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“Torin!” I cried, but he only did it again, Jerald’s head cracking sickeningly with the force my brother drove his forehead into the counter. He pulled him up and I saw a bright flash of blood on the other man’s face before Torin drove him down again.
This time I heard a shatter as Torin broke his nose.
“Stop!” I cried, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
My brother let him go, and Jerald staggered back, the coffees all falling on the floor.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Torin said, big set of knuckles curling over the counter. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”
It was the way he said it that frightened me. I knew it wasn’t an empty threat.
My dumbass brother was going to get himself thrown back in jail!
I threw my arms around Torin, feeling his hard belly and the taut lines of muscle.
“Stop!” I ordered fiercely, even though I knew I couldn’t really hold him.
But he did stop.
“I’m going to call the police,” Jerald whined, feeling his broken nose. “This guy’s a psycho and look at all these witnesses.”
“I’m not backing you up,” old Mr. Martin, one of my regulars, interrupted. “I didn’t see shit and you’re an asshole.”
Jerald looked around to see the unsympathetic coffee shop patrons, all well-used to his general dickhead behavior, glaring unsympathetically at him. He turned and left, but I worried that this wasn’t over.
An alarm rung, and my brother went back to the ovens to check on it. I felt a sort of furious rage at his stupidity and as soon as I had soothed the customers, all of them highly excited by what had happened, I headed back.
“Is your brother available?” one woman asked, her face flushed slightly pink.
Was he available?
I remembered my engagement ring he had tucked in his pocket.
No. He hadn’t changed at all. He was not available for anyone else. Not as long as he regarded me as his personal possession.
“Torin!” I hissed angrily when I walked up to him. “You can’t do stuff like that! They’ll send you back to jail!”
“He insulted you, Lele,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice, and I didn’t even try to suppress my shriek of rage.
“You are not going back to jail on my watch! You better tell me the rules for that halfway house.”
“Yes, sister,” he said with deceptive mildness, pulling a piece of paper out of his back pocket and handing it to me.
I scanned it hastily. Curfew every night. Requirements to meet with his parole officer. All day meetings tomorrow and for the next week about Reintegrating Back into Society.
“You’re going to do all this shit, Torin,” I said.
“If you say so,” he replied, leaning closer so that both his hands were on the counter on either side of me, and I saw his harsh mouth curve up almost into a smile.
I felt a prickly, uneasy heat at his proximity, but I was mollified by his easy acquiescence, so I said, “Now give me my engagement ring back.”
“No, sister,” he said. “Your engagement is over now.”
I grabbed his shirt, twisting it in my hand to try to yank him down to my eye level so he could see my glare. “Torin, I’m not 16 anymore! You can’t just beat up everyone who wants to ask me out.”
I realized belatedly that I was too close when he pulled me against him, and I fell into his stomach as he caught me with hard hands.
“Want to bet?” he growled in my ear, and I felt a panicky heat blossom in my chest.
