“What the fuck are you doing!” he shouts, face gnarled with fury.
I take a long drag from my cigarette in reply. “Seems obvious, doesn’t it?”
There’s this vein in Heston’s temple that gets all bulgy and gross when he’s pissed off past the point of maintaining composure. It hardly ever makes an appearance, considering composure is his whole thing, but there it is. Bulge bulge bulge. “I have seven fucking grand riding on this fight. You get your ass in that pool and beat that motherfucker down, or—”
“Or what?” Reyn’s voice comes from behind me. A bored glance over my shoulder reveals the other four Devils.
Heston gives them all a scathing look. “This is none of your fucking business.” He thrusts a finger in my face. “You know exactly what I’ll do, don’t you? Remember that ragdoll you talked about last week?”
I scoff. “This shit again? I already told you I don’t give a fuck about Sydney.”
But Heston smiles, sharp and menacing. “Imagine she was someone else.” He nods at the look on my face, voice pitched low when he leans in to hiss, “I will fuck her within an inch of her life.”
Everything goes a little fuzzy then, because I do. I imagine him doing to Sugar what I saw him doing to Sydney.
Heston hits the ground so hard, I can practically hear all the air escaping his lungs. He tries to push me off, but I get a knee into the center of his chest, pull my fist back, and slam it forward. The crowd from before notices a new skirmish and quickly surrounds us, swallowing up the sounds of my knuckles meeting Heston’s face. He tries to buck me off, that vein still bulging, but it barely moves me. He tries to turn his head away from the blows, but I don’t mind hitting his fucking skull, so that’s what I do.
I beat the shit out of him.
It’s the easiest fight I’ve ever had.
He strikes out, of course. He lands a few clumsy, wayward hits. One to my throat, another to my already-swelling eye. That shit doesn’t even slow me down. The longer I kneel there over him, finally—fucking finally—burying my fist into his face, the hotter the thing inside me burns. It’s hungry and eager, exactly what was missing from the fight before. And every memory, every threat, every goddamn bit of hurt he’s inflicted on the people I love is like a steady source of gasoline, feeding it.
I could hear Ben and Carl egging me on before, but now they’re quiet, even as the crowd is losing their goddamn minds. I barely register how fucked-up Heston is looking—bloody and apoplectic—or how my knuckles have gone numb, or that I can barely see out of my right eye.
I don’t stop hitting him.
Not until Emory pulls me off. “Cops, dude. We have to bail. It’s done, Bass. It’s done!” My fists are still swinging, even when he’s yanking me back. It’s not until Reyn takes my other arm and drags me away with him that I finally let go. I keep my eyes on him, writhing on the ground, turning to his side to spit blood on the ground below. A sick surge of satisfaction rises within me at the sight, which is new and interesting. I’ve fought a lot of guys in my time, but winning has always just been something that came to me like a bare fact. I never got off on it. It never made me feel good to know I’d hurt someone, even when they were dicks.
Now, I do.
I feel it as I shake Reyn and Emory off, and then some more as we run toward Em’s truck, the crowd dispersing in much the same way. The park is filled with blue flashing lights so quickly that, for a moment, I begin worrying about another concussion. It’s not, though.
It’s just that two cruisers are that close, sirens blaring harshly in the silence of the park. We jump into the truck—closer than the Shelby—but even though Emory cranks the ignition, he doesn’t put it into gear.
“Oh, shit,” he says, leaning over the steering wheel. “Reyn, look.”
From the back seat, I crane forward to see why the fuck we aren’t peeling out of here. Four officers are surrounding Heston, probably because he’s beat to shit and sitting there, too gassed to flee.
It takes me too long to wonder why they’re putting him in cuffs, but no one