Howard's eyes were brimming with tears.
I swallowed the disgust clawing up my throat and shoved myself to my feet.
My fist came up and slammed square into Howard's face.
I ripped the high-pressure water gun from the man beside me, aimed it straight at Howard's crotch, and pulled the trigger.
His shorts were soaked through in a second—red cartoon-print underwear on full display for every last person watching.
"Don't run!"
I kept the water gun on him without letting up.
"Water Splash Festival, right? Whole point is getting drenched! Come on!!"
Howard cupped both hands over his crotch and scrambled behind Judy, shrieking the entire way.
The bruise from my fist was already darkening on his face.
I grabbed the scarf from Judy's hand and threw it around my own shoulders.
One cold look at her, and I turned to leave.
The kick hit my lower back before I'd taken a full step.
Judy.
Pain drilled straight through the old wound and locked my whole body rigid.
But it didn't come close to the pain in my chest.
Three years ago, a rival faction kidnapped Judy. I brought every last man from Crown City to get her back.
A knife went clean through my lower back.
Eighteen hours on the operating table. Thirty-six steel pins just to hold my spine together.
The day I was discharged, Judy knelt in front of me and told me what I'd done for her was a debt she could never repay in this lifetime. For three years after that, every time the sky turned gray or the rain set in, the pain nailed me to the bed—and Judy would cancel everything, meetings, dinners, all of it, just to stay beside me pressing hot compresses against my back, hour after hour, without stopping.
Now, for Howard's sake,
she'd kicked me right in that same spot.
"Dustin, I told you. Apologize. Or you're not leaving here in one piece."
Judy's voice, cold as iron, dragged me back.
She pressed her foot down on my lower back.
*Crack.*
Something deep in my spine gave way—a white-hot, nerve-shredding bolt of pain that ripped a strangled groan out of me before I could clamp it down. I knew instantly. Something in there had just snapped.
The surgeon's warning echoed through the haze: one more serious hit to my lower back, and I'd never walk again. No surgeon on earth could undo it.
My father's words on the phone just minutes ago flashed through my mind.
I clenched my teeth, looked up at Judy, and forced the words out through the shaking.
"I was wr—"