It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the shadows that slowly shimmered into men. Three young black men. One tall, maybe six foot, and two short. The short, thinner one wore a red baseball cap. The whistler had been the tall one. We might have had a chance if it had been just two, but I didn’t like our odds with three.
The tall whistler stopped.
“We’ll make it easy on yo bitches,” said the fat one. “Hand over the bag and nobody gets hurt. You feel me?” Cockiness resonated in his voice.
The tall one chuckled.
“Shut the fuck up, Tyrone.”
“Don’t use my name, nigger,” yelled Tyrone. He pushed the fat one.
Haylee and I started to back away. The quiet one with the baseball cap noticed.
“Uh-uh, ladies. You ain’t going nowhere,” he said. “See, what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
“Yeah, bitches, I said hand over the fucking bag,” roared the fat one.
He took a step toward me, and Haylee lunged at him, screeching like a banshee. All hell broke loose. Haylee jumped on the back of the fat one, wrapping her arm around his neck, trying to choke him, but his extra rolls of fat were getting in her way. Haylee struggled to get her arm under his chin, the fat making it impossible for her to cut off his windpipe. She raked her long fingernails down his face, leaving behind bloody gouges. The fat man screamed. I wish I could’ve told her to go for his eyes instead, but before I could utter one word, Tyrone had grabbed me and was trying to drag me back toward the alley on the side of the boarded-up shop.
I squirmed, trying to wrench myself free of his hands, which were digging into my armpits, dropping my car keys on the ground in the process. He was surprisingly strong for such a lanky man, and he laughed at my feeble attempts to grind my heels into the dirt of the alleyway.
“Don’t fight me, bitch, or I’ll make it hurt real good,” he warned.
The man in the baseball hat had followed us toward the alley. He stared at me with dead eyes, and I knew then it was going to be bad.
Tyrone suddenly released me, and I fell backward on my butt in the dirt and gravel. I tried to stop my fall with my hands, but as I hit the ground, my left hand crashed into a broken bottle, slicing my palm wide open. I held my hands up in front of me helplessly as blood seeped out of my palm.
It didn’t seem to faze them in the slightest. Ripping my bag off over my head, I threw it at them, grabbing the broken bloody bottle with my good hand.
“Take it! Get the fuck out of here,” I screamed, waving around the broken bottle.
“It ain’t that easy, bitch,” said Tyrone. “You got somethin’ else I want now.”
I heard Haylee scream, but I couldn’t go to her. I looked up at Tyrone, who just grinned at me, unfastening the belt that hung around his baggy pants. I choked back a hysterical laugh. His pants were practically falling off. What was the point of a belt? I glanced nervously to the man with the red cap when I noticed there was no noise coming from the street. What had happened to Haylee?
“Haylee,” I screamed, my lungs burning with the effort.
“Shut up, bitch,” yelled Tyrone.
And then he was on top of me.
I couldn’t breathe as he wrapped his left hand around my neck, his right knocking the bottle from my hand. It skittered a couple of feet before landing up against the brick wall with a chink. My eyes were bulging out of their sockets with the force of his hand squeezing my throat, and I had a minute, maybe less, before I would black out, and then he would do to me whatever he wanted. I couldn’t let him—I wouldn’t let him. I looked up past Tyrone toward the man with the cap, seeing if there was a way to get around him. Even if I could disarm Tyrone, I still had to contend with the baseball cap man.
That was when I saw the third figure coming toward us, and my heart sank. It was hopeless. It would be hard enough to get out from under Tyrone and then get past his accomplice. I couldn’t deal with the fat man, too. I thought one more time about Haylee and what the fat man would’ve done to her. Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes as my vision got hazy. Unconsciousness was coming for me, and there was no escaping it. My shoulders sagged, and I willed myself to give in to the blackness. At least I wouldn’t feel the pain when it came.
I looked up one last time, focusing on the man shape that seemed to emerge from mere whispers of a shadow. An elongated man shape, not a short, squat one.
