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.
