Damien hadn’t proposed to me … yet.
It confused me but didn’t upset me because I knew men had a lot of mental preparation to go through when they were popping the question … especially when the last three times Damien asked, the answer was no. The day after Keela gave birth to Enzo, she came home, and we all showed up at her and Alec’s house to fawn over the baby and congratulate our friends.
Bronagh managed five minutes before she started crying, but she had no idea why, and the woman was tearing Nico up from how distraught he appeared to be. She asked me to go to the supermarket with her, so she could walk around and hopefully put herself into labour. Nico was visibly terrified, but I assured him that I would take care of her.
“Why are you so keen on givin’ the man a heart attack?”
“I don’t mean to worry ‘im, but he is no help when I’m restless. I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m inside.”
I understood.
“Are ye’ uncomfortable?”
“Unbelievably,” she grunted as she adjusted her seat belt. “I’m sore, tired, cranky, and just so fuckin’ ready for this baby to come. It’s not fair that Keela was so small and not bothered about bein’ pregnant longer than ‘er due date. I hate ‘er.”
I laughed as I adjusted the driver’s seat in Nico’s car. “No, you don’t.”
“No.” Bronagh sniffled. “I don’t. I love ‘er and ‘er perfect little boy.”
She was breaking my heart.
“We’ll get that kid out of you today if it’s the last thing we do, okay?”
Bronagh bobbed her head. “Okay.”
I drove to our local Tesco that was only five minutes away, and though we just wanted to walk around, Bronagh decided to get some messages while she was there. If she did go into labour, then by the time she got home with her new baby, at least her house would be stocked with food. That was how we looked at it. I got a trolley, then gave it to Bronagh to push, just so she would have something to lean on. Her feet were swollen, so anything to take some pressure off them was a must.
“Where to first?”
“Just keep walkin’ straight, then we’ll walk up and down each aisle,” Bronagh answered. “There’s an unspoken rule about things bein’ one way in this shop. Anyone who walks the wrong way will just have to wait until I walk by to get around me because I’m not movin’ for anyone.”
“Okay, mama bear,” I appeased. “Your way or the motorway.”
Bronagh chuckled tiredly. She then pointed out what items she wanted me to pick up and put into the trolley as we approached them. We did this for thirty minutes. I answered ten calls from Nico during that time. The poor man would need to be sedated once this child was born because his nerves were fried. We had just come to the cereal aisle when I noticed an overweight, middle-aged man leering at Bronagh.
An uncomfortable chill ran up my spine, and my protective instinct kicked in. I moved over and stood directly in front of her, blocking her as much as I could. When I glanced at the man once more, his roaming eyes were now on me, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what disgusting thoughts were running through his mind.
“Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Bronagh said. “What’s nicer, Cornflakes or Special K?”
“Just get both.”
My friend frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“The man behind us,” I mumbled. “He is lookin’ at us in a way that’s makin’ me skin crawl.”
To her credit, Bronagh tried to be discreet as she glanced his way, but when she caught sight of him and saw for herself how he was ogling us, her face dropped.
“He’s creepy.”
I agreed.
“Let’s just go,” I mumbled. “I don’t like how he is lookin’ at us.”
She tossed both boxes of cereal into the trolley, and together, we walked away. When we reached the till and glanced back over our shoulders, we both released a sigh of relief when we saw that the man hadn’t followed us. Logically, I knew he was most likely harmless, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that settled over me when I realised that he was watching us.
After we checked out all our items, we put them into carrier bags, popped them into the trolley, and left the shop. We had just cleared the exit and turned the corner only to have the creepy man step in front of our trolley and cause us to come to an abrupt halt. I grabbed Bronagh’s forearm and held on.
“Excuse us,” I said. “We’d like to get by, please.”
“You’re both real pretty,” he said, and when he spoke, I could see how yellow his teeth were. “Real pretty.”
“Thank y-you,” I stammered. “But we have to go.”
