His To Shatter (4 page)

The man took a few shaky steps forward,
closing the space between the two of us. I looked anywhere but his
eyes, refusing to let him win any power over me. He was just a
drunk in the subway, after all. He meant nothing to me, and he
couldn’t hurt me. At least, that was what I told myself as he came
ever closer.

“You look like a nasty bitch,” he said,
resting his hands on the bar above me. He was hardly a foot away
from me now, and the stink of booze on him was overwhelming. “I bet
under all those fancy clothes you’re a fuckin’ freak. Yeah...You
are, aren’t you?”

“Leave me alone,” I snapped. I’d had about
enough of his vulgarity. I needed to keep calm and cool before my
interview, and this asshole was singlehandedly ruining my state of
mind, not to mention massively invading my personal space.

“She speaks!” he cackled, spittle spraying
from his face. “You’ve got a pretty voice in that pretty mouth. I
wonder what else that pretty mouth can do?”

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” I hissed.
“You’re drunk, and you’re making everybody on this train extremely
uncomfortable. Please sit down and leave me be. I haven’t done
anything to you. I would never treat you this way.”

“I’m not drunk,” he slurred, the vodka bottle
swishing around in his jacket.

“You most certainly are,” I replied. I was
used to reasoning with drunk idiots. My father had trained me well.
I also knew how dangerous a drunk man could be, should you insult
his pride. But I couldn’t hold my tongue as this man stood leering
over me. It wasn’t fair that he felt he could act this way. It
wasn’t fair that I couldn’t leave my apartment looking nice without
facing down an army of cat callers. What gave these men any right
to put me down as I went about my life in the city?

One thing I had most certainly inherited from
my father was my short temper. I felt my outrage bubbling over as
the drunk licked his lips suggestively, raking his eyes all along
my body. Who did this person think he was, to approach a complete
stranger and harass her so outrageously? It was sickening. I
dropped my eyes away from the man’s face, my breath coming rapidly.
I knew it would be stupid to lash out against him, but I could feel
anger beginning to blind me. I was teetering on the edge of lashing
out when my eyes fell upon the man’s midsection. His hand was
wrapped around a pale, ghastly rod of flesh, working up and down
its length with fervor. For a moment, my head couldn’t even
comprehend what I was seeing. It was so outlandish, so disgusting,
that my rational mind wouldn’t even allow for the possibility of
the truth.

But the reality wouldn’t be held back for
long. I let out an angry, appalled scream as the man continued to
jerk off above me. Without thinking, I planted both of my hands on
his chest as pushed as hard as I could. He stumbled backwards, his
dick hanging out of his pants like an engorged worm. The man fell
heavily back into his seat, glaring at me with furious rage. He was
humiliated, I could tell. And that could be even more dangerous in
a man than pure anger.

“You fucking slut!” the man roared, pulling
himself back up to standing. He towered over me, seeming to grow an
inch in his anger. My head began to swim as I realized that he was
going to come at me. The other passengers on the train were staring
at the scene, aghast, but no one moved a muscle. In half a
heartbeat, the man began to charge. He thrust his body across the
enclosed space, bearing down on me with his hand raised menacingly
in the air. A thousand memories of my father flickered across my
mind’s eye as he came upon me, his hand poised ready to strike.

In the split second before the drunk began to
swing toward my face, a sudden burst of movement erupted in front
of me. A tall figure appeared as if from nowhere, grabbing onto my
attacker’s arm. The drunk grunted as my defender wrenched his arm
backward, pinning it behind his back. With a mighty shove, the
second man sent the drunk sprawling across the dirty subway floor.
An enraged howl slipped from the fallen man’s lips as he rolled
onto his side, clutching his arm.

“You sonofabitch!” he screamed, picking
himself up off the ground.

“I think that you should sit down, sir,” said
a voice above me. My eyes were so fixed upon the drunken man that I
couldn’t even look up to see who had come to my aid a moment
before.

The drunk sneered first at me, then at the
man beside me. “You want that sweet pussy for yourself, huh?” he
cackled. I nearly retched when I saw that his cock was still
exposed, hanging there for the entire train too see.

