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“Gotta tell the people who love you that shit went down,” he said, giving me a hard look. One that said that he would do it if I didn’t.
“Yeah. Eventually,” I said. “But not right now. There’s enough going on.”
“With that club, there’s always something,” he said. And he wasn’t wrong. If there wasn’t a kidnapping, attempted murder, or ambush, it was a light week.
“I meant with this whole situation,” I said, waving a circle to encompass both of us.
“You don’t gotta worry about that,” he insisted, shaking his head.
“Well, I am,” I told him, rolling my eyes.
“It’s my problem.”
“Seeing as I just got attacked in an alley, it’s my business too.”
Was I imagining that pain that sliced across his eyes?
“He’s gonna pay for that,” he said, that jaw going rock-hard once again.
“I think you’d want him to pay for betraying you.”
“That too. But that, that I can understand,” he said. “This,” he went on, gaze moving over me, his head shaking. “There’s no understanding this.”
“Would you feel the same way if I was a guy?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted.
“Well, I have to appreciate your honesty even if I’m not happy about the subtle misogyny.”
“Maybe I just don’t like fights that ain’t fair, ma,” he said. “Wouldn’t like seeing a MMA fighter beating up on some scrawny computer nerd.”
“I’m not a scrawny computer nerd. He was well-matched here.”
“Well-matched,” he mused. “He’s bigger than you, yeah?”
“Yes,” I admitted, exhaling hard because I knew he was just going to keep doubling down.
“Stronger than you too, yeah?”
“Strength is subjective,” I insisted. I mean, I had a cousin, Gracie, who was sweet as apple pie most of the time. All-American girl. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. But if you got her in a ring, she threw down better than most men I knew. She could throw most men I knew.
“He picked you up. Could you pick him up?”
Ugh.
I was going to lose this argument, and we both knew it.
“Look,” he said, tucking his chin a bit. “I’m not saying you can’t throw down. I’m saying that all the training in the world ain’t gonna help you if your opponent’s got sixty pounds on you. And a lot of it being muscle. This ain’t about you being a woman. It’s about you being a small woman,” he said.
He had me there.
My mom is very petite. My dad is tall, but on the thin side too. When their genes mixed, I got a little more height than my mom, but every bit of her smallness.
“You’re easy to pick up, easy to throw around. Sure, it might not be fun picking you up and throwing you around when you’re flailing and kicking and biting, but to a guy that much bigger than you, it’s like a kid throwing a temper tantrum when being carried out of the grocery store.”
“Gee. Thanks,” I grumbled.
“Just giving it to you straight, mama. You’re not the kind who wants smoke blown up her ass.”
He was right about that.
And I appreciated him knowing that.
“I’m going to be bitter about him getting the better of me for the rest of my life,” I admitted.
To that, he sighed as he moved to sit off the edge of the bed. “We all get our asses kicked sometimes, ma,” he said, giving me a small smile. “If you haven’t gotten your ass kicked, you’re living too easy,” he added. “You lost this one. You’ll win the next. It’s not that serious.”
Andres had a way of putting things into perspective that I didn’t. I guess I was a little more high-strung, and he had that laid-back thing going for him.
“Besides,” he said. “I saw the knife. Figured you did some damage too.”
“I stabbed him in the hand,” I told him, the memories coming back, but not as detailed as I would have liked. That was the problem with a fight. It all happened too fast. You were so jazzed up on adrenaline that it kind of all melded together into one violent lump in your head. “And his stomach,” I added. “And when he was doing this,” I said, pressing a hand to my poor, bruised throat, “I clawed at his face and poked at his eyes.”
“You did good, ma,” he told me, reaching up to gently swipe the hair out of my face.
“There’s something else,” I said as a warm sensation flooded my chest, unfamiliar and a little alarming. Was that some sort of side effect from the fight? I’d have to ask the doctor when she showed up again.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I think… he said something while he was choking me. I don’t really remember it clearly, but I think he said something about sending you a message,” I told him.
“Think he accomplished that,” he said, nodding.
“No, wait. It’s… he didn’t say I. He said we.”
He had more than one snake in his organization.
