Whiskey Poison

Chapter 2 Episode 2

The stranger angles his body to shield me from my attacker. All I can see is the thick swell of his biceps and the broad set of his shoulders.

“Who the hell are you?” My attacker sneers. “Her boyfriend?”

“I’m the man who will separate your hands from your arms if you touch her again. Do you understand?”

The guardian who attacked me suddenly doesn’t look so scary. As he stands up from where the god threw him to the ground, I see him stumble. He’s drunk. I probably could have tipped him over with a good shove to the chest.

Shame washes over me in a hot wave. I’m surprised the rain on my skin doesn’t evaporate in the sudden heat of it.

The drunk gives me one last look. His glassy eyes narrow in distaste before he hunches against the rain and scampers away down the alley. He rounds the corner and disappears.

Relief knocks me back against the brick. I press a hand to my chest and inhale shakily. “Oh my… Holy hell.”

I look up and realize my rescuer is facing me now. His dark hair is short but curly, plastered to his head by the rain. Black-ink tattoos slip out of the ends of his rolled-up shirt sleeves to wrap around his wrists. Sixty seconds ago, I would have been afraid to run into him in this dark alleyway alone. Now, I’ve never felt safer in my whole godforsaken life.

Our eyes meet, and I inhale sharply. Even in the dark, his blue eyes are luminous. Bright and clear…

I swallow down the surge of conflicting emotions rising up in me and shake my head. “No. No, I’m okay. He didn’t—You got here just in time. Nothing happened.” I roll my shoulders. “Maybe once the adrenaline wears off, I’ll be a little sore. But otherwise, I’m perfectly—”

“Excuse me?” I blink at him, a frown working between my brows.

“You are stupid.” He repeats the words slowly. “You shouldn’t be wandering down dark alleys in the middle of the night if you can’t defend yourself.”

It takes me a few seconds to process what he’s saying. And how he’s saying it. Like I’ve personally offended him.

“It’s not the middle of the night. It’s just after eight. The storm is making it darker than it would be if—”

“You didn’t even check to see if anyone was around,” he continues, ignoring me. “Your head was down and you don’t have a weapon. If you’d spent half a f*****g second observing your surroundings, you would’ve seen that asshole waiting at the mouth of the alley. f**k knows he wasn’t being sneaky about it.”

The shame I was already fighting back redoubles and charges at me again. Tears burn in my eyes.

“It was raining too hard to see anything!”

“I saw him from across the street,” he scoffs.

I look into his inhumanly blue eyes again and snort. “No wonder. What are you, a werewolf or something? Normal human eyes don’t look like that.”

His annoyance with me is interrupted for the barest of seconds with something like amusement. Then his full mouth turns down into a grimace. “Get your bike and go.”

“Good idea. There are a lot of assholes wandering around tonight, apparently.”

“And I won’t always be there to save you from them.” He turns around and walks away.

Just like that, I’m alone again.

In the dark. Soaking wet. Shaking with a chill that goes far beyond skin deep, and burning up with a single question on my mind.

What the hell just happened?

My hands are still shaking as I reach for another slice of stuffed crust pizza. I’m showered, in clean pajamas, and eating the frozen pizza I promised myself, but mentally, I’m still in that alley with that man’s vodka breath rolling over me in nauseating waves.

My name being shrieked through the tinny speakers of my phone makes me jump. A dribble of grease drops from my pizza onto my flannel pajama pants.

"Damn it, Noelle. You made me spill."

"Good! Put down the pizza and pick up your phone," my best friend retorts. "You should be calling the police, not stuffing your face."

I drop the pizza on a chipped ceramic plate and wipe my fingers on a paper towel. "I'm not stuffing my face. And what would I even tell the police?"

“That you were attacked by a deranged parent outside of your job! I’d say that’s a good starting point.”

“It sounds simple when you say it like that, but…”

The beast of the man who rescued me floats in my mind’s eye. There was nothing simple about him. He saved me and called me an i***t in the same breath.

Not exactly a knight in shining armor.

