Punching and Kissing (31 page)

She took a long breath. “I could mix you something,” she said. “Vecuronium would paralyze you. I could put in something to lower your heart rate and breathing. It wouldn’t be perfect. Any half-decent paramedic will be able to tell you’re not dead. But your boyfriend, in a panic...it’d fool him.” She bit her lip. “There’s a very good chance it’d just kill you. And there’s no way to tell when you’d wake up.”

***

Daylight.

That was the first thing that crept into my awareness. A red, warm light. My eyelids were closed. Why were my eyelids closed?

I tried to open them, but couldn’t.

There was sound, but it seemed muffled and distant. I was being carried like a baby. Then a softness under my ass and back. I was lying on a bed.
Ow,
my head hurt like a motherfucker.

The bed shook and the room started to move. A car. I was in a car. Stretched out on the back seat.

I hauled and hauled with all my strength but I couldn’t get even one finger to move. So I listened, instead, and the sounds I was hearing gradually changed into words.

“—sorry,” I heard. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I swear, when all this is done, I’m going to get that bastard. I’m going to make him pay.”

I felt my body roll back against the seat. The car was climbing up what felt like a winding hill. Where was he taking me? Now that my mind was swimming up out of the blackness of sleep, things started to sink in. We’d done it! The plan had worked. Aedan was alive and so was I and now we could move on!

We slowed and then I felt myself roll awkwardly onto my side as the car jerked to a stop. I tried to turn back onto my back but my body still refused to respond. Some of the cocktail Heather had given me had worn off, but not all of it—I was still paralyzed. I wanted to tell Aedan I was alive. He was hurting so much and there was no need. I could grab and hug him and everything would be okay.

If I could
just...move...something.

I heard him open his door and get out. And then there was a sound that was familiar and yet unplaceable to my drugged brain. A sort of metal scraping and the patter of something soft falling. Rhythmically, over and over again.

At last, he stopped and I heard the rear car door open. I could see only reddish daylight through my closed lids, but I could feel Aedan looking down at me. “I picked a beautiful spot,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Looking out over the water.”

Oh God. Oh Jesus, no. I wanted to throw up with fear. I wanted to scream. But my drugged body just lay there like a lifeless doll.

He leaned over me and wrapped me up in his arms and I felt myself being carried. There was the sensation of being lowered and then cold dampness was soaking through the back of my tank top and the smell of earth surrounded me.

MOVE!
But no matter how hard I strained, my body didn’t even twitch.

I heard a rustle of clothing and the scrape of his sneakers as he knelt down. When he spoke, it didn’t sound like the Aedan I knew. He was stripped down, his soul bared; he was talking the way he talked when there was no one else to hear.

“The first time I saw you,” he said, “I thought you were an angel.”

Going by where his voice seemed to come from, he was kneeling right beside my grave...but it still sounded horribly far away. The hole must be deep. I was going to be deep down in the earth, with hundreds of pounds of soil on top of me.

“I thought you couldn’t be...because nobody would send someone to save a feckin’ waste of space like me. I thought I was long past saving. But you showed me—But then I couldn’t—“

He took a breath. Something warm and wet splashed onto my cheek.

“—I couldn’t save—
God damn it, Sylvie!
It was meant to be
me!”
More wet drops on my face. When he could speak again, he continued. “I promise I’ll take care of Alec. And I’ll find a way to get Rick. I’ll get that bastard, if it takes me twenty years.”

I heard him pick up the spade and stand up. “You were the sweetest girl I ever met,” he said. “And I will never, ever forget you.”

MOVE!
I tried to open my eyes, but they weighed a thousand tons each.

There was a
whump
and something heavy and powdery landed across my legs. A few bits bounced as far as my neck.

MOOOVE!
But nothing happened.

And the earth kept falling.

Aedan

I put the spade down and looked out across the water. It really was a beautiful place. She’d be happy here.

Jesus, how the hell am I going to tell Alec?

I looked down at Sylvie’s grave. I’d thought that she’d have to do this for me—that’s why I put the spade in the back of the car. I never thought I’d be the one doing it for her.

I knew I had to finish. She was almost covered up with the first thin layer. I’d left her face until last. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing soil down onto it, the dark clods breaking across those lips.