Suddenly the weight was off my chest and I could breathe. I took in a ragged breath and tried to scream, but it was like a fire had exploded in my larynx, and nothing came out. Rolling over, choking, I inhaled dust through my nose while my left hand still trickled blood down my arm, but I didn’t care. Bracing myself for the pain, I placed my hands in the dirt and pushed hard. More blood seeped out into the dirt, but I ignored it and the pain as I staggered to my feet, regaining my sight.
I glanced around wildly, looking for my attackers, ready for the second wave of violence, but they were gone. There was just one man standing in front of me, tall and raging.
Adam stood, breathing hard, his hair rumpled, his shirt ripped open.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low, quiet, and deadly.
I nodded my head and kept nodding. I couldn’t stop. My chest tightened and still I nodded, small gasps of breath coming out fast and irregular. The gasps turned into sobs.
“Shhh. Come here.” Adam grabbed my unhurt hand and dragged me toward him, intending to wrap me in an embrace. The moment he touched me, the electrical charge ran through my body, shocking me to my senses. I pulled my hand away as a hurt expression crossed his face. He crossed his arms.
“Where are they?” I gasped.
His face hardened as he looked beyond me. “They will not bother you anymore, Poesy.”
“Why? What did you do?” He had my attention.
“I did what I should not have done,” he said quietly, looking back at me before looking at the ground, where the blood from my dripping hand pooled at my feet.
“I don’t understand.” He no longer seemed angry. He seemed almost regretful.
“I should not have gotten involved. It was not my place to save you,” he said simply.
“Are you serious?” I spluttered.
“Yes,” he confessed; then confusion clouded his face. “No. I could not watch it happen.” He groaned, his hands covering his eyes before raking through his hair.
“You’re a jackass!” I yelled at him, the adrenaline pumping through my body.
“I just saved your life,” he said, looking incredulously at me.
“I didn’t ask you to step in, Prince Charming. You took it upon yourself. I could’ve handled it,” I snapped.
“Oh, really? You looked like you were handling it just fine!” He pointed at my injured hand.
I jerked my sweater off and wrapped it around my hand before turning my attention back to the man who regretted saving my life. “Just go away and stop stalking me!”
“I am not stalking you.”
“That’s not what it looks like from where I’m standing.”
“You are lucky to be standing at all,” he retorted.
“I said go away!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!” I said back at him.
“Fine. I am leaving.” He glared at me one last time.
“Okay, then,” I replied, trying not to sound contrite.
He turned his back on me and stormed off down the alley out into the street. I raced after him, but he was gone by the time I reached the corner. How could he disappear so quickly?
A groan brought me back to the situation at hand.
“Haylee Jane!” She was lying on the sidewalk.
I ran over to where she was struggling to sit up and dropped to my knees, giving her a hug.
“You’re alive,” I croaked.
“Yeah, although my body feels like I’ve been tossed around in a washing machine.�
�� She winced to emphasize the point. “What happened? One minute I’m on that nigger’s back, next thing I know I’m lyin’ on the ground.”
“Adam saved us.”
“For real? That freaky cracker saved us?”
“Haylee Jane.”
“Oh please, you know what I meant,” she replied, rising to her feet. With a grunt, I stood up beside her.
“I don’t know how he did it, but he did,” I mumbled.
“I don’t care if ol’ Moses came down from the mountain and zapped ’em niggers in the ass with a lightnin’ bolt. We’re alive, and that’s what counts.”
I couldn’t help it. I cracked a smile. “Haylee Jane, you’re crazy.”
“Crazy is as crazy does,” she countered.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder.
We limped back to the car.
3
I woke up with the sun glaring down in my eyes—its blinding light drilling directly into my brain. Moaning, I rolled over and promptly took in a mouthful of Haylee’s dreads, causing me to cough. My throat felt like it had been bathed in acid as another cough stabbed through my body. I groaned, pushing on Haylee’s shoulder. Haylee slept on like the dead—nothing short of a nuclear bomb could wake her up, and to make matters worse, she snored.
