Page 43 of Still Yours
“Mostly true.” Stone nods sagely.
Stone swings before anybody predicts, causing gasps and cries at the same time a skin-to-skincrunchrings out.
The man collects himself and swings back, but Stone dodges the punch with ease.
“Stone!” I shout.
Stone bends low and runs at the man’s middle, toppling them both to the ground. The girlfriend screams, then centers her phone. The people who gathered scatter like a flock of geese. Lunchtime on a school day at the Merc is mostly filled with retirees or farmers finishing their day’s work before the sun gets too hot. There aren’t too many willing to stay and film theaction, which I’m thankful for, since Stone just rolled them into a pyramid of glass spaghetti jars on sale.
Glass shatters, and sauce flies everywhere, including my face. The sudden, dramatic fracturing of one hundred pasta jars brings Maisy running full on into the fray with a broomstick and a battle cry.
“Goddamned hooligans!” She smacks the gang member on the head, but he just shakes it off and continues boxing-style punches into Stone’s chest. Stone has the wherewithal to block him, but with glass shards flying, he’s bound to bleed.
“Noa!” Maisy shouts. “Help me!”
The grocery basket I was holding drops to my feet. I fly into the fray, too worried about Maisy breaking them up on her own to think straight and maybe call the police first before I kick at a motorcycle club member.
On my way, I pick up a pasta jar that somehow survived and swing it at the side of the motorcycle guy’s head as he rolls on top of Stone to land more punches.
“Youbitch!” I hear before someone yanks me back by the hair, and I’m slammed into the mess of pasta and glass, sliding a few feet on my back like an overturned beetle. “Nobodytouches my man but me!”
The girlfriend shrieks and lands on top of me, using her acrylic nails to her advantage and scraping them along my cheek.
Crying out, I swipe back and buck like a wild stallion to get her off me. I’ve taken enough self-defense classes to use my legs to wrap around her and drag her down, then crawl on top of her and hold her by the wrists, yelling into her face, “I’m not your enemy!”
She won’t hear any of it. This girl has turned feral, snarling at me and promising threats against me and all those I love.
There’s no reasoning with her, so I let her stumble into a stand, heading toward Stone. She, of course, tries to drag me back into it, but I catch enough to see their fight is more brutal than ours, grunts, curses, and bone-breakingthwacksringing out. Maisy is still there, adding cleaning spray to her arsenal and aiming for their eyes.
Until a shot rings out.
The shock is so stunning, no one screams. Everyone freezes. I lose all hearing, and the girlfriend goes slack with surprise.
Then my heart drops.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, sounds of the Merc tunneling back into my ears. “Stone?”
I fumble through the mess, my sneakers squeaking, then slip and land on my stomach, my chin ricocheting off the linoleum with a fiery sting in its wake. I roll onto my back, moaning.
Stone lies still on the floor as the club member stands, brushing at the wet stains on his pants like the nuisance they are.
“That should fucking teach you,” he mumbles, then limps to his girlfriend. “Come on, Veronica. Look what the hell you’ve done. Let’s get out of here before the cops arrive.”
Then, with the help of this Veronica, he pockets his gun and they both disappear.
“Noa.Noa!Are you hurt? Say something!”
Stone darts into my vision, the worried lines of his handsome face rippling overhead like an avenging angel I’ve summoned from thin air. His firm hands pat me down, decorum forgotten as he does a full-body search, pressing against my breasts and inner thighs, searching for a bullet wound.
This isn’t the time for that kind of molten fire, yet it comes scorching between my legs and sparking into my nipples as soon as his touch leaves my skin.
His frenzied search returns to my face, his hot, wet palms cupping my face. “You’re bleeding.”
The switch from hot to soft is so unexpected that I relax in his hold, keeping eye contact and giving his wrists a reassuring squeeze. “I’m okay. I’m not shot.”
Adrenaline that had been leaking from my body halts with a clog of fear. “What about you? Did you get hit?”
I do a quick scan of his body, unable to tell blood from spaghetti sauce. Red covers his chest, his lip bleeding, and one eye’s starting to swell.
