Chapter 29
TRUE TO HIS word, Sukha attends the Hillway seminar with Rajan. He rolls his eyes throughout it, but most of the attendees do. Rajan’s probably the only one listening as they explain gang exit strategies, fostering connections in the community, healthy friendships, navigating drug use, blah blah.
Admittedly, his mind starts wandering too while sitting in the back, doodling in the margin of a counseling brochure. At least until someone sits beside him.
Kat. He stiffens, as always now with his relapse hanging over him. She speaks in a whisper so as to not disrupt the presentation. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Their little game continues, then. Rajan exhales. He’s counting down the days till end of probation, because this is torture. “I’m here for my brother. You?”
“Volunteering. I helped organize this seminar, actually. What do you think?”
“It’s kind of bullshit.”
She frowns. “Why?”
“It would hit more if it weren’t just some do-gooder standing up there.” He nods to the front of the room. “If it were someone who actually went through this and made it out the other side.” As it stands, it’s entirely theoretical.
Kat nods sagely. “Hmmm.”
He eyes her. She looks like she wants to say something. “Spit it out, dude.”
She doesn’t. She just says, “So the gas station job didn’t suit you, I take it?”
“Kat, not even you would be able to smile if you worked there.” He quit the same day he discovered Maya.
Now he’s fully returned to roofing. And Simran’s returned to bookkeeping with a vengeance.
Nick hasn’t acted on Rajan’s Maya intel, and although he makes excuses, Rajan knows it’s because Simran made it obsolete.
They’re back to square one—Rajan keeping an eye on her while she works.
Except some days, even that feels useless.
That night at his house she seemed happy, but the next time he saw her with the Lions, she was listless, the shadows under her eyes deeper than ever.
Her phone buzzed occasionally, and she didn’t even look.
But he did. He saw how many unread messages she had.
And he mentioned it, too, only to receive glares from everyone else in the room.
Nick even told him to shut up. None of them like it when Rajan reminds their bookkeeper she has a life outside these damn ledgers.
“Does that mean you’re willing to explore other options now?” Kat asks.
A commotion distracts them from conversation. Rajan looks up to see Sukha has stood in the middle of Narcan kits being distributed. “I’m not doing fucking IV drugs,” he snaps. “Fuck this.” He stalks toward the exit. Rajan doesn’t move to stop him. Sukha staying this long is already a win.
“Thanks for coming!” Kat trills as Sukha storms past. She turns back to Rajan. “As I was saying, I gathered some applications for the community college I think might interest you. There’s funding we can apply for. Mechanics, woodworking, graphic design.”
He pauses his doodling. Kat’s psychoanalyzing is getting old. “Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Only to get her off his back. Even if Kat got him into some program, starting something like that feels like asking the universe to screw it up again. He’s not sure how much more of that he can take.
He crumples the brochure. “I’ve got to go. Work soon.”
Kat’s hand lands on his shoulder. “Wait.”
He stills immediately. This is it. This is where she mentions—
“Be careful out there. You’ve seen the news, right? There’s a gang war. People might not be thinking clearly, and you’re very visible with your tattoo.”
Rajan relaxes again. “Don’t worry, dude. Everyone knows I’m a reformed Lion.”
He punctuates that with a wink, but she doesn’t seem reassured. She keeps smoothing out her dress. Weeks have passed since the playplace attack; why so nervous today?
He shakes his head and follows Sukha out.
Work today is at a three-storey house they’re re-shingling. The cloudy July sky forecasts rain. Bad news for a roofing company, and the foreman is in a shit mood when Rajan shows up, barking at him to get to work already.
Rajan and Trevor are assigned on a section together. As usual, Trevor talks too much. As usual, Rajan tries to tune him out.
Trevor notices, though. “You’re in a mood.”
“Just noticed today, huh?”
Trevor doesn’t seem to get it. Raindrops splatter the shingles they’re laying down. “Trouble with your girlfriend?”
Rajan pauses. Was it Trevor that gave Nick the intel about Chandani? “One-time thing.”
“That’s not the one I’m talking about.”
His voice is sly. As the rain comes down in earnest, Rajan processes what he means. There was that day—at UBCO—when Rajan talked to Simran on the worksite. Interrogated her, really, about her dealings with the Lions. It hadn’t occurred to him that people were watching.
A foreboding feeling crawls up his neck.
Today, Kat was warning him off from rival gangs.
What she didn’t realize was that he might have more to fear from his own people.
