Chapter Twenty-Three.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Saturday
Joshua:
Somebody hurt Ruby.
My Ruby had blood on her knuckles and a bruise taking up the entire side of her face.
I have never been the sort who gets into fights. I’ve never even understood the appeal of them. I know plenty of lads who are one joke away from swinging, but I have always walked away.
I let people say whatever shit they want to say, but tonight there’s no warning voice in my head telling me to be sensible and there’s no part of me considering what happens if I find these men and they’re bigger than me, carrying something, or willing to do worse.
They hurt Ruby.
They laid hands on her and bruised her.
The path bends around the pond and Cam shouts my name through the dark, but I keep running until the lamps thin out and the little cut-through between the bushes comes into view.
“Wait for me!” Cam yells. “I wanna beat them up too!”
Any other night I might laugh, or tell him he’s a fucking idiot, but I don’t have it in me now.
I push through the gap between the bushes and come out into the clearing where it happened, finding nothing except churned-up grass, broken twigs and the tree Ruby must have been thrown against. There is no sign of either man.
They have got away.
I’m going to have to walk back to Ruby knowing the men who put their hands on her are somewhere out there laughing about it. What a fucking bitter disappointment I must be to her. I let her down, I rejected her, and now I can’t even protect her.
But then I hear footsteps pounding further ahead and a voice shouting, “Hurry up!”
I veer towards the sound, coming out to a stretch of path and two men moving along it quickly.
One is limping and keeps falling behind, while the other keeps glancing over his shoulder as though he knows somebody is coming after them, and when Cam breaks through the bushes behind me shouting, “There!” both men look back and start running harder.
I go after them, every stride driving the image of Ruby further into my head. The closer I get to the man at the back the more furious I become because I can see blood beneath his nose, dark across his mouth and chin, and I know Ruby did that to him while she was fighting to get away.
Fighting not to be raped.
Fighting not to be hurt.
Fighting for her life.
He hears me gaining on him and looks back, terror flashing across his face before he veers off the path towards the grass, but he is limping too badly to get far.
I catch the back of his jacket and yank him towards me, momentum spinning him around so hard that he nearly falls, and he lashes out with one arm.
His fist glances past my cheek and mine lands clean across his mouth, the impact jarring through my knuckles as his head snaps backwards and blood sprays across the front of his jacket.
“What the fuck?” he shouts, staggering away from me.
I grab him before he can turn and run again, both fists bunching in the front of his jacket as I drive him backwards until his shoulders slam into the trunk of a tree, making sure to smack him hard enough he’s the one who will bruise. “Which one of you touched her?”
His eyes widen, but he doesn’t answer, and something about the fear in his face only makes me angrier because Ruby must have looked frightened too and that clearly didn’t stop him.
I shove him harder against the bark, my forearm pressing across his chest while he claws at my wrists and tries to wrench free. “The girl you attacked,” I spit. “Which one of you put your fucking hands on her?”
“Get off me!”
He swings again and catches me across the jaw, but I feel nothing. I hit him back, driving my fist into the side of his face hard enough that his knees buckle beneath him. I keep hold of his jacket and drag him upright. “You pathetic, low-life piece of shit.”
“Look, man!” The scumbag strangles out. “Those girls wanted it. They led us there.”
“Shut your mouth!”
I hear Cam crashing into the second man, both of them swear and stumble across the grass.
The man in front of me tries to shove me away, getting one hand flat against my chest, but I knock it aside and hit him again, this time across the mouth, skin splitting over my knuckles as his head turns with the force of it.
They wanted it?
They fucking wanted it?
That’s this piece of shit’s story?
He spits blood onto the grass and tries to turn his face away from me. “I’m telling you, mate, they were both up for it until that psycho bitch started kicking off.”
My grip tightens so hard the fabric bunches into my palms. “That psycho bitch is called Ruby. And you don’t get to speak about her.
” I drive my fist into his ribs and feel him fold around the impact, dragging in a broken breath as I keep one hand twisted into his jacket to stop him dropping completely.
There is something viciously satisfying about the way his body gives under mine, and I hate that part of myself almost as much as I need it right now.
