After Hours (InterMix)(36)

I heard Amber yell, “Let her go!” I heard gravel grinding under our shoes, heard Jack begin to wail.

“Stay on the steps!”

Marco’s grip on my arm was gone. He charged me a pace and gave me a hard shove. My feet weren’t quick enough, and I stumbled, trying to catch myself on my car. But I was too far away, and my elbow banged dully against the door; then pain exploded in my face as my temple hit the side mirror.

I heard Amber yell my name. Jack’s wailing turned to shrieks. It was the latter that had pebbles beneath my palms and my arms shoving me to kneeling, my hand finding the car door as I forced my legs to work and let me stand. My face hurt, but it was dry. My elbow hurt, but the joint didn’t scream when I bent it. One of the knees of my scrubs was split and my skin felt raw, but I didn’t care. I stared at Marco, stared right in his face with adrenaline pulsing through me like pure, molten hate.

With my eyes I told him, I’m gonna f*ck you up for making my family cry. But my body hurt, and my brain got its say. My brain said he’d win, if he wanted.

What he wanted, apparently, was nothing more to do with any of us.

“Crazy bitches.” He hawked and spat on the dirt and climbed back inside his truck, reversing out of the driveway as slow and lazy as you please.

When he rolled onto the street and drove off, I realized I’d won. I was hurt and scraped up, but I’d won that fight, somehow.

Amber hurried over, holding Jack to her chest with one arm, smoothing my hair back with her free hand.

“Am I bleeding?”

“No. But it’s real red. Lemme get you some frozen peas or something.”

“I have to get back to work. And you have to call the cops, and tell them where he lives and what happened. Tell them I’ll come and give a statement, the second I’m off work.” While the bruise is still nice and heinous, I thought grimly.

“Okay.” She said it too quietly for me to trust.

“Do it today, Amber. Do it right now. Give them my number, so they can call and arrange for me to meet with them. Don’t you dare * out.”

“Okay, okay.”

I nearly believed her that time.

Despite my speeding, I got back late. I hurried to the empty locker room and changed into fresh scrub bottoms and shoved the ones with the ripped, crusty knee deep underneath the wadded paper towels in the trash can. I checked my eye in the mirror over the sink, and it was pretty gross. My lid was puffy and pink and shiny, the skin under my eyebrow purple, radiating red. It was a job for an eye patch, not concealer. Sadly I had neither, so I rinsed my face and smoothed my hair, and headed for the sign-in room, walking as tall as I could.

And of course I ran into Kelly. Of course I did.

He was filling a cup of coffee from a carafe and I ignored him, scouting for a dry erase marker.

“Drawer by your hip,” he said.

“Thanks.” I had to turn to open it, though, and he saw.

“Whoa.” I looked up in time to catch his pale eyes growing wide. “What the f*ck? Who did that to you?”

“Not a patient.”

A glare eclipsed his icy irises. “Who, then?”

“None of your business.” I dug through the drawer. Highlighter, no. Sharpie, no.

He strode to the freezer and pulled out an ice pack, squishing the gel inside and wrapping it in a paper towel. “Here.”

I abandoned my search, pressing the pack to my face. “Thanks.” Six more hours in my shift, and probably twenty more times I’d have to say “no comment” when someone asked how I’d managed to get a black eye during my lunch hour. I glanced at the gash on Kelly’s temple, and way too many details about what had happened after he’d turned up injured at my threshold revisited me in a breath.

“So who did that?” he demanded again, locking his dumb, huge arms over his dumb chest.

“A ’93 Tempo.”

“Where were you at lunch?”

I sighed and leaned wearily against the counter. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t.”

“I got in a fight with my sister’s * ex-boyfriend. He shoved me and I tripped, and hit my eye on my side mirror.”

His own eyes narrowed. “Where is he?”

“Oh, come off it, Kelly. I don’t need some tough guy to sic on another tough guy. I’ve had enough of your type to last a lifetime.”

“You call the cops?”