They’re watching, they’re reporting on him to their higher-ups, they’re narcing to his PO, and—he suddenly remembers Nick’s and Zohra’s warnings about him not being welcome—maybe they’re waiting for the right moment to off him.
The thought feels ridiculous. At first. Because then he thinks about the stink eye everyone gives him when he talks to Simran at the café. Not only has Rajan become useless to the Lions, but he might now be actively getting in their way.
He’s spared from answering Trevor because the foreman shouts to cover the roof. The rain’s too heavy.
Trevor runs to grab the tarp, and they lay it down on the unfinished parts. Rajan reaches for the zip ties to secure it in his vest pocket, but it’s empty. He could’ve sworn he had some earlier.
Trevor stands. “I’ll get more.”
Rajan sits back while Trevor darts over to the edge of the roof to his ladder. Something about the whole group—Trevor, the foreman, everybody—seems off today. He can’t put his finger on it. God, Kat really got into his head, didn’t she—
Thump.
Rajan looks up. “Trevor?”
No answer. Trevor’s not on the roof anymore.
Rajan stands. He may not like the guy, but that doesn’t mean he wants him to break his neck. “Trevor!”
He walks quickly to the edge of the roof. But right before he can look over the side, his boot connects with something heavy.
He barely has a second to look down and note the heavy hammer that’s just lying there before he loses balance. Reflexively, he shifts his weight, but the tarp under his feet slips. He doesn’t even have time to curse before he tips backward off the roof.
And falls. Headfirst.
Some instinct makes him stretch out his arms, looking for something, anything to grab onto. Miraculously, his hand hooks around something—a beam?—and his fall stops all at once, violently wrenching his shoulder.
Pain explodes through it.
It’s so intense, he loses his breath. Along with his grip. He falls the rest of the way down.
His back hits the earth first. Then his shoulder—god, his shoulder.
He blinks up at the cloudy sky, raindrops falling on his face.
The pain makes him woozy. When he tries to roll onto all fours, his shoulder won’t take any weight.
It feels odd. With his other hand, he gropes at it. Something’s...not right.
In his peripheral vision, boots splash through the puddles toward him. He struggles to his knees, fighting back nausea. Fingers pry at his shoulder, making him gasp. “Dislocated,” someone says.
Rajan staggers to his feet, shoving them away with his good arm. The shock is starting to wear off, enough that he’s aware of his frantic heartbeat, more frantic still as his coworkers crowd him. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Relax, Rajan.”
“We can fix it.”
“Don’t touch me.” Rajan clutches his injured arm. The nausea lets up a little. He rounds on Trevor. “Why was that hammer on the roof?”
Silence. Trevor pales. “It was an—”
“Why the fuck was it on the roof?” he screams. He’s lost it and he doesn’t care, all he can see is a hammer that never should’ve been there, a tarp that was loose, zip ties that were gone, and a blur of people he can’t trust.
He backs away. They let him, watching warily.
Trevor sighs. “Kid, at least go to the hospital. You can’t sleep that off.”
Rajan doesn’t answer, because he can’t think straight. He doesn’t like hospitals. Jesus Christ. This hurts.
“They’ll at least dope you up,” someone else adds quietly. And, pathetically, that gets him thinking as he trudges off the worksite. No one stops him. But he hears that thump again behind him—when he looks, it’s just the wind knocking heavy tarps against the wall. That’s all it was...right?
He takes the bus to the hospital, wincing with the jolt of every pothole. He’s suddenly learning all the other hits he took on the way down. He closes his eyes to the pain and again sees that hammer on the roof. Is he losing it or was that definitely not there before?
At the hospital, the triage nurse directs him to the waiting room.
It’s crammed. His eyes snag on the woman holding a bucket for a little girl to barf into.
God, he wishes he had one of those right now.
A few rows away, a guy rocks back and forth, clearly tweaking.
The security guards nearby are eyeing him.
Too much déjà vu. Rajan hasn’t been in a hospital since. ..
Anyway.
He scans for a patch of floor to sit. There. By a lady with a ponytail. It’s only when he makes his way over that he realizes he knows her.
“Kat?” he blurts.
She’s not in her preppy dress from earlier; she sits cross-legged on the floor in a black full-sleeve shirt and loose-fitting jeans. When she sees him, she smiles wanly.
“Hello, Rajan,” she says, like it’s normal for them to rendezvous in ER waiting rooms. Her eyes flit to how he’s holding his arm. “Did you...dislocate your shoulder somehow?”