Didn’t ask questions.
Just drove my shoulder into his ribs and took him to the ground. The impact knocked the air out of both of us. He went down hard, back hitting the frozen earth with a thud, dragging me with him. My shoulder burned. Pain flared, sharp and bright, then settled into a steady roar.
He grunted, rolled fast, swinging wild. For a second, I saw his face, mid-twenties, maybe, strung out, pupils like pinholes.
Not drunk.
Something else.
Something worse.
Teeth bared, lips chapped and cracked, stubble patchy along his jaw. He smelled like sweat and stale smoke and something chemical that stung my nose.
His fist clipped my cheekbone. Stars burst behind my eyes. Good. I needed that. I hit him again. And again. My fists haven’t been needed in a long time. Not really. I’ve worked hard to keep them out of trouble. But muscle memory doesn’t go away. Not when you’ve been taught to survive before you were taught to trust. Before you were taught to talk. Before you were taught to walk away.
Knuckles meeting bone, cartilage, gristle, it all comes back. I wasn’t thinking about technique. Not like in some ring, not like in the old days when a fight was sport and bets and bruises you could brag about later. This wasn’t that. This was simple.
End the threat.
Get him off her.
Keep him down.
He twisted, bringing his elbow up. It caught me in the ribs, a hard shot that knocked the breath from my lungs. I wheezed,tasted copper at the back of my throat. The guy landed one good punch to my jaw. My teeth slammed together. Pain shot up the side of my face, hot and sharp. I tasted blood.
I liked it less than I remembered. Adrenaline surged. My vision narrowed, framing him and nothing else. I drove my forearm across his chest, pinning him, and brought my fist down again. Once. Twice. Three times. His head snapped sideways, blood blooming from his nose, dark against the snow.
“Should’ve walked away, man!” he shouted, voice ragged, words slurring at the edges. He spat blood into the snow, tried to twist out from under me. “She ain’t yours!”
“She’s not yours either.” My voice came out low, even. I barely recognized it.
His eyes darted toward the direction she’d run. I saw the calculation there, cut and run, leave the problem behind, find her later, when no one’s around to play hero. I shifted, blocking his line of sight, planting my boot more firmly on the ground between us. Snow crunched under my weight.
She was gone;good.That meant I could stop worrying about her and focus on the piece of shit in front of me. I pushed off him enough to get my feet under me, stepped between him and the path, cracked my knuckles. The sound echoed in the trees, sharp and deliberate.
He staggered up, shaking his head, swaying. His hoodie had slipped back a little, revealing greasy hair, sweat shining on his forehead despite the cold.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” he slurred.
“Pretty sure I do,” I said. “The kind of guy who only grabs a woman when he thinks no one’s watching.”
His lip curled. “You think tonight’s the only night? You think she’s the only…”
He didn’t finish that sentence. He charged instead. It didn’t last long after that. He came at me with his head low andhis arms wide, like he’d watched one too many bar fights and thought that was how this worked. I sidestepped, drove my knee into his midsection, and brought my fist down between his shoulder blades as he passed.
He wheezed, stumbled, hit the ground on his hands and knees. I didn’t give him the chance to recover. One hand grabbed the back of his hoodie, yanked him upright enough for me to see his face again.
“Look at me,” I said.
He tried to spit at me. Missed. It hit my jacket instead, sliding down the worn leather. Wrong move. I took him down harder the second time. I don’t even remember the exact sequence, just flashes of motion, the feel of muscles shifting under my hands, the crunch of his shoulder hitting the ground, the slam of my fist into his jaw.
I didn’t stop until he stopped moving. Breathing, yeah. His chest still rose and fell in shallow, wet pulls. Conscious, maybe. Hard to tell. His eyes were half-open, unfocused, rolling. But no longer a threat. The roar in my ears started to ease, leaving behind the quieter sounds, the ragged pull of my own breathing, the distant rush of cars somewhere far off, the whisper of snow landing on tree branches.
I stood there over him, chest heaving, hands stinging, blood trickling down my neck where he’d caught me with something sharp, maybe a ring, maybe a buckle. I reached up, and my fingers came away red, already tacky in the cold.
Snow fell slowly and quietly, trying to cover the mess we made. It dusted his hoodie, my boots, and the splatter on the ground. Nature’s way of pretending nothing bad ever happens here. For a second, everything went still. No voices. No footsteps. No witnesses. Just me, a bastard on the ground, and a stretch of trees that had seen more than they’d ever tell.
This is the moment, I thought. The one where you walk away.You could.No one knows your name here. Your bike’s warm. Your prints are already getting swallowed by the snow. You could step over him, get back to the road, and by morning, this will be another story the cops tell themselves about bad men doing bad things to each other in the dark.