I tried to turn the trolley to move around the man, but he stepped back in front of us. That was the moment I knew this was a bad situation, and it wasn’t going to have a good outcome.
“I have a husband,” Bronagh blurted the lie with ease. “And so does she.”
The man looked between us.
“You both really playin’ the married card?”
“We are married,” Bronagh pressed. “I’m pregnant with me second child, as if you can’t see that for yourself.”
The man didn’t move a muscle.
“Pregnant women fetch a high price on the streets.”
Excuse me?
“Please, leave us alone,” I asked him, my voice soft. “We’re just ‘ere to do some shoppin’.”
“I can offer ye’ both jobs,” he spoke, ignoring me completely. “I can make ye’ both wealthy women. All ye’ have to do is join me entertainment business.”
Entertainment business?
“We don’t want to work for ye’,” I said, my voice firm. “We aren’t—”
“You have a big mouth.” The man cut me off. “I bet you can deep throat. That earns me worker’s big tips.”
“Workers?” Bronagh repeated. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“Women of the night.” The man grinned. “Or day. Whenever you get a body between your thighs, really.”
“Prostitution?” I choked. “We are not gonna be prostitutes!”
What the fuck kind of conversation is this?
“Don’t raise your voice at me,” the man snapped.
Bronagh pushed the trolley forward, and it smacked the man’s thigh and sent him stumbling back.
“Clear off!” she warned. “We don’t want no part of your business.”
“You’ll fuckin’ pay for that!”
When he turned and stormed away, my heart was pounding erratically.
“We have to leave!” I stressed to Bronagh. “I feel sick.”
“Me too,” Bronagh agreed.
Together, we hustled across the car park, only to come to an abrupt halt when we saw a black-haired woman and a red-haired woman jogging towards us with the fat man huffing and puffing as he trailed behind them.
“Oh God.”
I scrambled for my phone, and when I rooted it out of my bag, I called Nico straight away. He answered on the second ring.
“Nico?”
“Alannah?” he said. “What’s up?”
“We need help,” I said, my voice gruff. “A man was bein’ creepy towards us in the shop so we told ‘im off, and now we’re in the car park and he is ‘ere with two women who I think are goin’ to fight us. I’m afraid I won’t be able to protect Bronagh. She can’t get to the car without them gettin’ ‘er first.”
Nico wasted zero time as he asked which part of the car park we were in. When I hung up the phone, the women and the man were only metres away from us.
“Alannah,” Bronagh said, her grip tightening on me. “I think they’re goin’ to jump me. Look at them.”
I eyed the two girls and noticed they were removing earrings, repositioning rings on their fingers, and tying their hair back into tight buns. It didn’t look good, and I suddenly felt sick because I was going to get hurt by one or both of these women. No way in hell was I standing by while they jumped my friend.
“She is pregnant,” I announced, loudly. “Don’t even think of comin’ for ‘er.”
Both the women laughed, uncaringly.
“I’m not jokin’,” I pressed. “We did nothin’ wrong.”
“You hit me baby’s daddy with your trolley!” the redhead spat. “I’m gonna bounce your head off the concrete.”
Christ.
“She has a baby with ‘im?” Bronagh said under her breath. “She’s half his age and way out of his league.”
I stared at the women, then said, “I think they work for ‘im, and he mixed business with pleasure.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh.
“He cornered us and tried to get us to work for ‘im,” Bronagh said in our defence. “He wouldn’t go away when we asked ‘im to.”
“Ugly bitch!”
“Hey!” I snapped, shocked that the man would insult my friend. “You can’t just slag ‘er off because she wouldn’t work as your prostitute! Ye’ can’t be serious to think ye’ can just come out and ask strangers this kind of stuff!”