“I want you to leave this young woman alone,
and get off the train at the next stop,” the man said, calmly. “Are
you going to do that or not?”

I didn’t see the drunk’s hand slip into his
pocket until he was already brandishing a rusty box cutter at me.
“I’ll show you what I’m gonna do, buddy,” he said. I didn’t even
have time to scream before he lunged at me, blade extended out
before him. I curled into a ball against the back of the bench,
shielding myself as best I could from his attack.

Two strong hands caught the drunk by the
shoulder and wrenched him out of his deadly trajectory. The man
defending me swung the deviant in a sharp circle and slammed him
hard against the metal pole in the center of the car. A sickening
crack
rang through the enclosed space as the drunk’s skull
collided with the pole. I looked on in horror as the filthy man’s
eyes rolled into the back of his head. He dropped the box cutter,
and the crude weapon clattered away from him as the train came to a
stop at the next station.

Each and every passenger ran for the doors
the moment they sprung open. The drunken man slid down against the
pole and fell heavily onto the sticky floor. He was conscious, but
barely. I ripped my eyes from his crumpled form and took in the man
who had sprung to my defense when no one else would. He turned to
face me with a grim half-smile on his face, and I felt my jaw drop
open.

Older than me by a good decade, he was the
most beautiful man I had ever seen up close. He must have been six
feet tall, and his impeccably cut suit hung perfectly on his
well-muscled body. I’d seen plenty of attractive men since moving
to the city, but so many of them looked like they were trying
desperately hard at it. This man, on the other hand, wore his
incredible good looks effortlessly. His black hair was closely
cropped, his strong jaw line clean-shaven. The eyes above his
aquiline nose were dark and intelligent, the kind of eyes that
women would want to drown in, I was sure. He held out a hand to me,
and I could see the extremely expensive-looking watch on his wrist.
This was not the typical subway vigilante, that was certain.
Staring up at him bemusedly, I grasped his kindly outstretched
hand.

The moment his fingers tightened around mine,
a searing spark of excitement tore through my body. He helped me up
to standing, and I knew that my cheeks must have been eight
different shades of red. My thoughts were a jumbled wreck as I
lifted my eyes to his. The man looked down at me worriedly.

“Are you OK?” he asked. I now noticed that
his speech was accented, slightly.

“I think so,” I said, “Yes, I...Thank
you.”

“No need to thank me,” he insisted, still
keeping hold of my quivering hand. “It’s what any decent person
would have done. Come on, now. We should leave.”

He began to pull me toward the exit, and I
nearly tripped over my fallen assailant. “Should we do something
about him?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” the man answered, glaring
at the drunk. “That looks to be pretty much what he deserves.”

We skipped off the train in the nick of time.
The doors closed behind us and the train rumbled forward on its way
whisking the horrible drunken pervert away forever. I looked up at
the man who had rescued me just moments before, full of gratitude.
There was no telling what that man might have done to me, had he
not intervened. I tried to think of some way to thank him, to
express in just the right words what his actions had meant to me.
He was looking down at me, curious but collected. Just as I was
about to speak, someone began to clap from the subway
turnstiles.

I turned toward the slow applause and spotted
a gorgeous woman staring straight at me. Her huge hazel eyes and
perfectly pouty lips were arranged in an expression of utter
resentment and ire. Her long, lean body was wrapped in a skin-tight
black dress that would have put Audrey Hepburn to shame. She swung
her gaze toward the man at my side and continued to clap
sardonically.

“Well done, Girard,” she hissed. “Assaulting
a civilian on your morning commute? A new and impressive low.”

Girard
, I repeated to myself,
relishing the feel of his name as it rolled around in my mind. The
exotic name suited him well.

