“I know you’re protecting me,” I managed, and my voice came out too small for how big my feelings were. “But you can’t protect me by hurting me.”
He closed his eyes like that sentence punched him.
“I know,” he whispered. “I know, and I’m sorry.
His hands lifted to my face, thumbs gentle against my cheeks, like he was trying to soothe the part of me that had just flinched away from him. He kissed my forehead with a slow, reverent kiss that usually made me feel cherished.
This time, it just made my chest ache. Because love had never scared me with him before.
Elias stepped in, voice firm and brotherly, pulling Roman’s attention the way you pulled a man off a ledge. “You got that look in your eye like you finna do something dumb. I get it. I do. That’s your woman. Your heartbeat in human form. Your peace.” Roman didn’t deny it, and that silence said everything. Elias kept going. “But peace doesn’t survive if you scorch it yourself. We handle this the right way. Get him on paper. He already lost his job, which means he has time now. Too much time. We goto the station. We file the report. We get the restraining order. Then we move smart.”
He patted Roman’s back, steady as a rail. Jonay met my eyes, soft and knowing. In the distance, the twins and Bryce stayed untouched by the ugliness—Reagan loud, Reece calm, Bryce a wall.
Roman wrapped an arm around my waist and guided me forward, leaving no room for Henderson to get close again. We moved toward the exit, the parking lot, whatever came next.
Ahmad’s voice rang out behind us, loud and irritated and familiar. “I can never go nowhere with y’all heathens and have peace. I’m always swinging on somebody, arresting somebody, or bribing somebody. I’ma stop hanging with y’all.”
Even through the shaking in my bones, I laughed a little because community did that. Family held you up. It made room for fear and still gave you something warm to stand on. Roman’s hand stayed at my waist the whole way to the station, like he was terrified the world might snatch me again if he loosened his grip.
The paperwork took forever. Bright fluorescent lights. Plastic chairs. A receptionist who spoke too calmly for the kind of day I’d had. My arm ached where Mr. Henderson grabbed me, the bruise blooming like a dark flower under my skin.
Roman hovered the entire time, quiet now, jaw still tight, eyes restless. He kept glancing at my arm like he wanted to rewind time with his bare hands. When it was finally done, when the report was filed, and the restraining order process was moving, the air outside the station felt colder than it should have. The night pressed on, and I realized my body was exhausted in a way sleep didn’t fix.
Roman opened his mouth. I could tell he was about to say,Come home with me.I could see it in the way he reached, hopeful, as if love could patch a bruise instantly if he held it long enough.
My heart wasn’t ready to be held like that. Not tonight. Not after one man grabbed me and another reprimanded me. I stepped back before Roman could touch me again. The hurt in his eyes flashed, quick and boyish. That big-dog energy, so loud a second ago, looked like a sad puppy when he realized his bark had bruised me.
“Connie . . .”
My throat tightened. I folded my arms around myself, not dramatically, just instinctively, like my body needed to be its own shelter for a second.
“I need to go home,” I said, soft but final. “To my bed. I need quiet. I need my feelings to belong to me again.”
His lips parted like he wanted to fight the distance, fix it with closeness, with presence, with promises. I shook my head once.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, soft and careful, like he was laying a promise at my feet. “I hurt you. I showed my fear the wrong way.”
His hand hovered near mine, not claiming but asking. “Can I at least drive behind you . . . make sure you get home safe?”
I nodded once, even though my chest still hurt. Even though something inside me feared what this moment meant. Because the truth was, the rift between us wasn’t loud. It was small and quiet, which made it more frightening. It was a crack you could ignore until it spread.
Under the streetlight, he stood broad-shouldered, remorse in his eyes, love and protectiveness twisted tight in him, and my heart ached. It loved him. What scared me wasn’t him; it was what loving him might cost us. That his sharp edges and my good nature would keep colliding until our tenderness started bruising.
So, I turned to my car, keys clenched like an anchor, and I didn’t go home with him.
I could not getthe look Solè gave me after I snapped at her out of my head. What the hell was I thinking?
It wasn’t even the words alone. It was the way her face changed, like a lamp getting turned down in a room I prayed would stay lit forever. Her eyes didn’t flare up with anger. They didn’t get loud. They got quiet in that soft, holy way that let me know I had touched something delicate with the wrong kind of hands. Like I had grabbed a rose by the bloom instead of the stem, and then acted surprised when the petals fell.
That moment kept looping—Henderson, the crowd, the mall lights all fading—until the truth was the only thing left. Her flinch, her spirit ducking before her body could, that small step back that told me my tone got to her before my love did.
And I watched her pull herself together right there, gathering her softness like fabric and smoothing it over the bruise I put on her dignity, standing composed in public, while I was the one who’d made her feel unsteady.
I felt like shit. It was a real, stomach-sinking, throat-burning, can’t-swallow-it-down type of shame. I held onto her like she was about to evaporate off my hands, like she was smoke, and I had just opened a window. Because truth be told, that was exactly what it felt like. One wrong move, and the best thing that ever happened to me would drift away quietly, no argument or scene, just absence.
And what made it worse was I could feel her letting me hold her, but I couldn’t feel herrestingin it. That was when you knew you messed up. When the body stayed, the trust took a step outside to breathe.
I was supposed to be the protector, the big dog, the one who moved calculated, the one who kept danger on the outside of the circle, the man who didn’t just get loud but got strategic, and the man who knew how to put hands on a problem without ever putting weight on the woman.
