Page 46 of Chasing the Other Woman

I blink, thrown off. “Hey.”

He leans forward. Too close. Tony has always had a casual disregard for personal space that I previously wrote off as harmless bravado.

“We need to talk,” he says under his breath.

“About what?”

“Not in here.” His eyes flick toward Brooks, then dart back to me. “Come out to the lot with me.”

“No.”

His easy smile fractures. “Just for two minutes, Sam.”

“I said no, Tony.”

He reaches out and clamps his hand around my wrist.

Every muscle in my body locks.

“Tony,” I say, the warning razor-sharp. “Take your hand off me.”

His grip tightens instead of letting go. “Sam, please. You don’t understand what went down⁠—”

I wrench backward. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

A chair screeches violently against the floorboards behind me.

Brooks is already there.

One second Tony’s fingers are locked around my arm; the next, Brooks has stepped directly between us, tall and menacing, towering over both myself and Tony.

“She told you no,” Brooks rasps.

Tony stumbles back hard into a table as Brooks shoves him clear of me. “Back off, Brooks! I just need to talk to her⁠—”

“Touch her again and see what’s left of you.”

The room detonates.

Tony throws a right hook.

Brooks takes the blow to the jaw, barely flinches, and counters with a vicious right cross that sends Tony crashing into the bar stools. Someone screams. Glass shatters. Petra bellows both their names with murder in her voice as Hershel charges across the room, cursing loud enough to rattle the neon signs.

“Enough!” Hershel roars, grabbing Brooks by the jacket collar and shoving him back.

Tony drags the back of his hand across a bloody mouth, breathing heavily from the floor. Brooks’s lip is split and swelling, but his eyes never leave mine, scanning me in a frantic, desperate sweep.

Luci bursts out of the restroom, a wet towel pressed against her shirt. “Brooks!”

She rushes toward him, hands reaching up for his face. “Are you okay? Let me see⁠—”

Brooks catches both of her wrists in midair and shoves them firmly down, stepping back out of her reach. “Don’t touch me.”

The entire bar goes dead quiet, until the only sound left is the low thrum of the exterior generator.

Brooks turns his back on Luci without another word and steps toward me.

“Did he hurt you?” his voice drops, rough and tight.