Pink Walls

Sunday Morning [Part II]✓

“You deserved it.”

The headlights of the sports car came on soon after I noticed it, its rays colliding with the beams already shining out of our own car to join in illuminating Alex's path as he walked.

Then the car door opened into the air—in the fashion the doors of most stylish, high-performance vehicles were designed to—and a man got out.

Even from this distance, I was able to see the absolute rage twisting his otherwise beautiful features. His hair was auburn, waist-length and braided into a fishtail. He had a handful of freckles speckled across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and a diamond stud piercing the lobe of his left ear.

I watched in anxious anticipation as the two men met in the middle to begin conversing. I knew that Alex had a gun on him yet he still let himself get pushed around despite being more than a head taller than the other man.

He barely spoke, but the words that left his lips were enough to have the shorter man spiraling even deeper into his already volatile rage. Though the windows of the car were rolled up, I could still hear echoes of the man's intelligible words bounce around in my head—that was how loud he was.

The amount of anger a person had to be feeling to shout so much was foreign to me, so when a punch was thrown at Alex, I couldn't help but wince.

That's a bad idea.

I had expected the attack to miss, but Alex did nothing to stop it. He didn't even try to dodge.

The shorter man's fist connected solidly with his jaw and he just took it.

A few more words were screamed at Alex—the other man stabbing a finger into his chest the whole time—and when he was done talking, he got back into his exuberant sports car and drove off.

I might not have been able to hear the screech of his tires against the road but I was able to see the skid marks they left behind.

It was obvious that whatever the two men discussed had been far from pleasant, especially if Alex's blank expression was anything to go by. His face might have betrayed nothing, but his clenched fists spoke volumes.

For a moment he just stood there, staring into the distance where the car had sped off to. I didn't know what was going through his mind or what emotions he was feeling, but the sight of him standing against the backdrop of an abandoned road made my chest hurt.

I had never seen anyone look so lost.

When he started making his way back to the car, I averted my gaze and pretended to be occupied with counting the lines that streaked my palms.

It was only when he slid back into the driver's seat and shut the door that I realized that he was trembling.

Alexiares Lestrange, the most feared man in the city, was shaking like a leaf.

Now I stared at him openly, eyeing the reddening skin on the left side of his jaw. He must have run out of luck today, getting his face hurt twice in a row.

His pale skin bruised much too easily for someone who made a living killing people.

I didn't say anything to him when he started the car up again. I just reached into the glove compartment and grabbed a Ziploc from where he had dozens of them stacked then got out of the car to scoop two handfuls of clean-looking snow into it.

After getting in my seat again and shutting the door, I balled up the makeshift ice pack and held it against his face when he turned to set his questioning gaze on me. He didn't even flinch when I pressed the ziplocked snow harder against his skin.