opened with a soft click.
She put the guitar down, the strings humming a fading protest. Joseph stood in the doorway, haloed by the dim light from the hall. Blood, diluted to pinkish streaks by the rain, ran from a gash above his temple down the side of his face. He held his left side tightly, his knuckles white. His fluffy black hair was plastered to his scalp, and his clothes were utterly soaked, darkening the pale rug beneath him.
“Your dad’s car’s in the driveway,” he said, his voice rough. He leaned heavily against the doorframe.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, the air leaving her lungs. She was off the bed in an instant, crossing the room. “What happened to you?”
He winced as he tried to straighten up. A shudder ran through him. “He puts razors in his hand wraps,” he gritted out, each word clipped with pain.
She guided him toward the bed, her hands on his cold, wet arm. “Sit down.”
He sat with a deep, guttural grunt, the bedsprings groaning under his weight. She took a step closer, her fingers trembling as she gently pushed the sodden hair back from his forehead to see the cut. It was deep, a cruel slice still welling with fresh blood.
“Kenzie, I’m fine. It’s really nothing,” he insisted, but his eyes were glassy, his pupils wide with shock.
“You are bleeding profusely from your head,” she stated, her voice surprisingly steady despite the panic clawing her throat.
With careful, stiff movements, he shrugged out of his soaked jacket, letting it drop to the floor with a heavy wet slap. He gripped the hem of his black t-shirt and lifted it slowly, hissing through his teeth. The skin over his ribs was a catastrophe of colour—a massive, violent bruise already blooming in shades of plum and ink-black, the centre a frightening, swollen purple.
“Ahhh,” he groaned, the sound pulled from deep within him as the fabric pulled away from the injury.
She stared at the mottled flesh, her stomach turning. Without a word, she turned and grabbed a clean cotton pad and a bottle of antiseptic from her ensuite. She pressed the pad firmly against the gash on his temple. He flinched but didn’t pull away.
“So,” she said, focusing on the task to keep her hands from shaking. “Who won this fight?”
He let out a pained, humourless puff of air. “The other guy.”
She nodded, dabbing carefully. The rain lashed the windows. “Your girlfriend must’ve been upset, huh.”
“Girlfriend?” he asked, his brow furrowing slightly beneath her ministrations.
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes still on the wound. “That tattoo girl from the other day.” She held the cotton pad there, the white material quickly staining a deep, unsettling red.
“Who, Lacy?” he asked, his voice strained.
“Yeah,” she said, her focus apparently on dabbing the cut again.
A slow, pained smirk touched his bloody mouth. “You’re jealous of the fight girl.”
Her hand stilled. “No, no I’m not jealous.” She put her hand firmly at the base of his skull, her fingers tangling in his damp hair to hold his head steady. The other hand dabbed at the open cut with a fresh pad. “Just stop talking, I’m trying to focus.”
“Wait.” He winced but his eyes stayed locked on hers, a new understanding dawning there. “You wanna be my fight girl? I didn’t really think that was your style.”
She looked down at him, the intensity in his gaze making her breath catch. She let out a small, flustered laugh, shaking her head. “Can you not tease me while I’m tending your open wound?” She dabbed more antiseptic onto the cut.
He hissed, a sharp intake of breath. “Gentle.”
“Shhh,” she murmured, her voice softening. She started humming quietly then, a tuneless, soothing sound she hadn’t known she could make. He looked up at her as she worked, his breathing heavy and ragged in the quiet room.
He groaned quietly, a sound that seemed pulled from a place deeper than physical pain.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she whispered, her thumb stroking a slow arc on the skin behind his ear. He kept his eyes on her, the storm-grey of them dark and unblinking, following every minute shift in her expression. The rain outside was the only other sound, a steady percussion against the glass.
His breathing evened out, matching the rhythm of her thumb behind his ear. Finally, she pulled the cotton pad away. The bleeding had slowed to a sluggish ooze.
He stood up, grabbing her arm for support, and leaned against her for a moment, groaning. She looked up at him, he looked down at her.
He walked to the closet, moving with a stiff, careful gait. Inside, he took off his shirt slowly, each lift of his arms making him wince. He stepped out of his wet jeans, the denim heavy and cold, and pulled on a warm, dry pair of black shorts.
