The Two Alphas of Rosewood Creek [MxM]

Chapter 16

Please...someone, please... Please help me!

"Curly?... Is that you?"

I felt my body being shaken as I opened my eyes, hazy street lights brightening the dark alley I'd been left in. I couldn't make out the figure standing next to me, holding its hand out as I propped myself up on my elbows, struggling to get my body off the pavement. I blinked a few times until I saw the mystery person who'd shown up too late to my rescue.

Nate came into my vision once the swirling stars in my eyes started to dissipate.

Why did it have to be him?

"What the fuck happened to you?" His eyes gave way from his cool edge, boring lasered concern over the wounds that covered my body. He cautiously examined me, twisting me around to assess the damage.

I smiled, the metallic taste of iron stinging the inside of my mouth, as blood dripped from the corner of my lips. "Just chillin, ya know? Nothing too crazy." I tried to chuckle but couldn't, a sobbing wail forcibly wrenching itself out of my throat. The tears came in convulsions.

Nate watched as I broke from manic laughter into a full scream-cry. I don't know why I felt more embarrassed that he had to find me like this than grateful that he found me at all. I was so ashamed that he had to witness me unfurl and completely melt down.

"Get the fuck off of me, I'm fine!" I pushed him away from me. Up off the ground now, I shakily tried to walk away, limping miserably on the new found soreness in my left ankle. My whole body was on fire, but trying to walk through the pain gave me something to focus on without somehow dizzying me.

"Listen, Curly, I wont do anything to you, just please... Let me help you," he grabbed my wrist, pulling me back to him.

"For what?!  So your fucking friends can just beat me up again." I whipped my hand from his grasp.

"Friends?!"A brief silence cleared between us, Nate's eyes demanding answers in the small seconds before he could actually ask for any. "Curly, who did this to you?"

"Oh! I thought you knew already... Wow, this is a shocker! Who else would it be?" I screamed at him. "It was Ryder and those fucking idiots you always send off to attack other people. I thought you knew that though, sorry my bad."

I leered sharply at Nate before rolling my eyes back in front of me‒‒back to the quickest way home.

"And to think, the fucking ring leader doesn't know where his little attack dogs are at any given moment. I can't fucking even with you right now, trying to play dumb. Trying to play nurse with me so you can... What? Feel me up again?" 

Nate didn't answer, only remaining near me, insistently closing the physical gap that I tried to open between us (even though all I could manage was a slow hobble).

"What!? You're going to attack me too? Then do it already! Fucking do it!" My emotions were blinding, a swirling cauldron of anger and sadness. Though I could only dread what he might do to me in that moment, I had no more will to keep my cool. That hadn't worked back in the schoolyard with his dogs, and I doubted it was going to work here either. But then I didn't know of anything at all that might work, so I just yelled in Nate's face, the towering boy looming over me like an ominous telephone pole in the night.

I didn't care. I started sobbing again, punching him in the chest as forcefully as my mangled body could manage. He was an immovable stone mountain before me, my punches doing little to prove any kind of point. Yet for a second, my eyes returned to his and I could see that for some odd reason the smallest amount of what may have been tears welled up in his water lines. I could make even less sense of that, and so turned away from him again‒‒only to have him not quite let me, holding me halfway between warm embrace and forced restraint.