Fighting For Life

by Kylie Alyssa Forte

  The boy smiled at me when I handed it back to him. He looked at me closely and then took another hit. He seemed chill. Granted, I had only just met him and said a few words to him.

  “Thanks,” I stated, nodding at him. I felt a lot more relaxed.

  He blew out the smoke and handed it to his friends. “No problem. Can I get your name? I think it’s the least I deserve after I so nicely shared my weed with you,” he asked, looking at me in the face.

  I suddenly felt very self-conscious as my hair was still down from dinner, and my lips were still red. The only difference was my clothes. The joint made its way back around to me, and he handed it to me. I took another hit and savored it for a few moments. I blew it out and coughed a few times before I opened my mouth to tell him my name.

  “Aubry?”

  It was what I was about to say, but it wasn’t my voice.

  “Aiden,” the boy beside me said with a smirk and put his arm around me. I followed his gaze to the door that I came through. “Long time no see.”

  ***

  Aiden

  I wasn’t mad per se. Upset? Yes, but not mad. I was upset because a girl, who had only met my family twice, could see right through the act. She could see right through me. I let her get too close. Nothing good ever came from being close to me.

  I had to distance myself.

  That was how it was going to have to be from then on. Tommy and Brandon were going to take over Aubry’s training. I was taking myself out of the equation. I was removing myself from her life. It was too dangerous, too dangerous for anyone to be near me.

  I could feel Aubry’s questioning glare the whole night. I could feel it at the gym, in the car, when we got to the Underground, when Crystal came up to me, and even when Crystal had thrown herself at me and we were making out. I could feel Aubry all around. It was maddening.

  I was way too invested in her. I cared about her more than I wanted to admit. Had Tommy actually been right about my feelings for her? That thought scared me.

  I saw Aubry knock the guy out on stage, and I felt pride fill me up. That was when I let Crystal lead me out of the Underground. I wanted to get away from her penetrating stare, and the pull that Aubry seemed to have on me. I didn’t want her, but yet, I did.

  I wanted to create space between us. If Crystal wanted to be that space, then so be it.

  “This is just a hookup,” I told her firmly before I let her kiss me again.

  She said nothing and continued to try to kiss me.

  “No, I need to hear that you understand me. This is just a hookup, nothing else.”

  “Okay,” she said in a whiny voice, making me cringe.

  I then looked at her closer and sighed in defeat. I couldn’t do it. All I could see was Aubry when I looked at anyone now. This was messed up! I didn’t even like the girl. Now she was all I thought about.

  I stopped Crystal before she kissed me again or got down to her knees. “I’m sorry . . . this isn’t going to happen.”

  “What?!” Crystal screeched at me.

  I honestly felt a little bad, but I couldn’t do it, and that pissed me off.

  Before I could get any other words out, I heard Brandon yelling, “Aubry!”

  My eyes widened when it registered to me that him yelling for her meant that she wasn’t with him.

  What? Where was she?!

  “You lost Aubry?” I accused B before I could help myself.

  “Don’t act all high and mighty like you’re not over there screwing some bitch. You didn’t even watch her fight! You weren’t there! So don’t pretend to care now,” Brandon yelled back. Brandon didn’t usually get all worked up like that, so I could tell he was nervous.

  I took a deep breath trying not to snap back at him. “What did she say and what happened before she left?

  “Seriously Aiden?” Crystal yelled at me.

  “Yes,” it was all I said to her.

  She stomped off back into the Underground with a huff. I sighed as I saw Brandon’s smirk at me.

  “Not a word,” I told him with a look.

  “Anyways, Trey came and talked to us. She seemed really shaken. Then she just said that she’d be back and ran off. We lost sight of her in the crowd when she walked away. That was a while ago, T and I have looked pretty much everywhere. We can’t find her!” He was practically frantic.

  “The restroom?” He shook his head indicating that she wasn’t there. “Trey’s office?” I spat out. He shook his head again.