“Haylee.” I pushed harder this time.
Still no response.
“Haylee Jane!” I exclaimed, my throat now on fire.
As a last resort, I pushed her out of the bed with my foot. She landed on the floor with a meaty thud.
“What the hell?” Haylee yelled from the floor. Her sluggish, disembodied hand groped for the mattress. With some effort and an audible grunt, Haylee’s head appeared over the side of the bed. Her eyes glared at me.
“Good morning,” I rasped.
“Easy for you to say,” replied Haylee. “You didn’t just get your ass kicked out of the bed!”
“I couldn’t wake you.”
“You couldn’t have tried, for example, a cup of coffee first?” she asked sarcastically.
“Come on.” I got up from the bed and headed toward the bedroom door.
Two hours later and with several cups of coffee in my system, I felt more like a human being. Haylee finished cleaning up my palm and applied some ointment to keep my wound from getting infected. It still hurt, but I’d escaped serious injury. Stitches wouldn’t be necessary, which was fine by me because I couldn’t have afforded a hospital visit anyway. My throat was starting to feel better, too.
“So.” I avoided Haylee’s eyes.
“So.” Haylee echoed.
“Last night was pretty crazy, huh?” I looked at the laminated top of my kitchen table.
“Girl, it was more than crazy.”
“Yeah, I guess it was.”
“Good thing that Adam dude showed up when he did,” she remarked. “I’m not being funny or anythin’, but he just showed up like the Flash. One minute I remember tryin’ to choke that fat nigger, then I’m on the ground lookin’ up at you. What happened? Where did those niggers go?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
“Didn’t you see nothin’?” Haylee asked, pressing me further.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I was on my back, being straddled by that Tyrone guy, then next thing I know, he’s off me and I’m struggling to my feet. I look up and there’s Adam.”
“There’s somethin’ not right,” she insisted.
“I know.”
“No, I mean it, Poe. I ain’t sure what’s worse—not knowin’ why we were picked out or how your Adam just shows up to save the day like some comic book hero.”
“He’s not my Adam,” I said defensively.
“Well, you’re gonna have to talk to him about it.”
“Hell no! I’m not going to talk to him.” The last thing I wanted to do was speak to him.
“Uh, yes you are. If you think I’m just gonna forget last night ever happened, you got another thing comin’, Poesy Wharton.”
“I’ll probably never see him again, anyhow.”
Haylee seemed unperturbed. “Oh, that boy’ll be back around, sure enough. He’ll show up. Don’t you worry about that.”
***
Money being the way it was, I couldn’t afford not to go in to work. So I got dressed, put on a mood stone ring that had been my mother’s, and applied as much makeup as my limited capabilities allowed. Anything to make me feel better about going into work.
With a bandaged palm and a less-than-perfect voice, I showed up at Paddy’s. It should’ve been a relatively normal night except my shift started an hour after Haylee’s, which meant everybody in the whole bar now knew about our episode from the night before.
Some congratulated us on getting ourselves out of a tricky situation, while others just gave us appraising looks, as if we were forces to be reckoned with. One white girl and a big-bootied black girl got away from three would-be muggers. Of course, Haylee had left Adam out of the equation.
As it was, I kept glancing at the door to see if he would strut in and expose us for the liars we were, but to my disappointment, only the regular customers came and went. I had promised Haylee I’d speak with Adam, and although it made me grimace, there would be no peace from Haylee until I did.
If Adam wouldn’t come to the bar, I’d have to track him down.
The bad part was that part of me wanted to see him again. After all, the man had saved my life. I’d said a bunch of horrible things last night that seemed ludicrous in the light of day…I should at least be grateful.
