“Why don’t you come over here and make me?” Ty challenged, crossing his arms. “Oh, that’s right. You made my girlfriend a promise that you wouldn’t take a swing at me again, and you’re actually pussy-whipped enough to honor that.”
Emma’s face had gone from snow white to cherry red. It was one thing for him to humiliate her in front of me, but now he was doing it in front of a generous portion of her classmates. She was squirming from her discomfort. I couldn’t take seeing her like this, and since I couldn’t beat the snot out of him to shut him up, I could think of one other way to get him to shut his trap.
“I might not be able to hit you to shut you up, but I’m fairly certain if you’re beating the crap out of me, you won’t be able to manage anything more than a grunt.”
“Patrick,” Emma whispered, shaking her head, pulling me away from Ty instead of holding me back from him.
“Are you serious?” Ty asked, looking like he was waiting to double check the numbers before celebrating his lottery win.
“Dead,” I said, squaring myself in front of him, my body subconsciously bracing itself for a beating. “I’ll give you two minutes to kick my ass from here to next Monday because I’d rather feel your pussy punch than hear your filthy lies. But here’s the thing.” I stared at the piece of garbage with unblinking focus—I wanted him to know I wasn’t scared of him and I was serious as a tumor with my warning. “If you ever say another nasty thing about Emma again, whether I hear it or not, all promises are off, and I will relish beating you until you’re reduced to crapping into a diaper and sipping steak from a straw the rest of your life. I have no problem going back to jail, son.”
So I hadn’t been to jail before, but I meant it when I said I’d have no problem paying the price to beat him within an inch of death. In fact, I couldn’t think of a better way to end up in prison.
The crowd had grown again, almost exponentially. That probably had a lot to do with text messaging and “send all.”
“Two minutes, huh?” Ty said, sliding out of his coat and tossing it to the side. “And you think by keeping your word and not hitting me while I kick your ass, that will make me the bad guy and Emma will run into your broken in several locations arms?”
I slid off my watch and handed it to Emma. She was looking at me like I was the next in line to be hanged. “If Emma ever chooses me over you one day, it will be of my own merit. Not due to your lack of it.”
Ty cracked his knuckles, rolling his neck around. “What are the rules?”
Idiot, since when did fights for honor involve rules? We weren’t playing a game of chess.
“No rules.”
“No.” Emma’s voice was so tight it was a note from breaking. “Don’t be stupid. Just walk away. I can handle him.”
I unzipped my motorcycle jacket and handed that to her next, just to give her something to wring her restless hands into. “I’ve never been one to walk away, Em, and that’s something I’m not about to change now.”
“Back away, Emma,” Ty said, hopping in place to spike his adrenaline. “Might want to say goodbye to pretty boy’s face. There’s not going to be much left of it once I’m done.”
“This is a one time deal, dickhead,” I said, stepping away from Emma since she wouldn’t step away from me. “Do your worst.”
“That’s the only way I work,” Ty answered, pulling something out of his back pocket. The metal caught the sun as he slid the brass knuckles into place.
If my opinion of Ty Steel could have gotten any smaller, it would have. Who carried a set of brass knuckles around in their back pocket? Just think of the most despicable person you’ve had the misfortune of meeting and that pretty much describes him. “No rules right?” Ty said with a wicked grin.
Emma gasped. “What the hell, Ty?” Her voice shook across the grass at him.
Holding up the index finger of his knuckled hand, he reached his other hand behind him, revealing another set. Sliding this set into position, he held his fists in front of him, sliding them together so I could read the encryption etched into them: Don’t fear the reaper, fear me.
A man who was taller than me by a couple inches, heavier than me by a solid fifty pounds, brass knuckled to the teeth, set on ending me because I was after his girl, about to enter a fight with me where I wasn’t allowed to throw a single punch . . . I should have been pissing my pants right about now.
So, of course, I laughed. “Done stalling, big boy?” I called out, making sure the crowd heard me. “Quit playing with your toys and throw down the pain already.”
