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 understandI 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 toput 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.
