23. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
My gaze drops to the glass, Theo’s accusation sitting strangely against the completely ordinary drink on the bar in front of me.
Darren looks almost as stunned as I feel. “Dude, it’s literally just a drink.”
Theo lets out a laugh completely devoid of any humour. “Then drink it.”
A cold, uneasy feeling starts curling beneath my ribs, my eyes dropping back to the drink.
It looks exactly the same as it did thirty seconds ago. Ice floating near the surface. Condensation running down the side. Nothing that explains why Theo crossed the entire bar to knock it out of my hand.
It’s just a drink.
One I was about to swallow.
The conversations nearest us are starting to die away, people turning towards the tension at the bar, and somewhere behind me I hear Marcus say Theo’s name.
“Stop it,” I bite out, grabbing Theo’s arm and pulling, my fingers digging into his bicep. “What the fuck are you doing?”
He jerks free, making me stumble sideways, and by the time I right myself, his fist is already bunched in the front of Darren’s shirt.
Theo hauls him forward, glasses jumping against the counter.
“Drink it,” he growls, pushing the glass towards Darren.
“Jesus Christ.” Darren’s hand shoots out, knocking the glass farther away as he tries to put space between himself and Theo. “I didn’t put anything in it!”
My eyes follow the glass as Darren shoves it away, unease crawling deeper beneath my skin when his hand immediately retreats with it. For someone insisting there’s nothing wrong with the drink, he seems pretty fucking determined not to drink it himself.
The sight of Darren pushing the glass away drags something back from earlier.
His hand closing over the top when someone squeezed past us, fingers spread across the rim while he moved it out of the way.
I hadn’t thought anything of it. I’d barely even noticed because I’d been too busy watching Theo across the fucking bar.
My stomach turns as I look at the drink again
“Theo, enough,” I manage to snap, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth, everything feeling too much.
Theo freezes, his body rigid as he turns to face me, fury carved into every line of his face, but it’s the look in his eyes I’m not prepared for.
Fear.
My fingers close around his forearm, and this time he doesn’t pull away. My thumb sweeps over the inside of his wrist, feeling the hammering of his pulse.
“Theo,” I say again, his eyes falling to where I’m holding him before lifting back to my face, some of the violence in his grip easing.
Darren tries to wrench himself free, and Theo shrugs me off, his attention snapping straight back to him.
“You’re a piece of shit,” he snarls, slamming Darren against the bar.
I can’t seem to look anywhere except Theo, the rigid line of his shoulders and his fist in Darren’s shirt, the tendons standing in his forearm as he holds him there.
“Enough, Theo,” I snap, and Theo tears his hand away with a low growl, his nostrils flaring.
Darren stumbles backwards, and a breath leaves me in a shaky rush.
Theo’s eyes find mine, not Marcus, or anyone else on the team. Me.
My hand is still half lifted between us, reaching for him, and an ache spreads beneath my ribs, because Theo listened to me.
He barely listens to Marcus when he gets like this. I’ve watched Marcus physically drag him out of fights before, watched Theo fight him every inch of the way.
I’m still staring at him when Darren surges forward.
His fist catches Theo clean across the jaw, the crack of bone against bone cutting through the music as Theo’s head whips sideways. For the briefest moment, everything around us seems to stall with him.
Then a low, breathless laugh slips out as he slowly turns his head back, and my stomach twists because there’s something completely fucking wrong about hearing Theo laugh with blood already spreading across his mouth.
He turns back slowly, working his jaw, his tongue running across his teeth, and spitting blood onto the floor. He wipes the back of his hand over his split lip, smearing red across his mouth as a grin starts to spread.
I’ve seen that face cocky, amused, furious, but never like this. There’s an eager gleam in his eyes now that makes a shiver tear down my spine and turn strangely hot somewhere near the bottom.
I press my thighs together against the heavy pulse that goes through my balls.
“You picked the wrong fucking night,” he spits, the gin disappearing.
Theo grabs Darren by the throat and drives him into the wall.
People surge backwards when Darren swings, and Theo ducks beneath it, catching him around the middle and driving him back hard into the edge of the bar.
Marcus’s clamps a hand around my shoulder, hauling me backwards just as Theo and Darren stumble towards us, my shoes slipping beneath me before I manage to catch myself.
“Get outside,” he barks, his attention already moving past me, tracking Theo and the fight while he pushes me farther towards the edge of the crowd.
“No.”
Marcus stops, looking at me properly then. “What?”
“I’m not leaving,” I shake my head, the certainty in my voice catching even me off guard, but the thought of walking through that door while Theo is still in here makes my chest tighten.
He’s bleeding.
He’s furious.
And this doesn’t feel like one of the stupid fights I’ve watched him get into on the ice. It’s vicious in a way those have never been, and I can’t leave without knowing he’s going to come back from it.
Marcus studies me, his gaze flicking from me to Theo and back again, brows furrowing. “Shit,” he hisses, looking back at Theo. “I really don’t have time for this. Just stay the fuck out of the way, Con,” he snaps, shoving forward.
Marcus hooks a fist into the collar of Theo’s t-shirt and hauls him backwards, boots scraping against the floor with the effort of dragging him away.
Theo fights him on every step. Not the half-hearted resistance I’ve seen him give Marcus a hundred times before either. He tries to wrench himself free and get back to Darren, who’s slumped against the bar, clutching his nose while blood spills between his fingers.
“Cut it out,” Marcus grits, locking an arm across Theo’s chest when he surges forward again.
Theo barely seems to hear him, the green of his eyes feral.
His chest heaves beneath his shirt, pupils blown wide with adrenaline, every muscle in his body straining against Marcus’s hold, and I don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated how big Theo is until now.
How much strength sits beneath the lazy slouch and careless way he carries himself.
How easily he could hurt someone when he stops trying not to.
Marcus grabs his jaw, the skin turning white from the force of it, yanking Theo’s face up to his.
“Settle the fuck down, Theo.”
Theo tears his face out of Marcus’s grip, stumbling back a step before catching himself. The back of his hand drags across his mouth, smearing fresh blood from his split lip over his cheek.
His eyes flick to me, his shoulders dropping. Barely, but enough that Marcus’s grip stops looking like the only thing keeping him in place. His fists loosen at his sides, chest still rising hard as those green eyes stay fixed on mine.
He’s still furious. I can see it in the set of his jaw, the blood on his mouth, the tension still running through every inch of him.
But he stops fighting Marcus.
Because he saw me.
My chest aches with a feeling I don’t have a name for, because there’s no pretending I imagined that. He was ready to tear straight through his best friend to get to Darren until he looked at me.