“I won’t hold you to your promise anymore,” Emma said, bracing herself in front of me as I began loping towards Ty. “This is not a fair fight. Hit him, kick him, I don’t care, do what you have to to defend yourself. Okay?”
“Stay out of this, Emma,” Ty warned, taking an indirect route at me like he didn’t believe that I wasn’t going to fight back.
“Yeah,” I said, looking at her. Tears were streaking her face, but I couldn’t retract the offer now. Had I known she’d be crying more now than she had when Ty had been saying those terrible things to her, I might not have made this deal with Ty, but that was hindsight. “Stay out of this, Em.” Gripping her shoulders, I guided her into the crowd, handing her over to a girl I recognized who lived on the same floor as her and Julia.
“I know it’s hard for you, but stop being an idiot,” she pleaded when I turned to face a two minute beating. “The last guy he used those things on was unconscious by the second punch.”
I glanced back at her and winked. “Good thing I’m not the last guy.”
I was just looking back around when a cool crack crushed into my jaw. The crowd gasped—Emma screamed.
So, of course, I laughed—again.
I should have been expecting the sucker punch from the master of all things suck. It was an oversight I wouldn’t make again.
“I told you to punch me, not to give me a sweet little kiss on the cheek,” I said, pretending to smear the kiss away.
His next hit was fast and loaded with a potent amount of power. Not to mention the brass knuckles had a way of driving a punch so deep you could feel it radiate through the ends of every nerve.
Spinning around to the crowd, I lifted my arms to the sky. “Did someone turn a fan on in here?”
The next was an upper cut that felt like it would have shattered my jaw had I not been so . . . invincible.
“Is there a butterfly migration going on? I keep feeling the gentle brush of velvety wings on my face.”
A few members of the crowd laughed at my weak attempts at humor, but most stared like they were about to witness an execution. Emma was now being held back by two of her brothers who’d appeared with the rest of Stanford. That was a relief because I knew they wouldn’t let her get anywhere near to the cluster f-bomb taking place in the arena created by gawking bodies.
By the fifth hit, I wasn’t making witty comments anymore. And by the eighth, I wasn’t laughing either. I hadn’t been in more than a handful of brawls with beings of a fragile nature, but when I had, the random hit I’d let past my defenses to experience what it felt like had felt like nothing. Like someone tapping at me to get my attention, not to cause me physical damage. Then again, I’d never experienced the wrath of a man who was likely related to the devil, wielding a convincing pair of brass knuckles.
Spitting out the metallic taste swirling in my mouth, I realized this was one of those experiences I didn’t want to have again. Once was enough. I hadn’t felt this Mortal since the day I’d died with the rest of my family.
A quick jab, followed by a hook, rocked me back on my heels, but I recovered, assuming my spot in the center of the ring. I’d made myself a sitting duck, refusing to duck, not about to block him, and keeping my promise to not strike back. I’d promised the man two minutes to dole out a free for all beating and he wasn’t going to let a second pass wasted.
I kept myself angled towards Emma because I knew I’d
find the strength in her I needed when every fiber of my survival instincts begged to be set free.
She’d called the cops after the first hit. I’d heard her brothers advising her not to, and I’d heard her succinct, one word answer, but we both knew Palo Alto’s finest wouldn’t be here before the two minutes was done.
She never stopped fighting against her brothers. I don’t know what she thought she’d do once she did break free, but I hoped she was seeing a piece of the woman I saw when I looked at her. She was a scrapper, courageous to the core, yet she didn’t see it.
As Ty completed making a punching bag of my head, she threw herself hard against her brothers, getting the closest she had to busting loose.
“Just a walk in the park, Em,” I called over at her, spitting the bitter taste from my mouth again. This time, there was blood. I hadn’t bled real, red blood since 1806. Russo-Persian War. Long Story.
“A walk in the park,” I repeated, bracing myself as Ty threw his fist into my stomach.
