He waited, and I filled in the rest. “She said every day was your chance to make your city better.”

She didn’t only say it. There was a mural with those words painted on the hallway in front of her door. I never gave it much thought. Of course, we all looked out for one another. I didn’t know there was another way.

Rowan indicated the view out the window again. “These kids out here grew up just like us. What would you tell them to do if they had this same problem?”

I knew what he was doing, but he also wasn’t wrong. Our neighborhoods had been half-abandoned by a city because of our zip code and funding problems and budgets that went to rich people over working-class families.

I sighed. “I’d tell them…hell, if no one’s coming to save us, then we have to make it right. So I guess that means I’ll do it. I’ll figure out how to clean out Annie’s lot and turn it into…whatever.”

He grinned, rubbing his palms together. “You know I’ll help and the neighbors will pitch in. I wouldn’t worry too much about coming up with ideas. It’ll be great no matter what.”

“We’ll see,” I grunted.

His expression grew serious. “I know it’s easier to retreat. You know I’ve been there before. And the feeling fucking sucks. But I think this is the kind of work you were born to do.”

My muscles loosened a little. Rowan understood how it felt to be an athlete with a whole identity and persona controlled by other people. Whether you were good or bad, working hard or phoning it in, loyal to your city or a traitor. Since making the choice to retire, I’d found it damn near impossible to expose myself like that again, to feel like a raw nerve all the time.

Hiding was safety. Retreating was at least an action I could take, even if I wasn’t doing shit with my life. I knew it was only a vacant, trash-filled lot. But it shoved me back into a spotlight, no matter how small. And that made me shrink away.

“Yeah, it is easier to retreat. I hate…letting people down again,” I finally said. “I know you get it. And we’ll figure it out. I’m just extra distracted right now.”

“Oh, you mean because the girl you were into when we were in school is living next door to you now?”

I opened my mouth. Shut it. Scowled out the window. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours.”

Rowan held up his phone with a smirk. “Alice O’Callaghan has been texting me nonstop since the break of dawn. She’s no amateur.”

“Your grandmother is a menace to society.”