13
Easton
I reached the end of the hallway and grabbed the collar of my hoodie before I even saw the room.
The fabric dragged roughly across my face as I ripped it over my head with enough force to turn one sleeve inside out. The second the colder air touched my arms, the noise inside The Sin Bin shifted. Conversations thinned. A stool scraped. Someone muttered my name like a warning.
Good.
Warnings were for men who hadn’t already decided.
I tossed the hoodie onto the nearest chair without slowing.
My shirt clung too hot against my back, and my hands flexed at my sides as I crossed the bar.
The whole place went alert in pieces, like every table could smell violence coming but nobody wanted to be the first person smart enough to leave.
Maddox was still near the basketball table, sitting now because apparently his boys had decided pretending to be calm counted as a strategy.
Two of them had taken their seats again, hands wrapped around their beers and eyes fixed too intently on the table to look casual.
Another leaned back with his arms crossed, but his knee bounced beneath the chair.
Maddox saw me coming and stood too quickly. His chair knocked against the table behind him.
Briggs stepped halfway into my path. “East.”
I didn’t look at him. “Move.”
Rider was on my other side, quiet and tense. “You checked on her?”
I kept walking. “Yep.”
“Is she okay?”
Not even a little.
“No.”
That one word did what all my shouting wouldn’t have. Briggs’s face changed. Rider’s jaw flexed. Neither of them stepped in front of me again.
Maddox lifted both hands when I got close, trying for a laugh and landing nowhere near one. “Man, come on. You had your little hallway hero moment. We’re done.”
I grabbed him by the throat.
The sound that came out of him was small, wet, and satisfying enough that something ugly inside me smiled.
“We’re not done,” I said.
His hands clawed at my wrist, his eyes widening as I walked him backward hard enough that his heels skidded across the sticky floor.
The basketball table exploded to its feet behind him, chairs scraping and voices rising, but nobody put their hands on me.
Maybe it was because hockey stood with me.
Maybe it was because Briggs turned and looked at the entire table like he was begging someone to give him a reason.
I got into Maddox’s face and tightened my grip until his pulse jumped against my palm.
“Let’s go, motherfucker,” I said. “You need a lesson in manners.”
Then I slammed him into the front door.
The impact cracked through the bar, wood, metal, and bone striking at once.
The door flew open from the force, and cold night air rushed inside with rain, exhaust, and the wet slap of traffic beyond the parking lot.
Maddox stumbled across the threshold, lost his footing on the slick pavement, and landed on his ass outside.
For one second, everyone froze.
Then I went after him.
Maddox scrambled backward on his hands, his shoes slipping in the rain, his mouth already moving because men like him always thought words could buy time from fists.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he spat, rolling onto one knee. “She got you trained already?”
I caught him before he could stand fully and drove my fist into his ribs.
The breath left him in a hard grunt as his body folded around the hit, but he swung wildly and caught me across the jaw with enough force to snap my head sideways.
Pain flashed bright.
I wanted pain. I wanted something physical and honest, something with a beginning and an end. I wanted bone beneath my knuckles instead of Aura’s face in that hallway, tears on her cheeks while she begged me not to make it worse because of her.
Maddox staggered upright and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You think beating my ass changes what happened?”
I smiled through the blood coating my tongue. “No.”
His eyes flickered.
“It changes how you remember it, though.”
I drove into him before he could answer.
We struck the side of the building hard, shoulder, brick, and a sharp burst of pain shooting down my arm.
He shoved at my chest, stronger than I wanted him to be, and landed a punch against my ribs that stole half a breath.
I caught his next swing against my forearm and answered with a right hand to his mouth.
His head snapped back as blood struck his teeth.
He cursed and stumbled sideways into the rain before coming at me again with enough rage to be useful.
His next swing was uglier and, for half a second, less afraid.
His knuckles clipped my cheekbone, sending heat blooming beneath my eye.
He tried to grab my shirt, but I caught his wrist, twisted, and used his momentum to drive him down against the hood of a parked car.
The alarm chirped once.
Someone inside yelled, “Holy shit!”
