10. Scarlett #2
“You don’t get to put your hands on me, you arrogant son of a bitch.
” He’s up, swinging wide, a clumsy drunk arc that Reid leans away from without effort.
And then Vincent’s eyes find me again over Reid’s shoulder, and he stops caring about the fight, and he lunges past Reid with both hands out, reaching for me like I’m a thing he can still grab and keep.
Reid catches him by the front of his shirt mid-lunge and turns all that drunken momentum against him, driving him back and down against the buckled side of the SUV.
The metal booms under the impact. Vincent’s head snaps back, his legs go out, and he slides down the ruined door into a heap on the asphalt, and the fight just drains out of him, all at once, like a plug pulled from a drain.
Reid crouches over him, one hand still fisted in his collar, close enough that Vincent can’t look anywhere but at him.
“You’re going to lie here until those guards reach us,” Reid says, evenly, almost pleasant, which is worse than a shout.
“And then you’re going to disappear, and you’re going to leave her alone, because the next time you reach for her there won’t be a sober witness in sight to slow me down. Nod if you understand me.”
Vincent nods. It’s small and it’s broken and it’s the most honest thing he’s done all night.
Footsteps pound across the lot, a security guard and then another, drawn by the crash, radios crackling, and the noise of it all rushes back in.
One of them crouches over Vincent. The other is already talking about police, about an ambulance, about whether anyone got hurt.
I tell them the parked car got the worst of it.
I tell them the man on the ground drove it.
I keep my voice level the whole time, and only Reid, with his hand pressed warm against my spine, can feel that I’m shaking.
They get Vincent on his feet. He sways between them, blood at the corner of his mouth, and as they steer him toward the exit he twists around to find me one last time.
Whatever softness was in him an hour ago is gone now.
What’s left is harder, steadier, almost sober.
“You’ll regret this,” he says, and for the first time all night the slur is gone from his voice.
“You think you’ve won. You think you’ve got it all figured out, you and him.
But you forgot what I have, Scarlett. You forgot what you signed.
You should have come home when I asked nicely.
” His mouth curves, ugly and certain. “Remember that I gave you the chance.”
The guards pull him through the doors before I can answer, and the threat hangs in the air after he’s gone, and I tell myself it’s nothing. Drunk men make threats. It’s the last currency they have.
But a thread of unease pulls tight in my chest anyway, because Vincent doesn’t bluff about paperwork. He never has.
The car, of course, is finished. The whole driver’s side is caved in.
So we take a cab.
I don’t fall apart until the doors close and the city starts sliding past the windows, the lot and the wreck and my father’s hotel all dropping away behind us.
Then the trembling I’ve been holding at bay catches up all at once, and I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and breathe, and it doesn’t help.
“Hey.” Reid’s arm comes around me. “Hey. You’re safe. It’s over.”
“It’s not the car.” The words come out muffled. “I don’t care about the car.”
“I know.”
“It’s that I keep thinking I’m out.” I drop my hands and stare at the back of the driver’s seat.
“Every time I think I’ve finally pulled free of them, one of them shows up to remind me I’m still attached.
My father in a lobby. Vincent in a parking lot.
They keep their hooks in even while they’re losing, and I’m so tired, Reid.
I didn’t know it would be this hard to put down people who never once picked me up. ”
He doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay. He doesn’t reach for a speech. He just pulls me into him, one hand cradling the back of my head, and I let myself fold against his chest, let myself feel the steady rise and fall of him under my cheek, and for the first time all day I stop holding myself upright.
“You’re not attached anymore,” he says quietly into my hair. “You’re just the last one to find out. Hooks don’t hold when there’s nothing left for them to catch on.”
I let myself stay there a moment longer, in the warmth of him, in the steady rhythm I’ve come to trust more than I trust most things. And then I feel it move under the exhaustion, the thing that’s been building all day, through the handshake and my father’s face and Vincent bleeding on the asphalt.
Not grief. Not the old familiar urge to make myself small until the danger passes.
Anger. Clean and bright and entirely mine.
My father thinks I’ll come crawling back when the loneliness sets in. Vincent thinks if he makes enough noise I’ll fold the way I always folded.
They’ve both made the same mistake, the one everyone in my life keeps making, which is assuming the small quiet woman who took everything they handed her will keep taking it forever.
I pull back from Reid’s chest and wipe my face, and whatever he sees there makes him go still.
“He came at me with a car,” I say, and my voice isn’t shaking anymore. “He’s out of moves that work. Which means he’s about to reach for the one move he’s got left, the one he’s been holding over my head for years, and when he does, he’s going to think it finishes me.”
“Scarlett.”
“It won’t.” I look out at the city sliding past, all those lights, all that room I was never allowed to take up.
“I’m done waiting for them to stop hurting me.
I want to end it. I want to take the last thing he has and turn it into the thing that buries him, and I want to be the one holding it when he goes down. ”
Reid is quiet for a second. Then, low, close to wonder, “There she is.”
I lean back into him, but it’s different now, not collapse, not hiding. Just gathering. The exhaustion is still there underneath, but on top of it, finally, is the part of me that’s done being patient.
Vincent wants to play his last card.
Good.
I’ve been waiting ten years to see his hand.