Fragments return in pieces.
The alley.
Her hand in mine.
The man’s voice.
My stomach tightens.
“You shouldn’t be sitting up yet,” Alex says, noticing the shift in my posture.
“I’m not.”
He almost smiles.
There’s a bruise forming along his jaw I hadn’t noticed before.
“What happened?” I ask.
He leans back slightly.
“Ambulance arrived fast. Tommy called them while Chris and Nick made sure the three wankers didn’t come back.”
His voice remains calm, factual. The way it always does when describing something that had the potential to go much worse.
“They’re in custody,” he adds after a moment.
The words don’t register immediately.
“What?”
“The arseholes,” he clarifies. “Police picked them up about half an hour later. Someone at the pub knew their names.”
Of course they did.
Villages like Fellside remember everything.
“They’ve been arrested,” Alex continues. “Assault. Racially aggravated assault.”
The word lands harder than the others.
Not because it’s unexpected.
Because it’s real now.
I close my eyes briefly.
Not from pain. From the weight of it.
“You did exactly what you should have done,” Alex says quietly.
I open my eyes again.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You stayed between them and her,” he says after a moment.
I don’t answer.