Maddox bucked beneath me and drove an elbow into my stomach hard enough to make me loosen my hold. I let him get free because some part of me wanted him upright when I hit him again.
He backed toward the sidewalk, breathing hard, blood smeared across his lip. “She’s not worth this, man.”
I went still.
Rain ticked against my shoulders. The Sin Bin’s neon sign buzzed red and blue over the wet pavement. Behind me, bodies crowded the open doorway, hockey, basketball, and strangers packed into one tense line of witnesses, but nobody spoke.
Maddox should have stopped.
He didn’t.
“She’s got you looking stupid over something that happened years ago,” he said, cruelty shaking beneath his voice. “You weren’t even there. You don’t know what she was like.”
I closed the distance between us.
He swung first.
I ducked beneath it and drove my fist into his stomach hard enough to fold him, then grabbed the back of his neck and brought my knee into his ribs.
He made a broken sound and shoved me away, but I came back before he could breathe, my fist connecting with his cheek, then his jaw, then the side of his head when he tried to turn from me.
“Say it again.” I grabbed the front of his jacket. “Say she isn’t worth it again.”
He spat blood onto the pavement and smiled like an idiot with a death wish. “She’ll ruin you too.”
I slammed him backward into the brick.
“She already did,” I said directly into his face. “And I’m still hers.”
His eyes flashed, and he threw a short, desperate punch that caught me beneath the ribs.
It hurt enough to make my vision spark, and he used the opening to shove me backward.
For two seconds, it was all elbows and fists, rain and breath, shoes slipping over wet pavement, and the dull thud of bodies striking metal, brick, and ground.
He landed one solid hit against my mouth, and I tasted blood immediately. The pain didn’t slow me.
It focused me.
I grabbed his jacket again, dragged him off balance, and hit him with a right hook that made his knees buckle. He went down hard, one hand slapping the pavement to catch himself. I followed, but Briggs caught my shoulder before I could drop on top of him.
“That’s enough,” Briggs said, his voice strained.
Maddox pushed himself onto one elbow and laughed through the blood. “Listen to your goalie, Wade.”
I broke Briggs’s grip and kicked Maddox’s hand out from beneath him.
He struck the pavement face-first with a wet grunt.
Briggs cursed behind me. Rider moved in quickly, but I was already crouched over Maddox, one fist twisted into the front of his jacket as I hauled him up far enough to see his face. It was bruised, split, and bloody, one eye beginning to swell and his mouth red and ruined.
Still not enough.
Not after Aura’s face. Not after her order pad striking the floor. Not after the look in her eyes when she needed me to stop him and I had already been too late to keep the words inside his mouth.
“Easton,” Rider said, closer now. “Enough.”
Maddox’s lips peeled back. “You gonna kill me over some used-up high school skank?”
I hit him again.
Hard.
His head snapped sideways, and the sound from the doorway changed. A few people gasped. Someone cursed. The basketball players shifted, but none of them came closer.
Briggs and Rider grabbed me at the same time.
Briggs locked one arm across my chest from behind, and Rider caught my wrist before I could swing again. I fought them on instinct, every muscle in my body still fixed on the man bleeding in front of me.
“East,” Briggs grunted as he hauled me backward. “Fucking stop.”
“He’s done,” Rider said against my ear. “He’s done, man.”
“He’s breathing.”
“He’s done.”
Maddox rolled onto his side, coughing blood onto the wet pavement, one hand pressed against his ribs. His basketball boys finally moved toward him, but cautiously, like they were afraid getting too close meant joining him.
Then I heard her.
“Easton!”
Aura’s voice cut through the parking lot, raw and terrified.
Everything inside me stopped fighting for half a second.
She stood in the open doorway with a phone pressed against her ear, tears still bright in her eyes and horror written across her face. Hannah remained behind her, one hand hovering near Aura’s shoulder like she wanted to hold her back but knew better than to touch her without permission.
Aura looked from me to Maddox on the pavement and back again.
Her mouth trembled before she forced it still. “Stop,” she said, her voice breaking. “Easton, stop.”
