Page 8 of Moonshine Kiss
5
Cassidy
Bowie’s voice snapped like a whip. And a voyeuristic crowd materialized around us.
“Ooooh. Local boy doesn’t like it when we take his toy,” Blaine taunted. His cronies snickered.
I kneed him in the gut, and his friends laughed harder when Blaine chucked me off his shoulder as he doubled over.
I hit the ground hard on my hip and hand.
But before I could pop up and slap the crap out of him, Bowie was on him.
He grabbed Blaine by the stupid shirt collar and hauled him up on his toes. “When a girl tells you to stop touching her, you do it. Understand?”
Blaine didn’t answer fast enough, and Bowie gave him a good, hard shake.
“What’s your problem, man?” Blaine shoved uselessly at Bowie’s hands.
“My problem is you put your hands where they weren’t wanted,” Bowie said. His voice was quiet, scary.
“Bow, it’s fine,” I said, climbing to my feet swiping at the dirt on my legs. Scarlett appeared at my side with June on her heels.
The bonfire crackled in the silence that followed.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” Scarlett demanded.
“The timer went off,” June announced, walking obliviously into the circle. “We can leave now.”
Bowie shot me a look, gave me the once-over. I pleaded with my eyes for him to let the moron live.
Reluctantly, Bowie released Blaine. “Watch yourself,” he warned him, turning his back and heading in my direction.
Uh-oh.
Blaine straightened his shirt, and I saw the look he telegraphed to a couple of his bigger, drunker friends.
“Let’s go home,” Bowie said, reaching for my arm.
I don’t know if he saw the attack coming or not, but there wasn’t time to shout a warning. Blaine came running—or staggering real fast at him. I side-stepped Bowie and stepped in front of the charging Blaine. There were fights all the time in Bootleg Springs. Good, clean fights. But nobody attacked from behind. It just wasn’t done.
It might have been a fist or an elbow or one of Blaine’s stupid friends’ appendages, but I took the first shot right in the chin.
“You stupid son of a bitch!” I lashed out with my foot and caught a drunk jackwagon still wearing his sunglasses right in the balls. Bowie’s fist was busy plowing its way through Blaine’s face. Then I heard Scarlett’s legendary battle cry. Jameson and Gibson, the other two Bodine brothers, appeared and entered the melee, throwing punches indiscriminately.
It was a free-for-all as the rest of the Bootleggers present joined in good-naturedly. Some of them were throwing punches at each other just for fun.
I threw an elbow into the ribs of one of Blaine’s pals and watched Hester kick a guy in the stomach.
June waded in and grabbed me. “It’s time to go,” she said.
“June! I don’t care about the goddamn timer!”
She pointed at the flashing red and blue lights as our dad’s patrol car rolled through the grass.
“Ah, hell.”
There was an unspoken truce between law enforcement and the Bootleg Bonfire community. As long as no one drove home under the influence and there were no fights or property destruction, the cops pretended that these bonfires didn’t exist.