“Monica,” Girard said, walking toward the
beautiful woman, “I had to step in. You saw what—”

“I saw you acting like a fucking idiot in
front of a packed subway car. That’s what I saw,” the woman spat.
“What if someone had snapped a picture of you? I’m sure some
tabloid would pay big bucks for a photo of you beating a homeless
man. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that a young woman was about
to get seriously injured if I didn’t intervene. With my
training—”

“Forget about your goddamn training, Girard!”
Monica screeched, her voice ringing off the subway walls. As I
listened, her words ran together like a raging rapid, gushing
through her register faster than I could comprehend. When Girard
answered in a similarly unintelligible way, I rather feared that
I’d lost my mind. Had the panic that came along with the attack
addled my brain somehow? But a few sounds, a few words began to
make sense as Girard and Monica shouted at each other. They were
speaking another language, I realized. They were speaking
French.

Rescued from a crazy, homeless drunkard by a
dashing Frenchman? It was certainly not how I had anticipated my
day unfolding, but I wasn’t going to complain. I looked on as
Girard weathered Monica’s frenzied shouting, and started to feel
self-conscious as their argument raged on. Clearly, they were
traveling together. They must have been some kind of couple, for
her to be so upset. I let out a little sigh; of course he was with
a gorgeous, tall, slender model type. The good guys always got
snapped up by the pretty girls. Not that I had anything against my
own looks, of course. But I was the kind of girl people called
“naturally pretty”. A compliment in my book, but definitely not on
the level that this Monica was operating. Even furious, she was
stunning. Her eyes were fierce with outrage, her manicured hands
balled into fists.

I ran my hands awkwardly over my own
ensemble, thankful that I hadn’t gotten too mussed-up before my
interview. A cold panic swept over me as I remembered—my interview!
I pulled out my phone and checked the time; only fifteen minutes
until my appointment. I needed to be four stops further along on
the train. That goddamned drunk had thrown a wrench in the whole
thing. My brain swirled through alternative routes, but I drew
blank after blank. I didn’t know the city well enough by then to
come up with a subway detour. But I definitely didn’t have any cash
for a cab, either.

Without thinking, I rushed toward the
turnstiles, past the arguing couple. I didn’t even know where I was
headed as I raced up the steps, back out into the sunlit day. The
bright daylight shone off mirrored skyscrapers that rose up into
the clouds. I looked around wildly, seeking out some landmark I
could identify. I was somewhere in Midtown, that much I could
surmise, but past that I was utterly lost. Every block, every
street looked exactly the same to me, the press of humanity on the
sidewalk was unbearable.

I felt a firm hand come down on my shoulder
and whirled around, disoriented. Girard was standing behind me,
looking concerned.

“Pardon me,” he said, “I wanted to apologize
for my assistant’s behavior just now. She’s a very temperamental
person. Productive as hell, but not one to cross, I’ve found.”

“Assistant?” I echoed. A pang of relief cut
through my panic. They weren’t a couple after all! At least not in
his mind. Though the jealousy that shone in Monica’s eyes as she
looked at me told another story entirely.

“I didn’t want you to leave thinking that I
was some inconsiderate bastard,” Girard smiled. “I hate knowing
that there are people in the world with poor opinions of me.”

How could anyone have a poor opinion of you?
I wondered to myself. Aloud, I said “You saved me back there. That
guy could have done anything. I owe you big time.”

“I was only doing what I had to,” Girard
insisted.

“Still,” I said, “Thank you.”

“Perhaps you could join Monica and I for
lunch?” he suggested. “We’re only in town for a few days.”

I thought briefly of Monica’s furious gaze
before remembering once more that I was going to be shamefully late
for my interview if I didn’t get going. Spending more time with
Girard was simply not in the stars. I wished that I could have
gotten the chance to know my mysterious defender. I wouldn’t have
minded staring into those eyes of his for another hour, that was
for sure. My desire to hang on his every word, the hysteria of the
train ride, and the fact that I was about to miss the most
important interview of my life all came to a head, overwhelming me
as I stood before him. I felt hot tears spring to my eyes at
once.

“What’s wrong?” Girard asked. “Sorry, stupid
question.”

“No, no,” I said, trying like hell to keep
the tears from rolling down my cheeks. “It’s just that I have a
really big interview, like, right now. And that asshole on the
train totally fucked up—sorry—messed up my schedule, and now I’m
going to be late, and—”