Chapter 17 #2
My shoulders are tight. Every part of me feels braced for impact, which is fucking stupid because I am only walking to an apartment.
Only knocking on a door and standing in front of the woman who can gut me with one look and probably will, because Skylar has always had excellent aim at my weak spots.
I blow out a slow breath and glance ahead.
That is when I see her.
Skylar.
She is half a block ahead, standing on the sidewalk, holding two grocery bags awkwardly in her arms.
For a second, my brain doesn’t catch up.
It sees her first.
Then it sees everything else.
The way her body is angled back from the man in front of her. The way one of the bags has slipped from her grip and spilled across the pavement. The flowers near her feet, bright yet crushed. An apple rolling toward the road. A tin on its side, dented to shit.
Then I see his hand. Some asshole has his fingers wrapped around her arm.
Everything in me goes still. That usually comes right before every bad decision I have ever made. The decisions line up behind my ribs, crack their knuckles, and wait for permission.
Skylar’s face is pale and tight, her mouth pressed flat.
The traffic fades.
The people disappear.
All I see is his hand on her and her pale face.
My jaw locks so hard pain cuts through my teeth.
I have no idea who he is, but I fucking know this. He has about three seconds to let go of her before every promise I made to keep my fists to myself starts looking negotiable.
I cover the distance in seconds. I move faster than I have in a long time, my body making the decision before my brain gets a vote. There is no thought. No pause. No neat little moment to stop, consider the consequences, and choose to be the better man.
The better man is hanging on by a fucking thread.
I reach him before the fucker sees me coming.
My hand closes around the front of his shirt and I shove him back hard enough to break his grip on Skylar’s arm. The second she’s free, I step between them. I put my body in front of hers like a protective wall.
My hand closes around his throat. He barely gets a sound out before I drive him back into the building’s brick wall. The impact rips through the street, cutting clean through the traffic noise and the distant hum of people going about their perfectly normal fucking lives.
His head snaps back against the wall and my fingers tighten. Not enough to crush. Not yet. Just enough for him to understand I have done this before and found it considerably less difficult than most people would believe.
His eyes go wide and his hands fly up, grabbing at my wrist as if that is going to make a single difference. As if his soft little fingers are going to move me when I have rage sitting heavy in my bones and Skylar standing behind me with her groceries spilled across the pavement.
He looks up at me and whatever he sees on my face makes the color drain from his.
Good.
For one second, it would be so easy. That is the sickest part.
It would be so easy to forget the street, the people moving past. I could tighten my grip, watch the panic build behind his eyes, and make him understand, in the oldest and ugliest language I know, exactly what happens when a man puts his hands on someone who doesn’t belong to him.
My pulse pounds in my ears. My knuckles itch with that old, familiar pull, the muscle memory of a body that spent years being pointed at things that deserved to be hit and being told to go ahead.
This prick deserves to be hit.
His throat moves beneath my palm as he tries to swallow.
“Zane.”
Skylar’s voice comes from behind me. I hear it. I register it and tuck it away somewhere safe in my head . But my eyes never leave the man in front of me.
“Who the fuck are you?” I ask, my voice coming out flat. It’s too calm for the violence coiled behind my ribs.
He makes a sound. Something caught between a choke and a protest. His hands work at my wrist, fingers digging in, trying to pry me loose with the strength of a man who has spent time in a gym.
Controlled strength. Mirror strength. The kind that works when everything has a number, a routine, a clean little place to put your hands.
This is not that. There is no number for this.
There is no routine for being pinned to a brick wall by a man who grew up learning that survival was the only metric that mattered and who has the scar tissue to prove it.
“Zane,” Skylar says, closer this time. “Zane, look at me.”
I don’t look at her.
Not while this piece of shit’s chest is heaving, his eyes are wide, and he is finally starting to understand that whatever power he thought he had over her ended the second I turned that corner.
“You put your fucking hand on her again,” I say, leaning in close enough that he has no choice but to hear every word, “and I will make sure it is the last thing you ever fucking do.”
“Zane.”