“I barely touched her!”
That is the wrong fucking thing to say.
My fist catches him across the mouth again and pain finally starts to register in my hand, sharp and hot through the split skin over my knuckles. “You barely touched her?” I repeat, dragging him closer until we’re almost chest to chest. “She was covered in marks.”
He flinches when I raise my hand again, the prick understands fear just fine when it’s him who is being attacked.
“Stay the fuck down!” Cam shouts, followed by a loud thud of knuckles meeting flesh.
Sirens pierce the air and the man stops fighting, looking towards the path, finally realising he’s fucked.
“You hear that?” I taunt, shoving him back against the tree when he tries to twist away. “That’s for you.”
“Mate, come on. It was a little game that got out of hand. Can’t you forget it and let me go?”
I laugh once, bitter and disbelieving. “Not nice when someone decides you’re not going anywhere, is it?”
His face twists. “You don’t know what happened.”
“I know Ruby never would have wandered off with a creep like you.”
“That bitch was crazy.”
“Call her crazy or a bitch again. I fucking dare you.”
The sirens get louder and I can see blue light flickering through the trees, and my grip loosens a fraction.
Ruby is back there with Oscar having to talk to strangers about what happened while I’m out here making things worse.
She asked me not to come after them. I heard her shouting my name as I ran and ignored her anyway, and now the police are here, my knuckles are split open and I’ve got a man pinned against a tree.
Cam drags the other guy towards me, one fist twisted into the back of his jacket while the bloke swears and tries to wrench free. He takes one look at me, then at the blood across my hand, and jerks his chin back towards The Shed. “We need to get them over there.”
I nod and shove the one I’m holding away from the tree, catching his arm before he can bolt, wrenching it behind his back until he folds forwards with a curse.
“Walk,” I bark at him.
“Fuck off.” He tries to slam his feet into the ground, so I drive him forwards hard enough that he has to move, falling into step beside Cam as we force both towards The Shed.
I need to get back to Ruby, and the closer we get to The Shed, the more the noise around us starts to build.
The man in front of me starts dragging his feet the second the entrance comes into view, twisting his wrist against my grip and muttering that I’m hurting him, which is rich enough that I nearly laugh, but I’m past caring what comes out of his mouth.
Someone near the entrance shouts, “That’s them!” and the girl Ruby helped recoils into the person holding her, crying harder as soon as she sees the men coming back.
My attention snags on Ruby with Oscar, she is pressed against him with one hand twisted in his shirt, shoulders shaking while he keeps an arm around her and his head bent close to hers.
I wanted to hurt these men. I wanted them frightened and bleeding and helpless in the same way they made her feel, but dragging them back doesn’t fix a fucking thing.
Ruby is crying and I left her there to go after them.
Her head lifts as the crowd gets louder and her eyes find mine, travelling down to the man I’m holding before dropping to my hands. I follow her gaze and notice the blood and split skin across my knuckles.
Two police officers come towards us and one tells me to let the man go, but the prick starts shouting before I even move, saying I attacked him and chased him down, and I almost lose my temper all over again. The prick thinks he’s the victim here?
“Release him,” the officer commands me.
I do as I’m told and throw him towards the officer, not watching what they do with him and turning towards Ruby.
She’s out of Oscar’s hold and marching towards me. Her eye is swollen almost half shut, the bruising spreading from beneath it in thick purple and blue patches across her cheekbone and down towards her jaw, with angry red bursting through the white of her eye and a raw scrape in the middle of it.
It looks fucking brutal beneath the lights outside The Shed, far worse than it did when I first came out and saw her from a distance, and the sight of it makes my jaw clamp so hard pain shoots through my teeth.
Somebody did that to her.
Somebody put enough force behind their body to leave half of Ruby’s face looking like this, and even after what I just did to him, even with blood drying across my knuckles and my hand throbbing every time I flex my fingers, it doesn’t feel remotely close to what he deserved.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” she demands when she reaches me, voice shredded from crying as she shoves both palms into my chest. “I told you not to go and you just fucking ran off anyway.”
“Ruby,” I start, not knowing how to finish. She needed me and I ran off but those creeps had to be caught too.