Chapter 29 Grim
Looked like Helena had a friend. A friend who was making her very unhappy.
And that was making me pissed as fuck.
Hopefully, for his sake, this dipshit had good insurance.
Helena gaped at me as I approached, chains clinking, boots scuffing pavement. I spared her only a half-second glance as I moved to take the open car door from her and put myself between her and whoever this fuckwit was.
Since I’d only just arrived, I hadn’t caught their conversation. But this jack nut’s pointed glower combined with the devastation on Helena’s face had my right hand twitching to become a fist.
“Is this him?” the man asked, gesturing toward me, his British accent—too much like Cedric’s—irking the fuck out of me.
“This dickhead bothering you?” I asked Helena, peering down at her at last, our eyes meeting full-on for the first time since my arrival, the connection sending a shock wave of memory through my system—a distant and booming echo of that mind-altering kiss she’d planted on me.
Not to mention my subsequent and scandalous scouring of her eternal being with the remnants of my tattered-ass soul.
“Um,” she said, my keys tangled up between her delicate fingers, the nails of which she’d painted posy pink, a single shade darker than the natural hue of those perfect lips. Lips I could still feel the burn of…
Fuck, she was beautiful in the full light of day, the waning sunlight giving her the aura of a goddess with a glow that tried hard to mimic the gold of her hair.
“If you don’t mind, we were talking,” said ponytail boy, his words summoning back the scowl I’d forgotten to keep in place—right along with my glare. “I’d like to finish having a word with her.”
Looked to me like this asshole had said—and done—enough already.
“Let me guess,” I said, gesturing toward him. “This is Peter.”
“Are you serious?” snapped Ponytail, speaking to Helena. “You talked to your boyfriend about me?”
Boyfriend?
My head snapped back to Helena, who peered up at me with saucer eyes, her expression terror-stricken. She death-gripped the keys, beaming a plea at me to forgive her for one of the hundreds of crimes she thought she’d committed just by existing. And in that frightened gaze, I got my answer.
Before I’d gotten here, she must have been trying to shake this loser, who’d probably asked her about the car. And, as many a woman had done before her, she’d made up a story about having a boyfriend just so she could escape the unwanted ardors of an overzealous prick who couldn’t take a hint.
Got it, I tried to convey with my own gaze. Assignment fucking accepted.
Gently, I closed my hand around Helena’s, capturing the keys to The Judge. Despite her fear, she relinquished them to me without the barest resistance, just as she had her soul when I’d tugged it from her grasp. I could still taste it, too. That lemonade sting, that hot-honey heat.
How bad of an idea was coming to see her again? Didn’t matter now, did it?
“I said I wanted a word,” Dick Stick called—to me.
“Yeah, well,” I grumbled, “you know what they say about people in hell. Helena, get in the car.”
I nodded her toward the passenger’s side.
“I don’t care who you are,” said Asswipe as Helena rounded the rear of The Judge to get to the other side, “you don’t get to tell her what to do.”
“Relax,” I told him, “she likes it.”
That sure got his goat. Steering away from me, a glower overtaking his face, he hurried to intercept Helena. An action that ensured he was about to have a very, very bad day.
And given that he worked for a nonprofit, his insurance was probably shit.
Oh well.
Play stupid games…
“Give me another chance, Leaflet,” he said, ignoring me as I stalked around The Judge’s grille on my way to more formally introduce myself. Which was okay. He wouldn’t be the first—or the last for that matter—to receive a heaping helping of find out after fucking around in my vicinity.
“Does Cleo know you’re looking to date around?” Helena asked him.
“Cleo?” he echoed, fighting hard to keep the surprise out of his voice and his expression. By that time, I had him by the scruff of his stuffy-ass coat, and it didn’t take much to fling him away from Helena and send him backpedaling.
He’d just had to use a nickname. And now I was probably going to kill him.
Insurance issue solved.
“How dare you put your hands on me?” he snarled after getting his feet under himself again.
I spread my arms, a gesture that asked him what he was going to do about it.
He started toward me.
Making my fucking day.
“Grim,” Helena called to me from behind, her voice soft, frightened. “Don’t hurt him, Grim, please.”
Damnit.
Pete the Treat took a swing, which I dodged. His second fist, I caught.
I’d had tussles with literal demons and, once, a drunken banshee. This twig-in-the-mud was fucked.
Or he would have been.
I squeezed his hand in mine, silver rings digging into his flesh, and that expression of rage cracked, betraying pain. But Helena had asked me not to hurt the son of a bitch, so I wouldn’t.
Very much.
I flung his arm aside, caught him by the collar of his coat, then shoved him backward, taking care to give his soul a little love jolt in the process.
He hit the side of a Camry hard before crumpling witless to the ground. Though he probably hadn’t felt the impact because of my hard reset of his life, I took solace in the fact that he felt the effects now—and would for at least a week.
Nothing like a Control-Alt-Delete to recalibrate a bitch.
While Helena’s ex or whatever sat on the pavement trying to remember his name, take stock of his glasses, and account for his nonexistent ’nads, I stalked back to the car.
Stunned, Helena traded her attention between the two of us until the instinct to run to Professor Punk Ass had her starting forward.
“Car,” I said, pointing her toward the passenger door, and she obeyed, getting in before fastening her seat belt.
After removing the book I’d swiped from Helena’s apartment from my back jeans pocket and tossing the volume into the rear seat, I slid into the driver’s side, then turned the ignition. The Judge flared to life with a snarling roar.
Pete got to his feet. Then he got the finger.
Then, because Helena and I had things to talk about, shit that actually mattered, I peeled the fuck out.