It never made it.
I cocked back and hit her square between the eyes. Then wrapped her hair around my wrist and brought her down to my level. Her arms swung wild and wide, missing me completely as I hit her in the face again and again. I grabbed her by the hair and put her on the ground, then got on top of her and kept going until my knuckles were on fire.
Duke's arm came around my waist and he pulled me off her. I looked down at her and smirked.
He set me on my feet.
I stepped back in and kicked her clean in the face, sending her flat onto her back.
"Try me again," I said.
A crowd had formed around us. A few people started moving in, but the look on Duke's face kept them at a distance. Someone rushed over with a towel and Duke tossed it down at her. Vanessa looked up at him with wet eyes. He crouched down and said something low enough that only a handful of us could hear.
"Strike three. I'll be seeing you."
Her face crumpled. She cried openly, then scrambled up from the ground with the help of her friend, who had stood there the entire time without doing a thing.
Duke straightened and held his hand out to me.
Now that the adrenaline was fading, my hand was stinging something serious. This was nothing like the scraps I remembered getting into as a little girl, moving from group home to foster family and back again. I needed to keep all of that to a minimum going forward. But Vanessa had been asking for that for a long time, and I would always stand up for myself. Every time.
She reminded me of every girl who had come for me growing up, the ones who thought that because I was small and pretty they could push me around. A few of them learned the hard way that they were wrong. My mother had taught me to protect myself before she passed, like she somehow already knew what was coming. I had carried that with me ever since.
Duke walked me over to a bench across the street and sat down, then pulled me down beside him. He lifted my hand and began looking over my knuckles quietly like he was running a full examination.
"Friend, why did you never tell me you had hands like that?" Jessa asked.
A woman walked over with the same eyes as Duke and a warm smile already on her face. She was carrying a small first-aid kit and dressed simply in jeans and a cute top. I knew without being told.
"Mrs. Robbie sent this over," she said, nodding toward an older woman watching from the porch of a nearby house with both hands on her hips.
"Thanks, Heiress. Rambo over here has cuts all over her knuckles," Duke said finally, opening the kit and getting to work.
I rolled my eyes.
"Whatever. I wasn't going to keep letting her believe she could walk over me. I cannot stand women like that."
Duke paused what he was doing and used two fingers beneath my chin to bring my eyes to his.
"Watch your tone with me. I never said you were wrong. But there are kids out here."
I closed my mouth and let him finish.
"I'll introduce myself since he clearly wasn't going to. I'm Heiress. His mom. And you must be the woman whose helmet I was wearing a few weeks ago."
I gave her a genuine smile and extended the hand Duke wasn't working on.
"I'm Solana. It's really nice to finally meet you."
Duke glanced up. "Finally? I didn't know you wanted to meet my people."
"It would have been nice. I just figured you'd bring me around when you were ready."
"Sweets, we would have gotten there. My bad for not picking up on that sooner."
I nodded. He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then looked up at Heiress, who was watching us both with a soft smile.
"My fault, Heiress. I should have introduced you already. I was in my head."