  Where could she have gone? There weren’t that many places.

  Just then, a thought went through my head. “The back alley?”

  His eyes went wide and quickly went through the door. I followed him and Tommy caught up with us quickly when he saw us making our way over to the mostly unused door.

  I made it to the door first and forced it open with force. I was way too worried about her.

  “Aubry.” I breathed out finally when I caught sight of her pretty face.

  Thank God. I then noticed what was in-between her fingers—a joint. I didn’t even know she smoked weed. She put it behind her back quickly and smiled awkwardly at me.

  I finally took in the whole scene around her. When I saw the guy who was next to her, I froze. He put his arm around Aubry’s shoulders, making her tense up and look at him sideways. I knew then that she had no idea who he was.

  “Aiden . . . long time, no see,” he stated, casually grabbing the joint out of Aubry’s hidden hand and handing it to one of his three friends behind him.

  I walked fully into the alleyway, letting B and Tom see what was going on. I wanted to rip the guy to shreds, but I knew that we were outnumbered, and they were all extremely strong fighters. We would all be pretty evenly matched, if not bested, if we were to go on a full-out fist fight. However, I knew that those guys didn’t fight fairly. They used knives and guns if they had them.

  “What’s wrong Aiden? Cat got your tongue?” he stated, trying to make me mad. It worked.

  “Aubry, come here,” I said in a final voice, not giving her room to argue. She started to walk but was kept in place by Ronnie’s arm.

  That son of a bitch.

  “Ronnie, let her go!” I said, pissed.

  “Make me,” he stated challengingly.

  I grunted. I knew that he wouldn’t let me get her, and he didn’t ever fight fair. This was going to be a shit show, I could already tell. I just needed to get Aubry out of the line of fire.

  He took his arm off of Aubry to receive the dwindling joint. Aubry quickly tried to walk forward when he removed his arm. Before she could get very far, Ronnie grabbed her by her hair and pulled her back, throwing her against the wall.

  Her back hit the wall hard, and she held in a scream. I knew that the hard hit had to rebroke some of her barely-healing ribs. All of her progress meant nothing right then.

  “Ronnie, leave her out of this. She didn’t do anything to you!” I said, taking a step closer.

  Before I could get any closer, one of his friends snuck up behind me and had me in an arm lock with a gun pointed to my side. I looked over, and both B and Tom were like that too.

  This was too close to that night.

  “I already told you when I was done with Briana, you’re never going to be happy again,” Ronnie said, touching Aubry. I wanted to rip that arm off.

  “Wasn’t what you did to Briana enough? I’m not happy. I never will be again. How can I be? I have to constantly look at my beautiful little sister and think about what you did to her! I have to constantly stop myself from telling her, ‘I’m so sorry. If I never became friends with that guy, then you would have been the old you. The beautiful, outgoing you. Now all you do is sit here and mope around crying non-stop . . . and it’s all my fault!!’ I’m not happy, I’ll never be happy again!”

  I felt so much anger and hatred run through me directed at that man.

  “Now, let Aubry go. We’re not even friends.” Aubry looked around at us and I could see he
r discouragement at our predicament. She was seeing how badly this looked like it was going to end up.

  “No, it’s not enough. My sister is dead because of you! She was the only family I had left,” he growled at me. “What I did to Briana is going to be nothing compared to what I’m going to do to this one. You just heard about what I did to Briana. You’re going to watch what I’m going to do to Aubry.”

  “But we’re not—” I tried, but he cut me off by shoving Aubry backwards to the wall again, making her whimper.

  “Don’t give me that, We’re-not-even-friends BS. I see the way you look at her. You care about her!” he said, looking at me.

  I took a different approach at those words. “I didn’t kill your sister! Your sister killed herself! She was insane! Just like you!”

  I tried to keep his attention on me as I noticed Aubry starting to silently scoot away from the sociopath. She was almost out of arm’s reach before one of his friends signaled him to catch her.

