Sickened, I looked up at Jacki. She looked equally appalled, her nose wrinkling in distaste. But then she glanced off to the side.
Towards Rick.
I couldn’t see him, but he must have nodded. Jacki punched me a third time and then grabbed my tank top at the base of one strap and jerked. The strap tore free and suddenly my bra and breasts were revealed to the crowd. The hoots and wails were deafening. Jacki’s hands reached for me again—
A shining aluminum cane shot between us, then pushed her back. She got off me, sullen-faced, holding her jaw. Already, the skin there was starting to discolor. The crowd howled their disapproval as they realized the fight was over.
“That’s all, folks!” yelled Rick. “That was just a taster. If you want to see Sylvie get hers, be here! Same place! Same time! Two weeks!” And he grabbed Jacki’s hand and raised it in the air in victory.
She grinned at the crowd and then scowled down at me. I clutched the rags of my tank top to my chest, humiliated and shaking. In those final few seconds, all of the crowd’s male rage had bubbled up to the surface and shown itself for what it really was. And it looked like Jacki and Rick were only too happy to go along with it, if it kept them happy.
Aedan ran over. For a second, he stood there glaring at Rick, his massive fists bunched, clearly ready to kill him. Al and Carl sidled up to protect their boss but, for a second, it looked as though Aedan was going to wade in regardless.
I reached up and grabbed Aedan’s hand. “Just get me out of here?” I pleaded.
With a last snarl at Rick, Aedan pulled me to my feet and helped me to the side room. My legs had turned to jelly and I had to lean on him the whole way. I felt slightly better once we were out of sight of all those male eyes.
“Let me look at you,” he said. He took my head between his hands, his eyes wide with fear. He probed gently at my nose and Isquealed and thumped him on the arm. “Sorry,” he said. “But good news—it’s not broken. Just bleeding. Put pressure on it and it’ll stop.” He examined my cheeks and then my hip. “Nothing too bad here, either—just bruises.”
Just bruises?I wanted to burst into tears. The adrenaline was receding and the pain was hitting me full force, now. My whole body throbbed and I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. “I’m sorry,” I blurted.
He stared at me. “Sorry?What have you got to be sorry about?”
I was breathing in big gulps now. It felt like I was about to start crying, but the hot explosion of tears didn’t arrive. I was stuck in the prickly-faced heaving stage that normally precedes it. “I—I couldn’t hit her. I didn’t know what to do. I messed up.”
“Messed up?!”He hugged me close. “You didgreat.Neither of us was ready forthat.But now we can be. We know what she’s got. I can teach you how to deal with that, how to fight dirty. She can’t learn to fight like you—not in a couple of weeks.” He squeezed me tighter and stroked the back of my hair. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
Now Ididstart to cry. I cuddled in tight against his chest, my face leaving blood on his t-shirt.
“And youdidhit her. Christ, you nearly broke her jaw!”
I gave a nervous little laugh, but I didn’t feel like laughing. It had all been way too frightening: the brutal aggression; the speed at which it had all gone wrong, when she’d charged me; the cruel, male evil of the crowd at the end.
I pushed back from Aedan. “Take me home,” I begged.
He nodded and passed me the hooded top I’d brought with me. I pulled it on over my ruined tank top and we headed for the stairs.
30
AEDAN
I pushed through the crowd,acting as a wedge to keep them clear of Sylvie. They weren’t so brave, now that they were face-to-face with her...and me. It was impossible to tell which of the men had yelled the worst things. But all of them were guilty. All of them had, at a minimum, come along and watched. None of them had left in disgust when Jacki had torn off Sylvie’s top.
I was ready to kill every single one of them.
I settled for battering them aside, using plenty of elbow and shoulder, and growling at any who resisted. Outside, I bundled Sylvie into a cab and told the cabbie to take us to my place.
I looked at Sylvie. “No arguments,” I said. “I don’t want you to be alone, tonight.”
She nodded.
At my apartment, I showed her to the shower. “Get in,” I said. “Take your time. I’ll get us something to eat.” What I really wanted was to do something nice for her—some big bath filled with bubbles and scented candles and all that girly shit. But I didn’t have any of those things. All I had to offer her was hot water and men’s shower gel. And yet she looked at me as if I’d done all that and more.
I left her alone to shower. The thought of her naked in there hadme instantly hard in my pants but she’d been through too much—I didn’t want to do anything that would make her feel pressured into sex, not right now. So I retreated to the living room and ordered a massive pizza with everything on, and dug some cold beers out of the refrigerator.
When the bathroom door inched open, it was like a rerun of that time she’d fallen in the river...but so much had changed, since then. She stared at me around the edge of the door, steam billowing out around her, and I stared right back at her.
Her nose had stopped bleeding and she’d washed the blood away, but she was still red and tender there. Her left cheek had a dark bruise where Jacki’s fist had cracked across it and her right eye was turning purple, the lid swollen.
