Chapter 14 Talon’s Past #2
That’s when the girl who should’ve already been halfway home decides to save my stupid ass.
One second Rhea’s still behind the bar, the next she’s vaulting with a speed I didn’t know she had, a bottle clutched in her fist. She smashes it against the tall one’s gun hand, glass shattering, whiskey splattering everywhere, and he yelps, staggering back and dropping the gun across the floor.
“Run!” she shouts. But she doesn’t mean herself. She means me.
Except I can’t. My side’s a goddamn furnace, and my blood’s pumping out too fast. I’m on the ground now.
Why is she—
Why the hell is she doing this for me?
Me?
I am literally no one.
I am bad for her.
The jukebox guy roars, grabbing Rhea by the arm. She twists and drives her knee straight into his groin. He drops with a choking sound, both hands between his legs.
The third one, the one who’d been leaning close to her earlier, snarls. “Bitch, you don’t know what you just did.”
Rhea just crouches beside me, slipping her arm under my shoulder. “On your feet, Talon.”
“Rhea—” I grit my teeth. “Go.”
“No.” Her eyes blaze, sharper than I’ve ever seen. “I’m not leaving you here.”
And just like that, I get the worst kind of déjà vu known to man. I see her face bleeding into Lark’s, two ghosts overlapping. My heart shrinks three sizes and I swear I could just die right now and save us both the trouble.
But she pulls me up anyway, my legs jelly, my brain screaming, my body leaking. We stagger toward the back.
Behind us, the tall one scoops up the gun, screaming, “You’re dead, ginger! And you—” he spits, “—you’re gonna regret this till your last breath, bitch!”
“Guess we’ll see,” Rhea shoots back, voice sharper than I ever heard. She kicks open the kitchen door and drags me through.
We tumble into the alley, where the night air knifes my lungs. Cold bites. Blood steams. Everything smells like metal and winter and pain.
Everybody I know hates winter. I think I hate it more.
My knees buckle. Rhea catches me, barely, and shoves me down against the wall. Then she tears off her apron and slams it against my side. Hard.
“Why the hell would you do that?” she hisses, pressing down until I see stars. “Say that shit to them? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Her hands are warm. Too warm.
Feels… nice. Dangerous kind of nice.
I tilt my head back so I can see her properly. Long lashes, blurry neon, her mouth pinched tight with fury she didn’t know she had. If I’m dying, I’ll give myself the courtesy of a last good view. She’s a good view.
“Yeah,” I whisper, blood on my tongue. “I guess I am.”
She mutters something under her breath. A curse. A pretty one. She cannot even curse properly, this girl. And God help me, even bleeding out, I can’t help thinking—
If she’s the last friend I get before I check out…
At least I didn’t fuck this one.
At least I didn’t drag her into my bed and ruin it.
“It really looked like you had a death wish back there,” she adds, still shaking.
“What would you do if I had?” I breathe, half-smirk, half-collapse.
She presses the apron into my side like she’s wringing the life back into me by force alone.
“What would you do if I had?” I push again.
I want to hear it.
I don’t even know what.
I just like talking with her about everything and nothing.
She leans in so close her forehead almost touches mine. I can feel her breath ghost my lips when she answers:
“I’d ruin it for you.”
“Ruin what.”
“Your death wish.” Her eyes cut like frost. “I’d make staying alive more painful, more inconvenient, and more irritating than dying ever could be. Every. Single. Day. Until you begged for mercy.”
“Bossy,” I croak.
“Yeah, you can bet on it,” she says, and her mouth’s such a hard line, it seems like she really means it. “Now shut up and help me. My flat isn’t far.”
Somewhere in the background, those hounds of Rey’s are still onto us.
“You’re going against Rey’s crew?” the jukebox guy’s voice bellows from inside. They’re not getting out of the bar, probably trying to decide if it’s worth bringing this fight into the street where cops might notice. But it won’t stop them for long.
Rhea presses harder on the wound and calls back without even blinking: “Yeah. We are.”
The alley goes quiet after that.
Then someone laughs from inside. Long. Mean.
“You’ll regret it, sweetheart,” he calls. “Rey don’t forget.”
The door slams. Their footsteps fade like a threat on layaway.
Rhea exhales.
I don’t.
“Keep pressure here,” she orders, guiding my trembling hands over the sodden fabric. “And don’t you dare close your eyes.”
Did she just go against an entire goddamn street gang to save my sorry ass?
Yes. Yes, she did.
“You’re insane,” I rasp.
She’s so fucking good. Not like just good-girl good. Actual good. Like she was built in a lab where people still believed in decency. Like the people they write poems about.
And just like that, Lark ghosts her way into my head. Lark, with the half-fixed Camaro and the smile sharp enough to peel paint. Not a saint. Just a kid with too much spark and not enough armor. Now she’s dust and quiet. No one remembers her name except me.
She was sixteen.
I was sixteen.
Too young. Too dumb. Too sure I was invincible.
I killed her.
Am I now killing someone again?
Dragging another girl into my wreckage. Into the chaos that follows me like a goddamn stray. I swore I’d never do this again. I swore I’d keep it shallow, keep it skin-deep. Fuck, run, forget.
But Rhea isn’t Lark.
She’s not some street rat chasing the rush.
She’s really different.
Don’t be greedy, Talon. Don’t you fucking dare.
Fuck.
I try to tell myself it’s survival instinct. That I’m clinging to the first scrap of warmth I’ve found in years because everything else is arctic. That it’s just hunger. A normal, human thing.
But then her hands press harder, and she looks at me like my life’s actually worth saving. And the lie cracks. It’s not hunger. It’s greed.
I want more.
I always want more.
This time, it’s her warmth, her defiance, her stupid, fearless goodness.
“Yeah,” I mutter finally, voice shredded. “Alright. Take me to your apartment.”
Rhea exhales through her nose, that sharp, controlled kind of breath you give before doing something catastrophically dumb. Her hair’s fallen out of its knot, strands sticking to her cheeks. She looks like chaos and holiness all at once.
She nods once, and half-drags, half-hauls me down the alley.
Her flat’s not far. Two blocks, maybe three. But every step feels like walking toward a cliff with my name carved on it.
You’re a bastard, Talon, I tell myself. Everything you touch burns down eventually.
But I’m fading, and the self-loathing goes fuzzy around the edges. The greed takes over again, patient and inevitable.
She kicks open the door with her hip, drags me inside, and lowers me onto the couch like I don’t outweigh her by half. Her hands are shaking. Her voice isn’t.
“Stay awake. Don’t pass out on me.”
Her face hovers above mine, pale in the weak light. Sweat, blood, and something unbreakable in her eyes. She’s fire and stubbornness, too bright for the filth I drag behind me.
And I know, know, I’ll lose her too. That’s just how the world cashes its debts.
Still, I manage a whisper. “You’re brighter than me, Rhea.”
She scowls, mutters, “Don’t talk anymore,” and presses harder on the wound.
It hurts like hell.
It also kind of feels like home.
So I let her take care of me.