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“Your girlfriend’s a lying bitch,” Seth shouts as he follows the punch to Nick’s face with an upper-cut to the gut, throwing him off balance again before he can recover from the first blow. “My lawyer is going to tear her apart on the stand.”
I roll onto my hands and knees, willing my body to stop freaking out so I can help Nick, but my legs refuse to cooperate.
My enraged, itching skin has broken out in a cold sweat, and I’m shivering all over, my arms going numb as my stomach ties itself in terrible knots. My head pulses, and my vision swims, and my throat aches like a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around my neck.
There’s no way I’m going to be able to help Nick myself right now, but if I can reach my phone…
I fumble at my back pocket, struggling to work the phone free from my jeans as Nick shouts for help, “Someone stop this fucker. We have a medical emergency. My girlfriend’s life is in danger!”
But everyone on this end of the street at this time of night is inside The Horse and Rider, where the music is likely too loud for them to hear him, and Seth obviously couldn’t care less if Nick and I both die slow, painful deaths.
In fact, he seems pretty eager to help the process along.
Seth throws another punch that Nick ducks seconds before it connects. I wince and dig my entire itchy hand into my pocket, leveraging the phone free with an awkward flip of my wrist. My cell falls to the concrete, and I grab it from the sidewalk, tapping in 911 with half-numb fingers.
I hear the operator pick up and bring the phone to my ear, but when I speak, I worry my softly rasped, “By The Horse and Rider. Help. Please. We need help,” is too quiet to be heard over Seth’s stream of verbal abuse.
“The bitch should have kept her mouth shut!” The veins on Seth’s neck are standing out like swollen blue worms beneath his skin, and his face is as red as the convertible parked in front of Nick’s car.
“You should have kept your hands to yourself, you sack of shit,” Nick shouts back, dodging another fist bound for his face.
“Fuck you. It’s her word against mine, and I say nothing happened,” Seth says with an ugly laugh as he and Nick circle each other. I lay the phone down on the pavement with the call still active, fighting to pull in enough air to give our location again.
“The cops had no right to stick their fucking noses in it,” Seth continues. “There’s no evidence. They got me fucking fired from my job.”
“You got yourself fired,” Nick says, the rage in his voice enough to make me shiver. “And now you’re going to get arrested for assault. Don’t think I won’t press charges, asshole. And if you keep me from taking her to the hospital for another second, I will kill you with my bare hands if I have to.”
If I were Seth, I’d have run right then, but instead he sneers, “So you’re a pussy, too, huh? Just like your girl. She shouldn’t have worn that dress if she didn’t want to get fucked. She’s a tease and—”
Seth’s words end in a grunt as Nick rushes him, knocking the breath out of the shorter, burlier man as he slams him into the brick wall of the tattoo shop.
“You say another word about her, ever, and I will fucking end you,” Nick shouts, slamming Seth into the wall a second time before shoving him away.
The moment Nick releases him, Seth charges again. Nick shifts to the side this time as his right arm swings in a tight circle, colliding with Seth’s jaw. The blow connects with a sickening thud, and Seth drops to the ground and stays there for a moment, clearly dazed.
The moment the other man’s down, Nick is back at my side. “Hurry,” he says, gathering me under my arms. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“My phone. I called 911,” I rasp, pointing at where my phone still lies on the ground, the world spinning as I turn to brace my hand against the car.
I’m hot and itchy and dizzy, and my head is pounding so hard that for a second I think the blaring sound that fills the air is coming from between my ears, the final death cry of my brain as it bursts into a thousand tiny pieces.
But it isn’t my brain exploding, it’s a siren.
Many sirens, that grow increasingly louder as they close in on this end of Main Street just as Nick scoops my phone off the concrete.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Seth stagger to his feet and start to run—a blur of white T-shirt and black jeans—but I can’t turn my head fast enough to follow him.