The women picked that moment to advance, and even though I was terrified, I quickly walked towards them just to keep them as far away from Bronagh as possible. I heard Bronagh’s scream before I felt the first punch to the side of my head. I was knocked around like a ragdoll as both women punched, kicked, and stomped on me without mercy. I didn’t even realise I was on the ground until I felt the concrete scrape my bare shoulders.
A fighter I was not, but I swung my closed fists and smacked one of the women hard enough to make her cry out. I managed to get to my feet and pushed both women away from me. One tumbled to the ground, but the other remained standing. My face was throbbing, my scalp stung, and the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth told me I was hurt. I spat it out and forced myself to relax when I saw everything I spat was blood and not saliva, and my mouth was filling up once more.
“You’re bleedin’!” Bronagh whimpered, then I felt her hands clutch my waist. “Oh, shite. Alannah!”
I kept my focus on the two women; the one with red hair had her hand over her eye, and the one with black hair held her stomach. I wasn’t sure if I really hurt them or not, but they didn’t seem all that interested in running at me again, and I hoped to God they wouldn’t. My nerves were shot, and I trembled as adrenaline shot through me. I turned my head when screeching tyres sounded, and I heard, “Alannah!”
Bronagh practically deflated with relief behind me.
“Dominic!”
I glanced to my left, and my heart pounded when I saw the twins running towards us. I had never been more relieved in my entire life to see the lads, and when they reached us, I had to spit again because my mouth was full of blood once more.
“Fuck!” Damien snapped as he grabbed my face and inspected it. “Who hurt you?”
“Those women,” I answered, then quickly wiped my chin when spit spilled from it. “I can’t believe this is happenin’.”
When I looked at my hand, it was red with blood, and I knew something was wrong inside my mouth. Damien told me to open my mouth, so I did, and when he stuck a finger inside and felt along the inside of my cheek, he ran his finger over a part of flesh that made me jerk away in pain.
“There’s a gash on the inside of your cheek,” he said, his jaw tensed. “How did that happen?”
“It must have been when one of them punched or kicked me head,” I answered, not knowing how else it could have happened. “Maybe one of me teeth cut it?”
Nico looked me over once he made sure Bronagh was okay, and when I had to spit again, he saw the blood on the ground, on my hands, and running down my chin. He looked as furious as Damien. He asked me to show him my mouth and used the torch on his phone so he could have a better look.
“It’s a bad cut,” he concluded. “I think you’ll need stitches.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and Damien instantly got in my space.
“Look at me,” he said and wouldn’t speak until I locked eyes on him. “It’s fine. We’ll go to the hospital and get you all fixed up.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but when I had to spit again, I began to believe that Nico was right. At that moment, my face began to throb with pain, and like I knew I eventually would, I began to cry. To avoid having the women who attacked me see my breakdown, I pressed my face against Damien’s chest and tried my best to hold it in, but once the first whimper came, it paved the way for the sobs.
“Oh, Lana,” Bronagh said as she placed her hand above Damien’s hands on my back. “Are you okay?”
I could only nod to reassure her, but I was scared, and crying was the only way I could relieve my stress when I had no paint or my sketching pad on hand. I hated that when I cried, I couldn’t talk without hiccupping or a sob breaking my sentence. Damien hugged my body to his and wordlessly swayed me side to side. When I had to pull back and spit on the ground again, he looked over his shoulder and snapped, “Don’t either of you three fucking move!”
When I had calmed down a bit, Damien turned to face the trio, and he was enraged.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he bellowed.
“It was a misunderstandin’,” the creepy man stated. “I swear.”
“Liar!” I snapped. “Ye’ insinuated we should work as your prostitutes, and when we cleared you off, ye’ got those women to attack me! What in God’s name is the matter with ye’?”
I jumped back when Damien rapidly closed the gap between him and the man, getting in his space.
“I fucking know you didn’t insult my sister-in-law and threaten her and my girl, you fat fuck.”
