Page 9 of All Superheroes Need PR
“I need you to get the fuck out of here.” He points at the exit, not that I can see it through the sudden mass of people who are staring. Some have their phones out, and I can see little beams of light shining our way.
Oh no. No, please no.
I’m shaking my head, but he doesn’t understand. I’m not telling him no. I’d love to get the fuck out of here. I’m just trying to shake away what’s to come, but the burning in the pit of my stomach increases with every click of a phone camera. With every shrill laugh from the bar patrons. With every whisper.
“No?” he hisses.
I manage to glance back up at him but not past his neck. His throat works like he wants to say more but doesn’t. He doesn’t move out of my way either. I feel myself starting to sag. My adrenaline is dipping. My stomach is pitching. A wave of heat overwhelms me, followed by a dangerous cool.
“I don’t feel well.”
Instead of immediately making fun of me, the Pyro inhales sharply. His hands move from his pockets to my chin, and he tilts my face up with his fingers. All of them touch me at the same time. My stomachrolls. Nerves blitz me. Uh oh. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. And then I blink and register the anger in his eyes, and I try to jerk back, but he doesn’t let me. His left hand circles the back of my neck while his right hand very, very gently moves over my forehead, back through my hair.
“Shit, you’re hot. Grab your things. I’m taking you to a hospital.”
“No.” My voice is firm. Firmer than it should be. My stomach is soft. Softer than it should be. “I’m fine.”
His eyes narrow and he stops touching my face, but his hand on the back of my neck never moves. It’s so warm. “You’re piss drunk, and your skin’s fucking on fire. I’m taking you.”
“I ...”
“Don’t be stupid.”You’re so fucking stupid, Vanessa.
I flinch as if struck, but when I try to back away from him, my spine hits the bar. I have to push his hand off my neck with my own palm, and I immediately break out in cold sweat.Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Youneed to leave,” I wheeze, the world starting to close in, the lights starting to dim. My body is on fire, but it has nothing to do with the booze—well, it has less to do with the booze than it does with the knowledge that my photo is being taken alongside one of the most famous people on the planet and is likely to end up all over the internet. I don’t want to be seen. And not only is the Pyroseeingme, he’s making me visible to everybody.
“Excuse me?”
“You and I ... we don’t ... d-don’t work together, Mr. Casteel.” Mr. Casteel. I’m proud of myself for remembering that he actually has a name and for actually using it, because I can see as I use it that he visibly stiffens. With that small confidence, I manage to lift my gaze to his.
“And?” His jaw is clenched; I can tell even beneath the beard. It’s an attractive look for him, this mountain man, warlord, king of the wildlings thing he has going on. It makes him look volatile and dangerous, which is why it’s a look I’d have rather admired from afar. A very far.
“I’m not being paid to have to talk to you.” Mr. Casteel doesn’t move much, but his nostrils flare again, and this timesmokecurls out of them. Smoke. He still doesn’t speak, so I slur, “I need space.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” He takes an abrupt step to close some of the distance between us, and I can’t help the way I lower my head and lift my arm, a trained response. Old habits die hard.
The moment catches around me, swirling winds from a past life tickling the wine cooling on my clothes and making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I hear the clack of thunder, the bolt of a door, the creak of my trailer’s musty floorboards, but when I breathe in ... all I smell is smoke, a bonfire after a blaze when only the embers lie lonely. And then I’m pulled back into the present by the curl of warm fingers around my raised left wrist.
I open my eyes as Mr. Casteel coaxes my arm away from my face. His eyes are narrowed but blazing the brightest white, so white that the light they cast chases away the darkness under his brow. His mouth has an angry set, but when the line of our gazes clash, he blinks. Mr. Casteel swallows once, twice, a third time, and wipes his free hand, the one that’s not lightly draped over my palm, on his sweatpants.
He leans in toward me without moving his feet and gives my hand a firm squeeze. “I may be many terrible things, Vanessa,” he whispers, and his voice is rougher, like he swallowed nails dipped in whiskey and gasoline. “But I would never do that.”
And the strange thing is that the tension releases from the tops of my shoulders and eases down the rest of my back before dissolving at my feet. I bask in the feeling and then immediately hate myself for it—for wanting to believe.
“Words without actions are meaningless, Mr. Casteel,” I whisper and then hiccup. “And today, your actions did enough.”
His expression shutters even though the light in his eyes continues to beam, maybe even a little more brightly. “Roland,” he says suddenly, and the tension in his forehead releases like a rubber band snapped. His whole demeanor changes in a way that I find alarming.
I open my mouth to ask him if he’s okay, but the pit of knots in my belly chooses that moment to finally release. My stomach heaves, and this time I can’t stop the inevitable. I hiccup, and the burn in the back of my throat gets hotter. I flail my hands, trying to gesture for him to back up, which of course causes him to do the opposite ... just in time for me to projectile vomit ...
All over him.
The force is enough to propel me out of my chair, but a heavy arm blocks my fall, and the pressure of that arm on my stomach causes me to throw up another belly full of day red all over his gray sweatpants. Did I say gray? No, not anymore. Now it looks like he’s been dipped in a vat of my blood.
As he holds me in his arms like a bedraggled damsel, his hoodie looking like it’s been dipped in my insides, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s not such a terrible thing that we didn’t win his contract. After all, with the photos that will come out of this evening, he really will look every bit the villain that I know he is in his heart.
There’s a pause, and then a woman’s shriek marks the final fall of the axe over my throat. “Oh my God, it’s the Pyro! She just threw up on the Pyro!”What a lovely headsman,I think as I stare up into the Pyro’s shocked pink eyes before I finally, thankfully, pass the fuck out.
