I immediately figured it was Curtis, having gotten a little cat nap, and ready for more bloodshed.
Then I saw her.
For a short moment, I hadn’t really believed my eyes, thinking that the pain had maybe made me a little delirious and made me hallucinate an image of her to help ease the pain again.
If I were going to conjure an image of Louana, though, it was going to be a naked one. Not one with grim determination on her face and a wrinkled old brown bag in her hand.
Louana had come in to save me.
Kind of a new interpretation of the guy-saves-the-girl trope.
If ever there was someone ready to shatter glass ceilings, though, it was Louana.
I mean, the woman was able to quietly get me back down onto my own numb feet when I far outweighed her.
And I knew if, given the chance, she had to haul me out that window because her reckless ass came to save me without backup, that she was more than capable of it.
Then, fuck, then she gasped.
I knew.
I knew in the millisecond before my head could even raise what had happened.
Then Curtis spoke as I watched him grab her and drag her back, just out of reach.
As if I could even reach.
My arms were dead at my sides, weighted and useless, being stabbed endlessly with pins and needles. I clenched my hands over and over, trying to get the blood flowing again, trying to get some life back into them.
Because if I knew one thing, it was that I could not let Curtis get his hands on Louana for more than a second.
If he did, it was all over. He would use her to torture me. And I just… I couldn’t live with that.
“A pretty little rescue crew, huh? The fuck you think you were going to do, you sweet thing? Steal him from me? Naw, girl. I’ve been looking for him for a long time. A long, long time. Can’t be having some pretty little thing like you stealing him from me, can I?” he asked.
My gaze was on Louana then, wondering why the hell she was letting him move her further and further away from me.
Louana was a good fighter. A great one, even. She had the kind of training that could easily make up for the fact that Curtis was a fuck up a lot bigger and stronger than she was.
A couple of carefully placed moves, and she could take him down. I’d seen it. With men bigger than Curtis. Back when she was even smaller than she was now.
Yet she wasn’t using any of that training. She was just letting herself get pulled around by him.
Did she have some sort of plan?
Had she frozen up?
It seemed impossible. I mean, this was Louana we were talking about. She didn’t freeze up.
Unless, maybe, she knew about Curtis, knew what he was capable of, what he’d done to women in the past.
Maybe it had sort of short-circuited something in her head at the idea of being on the receiving end of something like that.
I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Life was coming back to my arms and strength to my legs. All I had to do was get to the table and grab some sort of tool.
Then I was going to do what I should have done a long fucking time ago.
Bash the fucker’s head in.
Or damn near slice it clean off his body.
Whatever it took.
To get her safe.
To get her away from all this shit from my past.
Really, I shouldn’t have underestimated her, though.
Because as I was contemplating whether I should grab the hammer or the serrated knife, she was finally moving, using all those old maneuvers she’d had beaten into her during all those training sessions she loved so much.
Curtis never saw it coming.
Not the elbow to his ribs that must have made him see stars. Nor the punch to the junk. The way she used her own body weight against him as she broke free of his hold, hooked his leg, and made him slam back onto the unforgiving cement floor.
The problem was, she went down with him.
Desperate, I started moving, making my way to the table.
I didn’t need to decide between the two. I grabbed both the knife and the hammer and started to approach.
I never should have doubted her, though.
Because through some complicated mat work, she suddenly yanked away and jumped back onto her feet.
“Nice try, bitch,” Curtis hissed, grabbed the backs of her legs and pulling hard, making her lose her balance and fall backward, crashing down on the ground with a hiss at the impact.
It was in a blink he grabbed her and flipped her onto her stomach. Which, I remember her telling me back in the day, was what Aunt Lo called the “rape position.” Because you never wanted to give up your back. It limited your chances to get away. It made it easier to overpower you.