He walked out holding his side, his face pale beneath the bruising and dried blood.
“So what got you off your game?” she asked, her voice gentle.
“I don’t know, could be anything,” he said, his tone dismissive.
She sat down on the edge of her bed, the comforter soft under her palms. “Could be the air mattress. There’s like no back support.”
“Yeah, could be,” he conceded, staring at the floor.
She looked at him, at the way he favoured his right side .“Maybe you should sleep here tonight. I can buy you a new mattress tomorrow,” she said, patting the space beside her.
He looked up, his blue eyes guarded. “You want me to sleep with you?”
“We’ll have our own side,” she said quickly, her cheeks warming.
He looked down, then back up at her, a faint, pained smile touching his lips. “Aren’t you worried about messing up the sheets?”
She looked him up and down, confused.“What?” she said quietly.
“I might bleed on them,” he said, pointing vaguely to the cut on his head.
She shook her head, a soft laugh escaping her. “Yeah, that’s why you get the old pillow.”
He didn’t argue further. He walked around to the other side of the large bed and pulled back the covers, sitting down gently. She watched him, her own breath held in sympathy. He leaned back slowly, groaning, his hand pressed tight to his ribs.
He let out a long, shaky breath when his head finally hit the pillow. The rain softened to a whisper. The only light came from the courtyard lamps below, casting watery shadows across the ceiling.
She slid under the covers on her side, leaving a canyon of crisp linen between them. Her body was rigid, hyper-aware of his every pained shift.
“You gonna stare at the ceiling all night?” his voice came, rough in the dark.
“Maybe,” she said. “Are you?”
“Trying not to move is a full-time job right now.”
A silence settled, different from before. It was shared, filled with the sound of their breathing.
“My dad asked about Tristan again at dinner,” she said, the words floating up to the shadows.
Joseph was quiet for a moment. “What’d you tell him?”
“That we broke up. He didn’t seem surprised.”
“He probably saw the guy was a tool.”
“Probably.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at his profile, a dark shape against the grey window. “The necklace was my mom’s. The one he broke.”
Joseph turned his head too, wincing at the motion. Their eyes met in the half-light. “I meant what I said. We’ll get it back.”
“It’s just a thing.”
“It’s not, though.”
She didn’t argue. The truth of it sat quietly in the space between them. He understood about holding onto fragments.
She could hear the shallow, careful rhythm of his breathing beside her, each inhalation hitched with pain.
“So when are you gonna stop fighting?” she asked.
The words hung in the dark, blunt and unavoidable. He let out a long breath, the sound weary at its edges. “Some of us have to work for a living, Princess.”
“What about your parents?” She turned her head again, watching the shadowed outline of his profile.
“Dad’s not around. Mom… she can’t.” The statement was flat, final. She looked at him, at the hard line of his jaw. “It’s up to me to take care of Declan.”
“Who’s Declan?”
“My brother.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“It’s a long story.” He let out another breath, this one shuddering. He turned on his side more fully to face her, wincing, then adjusting the pillow with a stiff, awkward movement. The mattress dipped between them. “He’s in rehab. He was the one who got me into fighting. He broke his jaw a couple years ago in a fight, got hooked on oxys.”
The confession landed in the quiet room, each word a concrete weight. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“Yeah.” He was silent for a moment. “Anyways, rehab’s expensive. Fighting pays the bills.” A hollow, self-deprecating note entered his voice. “Don’t you want me fighting? It’s good for the whole guard dog image.”
“I don’t want you ending up dead.” The sentence came out quicker than she intended, sharp with a fear she hadn’t fully named.
He looked at her, his eyes glinting in the low light. “Yeah, well, that’s not your problem. Don’t worry about it.”
He started to turn back onto his back, a pained grimace twisting his features. She moved without thinking. Her hand slipped across the cool sheet, her fingers finding his where they rested against his ribs. She didn’t lace their fingers, just laid her palm over his knuckles, a simple weight.
He froze. His hand was warm, the skin across his knuckles rough and split. He didn’t pull away.
