Chapter 33
June
The scent of tobacco mixed with his pungent breath made my stomach turn.
“I like the innocent-looking ones.”
“And I like seeing your fucking face bloody, Austin.” James’s tall figure stopped in front of me. He grabbed the guy by the collar and threw him far away from me.
No, he wasn’t protecting me; he was doing it because he couldn’t stay away from trouble.
“Oh, so blondie’s with you, Hunter?” Ethan Austin’s expression wasn’t a true sneer. He curled his lips into an unsettling smirk, and I didn’t know if he was angry or amused.
“The princess didn’t tell us. We thought she was available,” another guy barked.
My head was spinning from the nausea, and started spinning even more when James grabbed Austin by his jacket
A guy came to his rescue. “Hunter, chill, we didn’t do anything to her. We were just wondering how nice it would be to work in this club. With everything here.”
“We didn’t even get a look at her tits,” Ethan insolently added.
I saw James grit his teeth. Austin escaped his grip by shoving him. James wavered but didn’t fall.
“I don’t have to justify myself to anyone. And I certainly don’t have to ask permission to bang one of your little girlfriends. Isn’t that right, Jamie?”
His slimy voice made me shudder in horror. But James didn’t seem scared of him, never mind his entourage.
“Sure. Touch her and I’ll kill you.”
A chorus of challenges came from the group of meatheads, who started laughing at James. Austin, on the other hand, looked extremely serious, and shot me a look.
“Threats don’t suit you, you’re not in the position to . . . Didn’t we fuck you up last time, or am I wrong?”
The guys chuckled. James was forced to back away, and in that fraction of a second, Austin grabbed one of my arms and dragged me toward him. I tried to resist but it was useless. He put his arm around my waist, trapped me with both of his arms, and held me still with my back on his chest.
James clenched his jaw and glowered at him. “Let her go.”
“Don’t make any false moves, James,” Austin threatened, as I started to dissociate from reality.
My feet were cemented to the ground in fear. I closed my eyes and only understood the gravity of the situation when he grabbed my hair and exposed my neck. I felt my heart in my mouth and his heavy breath all over me.
“No! Let me go!” I screamed as his cold, calloused hand slithered under my hoodie.
“Listen to how this princess screams.”
My survival instincts kicked in. I lifted my foot and slammed it into his shin with all my might. It was enough to make him push me to the ground.
James pounced on top of him to punch him so hard that it knocked him out. Ethan Austin’s face was full of blood, and his body turned into deadweight. He was out cold. He seemed like a lifeless dummy. I stared at him dumbfounded.
I lifted my head. James was looking at me.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
Austin’s friends took advantage of the moment of distraction to grab James by the shoulders.
Frightened, I screamed. Everything happened so fast that I felt like I was in the middle of a movie scene.
It was four against one. Two of them held him back while the other two socked him in the stomach repeatedly. I saw him throw up blood and collapse on the ground. And even then they kept kicking him.
“Please, enough!”
Obviously nobody listened to me. The melee was getting so out of control that other people came to break it up.
Bewildered, breathless, and with my heart bursting, I resigned myself to watching them defenselessly.
“Want a hand, man?” A guy offered to help James, but Austin got up and scared him away with a glare.
“This asshole still doesn’t know who calls the shots around here.” Austin spit on the ground before leaving with his group of friends.
James rolled onto one side and clutched his stomach. He tried to get up, but it seemed like he was in too much pain to do so.
“Are you crying, White?” he asked, wincing in pain.
Confused, I touched my cheeks. “Of course not. Can I help you?”
I tried to put his arm around my shoulders to help him up.
“No.”
Jesus, he was heavy.
“Where’s Will? I want to go home. I can’t be here anymore,” I exclaimed, my voice cracking in fear.
James made a subtle sign with his head, so I went with him to the parking lot. We plodded to his Mustang, and he collapsed in the driver’s seat.
I grabbed the first aid kit from under the seat.
“Are these the same guys who beat you up the other day?” I dipped a cotton ball in hydrogen peroxide.
“What the fuck is it to you?” he spat. He groaned as I put the cotton ball on his eyebrow.
“You don’t give a fuck about anything, do you?”
James didn’t answer, but he took my breath away with such an intense glare that it made me burn.
I kneeled on the seat to lean toward him.
“Lift up your chin,” I ordered, as James stayed weirdly quiet. The deepest cut seemed to be on his lip, but I was too embarrassed to look at him and see it. “Maybe if you turn toward me it’ll make it easier for me to finish up.”
James continued to ignore me, so I grabbed him by his T-shirt collar and lifted it up to his jaw.
“Fuck, do you really think this is appropriate?” He tensed when I leaned over him to finish the job.
“What?”
“Do you really have to straddle me like this?”
My eyes widened in horror. “I’m just . . . I’m not . . . Oh, forget it.”
I grumbled then started to get up, but he grabbed my sweatshirt. “Finish up.”
“All right. But this is gonna hurt a little,” I whispered, before blotting his mouth.
James didn’t make a sound, but he kept on staring at me. He stared at me so intently and silently that it made my insides twist and turn.
I almost preferred when he was talking.
“Why are you always such an asshole to me? I didn’t do anything to you.”
“I’m an asshole, White? Why don’t you open your fucking eyes every once in a while, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
I saw him tilt his neck back to adjust the sunroof. “If I was that much of an asshole, I wouldn’t’ve gotten the shit beat out of me.”
I sighed. “You didn’t have to do that, Hunter. They wouldn’t’ve done anything to me.”
“You never want to listen to me. I told you that it’s no place for you. You could’ve gotten hurt, and nobody would’ve given a fuck.
“No.”
“No, not no. They would’ve torn you to shreds in five minutes.”
I nervously pushed my hair behind my ear. “What do you mean?” I looked down at the tight T-shirt hugging his sculpted abs.
“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. On top of me.” I ignored the malicious tone of his last few words and focused on the first part of the sentence.
“Would it kill you to say thank you?” I teased, without hiding a bit of sheepishness.
“You’re always being a smartass, meanwhile you’d be in tears somewhere if it wasn’t for me. So, yeah, you need to thank me, Snow White.”
“No,” I said.
“Oh my god, you’re so stubborn.”
He licked his split lip, stirring up a whirlwind of contrasting sensations in me.
I tried to go back, but this time he grabbed my wrist and stopped me.
“Go home. Trust me.”
I nodded because this time he was right. I didn’t want to spend another minute there, not even to wait for William.
“Are you coming with me?” I asked, realizing that we were already in the right seats.
James frowned contemptuously at me. “Do you really think I give a fuck about you?”
“Would you rather go back there? Do you want me on your conscience?” I bugged him.
“My god you’re a pain in the ass, White.”
I got out of the car, and before closing the car door, I bent over to look at him.
“So, Hunter?”
“Get in the car.”
>> > <<
I spent the next day studying. I missed two calls from William that afternoon and pretended not to see them. I didn’t want any distractions. I’d call him back when I finished the pages I planned on. Around six, I bolted into the kitchen like a ferocious beast in search of food.
I couldn’t handle another ten minutes of chemistry without getting some sugar in me.
“You’re still like that?”
My mom was putting shiny little earrings on.
“How should I be?” I asked, proud of my Christmas pajamas.
“It’s not Christmas,” she scolded.
“If it’s because of that, it’s not nighttime either. But I’m fine,” I replied as I dunked a cookie in Nutella.
She shot me an angry look. “What about the dinner, June?”
“What dinner?”