The lads are half a block from the pitch when the noise pulls them off course — a roaring, ugly thing, the kind of crowd you only ever hear when something’s gone very wrong. Gerard ‘Gibsie’ Gibson falls in step with Johnny, Hughie and Patrick, curiosity tightening his shoulders.

They push through to the edge of the circle. In the center, Jiji is a red hurricane: hair wild, fists moving, knees braced as she straddles Lizzie Young and rains blows down on her face. Lizzie is small against her, hands up uselessly, blood blooming at the temple. Someone screams for them to stop. Someone laughs. Someone records.

Hughie Biggs is first to move. He bolts forward and rips Jiji off Lizzie like someone’s yanked a plug; his face is white, breath hard. “Lizzie!” he shouts, scooping the dazed girl into his arms. Love makes him reckless; love makes him savage in defense. He drives Jiji back with a shove that would’ve knocked a lesser girl clean off her feet.

Jiji lands on her knees, panting, palms splayed on the cobbles. She doesn’t stumble away. She’s all knife-edge and spit. Blood flecks her knuckles; there’s a fresh bruise already darkening along one cheek. She drags a hand through her hair and looks straight at Lizzie, danger sharpening her voice.

“If you ever say Gerard should’ve died that day at the lake and not his sister or Da, I will make myself yer worst nightmare,” she spits. The crowd hushes. Even Hughie freezes, caught in the heat of it.

Gerard stands at the edge of the circle like a man carved from stone, sun striking off his jaw. For a second he looks as if he might step forward, say something—anything—but his mouth tightens and he keeps still. Johnny and Patrick shift behind him, uncomfortable, glancing between Jiji and the little wreck on the ground.

Hughie pulls Lizzie in closer, checking for injuries, cursing at the crowd. He lets go of Jiji reluctantly; his hands hover an inch away as if he expects her to lunge again. Jiji pants, chest heaving, eyes bright and fevered. She straightens slowly, shoulders squared as if the world can’t touch her.

Then, without ceremony, her gaze slides from Lizzie to Gerard. It lands on him with a complicated, dangerous look — not hatred. Not quite. There’s something hotter there: frustration at the bars life built around her, anger that her parents forbid the thing she probably wanted most, and a tight, humiliating ache that she will never confess. Gerard meets her stare and for a beat their histories — the lake, the rumours, the lost—hang between them like a held breath.

Jiji lets her stare hold, then turns away, palms flexing where the blood has dried. She mouths nothing. She’d deny everything til she dies; she’s already made that decision. But the look she gives Gerard as she steps back is loaded: a challenge, a promise, and, if you read it sideways, something very much like longing.