Page 70 of Him Too

Before I could even stand, Ciarán was there. It was like he materialized at the man’s shoulder, leaned in close, and spoke in a low, venomous whisper that somehow carried over the beat.

“You got a death wish, playa?” Ciarán’s tone was deceptively calm. “Keep your fucking hands to yourself. She ain’t part of the track.”

Kold-B pulled back, sneering, trying to save face in front of his crew. “Relax, man. Just showin’ love.”

“Show it from a distance,” Ciarán replied, eyes flat and cold. The threat hung in the air—more potent than any shouted insult. I almost grinned.

Jordin looked back at me and gave a slight nod.Let him handle it. This isn’t the place for you to go off.

Kold-B threw his hands up. “I got it, jit. No hands.”

The session limped on after that, tension stretched thin like a live wire.

An hour later, we stepped into the dimly lit parking lot, the humid Miami air a slap compared to the cold studio. Jordin was already at the car, digging for her keys. Kold-B and his entourage swaggered out behind us.

He spotted me.

“Yo, Mr. Dress Pants,” he called, voice slurred. “I thought she was your bitch—why the nigga checking me about yours? What, ya’ll running a train on ole girl?”

The wordbitchechoed in the quiet lot.

It was the match to the gasoline already simmering in my veins.

Everything—the accident, the wheelchair, the constant, gnawing presence of Ciarán, the helplessness—all of it coalesced into a single, white-hot point of rage.

I didn’t think. I moved. Dropped my cane.

My left hook wasn’t a wild swing—it was the focused, brutal strike of a man who’d boxed downtown for fifteen years just to manage his temper. It connected with his jaw with a sickening, wet crack. The most satisfying sound I’d heard in a year.

He dropped like a sack of bricks.

My leg didn’t even hurt anymore.

His crew moved toward me, but Ciarán was already beside me. He didn’t throw a punch. He didn’t have to.

He just stood there, a predator’s grin on his face, wild energy rolling off him. One hand at his side, a pistol clearly visible. Finger tapping the trigger.

“Anyone else wanna continue the conversation?” Ciarán asked, voice dangerously pleasant.

They backed off.

Ciarán looked at me with a flicker of something that almost resembled respect.

We stood there for a second, chests heaving, adrenaline coiled between us like a wire—tight, volatile, unspoken.

Then Jordin stormed over. “Are you twoinsane?” she hissed, eyes darting from my bloody knuckles to Ciarán’s smile. “Y’all trying to get usshotin Miami?”

“He called you a bitch,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“And he touched you earlier,” Ciarán added. “He did exactly what he was supposed to do,” he said like that settled it.

She just shook her head, muttering something aboutfucking childrenas she got in the car. “Let’s get breakfast.”

It was two in the morning. Not much was open.

We ended up at a diner. None of us really spoke during the fifteen-minute drive.

We slid into a booth—Jordin on one side, Ciarán and me, improbably, on the other. The fluorescent lights buzzedoverhead. A waitress with tired eyes took our order for three burgers and fries.