Page 45 of Airhead

Katie considered it for all three point two seconds. “That’s not gonna happen.”

Anger turned The Creep’s cheeks blotchy. “You trashed my car.”

“You can’t prove that,” Katie said with a shrug, not about to give this twerp any of her emotional time.

“I have witnesses,” he spluttered.

Frank snorted behind her and asked, “Who?”

The Creep gestured back to the trio of doofuses behind him. “Them.”

Oh no. That wasn’t going to fly. Katie had scoped out the parking lot before touching that ugly car. The only person who’d seen her anywhere near the DeLorean was Frank, and he wasn’t going to rat on her. The Creep had nothing.

“All they saw was you chasing my car as we left the parking lot,” she said, keeping her tone utterly pleasant because she knew how much it would piss him off. “Nothing else.”

She really shouldn’t enjoy watching The Creep’s face get blotchier the angrier he got. The nuns at St. Bernadette’s would be so disappointed in her. Although they were pretty much always disappointed in the Madigans, so what was one more sin?

“You’re really something; you know that?” The Creep snarled. “I guess this is what I get for slumming it with a Madigan.”

Slumming it?

Oh, hell no. An ice-cold fury froze Katie’s blood as she pictured her sister sitting in their tiny apartment, mourning her breakup with this asshole. Then she thought about all the times The Creep had made Connie feel like she wasn’t enough, and her anger turned red hot. The only thing that was saving the man from a broken nose was the fact that Connie was finally free of him.

The Creep looked back at his friends and laughed. “No sweet piece of ass is worth someone even breathing wrong on my DeLorean.”

“Guess not,” Katie said with a smile that he really should have taken as a warning.

While he was standing there, high on his own ego, she snagged the Big Gulp from one of his shithead buddies, tore off the lid, and poured it out on his Nikes.

The Creep gasped and looked past her to Frank as if he was in charge of her. “Are you just going to stand by and let your girl do that, Hartigan?” The Creep demanded. “What kind of man are you?”

Frank shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned. “The kind that knows she can fight her own battles without any help from me.”

“I always knew you were an absolute airhead,” The Creep said. “I didn’t realize you were a chicken shit, too.”

Katie didn’t think. She didn’t consider. She just pulled back her fist and landed a solid punch square in the middle of The Creep’s nose.

He yelped and stumbled back, his hand covering his nose as blood ran down.

“Nobody talks about the guy I’m gonna marry someday like that,” she said, jabbing her finger into his bony chest as he continued to backpedal. “Now go home in your ugly fucking car before I show you what my knee can do to your tiny little balls.”

The Creep shook off the helping hands of his douchey friends and glared at her. “You two deserve each other.”

This time, Katie’s smile was genuine, powered by adrenaline, and the thrill of righteous vengeance that had been finally delivered. “That might be the only nice thing you’ve ever said in your entire entitled life.” Loud beeps and the sound of a chain being hooked up to a car pulled her gaze from The Creep to the tow truck parked a few rows up. “Oh wow. Is that tow truck taking your car? You don’t think someone would have turned you in for parking illegally across two spots, do you?”

The Creep didn’t bother to respond; he just took off, yelling the whole way that he had cash for the driver if he just left his baby alone.

“Wow,” Frank said, once it was just the two of them again. “That was even more impressive than the purse punch.”

“I think I’ll stick to whacking people with my handbag,” Katie said with a laugh, as she rubbed her sore knuckles. They were red and already starting to swell up. “You were right, you know. About me. I was scared.” She let out a shaky breath. Her heart was beating hard enough to feel like it was banging against her ribs, and her instincts were all screaming for her to shut up now, but she had to finish this. She had to tell him the truth. “I’m not scared of stepping out of the shadow of my family, though. I am scared of becoming just another one of the many notches on your bedpost, when I want to be more.”

Frank cupped her chin and tilted her face up. “You were more from the moment you finally let me buy you a beer at Marinos and I ended up carrying your sister to your car.”

Then he dipped his head down and kissed her, his lips making all the promises she knew he could and would keep.

By the time he broke the kiss, all of her nerves had dissolved, and all her questions had been answered.

“So I’m the guy you’re going to marry, huh?” he asked as he opened the driver’s door to her Pinto so she could get inside. “I like the sound of that. What do you think about a December wedding?”