I’d just about resigned myself to the prospect of going to Adam’s when Birdie skulked through the front door of Paddy’s. He looked miserable.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he approached me.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a small cut,” I said lightly, holding up my hand and feeling slightly uncomfortable at his attention. Well, not so much his attention as everybody else’s. People were staring at us.
He took another step toward me, his chest touching mine, and then, suddenly, he cradled my face in both his hands.
“Birdie, I’m fine! Please!” Desperate to avoid a scene, I pulled his hands off my face and took a step back.
“What?” he asked.
“People are staring,” I hissed under my breath.
“And?”
“And,” I grabbed him by the wrist and led him over to the edge of the bar, “I’d prefer not to be a spectacle, thank you.”
“I think it’s a bit late for that.” Stevie stood behind the bar, drying a pint glass with a green towel.
I gave him a dagger look.
“Okay, fine. Why don’t you take a break? And while you’re at it, take it outside if ya’ll don’t want to be on display.”
I wanted to curse loudly. Instead, I merely grunted.
“Come on.” I grabbed Birdie with my one good hand, yanking him outside. It was cold, and the wind had picked up. It helped me clear my head.
“I’m sorry about last night, Poe,” said Birdie quietly. He interlaced his fingers with the ones on my good hand.
I sighed. “It’s fine.”
Birdie’s thumb rubbed the fleshy part of my palm, making me shiver. He stood directly in front of me, staring into my face. “No, I mean it, Poe. It’s all my fault.” He struggled to keep his emotions under control. His gray eyes had dark smudges under them—it looked like he hadn’t slept at all last night.
“It’s not,” I replied.
“If I hadn’t ignored you after the show last night, you would’ve left earlier,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, that wasn’t one of your best moments.”
“If something bad had happened to you, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“Birdie,” I said gently, “it’s okay. I’m okay.”
I wanted him to look at me, to look me up and d
own and see that I was in one piece. Instead, he gazed at his feet. “Yeah, but you almost weren’t, and I have no one but myself to blame for that.”
“I know you didn’t mean it.” I lowered my voice further. This time, I placed my bad hand under his chin and forced him to look at me. “We’re okay, you and me. You’re my best friend, and there’s nothing you can do that would change that.” My voice was thick with emotion. “I love you. Always will.” I gave him a small smile. He looked at me for a moment, his face unreadable.
“I love you, too. I would do whatever it takes, Poe.”
I knew we were getting into dangerous territory, but the alarm bell in my head went off too late.
Too late to keep him from kissing me.
His head bowed toward mine as he reached in to kiss me, and I didn’t stop him. Not with everything laid bare, not with his heart exposed to me. I wouldn’t crush it. His love was not a gaudy bauble or a trinket. It was real. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t step back from him. I did love Birdie. Perhaps not in the way he wanted, but I wouldn’t hurt him—not at this moment.
His first kiss was tentative and soft on my lips. He paused to look at me, to gauge my reaction. I didn’t move an inch. That was my opportunity to stop it, but I didn’t. I let him kiss me again.
This time, his kiss was urgent as he reached for my waist and pulled me toward him. I hesitated for a second until he gently pushed his tongue into my mouth, his taste a mixture of tangy mint and beer. Then I didn’t hesitate. I went with the feeling, went with the headiness of it. My physical need far outweighed my rational sense.
“Poe.” His moan echoed my own, as his hands left my waist, one twisting in my hair, the other trailing down my back toward the waistband of my jeans. My skin was exposed to the nighttime air for a second, no more, before his warm hand was caressing it. I trembled—from his hand or the air, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. This was madness.
The door to Paddy’s opened and the jarring tinkle of drunken laughter invaded the quiet darkness. It was enough to snap me out of it.
“Crap.” I broke away from Birdie, panting. Bending over to catch my breath, I wanted an excuse to look anywhere but at him. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand before clearing my throat and standing upright again. The revelers walked past me and Birdie on the sidewalk, completely ignoring us.
Watcher (The Shining Ones Book 1) Page 4
