Chapter 3 The Fight #2
They didn’t care about my explanation. They cared about what they saw.
Flashlight guy swept the beam over the guy on the ground, took in the blood, the bruises already blooming, the ways his limbs sprawled.
Then the light jerked up to my face, pausing on the line of red along my temple, the bruise already forming on my jaw, the split skin over my knuckles.
He narrowed his eyes. “Put your hands on your head,” he barked. “Step back. Slowly.”
I did as told. Fingers laced behind my head, I took two deliberate steps back, boots crunching. My heart hadn’t quite slowed from the fight, and now it started hammering for a different reason.
The taller officer moved in, staying angled so he could see both of us. His hand never strayed far from his weapon. He checked the guy on the ground first, two fingers to the throat.
“He’s got a pulse,” he said. “Radio for an ambulance.”
Flashlight guy relayed it into his shoulder mic, voice clipped and professional, spelling out the location, the condition. “Male, mid-twenties, unconscious, possible head trauma, extensive facial injuries.” Extensive. Yeah. Fair.
The taller officer stood, turned his attention fully on me.
“Turn around,” he said. “Face the trees.”
“I told you,” I said, keeping my voice level. “He was dragging her off the path. I stopped him. She ran.”
“Turn around,” he repeated. No give. No interest.
I sighed and turned, staring into the dark line of trunks. Snow drifted down, collecting in my eyelashes. My breath felt loud in my own ears. Cold metal kissed my wrists a second later. The sound of the cuffs clicking shut, once, twice, echoed in my bones. Old familiarity. Old shame.
The officer, tall, young, nervous if you knew what to look for, read me my rights like he was reciting from a cue card.
“You’re under arrest for aggravated assault,” he said. His voice only stumbled once, over a legal term he’d probably practiced in the mirror. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say….”
“I saved her,” I muttered, mostly to myself. To the trees. To the universe. “She was screaming. I stopped him.”
He didn’t respond. Not really. Just kept going like I hadn’t spoken, like my words were interference on a channel he couldn’t tune to. Because that’s not how the world works when you look like me. Leather jacket. Bruised knuckles. Blood on my shirt. Riding a motorcycle alone after dark.
Doesn’t matter what you did. It only matters what it looks like. And from where they’re standing. It looks bad.
Flashlight guy came up beside us, shining the beam over me again, slower this time. Taking in the scuffed boots, the worn jeans, the scar on my face that might as well be a neon sign to guys like him.
He jerked his chin toward the ground. “You do all that?”
I didn’t bother lying. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he had his hands on someone who didn’t want him there.”
He snorted. “That’s what you tell yourself?”
“Doesn’t matter what I tell myself.” I shrugged as much as the cuffs would allow. “It’s what happened.”
He made a noise that was halfway between disbelief and annoyance, then moved off to help his partner roll the guy into the recovery position, check his pupils, shine lights into his eyes.
The distant wail of an approaching ambulance began to cut through the trees, thin at first, then growing louder, weaving through the night.
Three minutes later, I was face down in the snow, handcuffed, while the guy I stopped was being rolled into the back of an ambulance. They hadn’t asked me once if I was okay. Didn’t really need to. I was standing. He wasn’t. That told them everything they thought they needed to know.
My cheek pressed into the cold ground, and for a second, I let myself just feel it, the bite of ice against my skin, the sting of the cut on my neck, the ache blooming in my ribs. A paramedic’s radio crackled somewhere above us. The stretcher squeaked as they slid it into place.
“On three,” someone said. “One, two, three….”
The guy groaned as they lifted him. I heard someone say, “possible concussion,” “fractured cheekbone,” “might have a broken nose.” They didn’t use words like “attacker.” They used “male,” “patient,” and “subject.”
The taller officer hauled me up by the arm once they were done, not rough, but not gentle either.
My shoulders protested. My hands had gone numb behind me.
He steered me toward the squad car parked at the edge of the road.
The blue and red lights spun lazily, painting the snow in pulses of color.
The bike sat off to the side, half in the ditch, forgotten for now.
“Do you have any weapons on you?” he asked.
“Just my hands,” I said dryly.
He didn’t laugh.
He patted me down anyway, professional, impersonal. Found my keys, my lighter, my wallet. Pulled it out, flipped it open, glanced at the ID.
“Jaxon Ward,” he read. I heard the recognition in his voice. The way his tone shifted just slightly. “You’ve been in trouble before.” Not a question.
“Yeah,” I said. “You gonna pretend that’s surprising?”
He didn’t answer that. Just shook his head and nudged me toward the back seat of the car.
The interior smelled like stale coffee and disinfectant.
The vinyl was cold against the back of my legs as I sat, the cuffs digging into my wrists when I tried to adjust. The door shut with a heavy thunk, sealing me into a bubble of my own breath and the distant, muffled sounds of people doing their jobs.
Flashlight guy walked past the car, glanced in at me once. His eyes were full of the story he’d already written.
Another thug.
Another violent piece of shit.
Another statistic.
Outside the window, the trees stood silent, snow catching in their branches. The path where it all went down was already starting to look different, the evidence softening at the edges.
The ambulance doors slammed shut. The siren wound up again, long, and low, then rose as the vehicle pulled away, carrying him off to a warm bed and morphine and sympathetic nurses. Me? I got a ride downtown.
The squad car jostled as the officer climbed in, radio crackling. He spoke into it, confirming we were en route to the station with one in custody. My name crackled back at me, detached and official, like it belonged to someone else.
As we pulled onto the road, I turned my head as far as the barrier behind me would allow and looked toward the trees one last time. She wasn’t there. No flash of a coat, no pale face, no wide eyes. Just snow, and shadows, and the ghost of her footsteps already fading.
And she was gone.