I slowed to a stop before turning the corner onto Tenth Street. Hands on my head, I tipped my face back. Breathed heavily for a full minute. It was barely 7:30 in the morning and the air was sticky, the sky bright blue. I didn’t need to run home after my workout. But I wanted to. Anything to burn through the excess energy buzzing through my limbs.

My trainer was a neighborhood institution everyone always called Sly—in his seventies now, he was tough as an old tire, brusque, and constantly under-impressed. He’d worked with me from the first day Mom and Midge had taken me to his gym. And he understood, more than most, what my career-ending concussion had cost me. He’d been around long enough to know how to keep me in fighting shape without the damaging side effects of real fighting.

Sly’s workout this morning had kicked my ass from one side of the gym to the other. Everything hurt, but the way it used to. The normal kind of hurt. Not the daily pain that came with competing in the ring—the broken teeth, the cracked ribs, the migraines. I’d been out for three years and I still hadn’t healed right in some places. I didn’t miss the scars that came from having my cheek split open or the constant ringing in my ears.

I did miss the power. I had more of that than I knew what to do with.

Wiping my forehead with the end of my shirt, I fished my keys out from the pocket of my running shorts. Refused to notice Linda’s house. Tabitha Tyler’s house, at least for the rest of the month. Halfway through the door, my phone beeped with a message. I scooped it up from the table but got distracted by the sounds of laughter down the street. The kind I recognized.

Standing in the open doorway, I read the message from Rowan on my phone: The kitchen sink at the center is busted again. You got some time this morning to fix it?

The South Philly Rec Center on 8th and Federal was housed in a falling-down building the same way most rec centers in the city were. I did as much work for Rowan as he requested. Anything to help.

Yeah, give me fifteen, I sent back. Then I ditched my phone back on the table and glanced toward the sounds of laughter. I scrubbed a hand down my face, sure I was seeing things.

Nope.

It was Tabitha, lounging in a lawn chair next to Eddie like she’d never left home at all. They were drinking coffee with my parents while Alice swept the sidewalk.

Give me thirty instead, I texted Rowan.