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Or maybe not, comes the painful thought as I try to raise my head and realize my neck is broken. Not all the way, thanks to the layer of thick muscle lining my neck and shoulders, but definitely broken.
“Get up,” I order myself as my mind suddenly sparks to life from a burst of fresh adrenaline, the body’s natural painkiller, a drug so powerful it can allow a man to finish the fight even with a broken body. “Get the fuck up, Xavier. She needs you, and she needs you now. This is your shot. You promised it would all come together, so you need to put yourself together and keep that promise.”
The words come out in a slurry garbled mess. I spit blood that I realize is coming from the side of my head. The blood is cool and starting to dry, which is both good and bad.
Good, because it means I haven’t cracked my skull wide open or burst an artery.
Bad, because it means I’ve been passed out for a while.
Maybe too long a while.
“Get up!” I roar now, clenching both fists and realizing with relief that all my fingers work, which means I’m not paralyzed, which means I’ll heal all the way and so I can damn well get up and finish this fight.
Because if I don’t get to Connie before the cops cuff me and take me back to my cage, healing won’t matter anymore.
Because I’ll be too broken to ever be fixed.
Now I ram my fist into the truck’s front-floor carpet, flexing my right triceps and pushing myself up. The pain is unreal, shards of splintering agony radiating from my head and neck all the way down my body. Each movement brings me to a new level of raw suffering, but I’m grinning by the time I crawl out past the half-deflated airbags and down to the hard asphalt of the alley.
Because movement and pain means I’m alive.
It means the neck-break hasn’t damaged my spine.
If I can stand, I can walk.
If I can walk, I can fight.
If I can fight, I can win.
Slowly I get to my feet, leaning against the side of the pink cookie-truck to stay upright. My head hurts like I’ve been a punching bag at a Southie boxing gym. My neck throbs like it’s being pulled in different directions in some medieval torture rack. It takes a while for my vision to clear, but the moment I can see straight, my body starts to move, beginning with my rapidly stiffening neck.
First, I glance back at the driver’s seat where Connie was thankfully still buckled in.
No blood. No spider-web splintered glass at that spot.
She’s alive.
And she’s with him.
Patrick Kieran the Third.
Soon to be Patrick Kieran the Last.
“Kieran!” I growl, pushing open the red metal backdoor leading to Connie’s kitchen. “Kieran!”
A blast of furnace-hot heat hits me in the face, almost blowing me backward with the force. I frown, then realize it’s the industrial strength baking ovens that have all been fired up.
“Don’t worry, baby,” comes Kieran’s voice from somewhere deep inside the sweltering kitchen. “We’ll get your cookies baked in time for the Valentine’s Day rush. Now that we’re married, we’re a team. There we go. The last oven’s all fired up. Oh, isn’t it warm and lovely in here? Perfect for our wedding day. Oh, fuck, you are so perfect, Connie. They’re right about how the wait makes it so much better. Except you didn’t wait for me, did you, you filthy slut, you dirty whore! You gave your pussy to some other man, some two-bit minimum-wage fucker who’s now dead in your ugly pink truck wearing that ugly pink hoodie with your dumb cookie-company logo on it.”
I frown, then realize Kieran still doesn’t know it was me in that truck. The hood of my sweatshirt must have been covering my face as I lay in a crumpled bloody heap on the truck carpet, unmoving and unconscious. I probably looked dead. Hell, I probably should be dead, by any reasonable measure.
But here I am.
And I’m coming for you, Connie.
And for you, Kieran.
You first, motherfucker.
