Just move

Winona

“Unless it’s a damn taser and a bodyguard, you’ve got nothing,” he argued, like he truly believed there was no way I could be prepared if someone jumped me.

“I take self-defense classes. Dante’s been training me for years. I’ve been in enough dicey situations to get out of most of the ones I encounter now. If not”—I shrugged and reassured him—“I’ll live. Because if I don’t, I’ll die, right?”

He grunted at the words he’d said to me so long ago.

They’d echoed through me. They’d ricocheted around in my head for years, even in the darkest nights when Marvin and the men who paid him stood over me, when Jimmy held me down, when I was sure death would be a better option than life.

The tube lighting of Crowned Ink glowed a bright red as we neared the shop. Their logo was a red crown with bold colored skulls in a pile below it. I pushed open the heavy glass door but didn’t hold it for HJ.

He grunted, but I ignored it. I took in the wall of magazines and, next to it, a large display of t