Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (21 page)

I only watched for a second as the flying stranger who had just saved me and the woman flew back off towards the city, before I instantly called for help. I ran into the hospital through the roof and cried out that we needed medics, and two minutes later a stretcher had been brought up, flanked by four emergency room workers. I showed them to the woman, who was now unconscious on the ground, and told them what I knew: it looked like a head wound caused by falling cement.

“How did you get here?” one of the doctors asked me as they loaded her up onto the stretcher.

I couldn’t help myself, I let out a hoarse laugh.

“Honestly,” I replied, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But a nice stranger dropped us off.”

The doctor gave me a weird look, and told me not to leave the hospital. I figured as soon as he got a second he was going to get someone to call the cops. After all, I was bound to be the main suspect here. Luckily there were about a thousand witnesses that I could call on who would tell them I was only trying to help the woman, and that my crazy-ass story about a flying guy saving me wasn’t quite as nuts as it sounded.

Instead, I slowly made my way downstairs and settled in one of the waiting areas. I saw a nurse I knew, and asked if I could use the phone.

“Sure thing, Val,” she told me. “I hear you’re saving people left, right and centre lately,” she added with a wink. It sounded like word was getting around about what had actually happened.

“Just being in the right place at the right time,” I replied. “Although sometimes I wish it would stop, it’s getting exhausting.”

I picked up the phone – mine being in my purse which I dropped next to Annie before going over to see the woman – and called my best friend. Luckily I knew her number off by heart.

“Annie, it’s me,” I told her when she picked up, and I could hear her breathe a huge sigh on relief.

“Oh my God, Val, are you ok?” she asked.

“Yeah. Just a bit shaken up.” It had all happened so fast, I almost hadn’t had time to be shocked about everything that had happened yet.

“Thank God. Oh I’m so glad you’re safe. Where are you?”

“At the hospital. Hanging out in the radiology department waiting room.”

“I’m coming to see you.”

“Can you bring me a coffee or something? I think I need something to sip on to cool my nerves, and I know from experience that the coffee here is terrible.”

“You got it. Absolutely, you got it.”

I hung up and thanked the nurse, then went and sat back down on a chair, waiting for Annie to show up.

The waiting room was completely empty, and apart from the odd nurse or janitor wandering through the halls on their way to one of the rooms, I was pretty much left alone, and so my brain started to process what had just happened to me in the last hour.

For one thing, there were people out there that could
fly
. Was I the crazy one? Was this a normal thing that only I hadn’t noticed before? No, of course not. Everyone else in the street was just as shocked as I was.

This was just full on nuts.

Then there was the one who saved me. That was so weird. I mean, he was with them. He was definitely one of the thieves, I had seen him there holding the money along with them. Then the girl had – what had she done, really? She looked at the sidewalk, and then it flew up and the chunk of cement came flying at me and the woman. But she couldn’t have made that happen. She just couldn’t.

But she wasn’t supposed to be able to fly, either.

Regardless, something had happened, and the cement was going to crush me and the injured woman, whose name I still didn’t know, and then that guy had saved us. He had left his group of thieves and rescued us, and taken us here, to the hospital.

There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place what.

Suddenly, before I had a chance to think about it anymore, Annie burst through the doors carrying a tray of coffee, a bag of food and my purse that I’d abandoned in the street. She put them down on a chair and ran over and gave me a huge hug.

“I can’t believe that happened,” were the first words she told me. “What happened?”

I pulled away from her and shrugged.

“I’m not sure myself, really. It all happened really fast. I thought I was going to die though.”

“I thought you were going to die too. Then that guy, he flew. He fully flew in and saved you, and the girl, she was pissed after that. She wanted to go after you, but the guy, he stopped her, and he said something to her, and they flew off without hurting anyone else.” She handed me a caramel latte and pulled a muffin out of the bag, passing that to me as well. I took a sip and the warm liquid running down my throat made me feel a little bit calmer.

“Well that’s good, at least.”

“Yeah, and now the cops and all that are trying to figure out how the hell they managed to
fly around
. Like, if it was wires or something. But obviously not, because that one guy wasn’t supposed to come in and save you.”

“No. No, he could definitely fly,” I told her, trying not to relive the moments of sheer terror I felt while floating high above the city, that guy’s arms the only thing stopping me from plummeting to my death.

“Did you talk to him?” Annie asked, and I nodded.

“Yeah. After he dropped me off. I asked him why he saved me. Since, you know, he was one of them, and she was the one who tried to… to kill me. I think.”

Annie nodded. “That’s how it seemed to me too.”

“Well, he told me…” I broke off as I remembered.

I’ve made enough bad life decisions, I figured I’d make a good one for a change.

That sounded familiar for some reason, but I couldn’t quite place why.

“He told you what?”

“He told me that he’d made enough bad life decisions, and for once he wanted to make a good one.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty glad he picked that moment to have a change of heart, personally.”

“So. What happens now? I mean, with everything. Like, did you know people could fly?”

I shook my head. “No. Of course not. This is such a huge thing. Who knows what’s going to happen now?”

I certainly had no idea.

An hour later the doctor came out and told me the woman I’d been trying to save was going to make it.

