Fissure (24 page)

     I shrugged. “She might.” It was working—my blasé demeanor was pissing him off hardcore. I was hoping he was two more retorts away from exploding out of the room in a furious puff of smoke.

     “She. Won’t.”

     “She probably will,” I replied, cracking my neck from side to side.

     “She—”

     I was sick of hearing this repeated. “She most definitely will,” I said, fixing my eyes on him. “Begging me to let her in. Begging,” I repeated slowly.

     The dormant volcano simmering between us chose that time to explode. Leaping to a stand, she stared hard at him, then at me. Damn, her eyes were taking on that glassy sheen again.

     “I am not some prize either of you can claim,” she shouted, all the way to the rafters and down to where a bored professor was laser pointing at something on the screen.

     Every last Monday-afternoon-groggy head snapped to attention, followed by bodies twisting in their seats to stare at Emma.

     I hadn’t seen that one coming. A full-fledged outburst in a silent classroom of a hundred? Emma seemed more the grin and bear it type.

     Pushing past Ty, she ran out of the room, hair flying behind her and tears spilling before her.

     “Happy?” Ty growled, towering over me.

     “Far from it,” I answered.

     One more shove to my shoulder and Ty turned and followed after her.

     When the door slammed closed the second time, Professor Camp cleared his throat. “My advanced degrees, unparalleled experience in the field, and all around mastery of all things of a psychological matter would lead me to the intricate, official diagnosis that she suffers from,” he paused, lowering his glasses, “boy issues.” Looking my way, he said, “Mr. Hayward, I’m guessing you play a large part in that. Be on your way,” he said, waving at the door.

     I didn’t need permission, but that’s what got me out of my seat.

     “Here’s a question for you eager young minds to gnaw on,” he continued as I jogged down the aisle. “Why are you here learning about life when you could be out living life?” You could almost hear a few brains shattering.

     The door was closing behind me as Camp barreled on with his education bashing spiel. “And here’s something else—sitting in class is a waste of your time, mind, and—”

     The door slammed shut before I could hear the continued pearls in this necklace of wisdom. I jogged down the hallway, listening for voices. I didn’t go far before I heard the ones I was listening for, and they weren’t being spoken in a quiet, or friendly, tone.

     Slamming the outside doors open, I saw Ty’s back, his arms and voice flying into the wind. I couldn’t see her thanks to the gorilla exhibiting every mannerism of an actual one blocking her, but I knew she was there.

     “You were nothing when we hooked up,” he shouted as another arm burst into the air. “You were on a one way train to becoming a future man sewer before I made the biggest mistake of my life and made you my girlfriend.”

     I launched into a sprint across the lawn, hardly able to wait tackling the SOB.

     “I guess I always knew you’d wind up a whore like your mom. I just didn’t see the evidence until this past weekend.”

     I would have snapped his back in half had I not pulled back two strides before I rocketed into him. Emma’s scream was the only thing I heard as Ty and I toppled over each other until the momentum from the impact crested.

     I landed on top, the red pulsing in me, ready to repay every foul word he’d said to Emma with the business side of my fist.

     A pair of hands wound around my arm an inch before fist met flesh. “Patrick—no!” she said, her voice shaking as she wrestled me off of Ty.

     The rage died, her touch freeing it. When she had me upright and a body length away from the human sized lawn gnome decorating the grass, she pressed her hand to my chest, looking at me hard.

     “You promised,” she said. The promise I wished I wouldn’t have made. “You promised,” she repeated, like she knew my anger was playing devil’s advocate with my rational mind.

     “I know.” The last remains of fury released itself in a tremble. “I know,” I said again.

     “Keep it then,” she said softly.

     What choice did I have when she looked at me like that? “I will.”

     “She sure got you whipped fast,” Ty said, upright and grinning his malevolence at us. “I’d say a little something more than studying and sun-tanning occurred this weekend.” Looking at Emma, his grin twisted higher. “What do you have to say about that, Emma? Were you being your typical whorish self with lover boy?”

     Like she was already expecting it, Emma caught my arm as I whipped around to finish delivering my message. “Stop it, Patrick!” she shouted, looking desperate.

