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“Shit. Address?”
I frown, unable to remember the street for a long moment, then it comes to me and I rattle it off and throw the phone on the passenger seat as I push my door open.
Now I know why Rafe told me to call the police.
It was so he’d go after Kenneth Shaw himself.
With a snarl, I climb out of the car and lurch toward them. This is my fight. I made it back from the memory. Now it’s time I faced the man who broke me.
Rafe is facing me, and his eyes widen when he sees me. He has blood running down his chin from a split lip, and he’s limping.
Kenneth Shaw begins to turn, swinging his bat, but I’m ready for him.
“Hello, Ken,” I tell him as I kick at his legs, then drive my fist up in an uppercut, catching him on the chin.
What do you know, I’m taller than he is now. And as he stumbles backward, and I advance on him, Rafe’s lessons and endless training at the gym from these past years echoing in my head, I’m sure I can take him down.
I can fucking kill him.
And he’d deserve it. He deserves to suffer a thousand deaths for his crimes.
I lift my arm, deflecting a hit from his bat, and barely feel the pain. My arm can still move, and that’s all that matters.
Curling my fist, I punch him in the stomach, following with a fist to his throat.
He goes down, his bat rolling away.
I kneel over him, press my knee to his throat and make my decision. “You’re fucking done, Ken. For good.”
***
Watching the police handcuff Kenneth Shaw and push him into the back of a police car has to be the strangest out-of-body experience I’ve ever had. It’s like a flashback, only it’s good, and Rafe is there beside me.
Fucking unreal.
“You know,” Rafe mutters, leaning against the fence of the house behind us, an arm curled around his middle, “you have to be the bravest motherfucker I know, going after your own personal demon.”
I’m not so sure about that, with my vision still going double between past and present and my knees feeling like rubber, but it’s done, it worked, and that’s all that matters.
“Or the most stupid,” I say, and shake my head when he laughs, then grunts in pain. “Make that two of us, in fact. You’re here with me, ain’t you?”
“Fuck yeah, I am. Always. But let’s not do this again, okay?”
My ribs hurt. My knuckles are split. My head throbs like a bitch, and I keep having to wipe the blood running from the cut on my forehead.
And Rafe looks just as bad.
But we’re alive, and the EMTs who checked us over already said we’ll survive. They want us to go to the ER, but the police want to talk to us some more first.
Then things get even weirder because several cars arrive, and our friends spill out. At least Megan and Asher and Tessa are here.
And Dakota.
She stops, stares at me, and suddenly I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my whole damn life.
I did this without telling her. Betrayed her trust.
Have I lost her? Was it worth it?
