In response, I can’t help it: I burst into tears.
“Sky. Sky,” he murmurs, pulling me back into his arms. It feels so good to be wrapped up by him, by his large, warm body. I hold him tight and my shoulders shake as I try to get words out.
“It’s Grayson Baker,” I sob.
“Baker? The one who was just out there with Fatima and them?”
“Yeah. He tricked me. He…we were going to hook up but he humiliated me instead. I was half-naked…he had his friend on the phone…”
I don’t even get to finish the sentence when Adam pulls back. I’m startled into silence. I’ve never seenthisAdam before. His jaw is clenched so tightly, I can see the muscles ticcing in it. His eyesare…not sparkling, that’s for damn sure. They’re sharp. Violently so.
“He humiliated you? He tricked you?” His voice is nearly a growl. I wonder if he realizes it.
I close my eyes. More tears trail down my cheeks, and then Adam’s warm fingers are there, brushing them away. “I would have been fine if he had pretended like I wasn’t there just now. But he looked at me and smirked and, and then hewinked. I just had to run, you know?”
Adam nods. “I know.” His jaw is still firm. His eyes still as bright as a blazing fire. “You ready to go?”
I nod, and he wraps an arm around me. We walk quickly, past the Wild Whirly Whirl ride, past the popcorn and candy apple vendors, slowing once we are near the Ferris wheel. “One second,” he tells me, releasing my shoulder. I miss the warmth of his arm. Stupid, I know.
He walks over to the crowd still by the benches he and I had dinner at. “Baker,” he shouts.
Grayson stands up, a big smile on his face, his arms wide. “What’s up, Noemi?”
“This.” And then Adam punches Grayson right across the face.
Grayson collapses instantly. Three seconds later, someone shouts, “He’s out cold!”
Adam walks away from the scene without once looking back. He comes back to me and grabs my hand. “You ready?”
I nod without speaking, because the words just won’t come to me right now. What can I possibly say to that? To what just happened? I’m still trying to process it.
Did Adam Noemi really punch Grayson Baker in the face?
All because he’d hurt me?
I want to shiver. I want to high-five Adam. I want to cry all over again.
But I don’t do any of these, instead opting for the continuation of my stunned silence. We get in his car once more; this time the night around us is thick as ink. Adam starts the car, and we drive home in silence. He’s seething, I think. I can feel the tension and frustration emanating from him in hot, sharp waves. One punch wasn’t enough for him.
He pulls into Nadia’s driveway and turns the car off. He turns to me. “Are you okay?”
“Areyouokay?” I ask him, gesturing to his hand. “That looked—you know. That was kind of a hard punch, it looked like.”
“Yeah, well.” Adam rubs his knuckles. “He deserved worse.” He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. Are you okay, Sky?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m good.”
“Good.” He sighs and lets his head fall back on his seat. He covers his face with his hand and chuckles. “I haven’t gotten into a brawl since I was a teenager.”
“To be fair, I don’t think knocking a man out with one punch counts as a brawl.”
Adam lowers his hands and looks at me, no longer laughing. He’s serious, what about, I don’t know. The streetlamps around us paint him in sheets of amber. He looks like he did that one night, when I was still a ghost—angelic. “Sky,” he says, and his voice is husky once more, just like before, when he caught me staring right at his lips way too hard.
A knock on the window has both of us jumping, with me shrieking as though the whole car had shattered. But it’s just Nadia.
Of course. Nadia is literally never here when I’m craving company. But when I have company? Here she is, smiling like sheknowssomething I don’t, waving at us from outside the vehicle, gesturing for Adam to roll the window down.
Once he does, she says, “Adam! What a nice surprise! Want to come in for some flan?”
