Page 248 of Vicious Saint
“NYPD nobody move!” a cop heading straight for the dock shouts through a megaphone. Several others appear with flashlights through the trees, leaving drunk teens to scatter like mice away from Annalie still weeping in the position I left her.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Fuck. We gotta go.” Saint yanks me by the arm, but my heels digging into the dirt halts his attempt after a few steps.
His yelling gets drowned out by panic as my eyes dart to Carlo, who’s escaping with my bag into the darkness not far from us. The relief of it is short lived, though, when I find a cop chasing Archer into the woods.
“No!” I cry out, already barreling toward him, but Saint practically tackles me into a tree.
“Hendrix, Good Guy’s fine!” He grunts as I wail on him.
A sense of dread I didn’t think could get worse than seeing Archer in danger hits me like a jab to the face.
“Oh my God, Theory!”
Saint looks over his shoulder, quickly scouring the beach before yanking me again. “Levi’s got her. Now let’s go. I need to get you the fuck out of here.”
The trees around us are huge, but really hard to see in the dark as Saint tears me through the woods. He pushes, he pulls, and my forearm burns from how tight his hold is on me.
“Move your ass, Jimi. You can’t get arrested.”
“I…am not…an athlete…” I gasp on my words. “Like…you.”
My screaming lungs can vouch for that.
Flashlights dance to our left, and Saint pulls me behind the nearest tree, his front crushing mine as we hide. It’s tense and awkward at first for us both, being so close after so long, but as the moments pass, weeks turn into as though no time has been lost.
We remain silent, Saint busy surveying the area, and me with my cheek flush against his heaving chest. It allows me to not only hear but feel the thumps of his racing heart.
“You okay?” he asks quietly as footsteps and chatter taper off. “Am I hurting you?”
Trying to mask a wince, I respond quietly, “Nope, I’m good.”
It’s a big fat cap, everything hurts and I want to cry.
“We should hang tight for a bit longer.” He guides me to the ground until our knees are to our chests and backs are against the tree. Where, once again, we practice painful silence under moonlight.
After several long minutes of Saint switching from playing lookout and staring off into the night, I have enough.
“You think the cops are still out here?” I ask as he ruffles his hair, sparking the ache around my eye from when his hat flew off his head and hit me.
“Probably returning to the beach by now.”
Another painful reminder.
“I can’t believe we left Theory…”
With this, Saint rests the back of his head on the tree, closing his eyes, dragging in a long breath, holding, then releasing it slowly. When his eyes open again, they’re on the night sky, and I can feel the weight of his absence growing the further he withdraws into himself.
“Motherfucker.” He throws a tree branch.
“What’s wrong?”
Through a cynical laugh, he replies, “I don’t know, Jimi, How long you got for the world’s worst fucking brother?”
That’s when the truth really hits me.
Saint saved me instead of Theory.
