Keep your fucking head, Coop.
Ha. As if I ever had any control when it came to her.
My helmet sat discarded on the kerb as I shoved through the crowded sidewalk and into the derelict club. I’d never been here before, but I’d heard the rumours Jay was referring to. The nefarious partygoers who frequented shit holes like this and I couldn’t fucking fathom how Seb of all people had thought the girls coming here was okay, especially when he was in the industry and knew how bad some of them were.
I scanned the place quickly. The ground floor was flooded with bodies dancing and grinding to the house music, intercepted only by the pulsing strobe lights flickering like heartbeats. Isearched every face until I spotted flailing arms and a mass of blonde hair whipping wildly, a beacon in the chaos.
Arna.
I barrelled through the sweaty, suffocating crowd, pushing past anyone who dared to stand in my way, fuelled by a seething anger that drowned out their protests. When I finally pushed through the last group of people keeping me from the girls, the scene before me was like nothing I could have imagined.
Marlee was evidently wasted, giggling as she and Felicity, also far beyond her limit if her stumbling was anything to go by, were holding a furious Arna. Arns was screaming, pointing over their shoulders, threatening death on someone, although her slurring made it difficult to be sure. Winter was pressed against the wall behind them, a phone glued to her ear while she looked on in wide-eyed horror. My gaze snapped around searchingly, desperate to locate the one woman I hadn’t yet spotted, when a tumble of deep brown curls pulled me forward.
Even hunched over, arms locked tight around her waist, I knew it was her.
I was frozen to the spot. My heart hammered against my chest, a relentless ringing in my ears, born straight from my fury.
“Cooper!” Marlee shouted and Eva’s head shot up, her gaze affixing to mine immediately.
I assessed every inch of her.
Red-rimmed eyes, cheeks swollen and wet from the stream of tears which were still falling down her face. Her sagging shoulders were the embodiment of helplessness, and that helplessness scared me more than anything. My body reached for her as I took a step, pausing only as her fear swept through me and I lost any semblance of reason.
Those large eyes brimming with pain was a trigger. Something which sent me over the edge countless times before – my urge to fight deep, eclipsed only by a primal instinct to shelter her from whatever pain she was feeling. But I didn’t have any right. And itwas that realisation and Arna’s incessant yelling which broke my trance, directing my attention to the right.
Three men stood close by talking to a security guard who I recognised as one who occasionally worked at Nexus. The three men periodically shot glances over their shoulders at the girls. An occasional smug smile, a goading wink, before one of them grinned sadistically, tauntingly pursing his lips into a kiss. I tracked his line of sight, easily realising his target who was no longer sitting. Evangeline stood to the side of the girls, her bare shoulders pushed back, her chin lifted with false bravado.
My head snapped back to the trio. Without meaning to, I locked in on one of them. The taller of the three, sweat slicked and working his jaw like he was chewing his own nerves. He scanned the crowd predatorily, sniffing for something or someone, until his focus honed in on Eva. I noticed the second he’d made his decision, his pupils blown wide, his step around the security guard coiled.
“Ready for that dance, bitch?”
A step closer toher.
The wall of heat blurred my vision as my feet moved involuntarily, my ears ringing with a pitch which silenced anything and everything in my wake.
I was in front of him in less than four strides and if the anger wasn’t coursing through my blood, I would have enjoyed the uncertainty which crossed his face when he finally noticed me. The adrenaline which pulsed in my hands was a welcomed old friend and I opened and closed my fists in anticipation.
Nothing else mattered. Only him and I.
This piece of shit who had the nerve to taunt Evangeline, and my money was on the fact he was also the one who couldn’t control his hands earlier too.
His mouth moved, words I couldn’t hear over my own pulse beating in my ears.
I was beyond all reason.
Any coherence dissipated the second I saw the pained expression on her face. The plea in her eyes.
This mother fucker hurt my family.
He hurt Evy.
My last clear thought was the despondency she’d betrayed in the slump of her body. And it was that which ignited the fuse within as I leant back and smashed my head into his nose.
Consequently, causing all hell to break loose.
CHAPTER 3
Eva
