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See. He was the kind of guy you were supposed to feel sorry for.
And I had.
Until I met adult Joshua.
Because adult Joshua finally grew into his arms and legs. His thinness became a lithe swimmer's body that he dressed well. His skin got slathered in creams then lasered to even it out. He saw a professional speech therapist who ironed out his impediment and taught him perfect elocution.
All good things.
Except with those things came the most arrogant, intolerable, jackass womanizer I had every crossed paths with. Which, given my line of work dealing with cheating bastards, was really saying something.
He was also one of the best hackers on the east coast. Better than me and Glenn certainly. A fact that he rubbed my face in constantly. At first I thought it was just because he was trying to push me to learn more. But, in the end, he was just a jackass.
It really shouldn't have come as much of a shock that he got himself involved with the likes of Lex.
And then he fucking ratted me out. Which was just... so against everything hackers believed in. It was us against them. Always. We watched each other's backs. Without fail.
The rat bastard.
I purged my rage at him, enjoying the fear overtaking his features as he realized how jolly well fucked he was. For no reason. Just his own vanity, thinking he could roll with the big boys. But, in the end, they would just remind him of the bumbling, stuttering nobody he had always been.
Then there was fighting.
And then the room cleared.
Save for me. And Lex. Breaker. And Greg.
Then I was at the receiving end of Lex's anger. Like my mother had been for so many years. Feeling his fists slam into my face, making my vision into little white explosions, making the punch Breaker had given me feel like it had been a love tap.
I was tasting and spitting my own blood when he got me down on all fours. And there was no time. No time to get to my boot. To get the heroin. To get it in my system and start to OD before he put his hands on me.
It was over.
I lost.
And I was going to pay.
I looked up at Breaker for a second, my heart in my eyes, before I shut that down and lowered my head, feeling Lex's hands reach for my pants, his fingertips grazing over my ass in a way that made my skin crawl. The sick crept up my throat as I heard his zipper move down.
It was one thing to have willing but awful sex. I had submitted to that with two different men.
It was a whole other to have the right to deny sex taken away from you... yeah, there were no words for that kind of awful.
But then Breaker's voice was cutting in.
Saying shit he had no business saying.
Though, in the end, it saved me.
I was seconds away from feeling Lex's body slamming into mine. And I knew enough of the police reports to know how terrible he would make that for me.
Then Lex was away from me. And the world went BOOM.
Breaker flew at Greg.
And I reached into my boot and I flew at Lex.
For my mom. And Glenn. And every woman whose battered, broken body I had seen. And also, for me. For what he had already taken from me. For what he was just about to take from me before he was stopped.
I never really thought much about if I was a violent person or not. In general, I was safe behind my computer screen. I had never been in fights. I had never hurt anyone.
But my arm flew out and the tip of the knife plunged with a force that made my stomach drop into Lex's eye socket.
The howl he let out sent a shockwave through my system and I pulled the knife back out, freezing, unable to do anything but fight down the bile that was rising in my throat.
Before my eyes, I watched a screaming, bleeding Lex take a right hook to the side of his face and fall unconscious to the ground.
Then there was Breaker, yelling at me, dragging me toward the staircase.
We had barely made it into the finished side of the basement when a battered Greg came barreling through with Lex hanging off him only half conscious, going to the side of the bar and opening a door into a small white panic room.
I almost laughed as Breaker dragged me up the stairs and into the kitchen.
I had half-expected some kind of war to be going on. But all there was was confused chaos. Anyone we encountered looked through us like we weren't even there. So we just kept moving, Breaker pushing the door to the outside open, and we knocked over a still living, breathing, laughing Shooter.
I felt a wave of relief that made all my air whoosh out of my system at the sight of him. I barely knew him. Had literally shared only a handful of words with the man. But he was good. He was willing to sacrifice himself for me. He offered me his pinkie for support. And he and Breaker loved one another like brothers. That was enough for me.
I was so happy to see him alive, I felt tears stinging my eyes.
But then we were running again, watching Lex's property start to break into wild fires from whatever the hell kind of explosives were planted all around.
We had just gotten to the truck when I saw Jstorm.
One look was all I needed.
I knew.
It could have been anyone in a hood.
But I knew.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when a hand reached up, pulled off a hood, and revealed a woman who had to have been younger than me. Or at least, she had one of those faces, eternally young. Sweet. Delicate. Except she wore her eye makeup heavy and her lips red and her tattoos were bright and colorful against her pale skin.
