32. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
M ICAH
If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to talk to Carly and ended up in a fight with some bonehead, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it’s happened twice in such a short time span.
I guess I can’t really be surprised. Carly is beautiful and sexy and has that mysterious grace that just intrigues a soul. When she focuses on someone, it makes you feel like the most important person in the world. And being the focus of that quiet intensity feels electric. Incredible.
It’s part of why I walked in here, eager to see her in the first place. She’s the first person I want to tell about the deal with Declan, the only one I really want to share this exciting news with. I can already see her eyes light up, glittering with amusement at my excitement, her lips parting to flash those pearly whites at me as she utters something so delightfully snarky.
And then maybe I’ll kiss her after she does. Maybe that will lead to more kissing and I’ll have to take her to an empty room or a back alley where I can make love to her under the stars.
The idea heated me from the inside when I got out of my car. But when I walk in to find Carly being accosted by yet another asshole with his hand on her, that heat turns into something else entirely.
The bastard has his hand wrapped around her wrist, tugging her closer. And unlike with Robbie, her expression is wholly hostile to this man. She hates him.
Which is good. That just gives the angry red-eyed demon inside more reasons to destroy him.
As I walk to them, my vision is a haze with the only point of focus being her and the bastard.
My heart thumps like a war drum as I stride to them. I hear my voice order him to let her go. He says something stupid back. I don’t care about whatever the fuck he says because the whole time, I’m just trying to give him a few seconds to see reason and obey, my blood pounding in my ears, that murderous rage building and building.
But maybe I could have let it go if he let her go at any point during that wait. It’s not like I’m a maniac who just likes to go around fighting people all the time. I’m sane and logical for the most part. Maybe I could have somehow suppressed the urge to cave his face in if he’d only listened to Carly’s urgent plea for him to let her go, if he’d understood how close to the edge I was seeing him touch my woman, make her uncomfortable.
But then the bastard made it so much worse when he decided to call her that ugly word.
And from that point on, I completely lost it.
So you see, I can’t be blamed really for plowing my fist in his face. Neither can I be blamed for grabbing his head after the fact, and slamming it right into the table.
“Micah!” Carly screams but it sounds like it’s from far away and it’s hard to hear her over the pounding in my ears.
Especially when the man’s equally huge but stupid-looking friends roar as they jump to their feet and charge at me. One of them tries to tackle me and I instantly drive my elbows into his back, feeling satisfied when he yelps and falls to the floor. Another one tries to punch me and I duck to avoid it, and then duck again to avoid the third idiot’s drop kick. He almost gets me with a second kick to the eye, but I drive my leg up to his crown jewels instead.
He howls as he drops to the floor and I smile in satisfaction.
They keep coming in twos and threes.
I break one’s nose with a satisfying crunch but the other one manages to kick me in the stomach. It doesn’t take me down though. I barely feel it and I manage to judo-throw him into a table, breaking it in the process.
Now I’m so thankful for all those self-defense classes my father made me take in case I ever got kidnapped. I know how to take a hit and deal an even more painful one.
Three more of the assholes come at me and I hop back over a seat to avoid their blows. Then I kick one in the face and kick another one into the bleeding asshole with a broken nose who was just getting to his feet.
It’s going well, but there are still too many of them and in my periphery, I notice one of them grab a seat ready to chuck it at me.
Good thing I’m not alone.
Because as they pick up a seat to throw at me, an older man yells, “Watch out!” and smashes his beer bottle over the asshole’s head leading him to drop to the floor.
His eyes meet mine. It’s the guy from yoga, Old Man Shoreton. He nods.
I nod back.
And just like that, an all-out bar fight breaks out.
It’s total and complete chaos. More chairs are thrown, and more glass is broken. Angry snarls form a cacophony mixing in with the punches and grunts. I manage to take care of myself and also watch out for Old Man Shoreton, who helps me. And he’s not the only one doing it too. It seems his entire table of elderly gentlemen is going after the thugs too, ganging up on them.
At first, the thugs don’t seem to know what to do with them, but then one of them grabs Shoreton and rears back his fist to punch him.
Oh no, you fucking don’t.
I hit him in the back with a chair before he can, and then smash his skull again so he passes out.
Someone breaks a chair against my back and I rear back in time to watch an elderly man tackle him to the ground. And another one is beating people with his walking stick.
“That’s my yoga teaching assistant,” he says as he fights. “You get your grimy hands off him.”
Later maybe, when I have the presence of mind, I’ll be touched by the way all of them jumped to my rescue and rallied to fight with me. But right now, I’m still too enraged.