     “Why are you defending him?” I spun on her, trying to see what it was she saw in this loser. I saw nothing but a face filled with dread and secrets. “I’ve never heard one kind word come out of his mouth when he talks to you, so why are you defending who should be your worst enemy to someone who wants to be your best friend?”

     “It’s because she knows the only way she can escape her shithole of a life is to glom onto the coat tails of any man who’s dumb enough to not recognize her for the gutter whore she is.”

     “You really are a piece of shit, you know that?” I said, seething. Emma’s firm hand holding my arm was the only thing keeping me from charging him again.

     “What does that say about Emma then? Since she can’t get enough of this ‘piece of shit’?” Ty said, looking his girlfriend up and down. “I think that makes her a swarming, shit eating house fly. That sound about right?”

     “Shut up!” I screamed, feeling the veins bulging in my neck. I’d seen enough of hate in my life to recognize it, and I hated him for talking about her like this. I’d known arch nemeses who’d had more respect for one another than to speak of the other the way Ty was speaking of the woman he supposedly loved.

     We were drawing a crowd. Fights happened on Stanford’s campus about as often as a middle class student was admitted. They were going to get quite a show if Ty didn’t shut his mouth soon.

     “Why don’t you come over here and make me?” Ty challenged, crossing his arms. “Oh, that’s right. You made
my
girlfriend a promise that you wouldn’t take a swing at me again, and you’re actually pussy-whipped enough to honor that.”

     Emma’s face had gone from snow white to cherry red. It was one thing for him to humiliate her in front of me, but now he was doing it in front of a generous portion of her classmates. She was squirming from her discomfort. I couldn’t take seeing her like this, and since I couldn’t beat the snot out of him to shut him up, I could think of one other way to get him to shut his trap.    

     “I might not be able to hit you to shut you up, but I’m fairly certain if you’re beating the crap out of me, you won’t be able to manage anything more than a grunt.”

     “Patrick,” Emma whispered, shaking her head, pulling me away from Ty instead of holding me back from him.

     “Are you serious?” Ty asked, looking like he was waiting to double check the numbers before celebrating his lottery win.

     “Dead,” I said, squaring myself in front of him, my body subconsciously bracing itself for a beating. “I’ll give you two minutes to kick my ass from here to next Monday because I’d rather feel your pussy punch than hear your filthy lies. But here’s the thing.” I stared at the piece of garbage with unblinking focus—I wanted him to know I wasn’t scared of him and I was serious as a tumor with my warning. “If you ever say another nasty thing about Emma again, whether I hear it or not, all promises are off, and I will relish beating you until you’re reduced to crapping into a diaper and sipping steak from a straw the rest of your life. I have no problem going back to jail, son.”

     So I hadn’t been to jail before, but I meant it when I said I’d have no problem paying the price to beat him within an inch of death. In fact, I couldn’t think of a better way to end up in prison.

     The crowd had grown again, almost exponentially. That probably had a lot to do with text messaging and “send all.”

     “Two minutes, huh?” Ty said, sliding out of his coat and tossing it to the side. “And you think by keeping your word and not hitting me while I kick your ass, that will make me the bad guy and Emma will run into your broken in several locations arms?”

     I slid off my watch and handed it to Emma. She was looking at me like I was the next in line to be hanged. “If Emma ever chooses me over you one day, it will be of my own merit. Not due to your lack of it.”

     Ty cracked his knuckles, rolling his neck around. “What are the rules?”

     Idiot, since when did fights for honor involve rules? We weren’t playing a game of chess.

     “No rules.”

     “No.” Emma’s voice was so tight it was a note from breaking. “Don’t be stupid. Just walk away. I can handle him.”

     I unzipped my motorcycle jacket and handed that to her next, just to give her something to wring her restless hands into. “I’ve never been one to walk away, Em, and that’s something I’m not about to change now.”

     “Back away, Emma,” Ty said, hopping in place to spike his adrenaline. “Might want to say goodbye to pretty boy’s face. There’s not going to be much left of it once I’m done.”

     “This is a one time deal, dickhead,” I said, stepping away from Emma since she wouldn’t step away from me. “Do your worst.”