The man seemed to size Damien up, and he concluded what I did. While he was a few inches shorter than Damien, the man was stockier. It all happened fast. My scream died in my throat when the man suddenly swung his fist, but Damien bobbed his head to the left like he expected it. The man caught nothing but air while Damien slammed his fist into the man’s gut, causing the man to hunch forward with a wheeze. I squealed when Damien rammed his knee into the man’s face. Blood instantly spurted from the man’s nose. He yelled in pain and used both his hands to cover his injury.
My heart pounded against my chest so fast I thought it would explode.
Damien threw a single jab, but the sound of it connecting was like a slap of wet skin. I cringed just as the man dropped to one knee. He shook his head, put his hand on his jaw, then fell onto his behind. He looked completely dazed and made no attempt to get back up, so Damien didn’t bother to hit him again since he now posed no threat. Instead, he focused on the two women who were screeching like banshees. The redhead attempted to dash at Bronagh, but Nico surged forward, putting himself in front of Bronagh and completely blocking her from the girl’s view and range.
“If you put your hands on my wife,” he snarled at the women, “I’m putting my hands on you.”
Oh, fuck.
The redhead glanced at the dazed man on the ground, then she wisely abandoned attacking Bronagh and moved to help him. The black-haired woman didn’t aid her. Her burning gaze turned on me, and she took a dangerous step towards me, but my view was suddenly blocked when Damien moved in front of me. My hands automatically went to his waist, and I gripped him tightly.
“Try it,” he warned the woman, his voice dangerously low. “I fucking dare you.”
“What’ll ye’ do?” she sneered. “Ye’ gonna hit me too?”
“I will do anything necessary to keep your hands off her,” he countered. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re a woman. If you lay a hand on my girl, I’m treating you like a man.”
My lips parted, and I prayed the woman wouldn’t be foolish enough to test Damien, not when he sounded so furious. I heard the woman curse at Damien, and when I peeked around him, I saw she was now helping the redhead get the injured man to his feet. The three of them walked away slowly, but they did so with jeers and insults thrown our way. Bronagh was called fat, and I was called ugly.
“I’m pregnant, dopey hole, not fat!”
“Yeah,” I shouted, “and I’m not ugly!”
When Bronagh and I looked at one another, for some reason, we started to laugh. The situation wasn’t funny at all, not in the slightest, but we laughed anyway. That was until I whimpered in pain and spat blood, again. Damien turned, gripped my arm, and wordlessly steered me towards Alec’s Sportage that the twins obviously borrowed to come to our rescue. I climbed into the back seat with him, and Nico and Bronagh climbed into the front.
“The messages!” I shouted. “They’re in the trolley.”
The twins hurriedly got the bags of food and put them in the boot of the car.
“Nico, your car is parked—”
“I’ll come back for it later, we need to get you to the hospital.”
I nodded, mutely.
“I can’t believe that just happened!” Bronagh stated, and she buckled her seat belt. “All because we told that creep that we weren’t interested in workin’ for ‘im. Fuckin’ ridiculous.”
I grunted. “Can you believe he asked us to come and work for ‘im as prostitutes? He was dead bloody serious when he asked us that, Bronagh.”
“I know!” she said, amazed. “He even promised to make us wealthy women from it.”
We were silent for a moment, then we laughed again. I only stopped when I felt how rigid Damien was. I looked at him and found his gaze was locked out the window, and his hands balled into fists. He was still mad; there was no getting around that. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but I had to spit, so I grabbed an empty fast food restaurant cup from the cup-holder next to me and spat into it. Damien looked at me, then at the cup, and then at my face.
“Put your tongue against the wound,” he said. “It might help with the bleeding.”
I attempted it but screeched when a burning hot pain filled my cheek.
“Hurts,” was all I could say.
Damien reached over and grabbed my hand. He didn’t seem to care that I still had blood on my skin; he squeezed my hand reassuringly, and I was pleased to find that it helped me relax massively. I spat into the cup again a few minutes later and began to sniffle as the pain became bad. Under my eyes throbbed, my scalp felt like it was on fire, and my cheek stung like hell. I knew, at that moment, that I would never be able to make it as an underground fighter like Nico once was. My pain tolerance was zero.