I curled over, wondering if time had decided to slow to a crawl so it could have a good laugh at Patrick Hayward getting his butt handed to him. Vulnerable, Ty charged into me, hoisting me into the air with his shoulder. And then I was flying, but not in the cool, trippy way I did in my dreams. In the this-is-going-to-hurt-like-hell kind of way.
I skidded across the sidewalk face first. The pissant had thrown me onto concrete. Face first. I wanted a piece of him so badly I had to wind my hands behind my back and lace them together so I wouldn’t be tempted. At my current level of anger and agony, I’d kill him with one strike.
Ty’s feet came into view, although my eyes were glazed and no longer able to open all the way. They were swelling closed. Ty seemed to have picked an excellent day to throw on a pair of steel toed boots, at least that’s what I had a good internal laugh about before they started taking turns bashing me in the face.
I hadn’t felt pain like that ever. Not even when I’d been shot close range in the stomach my last day of Mortality. Immortals experienced pain on a superficial level, if ever, but I was feeling it like it was cutting me open and spilling my insides out in the process. I’d never felt so human. Couldn’t have picked a worse day to feel Mortal.
I kept my hands locked behind me, not about to act the part of a coward and protect myself when the seconds were ticking to an end. I wouldn’t go down as someone who ran out of courage at the last minute. I didn’t want that to be my legacy.
Black dots were just beginning to cloak my vision when I heard a chorus of shouts. “Time!” most yelled. “Your two minutes are up, Ty!” some called. “Get him the hell off of him before he kills him!” a couple called.
“Patrick!” one voice screamed—the only voice that mattered.
Releasing their sister, Austin and Tex charged Ty, each one grabbing a shoulder and pulling him away from me, but he still managed to get a few last kicks in.
“Stay down, punk” he sneered, fighting against the Scarlett brothers’ holds.
Two minutes was up, I’d taken it like a man, keeping my promise and honoring my deal, and I was hurting hard core. My body felt like it’d just gone through an assembly line of heavy weights throwing their top-notch, grade A TKO punches. I could have curled up and gritted my teeth until my body did the Immortal thing and recovered itself like a new shiny penny, but because he’d told me to stay down, I did the opposite.
Trying to right myself with as little hobbling as my busted body could, I had to spit out the warm fluid trickling in my mouth before I could reply. More red, lots more red.
“That’s it? Just a wham, bam, thank you ma’am and you’re gone?” My body was broken, but my voice carried just fine. “No cuddling after or anything?”
The crowd’s eyes did a unified amplification, like if they hadn’t been before, they were now looking at a dead man. The humor in that was that I’d been a dead man before their great great grandparents had been born.
Ty fought harder to free himself, but the only thing more hulking on campus than him was the Scarlett brothers. He’d have better luck freeing himself from Alcatraz. I didn’t know if he was incapable of responding because his quivering red face was taking up all his energy or if he didn’t have a comeback worthy enough to speak, but I was relieved I’d managed to shut him up.
He wouldn’t look at Emma as he was dragged out of the circle, and I realized I’d never heard him disrespect her around her brothers. He must know all gloves came off if he talked that way to their sister. My estimation of the Scarlett boys increased two-fold.
“Thanks again for the rub down,” I yelled over the diminishing crowd to Ty, because I never knew when to quit. “You really worked all my kinks out. Same time, next week?”
I heard another growl and surge of effort, but Ty didn’t bust through the crowd to take another swing at me. Too bad, because one solid round house to the mouth would have been one of the few things to make me feel better.
Well, that, and one set of arms wrapping around me like she was trying to put me back together. God, I could have melted into a puddle of slush from those arms.
“Why did you do that?” she cried into my chest. “What the heck were you thinking?”
I dropped my stiff arms around her, trying not to wince. “I thought you would have noticed by now I don’t think too often.” My humor was still intact—that was a sure sign I was going to make it. However, I did not want to see my mutilated face before the magic fairy dust of Immortality had done its work and repaired me back to good as new. I’d never be the same if I did.