  Ronnie turned around and violently grabbed her. He shoved her against the wall once again. She didn’t even make a noise that time, she just had a look of fury on her face.

  He pulled his notorious knife out of his pocket and shoved it against her neck, surely it was cutting her with how harshly he was shoving it at her.

  “Move again and I will kill you, understand?”

  I struggled but the guy behind me had the upper hand and a gun. I didn’t want Aubry to get hurt . . . this was all my damn fault!

  “You sure are pretty, I can see why Aiden wants you so bad,” Ronnie said as he began unzipping her jacket.

  I started thrashing around, trying to get out of the man’s grip behind me. The guy wasn’t budging. Suddenly, an idea popped into my head.

  “Your sister sure was good in bed though!” I practically yelled. “She might have been batshit crazy, but she was sexy as hell,” I said, trying to distract him.

  He stopped for a split-second and turned to me with an ugly and sinister sneer.

  “Your sister was good in bed too. Although, we were on your living room floor. Still, every time she hollered ‘no,’ it made me so much harder.”

  I gasped at that statement and wanted to throw up. Well, that backfired.

  “By the end of it, I was in pure ecstasy.” He smirked as he looked me in the eye.

  I was going to kill him!

  He then turned back to Aubry and raked his eyes over her. “Mmm. You make me hard too, little girl.” She brought her leg up and tried to kick him, but he stopped her quickly. “Oh, you’re a fighter, huh? That makes me so much harder. Briana just laid there and took it. You have some fire in you. I cant wait to squelch it.”

  I saw Aubry’s face screw up in even more anger. It wasn’t fear; it was pure and unadulterated anger.

  I was mad too. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rip him into pieces until his body was unable to be identified. He deserved it!

  Ronnie called over his shoulder. “I’m just glad I got to this one before you. You would have killed her and her spirit.”

  I thrashed around again, but it was no use. The dude had the upper hand. I didn’t want to give up for her though. I couldn’t give up!

  Ronnie finished unzipping her jacket and backed away a little. “Remove it,” he demanded.

  She moved slowly and started taking the jacket off. Slowly, she was buying time. I wasn’t sure what for, I was afraid we were all stuck. Soon enough, Ronnie got annoyed and ripped the jacket off her quickly. His eyes roamed her body more, and he stroked her small waist, making him grunt in approval.

  “Gorgeous,” he stated, running his hand along her scarred-up arm.

  I looked at Tommy; we were devising a plan silently. I wasn’t sure what it was that we were going to do, but we both had agreed in that moment that we’d die trying before we let Ronnie have his way. We just needed to figure something out quickly.

  While looking at each other trying to figure out a plan, we all heard a commotion from where Ronnie and Aubry were standing.

  I didn’t know how she did it, but Aubry somehow had maneuvered herself by flipping around the two of them. She was the one positioned in front of Ronnie with the knife pressed against his throat instead of her own. However, her right hand was gushing blood from her fingers as she stood there.

  They, well, she was talking way too low for us to hear. I could see fear in Ronnie’s eyes though. I smiled with sick satisfaction at the scene in front of me, aside from the blood spilling out of her hand, of course.

  I was stunned, she was absolutely amazing.

  “L-Let them go guys,” Ronnie called out. Though his voice was hoarse with fear, it made me want to laugh. The guys let us go immediately at his request, and I moved forward closer to her.

  She backed away from him cautiously. She never turned her back to him and trusted us to cover her as she backed away. She picked up her jacket as she backed up just a bit. She paused for a moment and suddenly punched Ronnie right in the nose. We could all hear the crunch that his nose made when she made contact with it. I wanted to cheer loudly.

  She walked toward me as fast as she could with her back still facing me. However as she walked, even backwards, she seemed too wobbly.

  “I think you still have something of mine!” Ronnie said even though blood was pouring out of his nose.

