Fight.
Never stop fighting.
It’s time to get some.
I spin and move into something like a dance, a wild frenzy of fists and knees and well-placed kicks.
One kick takes a man clean off his feet and sends him clattering to the floor.
An elbow crushes a nose and even as they batter me with their clubs and sticks, I don’t feel a damn thing.
I spin around the room, kicking the guns into the darkness, and then jump on a man and wrench him sideways as he goes to leap for his gun.
His legs fly into the air and he accidentally kicks his friend in the jaw.
I spin my whole body into an elbow strike, smashing the cheek of one man, and then I follow through and clatter into the skull of another.
I don’t think.
I just act.
And then, when I spot my chance, I leap into the darkness where I kicked the guns and I pick them both up smoothly, firing two shots into the air.
“Everybody in the fucking corner, now,” I snarl. “Or this is about to get even more ugly.”
I suck in air slowly, controlled breaths, whereas these mongrels are panting and whining and struggling to drag themselves into the designated corner, which I point out with the barrels of the guns.
And even calling them mongrels is unfair.
Mongrels are a step above these monsters.
Soon all of them are crowded into the corner, Omar nursing his broken arm, several other men cradling their injuries.
None of them will meet my gaze and I can’t blame them.
They thought they were the big bad wolves.
Before they met someone who actually knows what the fuck he’s doing.
“Kat,” I say, guns aimed, never taking my eyes off the gathered men for a second just in case they try anything. “Call Jason, like we discussed. Give him our address. Tell him we’ll need the police, too.”
“Yeah, right, okay.”
A pause, and I know she’s hugging Rusty, her Rusty, even if I can’t turn to see.
“Good boy. Just give Mommy a second to arrange to put these bad men in jail. Then I’m all yours.”
I hear the lick-lick-lick of Rusty’s frantic reunion and warmth blooms in my chest.
Mommy.
I like the sound of that.Chapter ThirteenKatI sit beside the pool as the sun shafts down, a glorious day filled with the sounds of insects and effusive happiness that whelms welcomingly over everything, especially my heart as I lean back, letting both Rusty and Scrappy climb atop me and start licking at my face.
“Easy, boys,” I giggle, and hear Colton’s parents laughing from just behind me.
It’s been about a week since the craziness at the orphanage, and when I reflect on it, the phrase best week of my life can’t help but blossom like an eager rose in my mind.
Rusty looks prim and proper after his grooming, but most importantly his eyes are starting to glint with the same enthusiasm that was once his trademark.
Whatever he suffered with Omar, we won’t let that define him.
Just like me.
We’re moving onto brighter, better things.
To sweeter days.
I sit up, giggling and playfully waving them away.
Rusty and Scrappy have already become fast friends, Rusty even helping with the training sessions by setting a disciplined example.
But this afternoon isn’t about training. It’s about relaxing and basking in the light airiness of just how wonderful things are becoming.
I’ve spent every night this week with Colton.
We consume each other with the passion of victory, with the security that this is where we belong, where we’ll always belong.
Omar is in jail. His goons are in jail.
Now it’s just us and this closeness that grows ever more confident with each kiss, with each touch, with each searing contact of our hungry, greedy bodies.
I look over at Henrietta and Sebastian, a sophisticated-looking couple in their late sixties.
Sebastian is tall and wide just like his son, with a shaved head and a perpetual smile, and Henrietta is the sort of woman I admire, looking dignified but not upright or standoffish. She wears a swimsuit and big red heart sunglasses, not at all shattering her dignified air.
“Are you okay, dear?” Henrietta says, with an easy smile. “You looked like you were utterly under attack then.”
“I think I’ve just about recovered,” I giggle, as Scrappy and Rusty duck and dive at the same time.
Splash.
They leap into the pool and begin to frolic together, a sight that causes more sunny contentment to move like balm through me.
When Henrietta and Sebastian returned from their trip, worry spiked in me, worry that they wouldn’t accept me, that they wouldn’t like me.
And I’d forgive them.
Colton and I met a week and three days ago and yet – and yet – it feels like a hundred times that, a thousand.
It feels as if our destinies were carved out of atoms at the start of the universe and now we’re finally slotting into our rightful places, and even if that sounds crazy, I’m tired of calling myself crazy or unworthy or anything else.