And there was cheap booze.
And shoes.
Win-win.
Rosie let out an exaggerated sigh. “Touché. Who needs weapons with girlfriends when you’ve got words?” she asked, unfolding her arms and rounding the car.
She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t even impressed. We fought dirty. Someone had to teach those outlaw bikers how to do it. And Rosie and I were the OG vengeance vixens.
“Rosie!” Bex’s broken scream had us both halting in our tracks and staring across the lot.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Keltan stop and do the same.
“Get away from the car!” Bex yelled.
And because we’d experienced one too many drills in that situation, we didn’t hesitate. We started to run.
You heard it in someone’s voice, when they had knowledge that something was going to happen. Something bad they couldn’t stop, only try to save others from. And then you heard the other thing, that you couldn’t stop nor save anyone from.
I heard that in Bex’s voice.
Yet she still ran towards us. Like she would die trying.
But then I wasn’t focused on her. My eyes were on the man sprinting towards me, obviously used to that same tone, his eyes grim with demons and intent on saving someone.
He barreled into me at the same moment an echoing boom rippled through my ears and the air moved with the blinding heat of fire at our backs.
His strong arms yanked me into his chest, and in midair, he moved us so that his body thudded on top of mine, covering me on the pavement that we’d slammed into painfully.
My head cracked on the back of his knuckles, which prevented me from cracking it on concrete that would have been rather painful and potentially fatal.
He stayed atop me as the heat licked our bodies, like the promise of death once cheated.
My body throbbed in pain at the impact of hitting a hard surface so brutally, and my ears rang with a high-pitched whine that made even my thoughts hard to hear.
Though my wrist was screaming above all that, the sharp pain taking over most of my consciousness, radiating to my shoulder.
Because I was pinned underneath a man who ate The Rock for breakfast, I was paralyzed with the pain. My immediate instinct was to wrench my wrist away from the source of the burning pain and cradle it to my chest.
Moments, seconds, or minutes later—time was increasingly blurry—he was off me, his face carved from granite, chocolate irises focused on me and saturated with pure worry.
“Luce,” he said urgently.
“Hand… on fire. Put it out, please,” I bit out, lifting my burning hand up. I jerked with surprise when I didn’t see it in flames. Instead there was a lump in the flesh that I was reasonably sure hadn’t been there moments before.
Then again, Rosie’s VW Beetle had been there moments before. Now there was a flaming pile of wreckage.
Rosie, I thought immediately, my arm forgotten.
I tried to struggle at the same time Keltan’s eyes flared at my wrist, and he moved to jostle me gently but quickly into his arms.
I struggled as he turned towards his SUV, the wrong way.
Men were already shouting amidst the roar in my ears, sprinting towards the car.
“Let me go,” I screamed, looking to see Lucky bent over Bex—who was thankfully moving and not squirting blood from stumps that used to be limbs.
I snatched a glance at Rosie, who was standing with Cade’s hands at her neck, concern on his face.
I sagged only slightly at the fact that she also seemed reasonably unharmed.
“Let me go,” I screamed again, my voice sounding strangely muffled in my own head.
Keltan’s eyes flickered to Cade’s and then me. “You need to get to a fucking hospital, Snow,” he clipped.
“I need you to put me down,” I hissed, giving Cade another frantic glance.
Cade’s eyes darted up, and he locked them with mine. Relief apparent, his eyes went to Keltan’s arm, and then my wrist at my chest. Then they flickered beside us.
Dwayne’s tattooed hand slammed the door shut that Keltan had just tried to open. His name wasn’t Dwayne, not until Amy and Gwen arrived. All my life, I’d grown up calling him Ace—the only name he’d given me, despite him being around the same age as me.
I reasoned his old name, the one we knew that Gwen’s dead brother used to call her, was the reason he went along with this new one without protest.
The men cared about Gwen. It wasn’t hard, since she was awesome, but they cared about all the women. It was the way alpha males were wired. Archaic and so not feminist, but comforting even to a staunch feminist like myself.
Which was why, despite my screaming wrist that was becoming unbearable and making my stomach roll, I was grateful for the alpha male intervention.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re takin’ her?” Dwayne growled, the veins in his neck pulsing.