Her palm was a warm, startling weight over his battered knuckles. The contact seemed to short-circuit the low, constant thrum of pain in his side. He stared at their hands in the gloom, her slender fingers pale against his darker, swollen skin.
The rain had nearly stopped. A single droplet traced a path down the windowpane, catching the light. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, the air leaving his lungs in a slow, controlled stream. His ribs ached with the movement.
He rolled back on his side looking at her, then her hand on his.
The shift was slight, a careful re-angling of his body toward her. The sheets rustled softly. His gaze travelled from their joined hands up the line of her arm, over the slope of her shoulder, to find her eyes already waiting in the dark. She was watching him, her expression open and impossibly soft.
“Kenzie,” he said, her name just a shape in the quiet.
“Yeah?”
He didn’t know what to say next. Thanks felt wrong, inadequate for the sheer, quiet courage of her touch. An apology for existing like this, broken and bleeding in her bed, clawed at his throat. He swallowed it down.
Instead, he turned his hand beneath hers. It was a slow, deliberate rotation, his split knuckles grazing her palm. He let his fingers slide between hers, just enough to feel the delicate bones there. A simple, wordless answer.
Her breath hitched. She didn’t look away.
“Your hands are always cold,” he murmured, his voice gravelly from the fight, from the hour.
“Yours are warm.” She gave his fingers the gentlest squeeze. “Even now.”
He nodded slightly, the pillowcase scratching his cheek. The cut on his temple pulsed a dull reminder.
She wriggled slightly closer in the dark looking at him. The space of cool sheets between them vanished. He moved a little closer wincing slightly. A sharp intake of breath hissed between his teeth. “Sorry,” she whispered, freezing. “It’s okay.” His voice was tight. “Just… the ribs.”
“Right.” She didn’t retreat. Her forehead was almost touching his now. In the faint light, she could see the weary lines around his eyes, the sweat still drying at his hairline. “So Declan’s in rehab.”
He nodded, a tiny movement. “Six weeks in. It’s a good place.”
“And you pay.”
“Someone has to.” His fingers twitched within hers. “He got clean once before. Lasted four months. Then he relapsed, and I…” He trailed off, his jaw working. “You what?”
“I was angry. I said things.” Joseph closed his eyes for a second. “Told him he was weak. A bad brother for getting me into fighting. Then I left for three days to cool off. When I came back, he’d OD’d in the bathtub.”
Kenzie’s breath caught. Her other hand came up, tentatively brushing a damp lock of hair from his forehead, away from the wounded skin. He leaned into the touch, just barely. “He almost died,” he finished, the words flat and heavy.
“That’s why you fight,” she said, not a question anymore. “It’s not just for the money. It’s… punishment.”
He opened his eyes. They held a resigned honesty that was more vulnerable than any tears. “Maybe. Part of it.”
“You think you deserve to get hurt.”
He didn’t deny it. The confession hung there, raw and ugly. She’d expected him to deflect, to crack a joke. This truth was worse.
“You don’t,” she said, her voice firm. “Joseph, you don’t.”
She shifted her head on the pillow, her nose brushing his.
He looked down at her lips. Her eyes wandered down to his. She leaned in slightly, closer. The space between them became a charged, silent thing, measured in heartbeats and shared breath.
Then he flinched, a full-body twitch of agony as a spasm gripped his bruised ribs. A sharp, bitten-off groan tore from his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face contorting. The moment shattered into fragments of pure, physical misery.
“Jesus,” he gasped, his hand tightening around hers.
She pulled back instantly, the spell broken. “Okay, okay, don’t move.” Her voice was all practical concern now. She sat up, the covers pooling around her waist. “We need to ice that. Stay right there.”
He just nodded, teeth clenched, riding out the wave of pain. She hurried from the bed, her bare feet quiet on the rug. The house was profoundly still, a stark contrast to the storm inside her chest. She returned with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a dishtowel.
The bruise looked even worse in the direct light from her bedside lamp, a sprawling map of violence. She placed the makeshift ice pack gently over the worst of the swelling. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, his abdominal muscles jumping under the cold.
“Hold it there,” she said, guiding his free hand to press the pack in place. Her fingers lingered for a second on his wrist, feeling his rapid pulse.
“Thanks,” he managed, his voice strained.