“We’re nearly there, Alannah,” Nico said softly when my cries could be heard.
Bronagh reached her hand back and touched my knee, the gesture comforting me.
“I can’t believe this happened.”
“Thanks, Alannah,” Bronagh said in response.
“For what?”
“Defendin’ me,” she answered. “Babe, they were goin’ to hurt me, and you threw yourself at them so they wouldn’t.”
I blinked. “You’re me best friend.”
“I know, and I love ye’.”
“I love ye’ too.”
Silence lingered for a moment until I said, “If that situation didn’t scare that baby out of you, then I’m afraid nothin’ will.”
Bronagh laughed. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out all the pain that seemed to hit me at once. I focused on Damien.
“How are you here?”
“Dominic pulled up at the shop, told me what was going on, and I jumped in Alec’s car.”
My heart squeezed.
“This really hurts.”
“I know, baby.”
We arrived at the hospital ten minutes later, and as soon as we entered the A&E Department and checked in, I was taken straight to the back and put inside a cubicle. Damien accompanied me while Nico and Bronagh had to wait outside. I was given a cardboard bedpan and told to spit into that whenever I had to. Damien grabbed plenty of tissues and dabbed at my mouth whenever blood dribbled out of my mouth before I could spit.
“Me eye feels bleedin’ huge.”
“It’s swelling,” Damien said through gritted teeth.
I stared up at him. “Are ye’ mad at me?”
“No,” he answered. “Just mad that this happened to you.”
He moved closer to me and put his arms around my body. I pressed my face gently against him and waited. We stayed like that for at least twenty minutes. Damien didn’t move away from me; he remained standing and held me to him. He held the bedpan under my mouth so I could spit when I had to. When a doctor came and saw the bedpan, he asked Damien to step aside so he could examine me. He asked me to lie back on the bed and open my mouth, and when I did, tears instantly fell from my eyes with the pain.
“You’ve got yourself a sore one.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
“You’ll have to have stitches.”
I tried to get up, but Damien held me in place, so I began to cry harder.
“Stop,” he said and placed a kiss on my shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you, freckles. Stop.”
I couldn’t help it. My fight or flight reaction kicked in, and I wanted to run away.
“We’ll sedate you,” the doctor assured me. “You won’t feel a thing.”
“Sedation?” Damien repeated. “It’s a cut on her cheek. Why does she need to be sedated?”
“The angle of it is difficult to stitch while she is awake,” the doctor explained. “If I tug and move the needle around while she is conscious, it will hurt her greatly, and she would undoubtedly move and most likely injure herself further. This will take me ten minutes to do with her asleep. She’ll be snoozing, then stitched and awake all in half an hour this way.”
Damien looked down at me. “You understand him?”
I nodded, but the movement caused me pain, so I stopped. A nurse came in and asked me a million questions then asked me to sign something to allow me to be sedated by an anaesthesiologist. Damien was so mad that I signed the form without reading it, but I didn’t care. My face throbbed, and my head overall felt like a dead weight on my shoulders. I just wanted to go to sleep. Damien held my hand as a nurse stuck a needle in my arm and set up an IV.
I was moved to the operating theatre where I had to strip out of my clothes and put on a disposable gown. Once the nurses confirmed I had no food or water since early in the morning, they wheeled my bed into the operating room. Damien kissed me and told me he’d ring my parents as soon as he got back to Dominic and Bronagh who were still in the A&E Department. I was brave for him because I could see how worried he was for me, especially when the nurse had to clean up blood that dribbled from my mouth.
Once inside the operating room, things moved fast and before I knew it, I was asked to count back from ten. I think I made it to six before I was gifted with darkness. Sweet, painless darkness.