Briggs’s grip loosened when he felt me stop pushing, but Rider kept hold of my wrist.
For two seconds, I looked at Aura, and every violent thing in me turned toward her like she was the only fixed point in the whole fucking world. She had tears on her face again. Because of him. Because of me. Because of all of it.
Then Maddox coughed out a laugh from the ground.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “Listen to your bitch.”
I tore free from Briggs and Rider.
“Fuck,” Rider snapped, lunging after me.
I reached Maddox first.
He tried to crawl backward, but I caught his jaw in one hand and forced his bruised, bloody face toward the doorway. My fingers dug into his cheeks, not hard enough to break anything, but enough to make him understand exactly how fragile his mouth was inside my hand.
“Look at her,” I said.
Maddox groaned and tried to pull away.
I tightened my grip. “Look at her!”
His swollen eyes lifted toward Aura.
She went still in the doorway, the phone still against her ear while tears slid silently down her cheeks.
I hated him for seeing her that way. I hated myself more for turning it into another scene she had to survive, but I was past being reasonable.
“Apologize,” I said through gritted teeth.
Maddox breathed heavily through his nose.
I shook him once. “Apologize to her.”
“Easton,” Aura said. “Stop.”
I didn’t take my eyes from Maddox. “Say it.”
His mouth twisted beneath my hand. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Louder.”
Aura stepped into the rain. “Easton, I said stop.”
I looked back at her.
She shook her head, tears and rain mixing over her cheeks. “I don’t want it.”
Those four words struck harder than Maddox ever could.
I looked down at him, at the bloody, pathetic mess of a man inside my grip, and for one second, I wanted to force it anyway.
I wanted to drag an apology from him until it tore his throat raw.
I wanted every person who had ever hurt her lined up in front of me, one by one, begging where she could hear them.
But Aura didn’t want this.
She didn’t want his apology. She didn’t want his mouth touching her pain again. She didn’t want one more man deciding what should make her feel better while she stood there shaking and unheard.
My grip loosened.
Maddox dropped against the wet pavement with a pained grunt.
I leaned close enough that only he and the nearest players could hear me.
“You stay away from her. You don’t look at her, talk to her, breathe near her, or put her name in your mouth again.
You see her on campus, you turn around. You see her in this bar, you leave.
You see me anywhere, you keep walking and thank whatever mercy you believe in that she told me to stop. ”
He didn’t answer.
Smartest thing he had done all night.
I stood as rain ran down the side of my face and blood warmed the corner of my mouth. My knuckles throbbed, my ribs burned, and the entire parking lot stared as if waiting to see whether I would go back for more.
I didn’t.
I looked at Maddox’s basketball guys. “Get him home or to a doctor. Discretion is wise when it comes to what happened to him.”
One of them, the forward with dreads who had kept his hands visible the entire time, looked from me to Maddox before nodding once. “It’s cool, man. We saw nothing.”
Another basketball player swallowed, his eyes flicking toward Aura in the doorway before returning to me. “A one-on-one fight is just that.”
The first guy bent to help Maddox sit up. “Shit happens, East. Take it easy.”
It wasn’t true. Half the bar had watched us go through the door, and Hannah’s cameras had probably recorded enough to bury me if Maddox decided to run to the cops. Athlete culture had its own rules, though, and nobody standing in that parking lot planned to volunteer a statement on his behalf.
If consequences came, they would come because Maddox went rat, not because anyone there intended to help him.
Take it easy.
The words almost made me laugh.
Nothing about me was easy right then. Not my breathing. Not my hands. Not the rage still clawing beneath my ribs because Maddox remained conscious and Aura was crying and I couldn’t undo either thing.
Briggs approached me slowly, like he was moving toward a wild animal with a history of biting. “You good?”
I looked at Aura.
She stood beneath the edge of the awning now, Hannah behind her and the phone lowered at her side. Her eyes remained on me, wide, wet, furious, and afraid.
No.
I wasn’t good.
I didn’t know if I had ever been less good in my life.
I walked past Briggs and Rider without answering, leaving Maddox in the dirt where he belonged.