end.
Darkness surrounds me. But, I’m alive, somehow.
I blink and open my eyes, only to close them again. I’m aware of lights, and beeping sounds, and hands holding me down while people murmur somberly in Spanish. I’m on a table, and blood covers me. The hands holding me down aren’t malicious, I can tell. But I grunt and try to sit up anyways. The hands push me down, and I’m so fucking weak, I can only fall back to the table. Something sticks into my neck, and I fade out.
Maybe I’m finally dead for real.
Time passes, but I have no idea how much of it. My dreams are feverish, and violent. I dream of the night I basically died, back at that clubhouse, back in my old life. Back then, I ran with a crew called the Lost Devils—this rag-tag group of fucking outcasts and outlaws. My dreams tear me back into that clubhouse, the night of the party where we were betrayed—the night we were slaughtered like pigs.
I twitch and clench, feeling the rip and puncture of every bullet that cut through me that night. I was drunk, and high, but I still felt all five bullets that tore into me. I felt my life drip-dripping out of me, lying on the floor surrounded by my dead friends. I felt the blackness close in on me as they zipped up the body-bag—my pulse so nonexistent apparently that the on-site coroner thought I was gone.
I dream of waking up in a morgue, on a table, in a fucking body bag, and scaring the ever-loving-fuck out of the examiner. I dream of pressing the wad of blood-soaked Benjamins into his hands, barely able to speak the words to tell him to sew me up.
The darkness closes back in, and I fade away. And then, I awake from the dead, one more time.
It’s dim in the room, but I can sense light through my closed eyes. I keep them closed as I breathe, trying to assess the damage. My hand slides over my ribs, feeling the thick bandage there where the knife cut into me. I feel the other bandage on my shoulder from God even knows which hit. I’ve got some new scars and stitches. But I’m alive.
Ten on one, armed against unarmed. And yet here I am, alive.
Not bad, I mutter to myself. I start to sit up, and I hiss as the pain lances through me.
“Wait, no,” a soft voice whispers.
I go still. I start to turn, but it’s too fast, and I wince. My vision swims, and I sink back onto the table.
“Wait, you need to rest,” the voice says softly again.
I shake my head, grunting as I go to sit up again. But this time, I realize my other hand is shackled to the table, and I growl.
“Please, wait.”
I frown. The voice—it’s soft. It’s sweet. It’s kind. I go still again, turning towards it, and slowly, my eyes open.
And I look up into the face of an angel.
She blushes.
“I—you’re okay,” she says gently.
I nod, just staring at her—her, my desert rose. My angel. The girl from the fights I’ve seen twice now, and who I can’t get out of my head for a single instant. What the fuck is she doing here?
I ignore the pain as I glance around the room. I’ve been here before, though never in quite this bad shape. It’s the recovery room attached to a small clinic that Jorge uses to patch up his fighters if need be—not out of compassion, but so that they can fight another day.
I stiffen, and my eyes narrow as I turn back to her.
“I—” she blushes and looks down. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She swallows and looks around the dark clinic room.
“I—I’m not supposed to be here.”
No shit.
“But I had to make sure you were okay,” she says once again as she drags her eyes back to mine.
“Why?”
The word startles even me, and I realize I’m not even sure when the last time I uttered a word out loud was. Probably a year or more. So my word comes out cracked—a croaked growl of a word, like my vocal chords are remembering how to function.
She blinks in surprise.
“I—I didn’t know you could talk.”
I just hold her gaze. Fuck is she beautiful.
“Why?” I grunt again.
She smiles shyly. “Why did I check on you?”
I nod.
“Because,” she blushes. “I don’t know what you did, but no man deserves what I just watched out there. I mean, ten