And then he stood there afterwards, not even breathing hard, holding a gun he'd taken off one of them, asking if I was okay.
Like he hadn't just—
I press my hands against my thighs to stop them shaking.
"You doing okay?" Marcus's voice cuts through my spiral.
"I don't know." Honest. Too honest maybe. "I don't know what I'm doing. What any of this is."
"You're surviving."
"Am I?" I laugh. It sounds broken. "Because it feels like I'm in some kind of fever dream. Yesterday I was nobody. Just Nora Hayes, failed runaway, hiding in a shitty apartment waiting for the inevitable. And now there's—"
I gesture helplessly at everything. At him. At the truck. At whatever the hell we're driving toward.
"Now there's a motorcycle club involved. And you. And, Marcus, you fought three armed men. Three. With a bat."
"Four if you count Buzz Cut."
"That doesn't make it better!"
"Wasn't trying to make it better. Just accurate."
I stare at him. He's not joking. Not trying to downplay what happened. Just stating facts.
"How are you so calm?" The question comes out desperate. "How are you not… I don't know, freaking out?"
"Been in worse situations." He takes a turn. We're heading toward the edge of town. Away from the apartments. Away from everything familiar. "This? This is manageable."
"Manageable." I repeat the word like it's foreign. "Thirteen armed men hunting me is manageable."
"Twelve now. One of them's got broken ribs and probably a concussion. He's not hunting anyone for a while." Marcusglances at me. "And they're not hunting you anymore. They're running from the Riders."
The Savage Riders MC.
A motorcycle club that apparently owns Blackwater Falls. That protects an underground fighting ring. That showed up with enough men to chase off Castellano's entire team.
"I can't believe this is real," I whisper. "Any of this."
"It's real."
"When you said you don't feel pain—" I stop. Start again. "Earlier, when you told me that. Were you being honest or were you just trying to make me feel safer?"
He's quiet for a moment. The only sound is the engine and the tires on asphalt.
"I was being honest," he says finally. "It's not like I don't feel pain at all. I do. But most of it registers as—" He pauses, searching for words. "Like tiny slaps. Irritating but not debilitating. Something that should put me down just doesn't."
"That's not normal."
"I know." His jaw tightens. "I've been to doctors. Several of them. Army docs first, then civilian specialists after I got out. They all say the same thing, something in my brain got rewired. Trauma response, they called it. Something from what I saw, what I endured overseas. There's no way to solve it."
My chest tightens. "So, you just live with it?"
"Yeah. And I use it." He glances at me. "In the Pit, not feeling pain like normal people? That's an advantage. Makes me harder to beat."
An advantage that's slowly destroying him, probably. Trading one kind of damage for another. But I don't say that. Don't havethe right to comment on how he's choosing to survive his own demons.
God knows I've made my share of questionable choices trying to survive mine.