     “That’s the only way I work,” Ty answered, pulling something out of his back pocket. The metal caught the sun as he slid the brass knuckles into place.

     If my opinion of Ty Steel could have gotten any smaller, it would have. Who carried a set of brass knuckles around in their back pocket? Just think of the most despicable person you’ve had the misfortune of meeting and that pretty much describes him. “No rules right?” Ty said with a wicked grin.

     Emma gasped. “What the hell, Ty?” Her voice shook across the grass at him.

     Holding up the index finger of his knuckled hand, he reached his other hand behind him, revealing another set. Sliding this set into position, he held his fists in front of him, sliding them together so I could read the encryption etched into them:
Don’t fear the reaper, fear me.

    
A man who was taller than me by a couple inches, heavier than me by a solid fifty pounds, brass knuckled to the teeth, set on ending me because I was after his girl, about to enter a fight with me where I wasn’t allowed to throw a single punch . . . I should have been pissing my pants right about now.

     So, of course, I laughed. “Done stalling, big boy?” I called out, making sure the crowd heard me. “Quit playing with your toys and throw down the pain already.”

     “I won’t hold you to your promise anymore,” Emma said, bracing herself in front of me as I began loping towards Ty. “This is not a fair fight. Hit him, kick him, I don’t care, do what you have to to defend yourself. Okay?”

     “Stay out of this, Emma,” Ty warned, taking an indirect route at me like he didn’t believe that I wasn’t going to fight back.

     “Yeah,” I said, looking at her. Tears were streaking her face, but I couldn’t retract the offer now. Had I known she’d be crying more now than she had when Ty had been saying those terrible things to her, I might not have made this deal with Ty, but that was hindsight. “Stay out of this, Em.” Gripping her shoulders, I guided her into the crowd, handing her over to a girl I recognized who lived on the same floor as her and Julia.

     “I know it’s hard for you, but stop being an idiot,” she pleaded when I turned to face a two minute beating. “The last guy he used those things on was unconscious by the second punch.”

     I glanced back at her and winked. “Good thing I’m not the last guy.”

     I was just looking back around when a cool crack crushed into my jaw. The crowd gasped—Emma screamed.

     So, of course, I laughed—again.

     I should have been expecting the sucker punch from the master of all things suck. It was an oversight I wouldn’t make again.

     “I told you to punch me, not to give me a sweet little kiss on the cheek,” I said, pretending to smear the kiss away.

     His next hit was fast and loaded with a potent amount of power. Not to mention the brass knuckles had a way of driving a punch so deep you could feel it radiate through the ends of every nerve.

     Spinning around to the crowd, I lifted my arms to the sky. “Did someone turn a fan on in here?”

     The next was an upper cut that felt like it would have shattered my jaw had I not been so . . . 
invincible.

    
“Is there a butterfly migration going on? I keep feeling the gentle brush of velvety wings on my face.”

     A few members of the crowd laughed at my weak attempts at humor, but most stared like they were about to witness an execution. Emma was now being held back by two of her brothers who’d appeared with the rest of Stanford. That was a relief because I knew they wouldn’t let her get anywhere near to the cluster f-bomb taking place in the arena created by gawking bodies.

     By the fifth hit, I wasn’t making witty comments anymore. And by the eighth, I wasn’t laughing either. I hadn’t been in more than a handful of brawls with beings of a fragile nature, but when I had, the random hit I’d let past my defenses to experience what it felt like had felt like nothing. Like someone tapping at me to get my attention, not to cause me physical damage. Then again, I’d never experienced the wrath of a man who was likely related to the devil, wielding a convincing pair of brass knuckles.

     Spitting out the metallic taste swirling in my mouth, I realized this was one of those experiences I didn’t want to have again. Once was enough. I hadn’t felt this Mortal since the day I’d died with the rest of my family.

     A quick jab, followed by a hook, rocked me back on my heels, but I recovered, assuming my spot in the center of the ring. I’d made myself a sitting duck, refusing to duck, not about to block him, and keeping my promise to not strike back. I’d promised the man two minutes to dole out a free for all beating and he wasn’t going to let a second pass wasted.