  I rolled my eyes at him as I realized that he was looking at the knife in her hand.

  Instead of walking away and ignoring him like I thought she would, she marched up to him. I then realized that she really was going to give him his knife back.

  What? That was the same knife that made that scar on Briana’s face. The knife that had cut me. Why would she give that back to him?

  She held out the knife to him with a sweet smile. In the short time that I had known her, I had come to realize that the sweet smile was pretty much anything but sweet.

  He cluelessly opened his hand for her to set the knife in. Suddenly, she stabbed the knife into his palm. The blade went all the way through his hand and was sticking out on one side, stopping at the handle.

  I was shocked; she fucking stabbed him!

  “That was for my hand,” she stated calmly, while holding up her fingers that had blood profusely dripping from them.

  Ronnie screamed as he held his palm out and whimpered, practically kneeling down in pain.

  She pulled the knife out and stabbed his hand once again. “That . . . that was for Briana.”

  He screamed less that time and actually growled at her as she turned to walk away.

  “You just made a huge mistake, little girl!” he yelled out in warning.

  The only thing was, he might have been right. I mean, at one point, I thought that he was my friend and then he set out to ruin my life and everyone around me.

  Aubry walked out of the alleyway with her head held high as we followed her closely. As soon as she turned the corner out of sight from any of them, she collapsed hard on the ground. I was too far back to catch her.

  “Shit,” I whispered as I bent down and easily picked up her small body. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing erratically. She had passed out.

  “That is a deep cut,” Tommy said as he lifted her hand to examine it closer. Just as he said that, more blood gushed out. Step “It’s going to need stitches. She nicked her radial.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hope

  Aubry

  There was no other way out of it . . . I knew there wasn’t.

  I had heard enough of what the guy had done. I didn’t need a play-by-play of that night with Briana. I already knew that I hated him. I knew what he was planning for me, and he had me all the way messed up if he thought that I was about to let him do that. I wasn’t the one.

  I would rather die.

  I took a deep breath, knowing that it was the only chance that I was going to get. I had to get out of that situation. I hadn’t come so far as I had just to have something like that mess me up.


  As quickly as I could, I grabbed the knife by the blade, cutting my fingers deeply. It hurt like hell, but I managed to twist the knife out of his hand and grasped it by the handle. With my new leverage, I was able to flip us over, making me the one that was leaning on him blocking his movements.

  I pushed the knife deep into his neck, harder than he had done to me. “If you think that I won’t kill you, guess again,” I said as he thrashed around, trying to move. He immediately stopped when he felt the knife dig into his neck harshly.

  I smirked at him. “Tell your guys to let them go!” I demanded.

  He kept his mouth shut, so I pushed the knife deeper into his neck. Blood immediately seeped from the forming cut.

  He did as I said.

  “If you ever, and I mean ever, touch me again . . . I will not hesitate to kill you. Also, don’t even think about Briana ever again.”

  As I looked at him, I let my anger get the better of me and punched him in the face. I felt a little satisfaction at the blood pouring down his face from my punch. I slowly backed away from the boy, extremely unevenly.

  Before I was all the way back up to Aiden, he yelled at me, “I think you still have something of mine!”

  I couldn’t believe his audacity in wanting his knife back. Before I thought about my actions, I marched up to him, holding in my breath as I did so. I got to him and smiled sweetly to him.

  He let down his guard and held out his hand. Suddenly, I slammed the knife down into his palm as hard as I could. The blade went all the way through his hand.

  The satisfaction that I felt at his pained screaming was carnal. I almost wanted to laugh.

  “That was for my hand,” I told him savagely, only to take the knife out and stab him again. “That, that was for Briana.”

  He was screaming loudly as I walked away. “You just have made a huge mistake, little girl.”

  I honestly didn’t care what he had to say. The static in my brain as I was walking away was too much for me. I was dizzy and tired as I walked out of that alley. I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to continue.