“It’s a bad cut,” he concluded. “I think you’ll need stitches.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and Damien instantly got in my space.
“Look at me,” he said and wouldn’t speak until I locked eyes on him. “It’s fine. We’ll go to the hospital and get you all fixed up.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but when I had to spit again, I began to believe that Nico was right. At that moment, my face began to throb with pain, and like I knew I eventually would, I began to cry. To avoid having the women who attacked me see my breakdown, I pressed my face against Damien’s chest and tried my best to hold it in, but once the first whimper came, it paved the way for the sobs.
“Oh, Lana,” Bronagh said as she placed her hand above Damien’s hands on my back. “Are you okay?”
I could only nod to reassure her, but I was scared, and crying was the only way I could relieve my stress when I had no paint or my sketching pad on hand. I hated that when I cried, I couldn’t talk without hiccupping or a sob breaking my sentence. Damien hugged my body to his and wordlessly swayed me side to side. When I had to pull back and spit on the ground again, he looked over his shoulder and snapped, “Don’t either of you three fucking move!”
When I had calmed down a bit, Damien turned to face the trio, and he was enraged.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he bellowed.
“It was a misunderstandin’,” the creepy man stated. “I swear.”
“Liar!” I snapped. “Ye’ insinuated we should work as your prostitutes, and when we cleared you off, ye’ got those women to attack me! What in God’s name is the matter with ye’?”
I jumped back when Damien rapidly closed the gap between him and the man, getting in his space.
“I fucking know you didn’t insult my sister-in-law and threaten her and my girl, you fat fuck.”
The man seemed to size Damien up, and he concluded what I did. While he was a few inches shorter than Damien, the man was stockier. It all happened fast. My scream died in my throat when the man suddenly swung his fist, but Damien bobbed his head to the left like he expected it. The man caught nothing but air while Damien slammed his fist into the man’s gut, causing the man to hunch forward with a wheeze. I squealed when Damien rammed his knee into the man’s face. Blood instantly spurted from the man’s nose. He yelled in pain and used both his hands to cover his injury.
My heart pounded against my chest so fast I thought it would explode.
Damien threw a single jab, but the sound of it connecting was like a slap of wet skin. I cringed just as the man dropped to one knee. He shook his head, put his hand on his jaw, then fell onto his behind. He looked completely dazed and made no attempt to get back up, so Damien didn’t bother to hit him again since he now posed no threat. Instead, he focused on the two women who were screeching like banshees. The redhead attempted to dash at Bronagh, but Nico surged forward, putting himself in front of Bronagh and completely blocking her from the girl’s view and range.
“If you put your hands on my wife,” he snarled at the women, “I’m putting my hands on you.”
Oh, fuck.
The redhead glanced at the dazed man on the ground, then she wisely abandoned attacking Bronagh and moved to help him. The black-haired woman didn’t aid her. Her burning gaze turned on me, and she took a dangerous step towards me, but my view was suddenly blocked when Damien moved in front of me. My hands automatically went to his waist, and I gripped him tightly.
“Try it,” he warned the woman, his voice dangerously low. “I fucking dare you.”
“What’ll ye’ do?” she sneered. “Ye’ gonna hit me too?”
“I will do anything necessary to keep your hands off her,” he countered. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re a woman. If you lay a hand on my girl, I’m treating you like a man.”
My lips parted, and I prayed the woman wouldn’t be foolish enough to test Damien, not when he sounded so furious. I heard the woman curse at Damien, and when I peeked around him, I saw she was now helping the redhead get the injured man to his feet. The three of them walked away slowly, but they did so with jeers and insults thrown our way. Bronagh was called fat, and I was called ugly.
“I’m pregnant, dopey hole, not fat!”
“Yeah,” I shouted, “and I’m not ugly!”
When Bronagh and I looked at one another, for some reason, we started to laugh. The situation wasn’t funny at all, not in the slightest, but we laughed anyway. That was until I whimpered in pain and spat blood, again. Damien turned, gripped my arm, and wordlessly steered me towards Alec’s Sportage that the twins obviously borrowed to come to our rescue. I climbed into the back seat with him, and Nico and Bronagh climbed into the front.
“The messages!” I shouted. “They’re in the trolley.”
The twins hurriedly got the bags of food and put them in the boot of the car.
“Nico, your car is parked—”
“I’ll come back for it later, we need to get you to the hospital.”
I nodded, mutely.
“I can’t believe that just happened!” Bronagh stated, and she buckled her seat belt. “All because we told that creep that we weren’t interested in workin’ for ‘im. Fuckin’ ridiculous.”
I grunted. “Can you believe he asked us to come and work for ‘im as prostitutes? He was dead bloody serious when he asked us that, Bronagh.”
“I know!” she said, amazed. “He even promised to make us wealthy women from it.”
We were silent for a moment, then we laughed again. I only stopped when I felt how rigid Damien was. I looked at him and found his gaze was locked out the window, and his hands balled into fists. He was still mad; there was no getting around that. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but I had to spit, so I grabbed an empty fast food restaurant cup from the cup-holder next to me and spat into it. Damien looked at me, then at the cup, and then at my face.
“Put your tongue against the wound,” he said. “It might help with the bleeding.”
I attempted it but screeched when a burning hot pain filled my cheek.
“Hurts,” was all I could say.
Damien reached over and grabbed my hand. He didn’t seem to care that I still had blood on my skin; he squeezed my hand reassuringly, and I was pleased to find that it helped me relax massively. I spat into the cup again a few minutes later and began to sniffle as the pain became bad. Under my eyes throbbed, my scalp felt like it was on fire, and my cheek stung like hell. I knew, at that moment, that I would never be able to make it as an underground fighter like Nico once was. My pain tolerance was zero.
“We’re nearly there, Alannah,” Nico said softly when my cries could be heard.
Bronagh reached her hand back and touched my knee, the gesture comforting me.
“I can’t believe this happened.”
“Thanks, Alannah,” Bronagh said in response.
“For what?”
“Defendin’ me,” she answered. “Babe, they were goin’ to hurt me, and you threw yourself at them so they wouldn’t.”
I blinked. “You’re me best friend.”
“I know, and I love ye’.”
“I love ye’ too.”
Silence lingered for a moment until I said, “If that situation didn’t scare that baby out of you, then I’m afraid nothin’ will.”
Bronagh laughed. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out all the pain that seemed to hit me at once. I focused on Damien.
“How are you here?”
“Dominic pulled up at the shop, told me what was going on, and I jumped in Alec’s car.”
My heart squeezed.
“This really hurts.”