I stepped down into the hole instead, putting my feet either side of her body. I’d push the earth with my hands, instead. I’d gently cover her face and then I’d just be shoveling earth onto earth and it would be easier.

Jesus, she looked so perfect. Like she was sleeping.

I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers one last time.

And heard a tiny noise from her throat.

I jumped back, staring down at her. But there was nothing else. My eyes filled up with tears. I’d just squeezed her chest a little and the air had moved.

I put both hands behind the earth that covered her stomach and started to push it onto her face.

And her eyes opened.

Sylvie

I couldn’t see, at first. My eyes had been closed too long. There was just blinding brightness and then I felt myself being lifted up. Was this heaven?

The shapes resolved and I focused on Aedan’s face as he lifted me out of the grave and hugged me to him. He was saying my name over and over again but my tongue was thick and slow and I couldn’t seem to move enough air to form words. He put his ear to my chest and listened intently and I knew that it was going to be okay.

He put me in the back seat and drove us a little way away, in case anyone came along and saw the hole and started asking questions. Then he sat in the back seat with me and held me as the drugs slowly wore off. It was another half hour before I could speak again. Full movement took an hour and I was still weak and shaky.

But I was alive. And the very first thing I could do, as soon as I was able, was to pull my man close and never let go of him again.

Sylvie

I called Heather to tell her that the plan had worked. Then I spent a week holed up in Aedan’s apartment, going stir-crazy, while we figured out what to do. I’d quit my job before the fight so no one was looking for me, but we couldn’t take the chance that word would get back to Rick that I was alive.

Then Heather called to tell us that Alec had shown signs of movement. Apparently, his vitals had started to perk up every time a certain nurse came in and, that morning, he’d opened his eyes.

I picked out the nurse at the nurses’ station when we passed, because all her friends were clustered around her saying how great it was. Blonde and curvy. Alec had somehow known, even in his sleep.

When we walked in, he was able to weakly turn his head to look at us.

“Don’t exhaust him,” Heather told us. “It’s going to be a while before he’s up and around. But from the tests we’ve done so far, there should be no lasting damage.”

Alec croaked something. I had to put my ear right to his mouth to make out the words. “
Everything feels heavy.”

I hugged him close. “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

Alec turned to look suspiciously at Aedan. “
What’s he”—
he coughed—“
doing here?”

Aedan and I looked at each other. “There’s a lot we need to catch you up on,” I said. And took Aedan’s hand firmly in mine.

Alec stared at our clasped hands...and nodded, still looking suspicious. Then a hint of a smile broke across his face.

“What?” I asked.

“
Nothing,”
Alec croaked. “
Just remembered a dream I had.”
And this time, when he looked at Aedan, he smiled.

What the hell is that all about?
I turned to Heather. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You can thank me by never going near those people again,” she said.

I pulled Aedan and Alec into a three-way hug. “Never again.”

***

Alec’s recovery took a month, but a lot of it was just rest and physio exercises, so we got him out of the hospital and into Aedan’s apartment after just a few weeks. While he healed, Aedan gave notice at the docks and I used the money he’d saved up and the winnings Rick had given him to pay off the hospital bills. Alec and I finally gave up the apartment we’d lived in with our parents. It killed us to do it, but we knew we had to move on. If Rick or someone who knew him ever saw me in the street, we were all in danger.

We talked a lot about where we wanted to go. There was never any question that the three of us would make our fresh start together—Alec and I were inseparable and Aedan and I were together for life. The only thing we had to figure out was where to go. And then, one afternoon when we were sprawled around Aedan’s living room fighting the heat with popsicles, Aedan stood up from his chair and said, “Chicago.”

Aedan

“Why?” asked Sylvie.

“It’s got the docks—I can pick up some work there, maybe get Alec sorted out with something, too. And options for you—bar work, hotel work…and college, once you get the money together to go back. Good hospitals, if Alec needs them.”

“And it’s a city, so there’ll be a boxing scene…right?” asked Sylvie. “I know you’ve been thinking about it.”

She was right—I had. Ever since Travere had died at my hands, I’d hated the idea of fighting. I’d thought I was the monster, when really it had been Rick. Sylvie had helped me see that and training her had woken something inside me. Boxing was the one thing I did really well. I nodded.

Sylvie folded her arms. “
Proper
boxing,” she said. “With rules, and gloves?”