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ADAM
What the actual fuck?
Adam stalked to the subway, head down, trying not to look at the other families streaming out of Olivia’s school after the show.
He didn’t trust himself.
His rage, when it came like this, was like a grenade, the pin already pulled, his unsteady finger the only thing preventing it from blowing. All it would take is a glance his way, an unintentional jostle by one of the parents, distracted and trying to get their kids through the crowd, and Adam would explode.
That couldn’t happen. He was an officer of the law — like his father, like his grandfather — but times had changed. The people of New York no longer looked at the uniform with reverence. Now there was something else in their eyes, a kind of wariness that made Adam sick to his stomach, that turned up the heat on the anger that simmered under his skin, even when he was able to put a lid on it, pretend it wasn’t there.
They had no idea what Adam and his fellow officers went through — what they risked, what they sacrificed — to keep the city safe.
No fucking idea.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and made his way down the subway steps, Ruby’s face swimming in his mind. She was as beautiful as ever, even though she didn’t know it, and he remembered a time when she looked up at him with trust, her face shining with love.
No one had ever looked at him like that before, like all the ugliness inside of him didn’t exist.
Like it never had.
It hadn’t lasted long. He’d almost started to believe he’d changed, that the rage-filled version of himself that had racked up an assault charge by the time he was seventeen (squashed by his father) and been issued two warnings by the department (the last requiring him to attend fucking anger remediation like some teenager being sent to detention) had finally vacated his mind and body.
But as soon as he and Ruby were married, his mask had started to slip. It might have been a comment she made when she was annoyed or the way she loaded the dishwasher or her rejection in bed when she was tired.
There was no rhyme or reason to the lighting of the kindling of his anger. It burst to life without warning, and they’d only been married two months the first time he hit her.
After that his possession of her had only seemed more urgent. He’d sent her back to change when she wore revealing clothes, wanting to kill any man who looked at her, wanting to kill her for letting them look. He’d sulked when she wanted to go out with her sister, and when sulking didn’t work, he picked a fight so she was too upset to go.
After it was over, when her face was tear-stained (or bruised), he’d be able to recognize what he’d done, that he was not a good man. He’d apologize and console, buy her gifts they couldn’t afford, make dinner or order out.
That never lasted either. It was just a reset on the ticking clock of his inevitable fury.
He’d watched her love for him — her trust — erode like sand on the beach as the tide washed out, had watched it diminish day by day, his attempts at preventing it as futile as standing on the shoreline, trying to hold on to the sand.
Now she hated him.
He stood on the subway platform to wait and wished he was wearing his uniform. Better the wariness on the faces of the people around him than their dismissal. In street clothes, he was just another New Yorker.
Another nobody.
Ruby thought it was over, that the divorce issued by the courts meant something in the face of his love for her, but he knew better. He was going to get her back, had always planned on getting her back.
And that motherfucker in the alley had only made things harder for him.
He replayed the moment for the hundredth time since it had happened. Had there been something familiar about the man?
He’d been wearing a perfectly tailored suit, had reeked of money and the kind of privilege Adam would never be able to give Ruby and Olivia.
The subway barreled down the tracks and came to a squealing stop at the platform.
The doors slid open and Adam stepped aside and waited as passengers exited.
He called up the memory of the other man’s face. He was… someone.
A celebrity? A famous business person?
No, those didn’t feel right.
