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He nods and gasps, “Yes,” several times before she releases him with a push that sends him stumbling back into the embrace of his shocked friends.
“Good, now sit back down and behave yourself or get the hell out of my bar.”
“Not like we want to keep drinking here anyway, you fucking cunt. Let’s go, guys. Leave this fucking bitch and her weakass drinks.”
The room goes quiet, except for Reggie’s whisper. “Oh shit, he’s done it now.”
As I walk past his stool on the way to the door, I hear Reggie stand. He places a hand on my shoulder, slowing me. “They’re drunk, but those odds out there are pretty damn well stacked against you. You care about Alexandra enough to go nine-on-one?”
I don’t even have to think about it.
“I’d take on the whole fucking world for her.”
Alexandra catches me saying that, and I meet her eyes in that moment. My look at her is clear — you know I can’t stand by when anyone speaks to you like that.
And her answer is a tiny smile and a nod.
“Then you ain’t taking on those shitheads alone,“ Reggie says. “Walk a little slower, though. I ain’t so fucking young that I can go running to an alley fight. Oh, and fuck, I just realized I’m about to throw down with you, but I only know you as ‘Marine.’”
“It’s Dixon.”
“Nice to meet you, Dixon. Let’s go teach some fuckheads a lesson.”
“Have a beer waiting for me when I get back, princess,” I say to Alexandra as I head to the door.
She rolls her eyes but starts filling a glass.
Outside, it’s cold. Unseasonably so. Fog has rolled in from the sea and makes the air so thick it’s choking. It smells like seaweed rotting on the beach. The men are slow-walking to their party bus. It’s lit up with running lights, tinted windows, and music so loud it makes my bones vibrate.
The bachelor spots us first. He sneers. "What the fuck do you two bitches want?"
Reggie doesn't say a word, he just cracks his knuckles and fixes them with a gaze that would freeze hell over. The group hesitates. There's something about an old lion that makes hyenas think twice. Especially when that lion is the size of four hyenas put together.
“You guys stepped in it tonight,” I say.
“What? By calling out that stuck-up cunt?”
Reggie and I trade a look. “They just want to keep on digging their own graves, don’t they?” He says.
“Seems like it.”
My eyes go back to the group of drunks, who are slowly walking towards us, fanning out to encircle Reggie and me. I keep my focus on the bachelor. It doesn’t matter what the others do, he’s the one I’m coming for first.
“You know, I came out here to see whether you really were as much of a dumb piece of shit as you seemed,” I say. “I thought that, maybe, once you got some fucking fresh air into that brain of yours, it’d function enough that you’d realize what a mistake you made and maybe you’d save yourself the beating by going in there and apologizing.”
“Apologize for what? Because that fucking bitch doesn’t know how to take a compliment?”
Before the bachelor can blink, I move. It's surgical; two steps in, pivot, and my fist connects with his jaw — a clean, satisfying crack.
I hit him again, twice more, before he crumples like a sack of wet sand.
The rest hesitate; Reggie doesn’t; he wades into them like a bear into a stream of salmon. There’s no grace to his movements, just raw, unstoppable force. Fists fly; grunts and thuds punctuate the night air, filling every moment between beats from the terrible music that thumps and thuds from the party limo. I laugh and charge into the fun, each move precise — a strike to a throat here, an elbow to a solar plexus there. I don’t have Reggie’s size or raw power, but I’ve got speed and years of training that make me just as deadly.
It’s over in minutes. The men lie scattered on the ground, groaning and clutching various injuries. Reggie is grinning, despite a split lip and a growing lump on the side of his head. I grin, too, even though there’s a wicked bruise forming somewhere on my ribs and a clicking in my jaw that I know is going to hurt like hell in a few hours.
But it’s fucking worth it.
I lean over the moaning bachelor and grab him by the hair, lift his head off the ground.