I was fucking late for class. Again. Because of course I was.

It wasn’t like school had always been a high priority for me. I didn’t really give a shit about my degree at all. I was doing it for my mom; she had wanted to see me graduate from college, and after everything she sacrificed to make sure I got a decent education, I sure as shit wasn’t going to let her down, no matter how much I hated it.

That didn’t mean I had to be on time every day.

And to be honest, ever since the accident and the discovery that I had superpowers, I cared even less about my classes than before.

But, I did care about my mom.

That’s why, even though I woke up an hour late, I still decided to make the trek out to class. I skipped my shower, grabbed a protein bar for breakfast and ran out the door with my book bag.

At least Keith and Sam wouldn’t be there.

They’d decided to drop out and become career criminals. Which, frankly, was pretty disappointing. As soon as I’d dropped Valerie and that woman off at the hospital, I made my way back to Keith’s apartment, which was always where we met after a heist.

“What is wrong with you?” Sam screamed at me as soon as I shut the door behind me. So much for this being an easy chat.

“What’s wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I replied. “You would have killed those people!”

“So? Who gives a shit? That woman was already dying, and that other chick just keeps getting in the way.”

“Yeah, if by ‘getting in the way’ you mean ‘saving your life’. Or have you already forgotten that her first aid is the only reason you’re still here?”

“If you’re so fucking infatuated with her then why don’t you leave and go fuck her instead?” Sam asked, but before I got a chance to answer Keith stepped in between the two of us.

“Woah. Ok, both of you need to chill the fuck out. Sam, Zander doesn’t want to fuck that chick. He’s still with you. But he’s right, she did save our lives. Zander, Sam’s pissed because you screwed with her plan. I know everything didn’t go perfectly today, but that’s no reason for us all to start jumping down each other’s throats.”

“You know why everything didn’t go perfectly today? Because this was a stupid fucking idea. I knew someone was going to get hurt if we tried this shit in the middle of the day.”

“So what? People get hurt by shit all the time. We’re better than they are now. All those smart business people who turned us down for summer internships because we were just big, dumb football players? All those nerds that laughed at us in secret because they knew we’d kick their ass if they did it to our face? They can all go get fucked.”

“So you have no problem with hurting people?” I asked Keith. He shook his head.

“No. It kinda sucks I guess, but if it happens it happens. I’m in this for me, not for them.”

I shook my head. “I can’t fucking believe both of you. I’m out.”

“What do you mean, out?” Samantha asked, her eyes blazing.

“I mean that while I was fine with stealing money from rich people, I’m not fine with hurting innocent people just to get a few extra bucks. Especially since you guys seem to actually be enjoying that part of it. Sam, I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

“You were always such a greedy fucking asshole,” she replied.

“Man, think about what you’re saying,” Keith told me.

“I have thought about it. I don’t want to be involved in this shit if you guys are going to keep doing it. I’m not going to turn you in, obviously, since none of us wants to end up being a test bunny in a lab, but I’m also not going to do this shit anymore.”

And with that, I stormed out of Keith’s apartment, my heart racing.

It sucked fucking balls, leaving my best friend and my girlfriend like that. But enough was enough. I wasn’t a good guy. I knew that, and I was fine with it. I was definitely willing to steal. I was willing to cheat my way into being the best football player ever. But innocent people? That was where I drew the line. Sam had almost killed the girl who had saved us today because she was worried I wanted to bang her.

Which seriously, what the fuck? That’s some psychopathic shit right there.

I hadn’t spoken to any of them since, and it had been over three weeks. For a few days I was worried that the CDC was going to knock my door down and drag me away in the middle of the night in a lab somewhere where they could do experiments on me and figure out exactly how I mutated, but it seemed Keith and Sam decided not to turn me in either.

Now I took the subway to Loch College, knowing I was going to be twenty minutes late for that stupid physics class that started this whole thing anyway.

* * *

Sitting on my seat I briefly scanned the headlines of the paper the man sitting across from me was reading. Every day I always looked, checking to see if my friends had done anything else stupid. It was usually pretty easy to tell if it was them or not. A shooting downtown? An assault on an old lady? Not them. A jewellery store broken into just after closing, the owner beaten half to death and three million worth of diamonds stolen without a trace? Definitely them.

It was starting to make me feel guilty, too. I didn’t know what to do about it. After all, what could I do? Call the cops? The cops didn’t have a fucking chance against us. That wasn’t me being arrogant, that was just simple fact. We were fucking superhumans. Plus, Sam was actually really good at physics. She’d made those suits we had worn herself, and even though they were super thin, they actually had some weird polymer in them that made them bulletproof. All I’d do by calling the cops would be putting them in danger.

And it wasn’t like I could sit there and follow them all the time and try to screw up their plans. After all, I had my own life to lead.

Still, I always made sure to keep my mask in the back pocket of my jeans. Just in case I ever had to use my powers. I didn’t want anyone to know who I was.

That hadn’t happened though. Life was actually going by surprisingly normally. Exams were starting in three weeks. We were in the final stretch of the school year, and I was actually starting to think more about studying than I was my superpowers.

Until I was walking towards the physics building and heard a woman scream.