I snatch one up by his collar ready to deal another blow.
And then I get a glimpse of Carly’s expression.
She’s still standing at the same place, staring straight at me. She doesn’t just look pissed. She looks devastated.
My fist stills in the air.
In my hesitation, the thug manages to get me in the eye before I finally complete the punch and lay him out. After he drops, my eyes go back to Carly. A tall, lanky fellow leaps over the counter and stands next to her as her eyes travel around the room in shock.
At the other end, Emma’s yelling trying to get everything back under control. Her bodyguards surround her, preventing her from getting involved. The fight still rages on, but I’m not paying attention anymore. I’m still staring at Carly and when her eyes meet mine again, the disappointment in them hurts me on a visceral level. It pierces through my chest and clears my anger.
Why is she looking at me like that? What did I do to deserve that look?
My heart jumps restlessly in my chest and I don’t see the punch coming until it crashes into my jaw. I stumble back and I’m about to retaliate when a loud whistle breaks through the atmosphere.
We all turn in unison to see a sheriff standing at the entrance of the bar, his eyes scanning the crowd.
“What in tarnation is going on here?” he says. “I came in here because I heard there was supposed to be a tomahawk special. Didn’t expect to find y’all tearing the place apart. And in front of the damn tourists too. Y’all ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
My jaw stings as he yells, and I put my hand up to my eye, which smarts like hell. That’s definitely going to leave a mark.
“Who’s responsible for this?” he asks.
I immediately point at the bastard who is currently passed out cold on the floor. “He started it.”
Unfortunately for me, about a dozen other people point at me.
“That fella punched out the other fella,” one woman says.
“That other fella probably deserved it,” Old Man Shoreton counters, but seeing as he’s one of the assailants, his account is less trustworthy.
The sheriff shakes his head in consternation. “Well, then that settles it. I suppose you’re all coming with me.”
And that’s how I find myself and about fifteen other people being cuffed and loaded into the back of the two police cars that arrive on the scene. Four of us are squeezed in the back like a pack of sardines and we still don’t all fit. A bunch of people are being carted in another truck that’s supposed to follow us.
But I’m not even paying attention to the discomfort. Before I left, I noticed that Carly was giving her statement and apologizing profusely to some customers who were all looking stunned at everything that just happened. I willed Carly to look at me, to see her expression, but she didn’t turn my way.
“Carly,” I called out as they led me out but her shoulders only stiffened. And then I felt it in my gut. She wasn’t just mad at me. She was disappointed.
And that does not make me feel good. Not one bit.
Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
But then I remember that asshole’s hand around her wrist, the leer on his face, the ugly word he called her. I recall the satisfaction of knocking him out.
Yeah, I wouldn’t take it back , I think. Given the chance, I would do it the same way all over again.
If this is what I’m going to jail for then it’s a worthy cause.
“Damn, man,” Shoreton says when we’re in the cop car waiting for the driver. “I don’t think I’ve fought like that in a while. My back is killing me. Can’t deny though, it was a lot of fun and a good way to stretch my muscles.”
He chortles and I shake my head but can’t help but smile despite my sadness at Carly’s reaction. “Thanks for having my back. I’ll show you some stretches for your back when we get out.”
“Of course, I have your back,” he says. “Here in Laketown, we look out for each other. I saw that asshole bothering Carly and we wanted to step in. Roger was even raring to get his gun from his truck. Right, Roger?”
“Yeah,” Roger says. “If Yule hadn’t put a stop to it, we would have. But you beat us to it, defended our own and so that makes you one of us now.”
“By the way, I’m learning now that you’re Carly’s fella,” a third man says. “Take care of her. That little girl has been through a lot.”
I nod, touched on Carly’s behalf. “I’ll try my hardest too.”
Once again, I wonder if Carly hasn’t gotten the townspeople all wrong all along. So far, I haven’t met anybody who showed outright animosity toward her or even dislike. At worst, they pity her for her situation.
So why does she think everyone in this town detests her?
Or maybe it’s her parents who planted that idea in her head? Especially that mother of hers. I could see her telling Carly things like that, to alienate the girl from the people who might have helped her out and separated her from their abuse.
I think about all this on the way to the cell. I also ask the men about Carly and her family.
They tell me the story on the way there, and it continues while we’re sitting in the cell. The conversation also veers from that to discussing hunting, and I get invited on a hike the men are going on soon. Also at least one fishing trip. So sitting in a jail cell isn’t bad, all things considered.
But I still can’t forget the sinking feeling in my chest, when I recall Carly’s face.
I hope I haven’t screwed things up permanently.