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Cold mud pressed into my palms. For one sick instant, I was certain there wasn’t room to lift my head.

I flinched down before I could stop myself.

There was nothing above me but sky.

Relief hit before I understood what I was relieved about.

I’d had the wind knocked out of me. Before I could try to stand, I was hauled upright and pulled back against something hard, a massive arm supporting me.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Declan demanded.

My heart started pounding as I realized it was him who’d pulled me up. Him I was leaning against. Him who was speaking.

Was he really going to yell at me for falling in the mud?

I wanted to cry. I shouldn’t have come.

But then he turned his head.

“Do you have a fucking clue who you just knocked over?” he asked, his voice aimed somewhere to our left.

At the guy who’d fallen into me. The guy who’d knocked me down.

“S-s-sorry, man,” the other boy stammered, trying to get his footing.

“This is Hazel Piper. Do you have a fucking clue what the Bishop brothers will do to you if you mess with this girl?”

There it was. Soft. Mush. With a few careless words he’d turned anything I’d managed to make hard against him back again to pulp.

“It was an accident,” the guy insisted.

He’d apologized to Declan, not me.

“I don’t fucking care what it was,” Chief snapped. “Any part of you touches any part of her again, you’ll be sorry. Watch where you’re fucking going.”

“Declan,” I managed, still trying to get a proper breath. “He slipped.”

Chief’s arm stayed firm around me.

The boy looked from him to Ruckus, who had appeared a few feet away, and apparently decided not to continue defending himself.

Ruckus moved aside to let him pass.

For a few suspended moments, all I could hear was the guy scrambling away and my own breathing.

I was panting like I’d run a mile.

Declan didn’t move. He stayed pressed against my back, one hand holding the front of my shoulder, his other arm a hard bar across my hips.

I could feel him, pressed that close, the tops of my shoulders cushioned against his chest.

It was excessive. His reaction, the threats. I knew that.

I also knew that I didn’t want him to move his arms.

Both things could be true, apparently.

“Did you hit your head?” Sadie asked, coming around in front of me. She had retrieved my towel.