“What did you say?” Noelle makes a growly sound in sheer frustration. "Move your camera. What's the point of video chatting if I can't see your face?"

"Ashley has been on a black screen this entire chat," I point out. "You're not yelling at her."

"Ashley also wasn't assaulted tonight, so your situations aren't exactly comparable. Reveal yourself. Now."

I'm a grown woman. I don't take orders from anyone, not even one of my two best friends. Then again, Noelle is scary. If I don't do what she says now, I know she'll show up on my doorstep right as I'm getting ready for bed.

I sigh and grab my phone, giving her an are-you-happy-now grin.

"You're pale," she observes without missing a beat. "And is that a bruise on your jaw?"

"No,” says Ash, “that's pizza sauce."

"Thanks for finally chiming in, Ashley." I roll my eyes and wipe the sauce off with my forearm. “I’m fine, okay? The guy was drunk and upset. He lost his kid this week. I don’t need to make it worse.”

Noelle’s eyes bug out like they’re about to pop. “Who cares about his week? What about you, Piper?! The guy choked you!”

“He tried,” I correct. “He didn’t get that far.”

“Only because some giant came along and shoved him away,” Ashley reminds us.

“I distinctly remember the word ‘giant’ being thrown around.”

“Giant biceps, I think,” Noelle says. “She said he was a big guy with giant biceps.”

“They were proportional to the rest of him,” I mutter.

Noelle claps her hands like an elementary school teacher trying to get the class’s attention. “Regardless, the fact remains that you need to file a report. He could come back and try again some other time.”

I hear the man’s deep voice like he’s whispering the words in my ear. I won’t always be there to save you.

Some masochistic part of me is disappointed. Maybe another attack wouldn’t be so bad if he came back to intervene again.

“f**k the cops,” Ashley blurts out. “Buy a gun. I can get you one on the cheap.”

“A gun? Piper isn’t getting—she doesn’t need a gun!”

Black Screen Ashley is unmoved. “What is a police report going to do if that guy comes back? Piper needs to be able to protect herself.”

“Not with a gun,” Noelle argues. She shakes her head. “If I could see your face, I’d be able to tell if you’re joking. What is with the two of you trying to hide tonight?”

Suddenly, Ashley’s screen goes white and then she’s there. Her dyed-black hair is tucked behind her ears and her eyebrows are as thin as they were in high school, which is to say, almost nonexistent. She raises them and stares at her camera like it’s a personal challenge. It takes me a second to understand why.

“Ash,” I breathe, covering my mouth, “is that a bruise, or…?”

She presses tenderly at the horrifying black ring around her right eye and gives a humorless chuckle. “Well, it isn’t pizza sauce.”

Noelle has gone eerily silent. Her nostrils are flared.

“What happened?” I ask, even though I already know.

Ashley has been in an on-again, off-again relationship with her abusive drug dealer for years. Apparently, they’re on again. Or they were. I don’t know what they’ll be after he’s punched her f*****g lights out.

Before Ashley can even answer, Noelle shakes her head. “I’ll kill him. I swear to God I will.”

“What happened to filing a police report?” Ashley taunts. “Suddenly, you’re Ms. Vigilante.”

It’s Noelle’s turn to be unmoved. “Jason already has several warrants out for his arrest, I’m sure. If the police were going to do anything about him, they would’ve done it several infractions ago. I might as well take matters into my own hands.”

Ashley snorts. “Your boyfriend works for the FBI. You do realize that, right? He’s probably recording this conversation right now. Everything you say can and will be held against you.”

“He’s just an accountant for the FBI, right?” I butt in. “He’s not, like, an actual agent.”

I’ve met Wayne plenty of times, but his job is kind of a blur. He has a soft chin, a receding hairline, and a vapid smile. He isn’t what television has taught me to think of as someone who works for the FBI.

“He’s a forensic accountant,” Noelle agrees. “Which is sort of like an agent, but he specializes in white collar crimes. He also is not recording my conversations, so no one needs to know that I’m planning to kill Jason and plant his head on a spike in my front yard.”