Then Skylar’s hand is on me. Her fingers curl around my forearm, light against the force of my grip, but I feel it everywhere.
I feel it the way I always feel her. Instantly.
Deeply. Like my body has been trained to know her before my head can do a damn thing about it.
My nervous system still treats her touch as the only instruction that matters.
“I’m okay,” she says.
Hearing her say that causes me to turn my gaze towards her. And fuck, the first second I see her face guts me because I see the fear in her eyes.
Not fear of him.
Fear of me.
It’s quick. Buried beneath shock and the stubborn set of her mouth, but I recognize it. I have seen it before, in that alley when everything went to shit. When three assholes put their hands on her and I stopped being a person with choices and became a weapon with a heartbeat.
That day cost me years. It cost her even more. And now she is looking at me as if some part of her has been dragged right back there.
My grip loosens before I decide to let go, because I can’t survive Skylar looking at me like she’s scared of what I might do next.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” the asshole against the brick wall manages, now that my grip has eased by half an inch and he has just found his courage.
I let him go.
Not because he deserves the air I give him back. I let him go because, once again, I have managed to show up in her life with murder in my head and violence in my hands.
He drops hard, coughing, one hand flying to his throat as he bends forward, gasping for air.
I step back.
The space doesn’t feel like a victory. It’s more like failure, because I promised myself I would never be that man in front of her again.
I stood in that workshop and meant it, and it took only one corner and one wrong pair of hands on her arm for every promise I made to dissolve into the same old ugly instinct.
Same fists. Same fury. Same fucking mistake, dressed as protection.
He stays bent over for a second, coughing hard into the pavement, one hand clamped around his throat as if I have left my fingers there.
Good. I hope he feels them for days.
The prick straightens slowly, his face flushed and eyes watering, as he pulls himself back together. His gaze flicks from me to Skylar, then back again before something ugly twists across his mouth.
“So that’s it?” he says, voice rough from my hand. “You’ve been playing the broken little victim while fucking this asshole?”
Skylar goes still beside me.
“Jesus, Skylar,” he says, rubbing his hand over the front of his throat as if I have wronged him personally. “You’ve been a slut fucking this asshole and still had the nerve to act like I was the problem?”
My fist curls.
Yeah, I’m going back to prison because I’m going to kill this fucker.
One punch. That is all it would take. One clean hit to that fucking smug mouth, and I could put him on the ground right here on this pavement, in front of whoever wants to watch.
Split his lip. Crack his teeth. Make him swallow every word he just spat at Skylar and choke on the ones still sitting in his throat.
My body wants it. My bones want it. The old version of me is already stepping forward, already calculating the distance, the angle, and the damage. Already entirely certain it would be worth whatever came after.
He is close enough. My shoulder shifts.
Skylar’s fingers clench around my arm.
That small, specific pressure drags me back harder than anything else on this street could have. Just her fingers on my forearm and the whole ugly momentum of the last thirty seconds stops dead in its tracks.
I remember prison walls. Metal doors. The sound of years closing behind me because I didn’t know how to stop once I had started.
I know how to stop. I just have to choose it.
I unclench my fist slowly.
I glance at Skylar. She is holding only one bag now. The other is somewhere around my feet, split open like a crime scene nobody gives a shit about. I didn’t even hear it drop.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I say, turning back to the asshole, my voice low and deadly serious. “Before I change my fucking mind.”
For one stupid second, I think he might argue.
I almost want him to. That is the worst fucking part of it, standing here with my fist unclenched, my jaw aching, and every part of me still wound tight, almost hoping he gives me the excuse.
But he must see it on my face, because whatever he planned to say dies somewhere behind his teeth. He swallows it and says nothing—the smartest thing he has done since I turned that corner.
He steps back, still rubbing his throat. His eyes slide to Skylar, something ugly in them, that last petty grab for power from a man who has run out of every other option.
I take half a step without thinking.
His gaze drops and then he turns and walks away. Not quickly enough for my liking, but away is away, and right now that is the only thing keeping my fists glued to my sides.
I watch him go as Skylar releases my arm. I feel the loss of her fingers immediately.