“You ain’t gotta run, shy girl.”
“I’m not shy. I’m just not interested,” I told him, snatching my arm away from his grasp.
I moved around him, hoping that the clear hallway meant that there wasn’t a line for the bathroom. At this point, I wasn’t in the mood for a line. Who knew there would be so many people out.
In my clubbing days, we usually didn’t even show up until after eleven. Now it was barely ten o’clock, and I was over it.Hope’s club hopping behind mentioned something about ladies’ night, but I wasn’t really listening after she said there would be half off drinks if we came early. My heart dropped when I heard footsteps behind me.
“Damn, baby girl, why you rushing off like that? I’m just trying to talk to you.”
It was just my luck that I would go to the bathroom solo and be followed by a drunk stalker when I didn’t have my mace on me. I kept walking, hoping Marcus would take that as a hint to finally get the hell on somewhere. I didn’t know why I expected my luck to change at that very moment when it had been shitty for years. Either way, it didn’t pick that night to get better.
“Aye, you don’t hear me talking to you?”
“I’m pretty sure I said I wasn’t interested,” I called over my shoulder as I reached the door.
“Ain’t nobody trying to do nothing to you, woman,” he said, stepping in front of me before my hand reached the handle of the bathroom door.
“Can you move?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows.
“Why you acting all stuck up like that? Your nose wasn’t in the air when you were guzzling free drinks. You ain’t that damn pretty, ho.”
“I didn’t ask you for shit. Do I need to give you back your seven fifty? If you need it that bad, you can have it back with interest, because I’m about ready to pay you to get the hell out of my face.”
“Oh, you got a smart-ass mouth, bitch.” He snarled, grabbing my hand when I went for the handle again.
“Let my damn hand go!” I barked.
“Girl, calm the fuck?—”
The next part happened so fast that I barely had a chance to process it. One second, the drunk, persistent asshole had a death grip on my wrist, and the next, his arm was twisted behind hisback, and his face was being slammed into the wall, over and over. Time slowed to a stop as I locked eyes with Reed. His face was dangerously calm as he stopped banging Marcus’s head on the wall to study my face.
“You good, baby?” he asked.
“Um . . . yeah. I’m fine,” I replied, almost too flustered to think.
Reed didn’t look satisfied with my answer, but he still released the back of Marcus’s head.
“Apologize to my fucking wife!” he demanded.
“My bad, man. She didn’t say she was married.”
“Did I ask you that, or did I say apologize to her?”
“My bad, man. My bad.”
“Not to me. Apologize to my queen.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know you were married.”
“Single or not. That doesn’t give you an excuse to disrespect a woman. You better learn to accept rejection without going out like a bitch. Tonight is just a warning. I should fuck you up, but I’m going to let you live,” Reed barked before punching Marcus on the side of his face and leaving him slumped against the wall.
As if he hadn’t just knocked a man out in the middle of the hall, Reed shoved me into the bathroom and locked the door behind himself once he was inside. His dark eyes bore through me like I was the one who had no business here. Was this a dream? Where in the world had he come from?
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him.
“What the hell areyoudoing here?” he shot back immediately.
“Minding my damn business just like you seem to be doing.”
