Bad Company

Shot through the Heart, but Who's to Blame?

It wasn't like the movies. There was no heroic, action-packed sequence of me taking a bullet for my best friend, our eyes glued to one another's in horror as I fell. In fact, there wasn't even a millisecond for me to think. All I knew was that one moment I was standing and the next I was on top of my best friend, Dannie screaming bloody murder beneath me.

A few yards away, Daniel and Colt sprinted after the shooter whose darkened silhouette darted amongst the littering of trees behind the bar. Twelve or so of the other boys were quick to follow, ignoring the shouts of caution from the remaining members of Hell's Riders. No one was calling for them to stop, only to duck so they could shoot the bastard.

Whoever he was, though, he was fast, he was agile, and he knew what he was doing.

Fuck him to Hell.

"No, no, no," Dannie shouted in defiance below me. My body was seemingly frozen, unable to process a thought as simple as rolling off of her.

I just couldn't.

My body felt too heavy to brace my palms against the ground and push away from her, so
I was left motionless and paralyzed above a horrified women whose skin was flushed the color of spring rose buds, her tears staining her porcelain cheeks. Dannie's thick eyelashes were clumping together from sorrowful tears, and her heart--or was it mine?--slammed between us like a terrified bird trying to take flight.

A splash of vibrant crimson bloomed against her chin, and I stared wondrously at it. Was she bleeding? Was she okay?

"Oh my God," Dannie sobbed. Her hands shot up from her sides, and she shoved desperately against my chest. Finally, my body slowly rolled to the side, and I collapsed beside her in a heap.

But the ground was too soft. And it felt...wet? Warm?

"Dannie?" My voice was a broken gasp, but she couldn't focus, her gaze locked on to me like a startled deer in headlights.

A gravelly rasp of air from underneath my body had fear seizing my muscles and an ear-piercing scream ripping from my chest. I rolled away from the warmth of the ground but froze when I fell a few inches, slamming into the sharp gravel.

Wait. If this was the ground, then...my eyes slowly trailed to my left where I had been, and, lying there with a bright patch of red seeping into his baggy shirt, was Bean.

His head was tilted upwards, and, for a brief moment, I could have sworn he was watching the stars. But he wasn't. That little light shimmering faintly wasn't the reflection of the stars; it was the fading twinkle of his soul stealing away to Heaven.

But it didn't belong there. He didn't belong there. Not yet.

"No," I gasped in denial, shaking my head slowly. "No. NO!" Pain ripped through my own chest, knocking the wind from my lungs. It wasn't the vicious bite of a bullet like Bean had felt but rather the first of many heartaches his loss would bring.

And I fucking hated it. I fucking hated it.

He didn't deserve it. Hell, he was a still a kid. He was still a kid.

My palms slid along the sharp rocks piercing my skin, but that sensation couldn't hold a light to the pain searing my heart as I crawled closer to Bean's blood drenched body.

And then the guilt wriggled its way into my conscious because here I was, grasping uselessly at the body of a boy whose real name I didn't even know.