“Don’t defile me,” he whimpered.
“Jesus, I’m not a monster,” I breathed. “Are you okay?”
I meant it more in a “do you need therapy” way, but he thought I meant physically overall. “I’ve had better days.”
“Can it, asshole,” I growled, sealing his wrists in one of my fists while I tried to open the tape with my teeth.
But in my tape struggle, he leapt to his feet and went for the absolute gutter of a knife on the counter, brandishing it at me.
Fuck.
I had my little pocketknife, but that wasn’t going to do me much good. Bryce might kill me.
Bryce, who betrayed Aspen, Hazel, and Mara.
Bryce, who bailed on his family.
I wasn’t going down without a fight.
Adrenaline surged, and all I could see was red.
It was fucking on.
Bryce lunged at my face with the knife. I grabbed his wrists before it hit me, but we arm wrestled back and forth until the knife sliced my cheek.
In his surprise, I grabbed the knife from him, whirled him around and sealed his back to my front with the knife at his throat.
“How the tables have turned, eh?” I said.
But Bryce wasn’t done.
He reached up to try and get control of the knife, trying to plunge it into my stomach behind his back.
This fucker was trying to kill me. Back and forth, back and forth, the weird angle made defending myself harder and harder.
Until he let go at the wrong moment and I sank the knife into his outer thigh.
Holy shit. Holy shit. I stabbed a guy. I stabbed him in the leg.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
He screamed like the world was ending.
I felt high. I felt scared. I felt like I could piss myself.
I went too far.
I stabbed a guy.
I stabbed my wife’s ex-husband.
But in the moment, I wasn’t all that sorry. This fucker had been trying to kill me and at worst, I landed him stitches and crutches. I was trying to survive, and he was lucky I hadn’t snapped his neck the first time I got him pinned.
If I didn’t think it would hurt Aspen that his dad died, I’d have considered killing him.
Or not, because I wasn’t a murderer. I was just a guy who had accidentally stabbed a guy who was trying to kill me because I searched him out to rough him up.
Okay, yeah, it was pretty bad.
