My Funny Valyntine: Book One - The Pull

Chapter Twenty - Back in Your Own Backyard

i.

The drive to The Robin's Nest isn't long. Valyntine spends the trip standing at the partition, staring through the metal mesh and windshield, trying to keep a conversation going with Latin. She wants to relay all she learned from Taboo and hear Latin's story of how he came to be behind the wheel of the truck. But he insists on quiet, saying he needs to concentrate on driving to make sure no one follows. She finds this odd, as Latin doesn't have any issues with handling several tasks at once.

"Almost there," Valyntine hears him grunt after a few minutes.

The obvious pain in his voice worries her. Watching through the windshield, recognizing Green Dolphin Street, the lumbering delivery truck drives past the front of The Robin's Nest.

"Where are you going?" Valyntine asks, confused.

"Around the back," again he grunts, more strained this time. Turning left, he drives around the end of the block, taking the truck down a wide alley. After he kills the engine, he forces out the words, "Go to the back. I'll open it."

When the doors open, revealing Latin for the first time since their separation near Moonburn Port, Valyntine gasps. Since meeting this man in the study of where she'd been forced to resist the Pull, he has been the epitome of effortless style, quick wit, and debonair appearance. Now, one hand holds his ribs, the other the back of his head, his clothes covered in mud, grease, blood, scrapple, and every other grime the West and East Boroughs have to offer. He looks as if someone buried him alive six feet below rock bottom.

"Latin! What happened to you?" Climbing down, she fights a sudden desire to reach out and help him. She does not act on the impulse, choosing instead to jam her hands into her pockets. The fingers of her right hand brush against the bone.

"Let's get—ah—inside, first. Don't want to—hrmph—tell the story twice," he strains to move the words around the pain.

"Have you been shot?" Valyntine notices the shirt beneath his hand is soaked through with blood – his blood.

"As we left Apple," he points to the holes in the truck's rear door. "In and out. I'll—urngh—be fine."

Her aversions to physical contact temporarily assuaged, Valyntine moves quickly to the opposite side of the wound, puts her arm around his waist and her shoulder beneath his armpit, trying to carry his weight. After a few clumsy steps along the side of the truck, they make it to a small staircase leading a loading bay. Someone speaks as they move into view of the dock lights.

"Um, I don't think we take deliveries this late on... Oh shit!" a woman's voice calls out.

"Who-" Latin lifts his battered and crusted face to the woman standing beneath the single light above the door.

"Hearts and bones! Mr. Golightly?! Is that you?!"

"Triste," Latin grunts the woman's name out, straining his neck to look up at her. "Still sneaking—argh—gaspers? You know—ungh—she will catch you."

Bewildered at the state of him, the woman he called 'Triste' continues to gape, the gasper in her fingers burning slow in the chilly night air.

After a short coughing fit, Latin says, "Triste? Be a lamb and—hrngh—tell Mrs. Jones—arghh—I'm here? Might want to—guhuck," he spits out a dark globule of too-much blood. "Fetch the croaker, too."

Valyntine looks up to see a thin woman with a head of well-sculpted tight curls and apricot lips, staring at her and Latin in stunned disbelief with golden-brown eyes. Limping up the small set of stairs to the loading dock, Latin making pained grunts with each step, the young woman still isn't moving.