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Jordan’s hand slaps my chest hard enough to shock me. “What the fuck?”
“No, you what the fuck?” At any other moment I might be amused. Her cheeks get a little red from using that word, and Brooks’s eyes widen while he looks at her, like he hasn’t ever heard it pass through her lips before. “You don’t care if she’s okay? That she’s probably devastated and hurting and ashamed? You just let her leave?”
My heart…Jesus I didn’t know it could take a beating like this and still continue to pump. Clenching my fists, I speak through my teeth. “It doesn’t fucking matter what I want. She ran away from me—and I don’t blame her.” My chest feels like it’s going to explode, the breath backing up so it’s hard to breathe. “Fuck fuck fuck!” I roar, ripping my hands through my hair and looking for something—anything—to punch. “Do you know what it was like hearing that story? When I can’t do or say anything while she sits there and tells some fucking stranger that she was violated? That no one believed her? That no one helped her?”
Now I’m looking at Brooklyn, waiting for him to fess up, for him to say he’s fucking sorry—but he doesn’t. He just stares back at me. And then, finally, he nods. “Yeah, I do.”
“We all do,” Jordan says, and it breaks me.
“I didn’t,” I snap, whirling on her. Leaning down, I get into her face, unsurprised when Brooks’s hand connects with my shoulder and shoves me back. I stumble, awkward in this goddamned cast, but I stand straight and stare at Brooks, with his tree-trunk arms crossed over his massive chest. I regret scaring Jordan, but I don’t regret that sight. Anger is consuming me; I can’t breathe without tasting it, without tasting my need for blood.
Yelling at my boy’s girl? That’s one way to get my thirst for violence quenched.
“I’m going to see Nala.” Just her name makes me flinch, and I think I see Jordan’s eyes soften before she turns and looks at Brooklyn. He leans down, cupping her jaw to kiss her—his lips trailing to her ear to whisper something. My fists clench again because fuck do I envy them. I want to hold Nala, to tell her I love her, that I can’t stop loving her, and I’d do anything to protect her, but I can’t because those words are weak.
I didn’t protect her; I hurt her. I walked away, too fucking scared to somehow make her see that I loved her, and that I would wait for the right time, and then she…no. I can’t say it again.
Jordan doesn’t look my way when she walks out. When Brooks turns to me, I wait for the punishing blow—even ache for it in a weird, sadistic way. If he punches me, I can focus on that, on the pain it elicits, on the fight, on anything other than Nala and what happened to her and this goddamn helplessness that’s eating me up.
Sensing my need, or maybe just driven by his own need to defend his girl from dickheads like me, Brooks’s fists clench, his forearms popping with veins. He’s a big fucker, heavy with muscle that’s as much from genetics and heredity as it is from working out. I never walk away, though. Ever.
The first punch has never killed me, that’s what my childhood taught me. If you can withstand the first punch, you can either fight back and land some of your own, or you can pass out and survive the rest. It’s been a long time since I had to pass out to survive.
“Jesus Christ, Mal, I can actually see you begging me for a fight.”
“I yelled at Jordan.” It’s a challenge—one I throw out with a hint of desperation because if he backs down now, my anger will leave, and all that will be left is this gaping hole of pain and regret and guilt.
His jaw clenches. “Yeah, and if this were any other time, I’d fucking pound you, but it’s not…just don’t fucking do it again.”
Those words…the exact I spoke to him after he took a pot-shot at Nala last year when Ashton died, said something that didn’t make sense then, but now…
“How could you not tell me?” I hate that my voice is raw, scratchy, that the anger is quickly disappearing now that my family is in front of me, the guy who knows how much it takes to be strong, and all I can feel is hurt. Bone deep, affecting my whole being, hurt.
“Jesus, Brooklyn, how could you not fucking tell me? My girl…Jesus, my heart. She washurtand you didn’t fucking tell me.”
He shakes his head, scrubbing his hands over his face. His hair is loose and he scrapes his hands through it, the heavy stands falling nearly to his shoulders when he lets them go. Then he sits on the edge of the couch, legs spread, elbows resting on his knees, and I see it—exactly what it must have been like to keep this secret, to not be able to save her, or make it better, when he was the one of us left home in charge.
And then I remember what was going on with Ashton at the same time, the hospitalizations, the understanding about just how sick she was, how sick she stayed.
Fuck.
Before I speak, there’s a light slam on the door, and then it opens and Jacks walks through, a white T-shirt over black shorts, a black cap with my brand on it shielding his face.
He pauses when he sees us, on the balls of his feet while he assesses. Jacks…he’s not like me and Brooks. He’s a watcher, a fixer, a planner. He doesn’t just explode, not even when his world is falling apart around him. Right now, I can see his wheels turning, wondering how he can fix this.
But like Nala said, no one can fix this.
“I need answers,” I say to the room at large. “I don’t fucking care who gives them to me, but I can’t go home to Nala until I have them. She won’t talk to me—doesn’t think I can love her if I know.”
That cuts me, right down to the bone and forces me into the chair next to the couch, my position nearly the same as Brooks’s with my elbows on my knees, my hands in my hair.
“Do you really need them?”
I spare Hunter a look, hating that a part of me wants to sayno, and just go home to Nala. To pick her up and hold her, to tell her I’m here and I’m never leaving her unprotected again. But it’s not enough—not when the rage and pain inside of me is eating at me until all I can think of is making someone pay. Whoever, wherever, however long it takes, someone will pay for hurting my girl.
“When Isa was hurt last year, did you just ignore the reason? Or did you make certain that you found out every fucking detail, right down to what that asshole did and said when he was alone with her, so you could exact your revenge the minute he gets out of jail?”
Hunter’s face darkens, and I see the recognition for what I’m asking in his eyes. These women…when they become ours, there is no length we won’t go to for them, whether or not they understand. It’s not a matter of needing answers to love them, it’s because we love them, so much and so hard, that we can’t imagine letting anyone get away with anything. It’s wrong; it’s barbaric, but it’s us. We protect who we love, no matter what the cost.
