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And then I heard a noise.
It was a woman, yelling.
More specifically, she was yelling, “Get the fuck away from me!”
Phoebe.
Fuck, it was too late to stop the process I’d set in motion. I shoved my cock in my jeans, hastily zipping them up and closing my belt buckle. As I raced out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind me, I felt a wave of undiluted pleasure roll over me.
I had orgasmed in my underwear.
There was no time to think about the discomfort of the sticky substance oozing down my thighs. Phoebe was in trouble. At least I’m wearing dark jeans, I thought with not a little humiliation.
I rounded the corner, shouting as I ran, “Phoebe, what’s wrong?”
And then I entered the clearing of the garage, and saw red.
Big Bob had cornered Phoebe. He was standing too close to her and had a strand of her hair in his hands, lifting it to his nose. She was back in her lavender dress and had her arms up, trying to push him away. Henry was in the other corner, scared but not crying, clearly unable to process what was going on.
“You get away from her right now,” I said in a voice so low I wondered if it really belonged to me.
Big Bob’s splotchy face turned to mine, his hands still clamped around Phoebe’s hair. “We’re just having a little fun, you ol’ spoilsport. Besides, she’s not your girl.”
That’s right about when I lunged across the concrete, hurtling through the air on a collision course with Big Bob. He released Phoebe and she spun away, hurt and terrified.
My body hit Big Bob’s, and we both fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs and strength. Big Bob was no match for me. I was twenty-seven, he was in his fifties and ate little besides bacon and steak and hadn’t done a decent day’s work in the entire time I was there. Within mere seconds, I’d rolled him onto his stomach, pressed his face in the ground and straddled his back, grabbing his two wrists in my fingers and effectively creating human handcuffs.
Big Bob under control, I swiveled my head to Phoebe. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she murmured, though she was still visibly shaking.
I nodded, then leaned down to Big Bob’s ear.
“If you ever again,” I whispered, “try to touch her, or any woman, without their permission, I promise you it’ll be the last move you ever make.”
He chuckled, but because of my weight on his back, it came out more as a gasp.
“You really want your boy to see you acting like this?” he asked.
What a snake. The worst part is that he was right — I didn’t want Henry to think that problems were solved with violence, that the clash of a fist was more powerful than the nimbleness of the word.
But I wanted to make Big Bob bleed. I wanted to twist his arm and leave his face purple and black. I wanted… I wanted revenge.
That’s not like you, a voice in my head said. It wasn’t my familiar inner voice. It was her voice.
And she was right, all these years later. Revenge was her trademark.
I can’t do this, I realized, because then Henry would have two parents who were fixated on getting their way no matter what. There can only be so much crazy in one family. Besides, Henry had seen enough violence. He didn’t deserve to witness even a drop more.
“All right,” I said carefully into Big Bob’s ear, not wanting to let him know that he’d got to me. “I’m gonna get off you, but know that it’s only because my son is standing in this room. Were he not here, you’d be dead. Is that clear?”
Big Bob nodded. This time, he didn’t make a joke. My voice broached no possibility for humor. This was real fucking serious.
In one swift move, I extricated myself from Big Bob’s limbs and stood up. In a gentleman’s match, you offer your hand to the bested foe to help him rise to his feet. Big Bob was no gentleman. I moved to Phoebe as he struggled in the background, trying to find his footing, wheezing and moving like a man twenty years older.
“I’m fine, Carter, really,” she insisted as I closed in.
I wanted to take her in my arms and promise that I’d never let anything like that happen again. If I hadn’t been so busy jacking off, I thought with disgust, she would never have been put through this ordeal.
Once again, calamity was my fault. I was irresponsible, selfish — every word in the book. I was the one who deserved to be flattened on the ground and pummeled. I was the failure.
As if reading my mind, Phoebe begged, “Please don’t beat yourself up about it. You did everything you could. This isn’t your fault, it’s his.”