Sniffling, she looked at me. “That’s not true,” she said, her hand skimming over my face like she was trying to erase the swollen, bloody, bruised, gashed, meatball of flesh. “You’re the most thoughtful person I’ve ever known. I know you did that because you thought it through, not because it was an impulsive, testosterone fueled decision. And I’d thank you, but I can’t be thankful for something that did this to you.”
Tears were skiing down her face unchecked, but her voice gave no sign of them. If we were in a dark room, I wouldn’t have guessed she was crying the tears of a new widow. She wouldn’t give herself more than one release of sadness, her strength ran that deep.
“You don’t have to be thankful, Em,” I said, seeing two of her every other heartbeat. Trippy. “I’m thankful enough for the both of us that your monster of a boyfriend shut up and left. But I meant what I said,”—I looked at her as hard as a pair of swelling shut eyes could—“if that bastard says so much as he doesn’t like the color of your shirt and I hear about it, there’s not going to be a time limit and I’m not holding back. You understand?”
She nodded, her face forming around a different kind of sadness. The kind that ran deep and couldn’t be fixed. “I know, Patrick. I know,” she said, her voice as sad as her face. “That’s why I meant what I said earlier.”
My blood battered brows rose in confusion; she’d said a lot earlier.
“You need to leave me alone. Alone, alone. I can’t have you and Ty in my life at the same time. One, or both of you, is going to wind up dead.” She paused, swallowing a rock in her throat. “Just forget about me, Patrick. It won’t be hard to do. I promise.”
“Emma, what the hell?” I felt numb from the hit I’d just taken to my heart.
“The ambulance will be here soon,” she said, pressing a lingering kiss into my cheek. It was so rich in emotion, history, and goodbyes it choked the words right out of me. The first time I’d felt her lips on my skin was the last time I’d see her again if I did what she was asking and left her alone and forgot all about her.
I might have cried my first tear in a long time just then. So much warm fluid was flowing from every surface inch of my face I couldn’t be sure, but that familiar burning feeling in my eyes was there. And everything inside me certainly felt like crying.
“Goodbye, Patrick,” she whispered beside my ear, before winding out of our embrace and pushing herself through the coul
dn’t-get-enough-of-this-train-wreck spectators, running in the opposite direction. I’d seen too much of Emma’s fleeing back today.
The pain surged in a fresh wave with the healing balm of her touch now removed. I would have collapsed to the ground and let the pain, pity, and regret eat me away until I was swallowed by the ground, but I heard the wail of approaching sirens.
I didn’t want to explain why their needles couldn’t puncture my skin or why every wound on my body would be vanished like it’d never existed in a couple hours.
“Run,” I told myself, feeling like I was going to need to whip myself to leave this spot where Emma had just held me like everything was going to be all right, like everything I’d gone through wasn’t for nothing, like I was going to be all right.
She took all my hopes when she ran away.
“Run,” I repeated under my breath, the sirens turning the corner. The crowd was already parting so the men with their boxes could sew up the bloody blob who used to look like a man five minutes ago.
“Dammit, Patrick Hayward. Run!”
It took a slow inhalation and my forearm thrust to my chest, but I did. I ran. I ran away from the sirens, away from the crowd, away from my problems, away from everything that had the potential to hurt me.
Problems, no matter big or small, had a way of running faster than you and could be counted on to be waiting for you, rested and ready to pick up right where they’d left off, by the time you got to wherever you were running. I knew that, I’d learned that lesson a million times over, but it didn’t stop me from trying.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I ran all the way to the edge of the Pacific, to the beach house where Emma’s sunny sweet smell assaulted me when I stepped in the door. She still lingered here, but once the scent was gone, no part of her would be here again.
The two hour run had done me good. Teleportation could have gotten me here in a blink, but when I ran, when I really let myself tear the ground apart, my mind emptied, and that was just what I needed. I ran until I couldn’t remember my name.
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