“Yes,” Niko hissed with an indignant lift of his chin. “I know. I have been burdened with patching you up since you were fifteen years old.”
Yes, he had been. Travis could remember that first afternoon like it happened only yesterday. When he had been dragged into a back alley after school by three older boys because he’d had the nerve to stick up for another boy they’d been picking on. Travis, then, had been the easier target.
It’d been raining that day. A wet, cold, miserable afternoon, and when Travis had been singled out by the trio of bullies, he ended up punched and kicked and tossed in muddy puddles.
“Give it up, Travis,” one of the boys said, propped up against some tin trash cans. “S’not like you’re gonna get anywhere.”
It went on like that for another few minutes. The three b
