So why did I feel a seed of something warm blooming in my chest? A prospect of happiness?
BEAU
My girls were sleeping.
I checked on both before taking my phone and a generous pour of whisky outside.
It was cold as fuck, but the chill helped to tamp down the fire coursing through me. The fury. The urge to drive around Jupiter, tear apart rooms at the one shitty motel we had—the one I knew someone like him would be staying at—to find him. To punish him. For plucking a flower like Hannah, so delicate, so beautiful, and instead of nurturing her and nourishing her like she deserved, pulling the petals off one by one. Tearing off pieces of her, her confidence, self-worth, her faith in the future.
Because men like that liked to ruin women for sport, to ensure that they never realize they’re too good for them, that they should leave. That had been his intention with Hannah, itwas clear as fucking day. Tear her apart to ensure that she’d never leave him. I’d been in his presence for all of two minutes, and I could see that. I could feel it as Hannah recounted their much-sanitized history to me. I knew there was a lot more, more that would’ve made me punch holes in walls if I heard it right then. God only knew how many more things he’d done to try to tear Hannah down.
But he didn’t succeed. Hannah was too strong to let him. And yet there he was, trailing after her, still trying to snuff out her brilliance.
I heard that small, little moan of pain as he squeezed her arm. If a man like that was willing to inflict pain on Hannah in front of me, who knew what he had done to her behind closed doors. I wanted to ask, to know, but Hannah was already skittish about the story, coated in shame that she shouldn’t have felt.
I had to treat her with care. Something I hadn’t done since she arrived. Under the mistaken impression that I was protecting her. But that lie was thin and barely believable at the best of times. Now that I was stripped of my denial, I knew that I had only been protectingmyselfwith my bad actions. I’d been blind to how broken she was, how lost, how fucking alone because I was too busy being a lustful bastard to notice whatshemight’ve needed.
She needed a man who wasn’t going to hurt her, for starters.
The urge to punish him for that was overwhelming. I ached to do it with my fists. Hear the crunch of his bones against my knuckles. Though it had been simmering inside me ever since I’d gotten Clara’s diagnosis, violence was not something I was familiar with. I wasn’t accustomed to having the urge to destroy something. For months, the thing I wanted to destroy was inside Clara’s body. There had been nothing for me to do; I was powerless.
Now, with this fuck, I was not powerless.
But I would not succumb to my baser need to get the quick dopamine hit that would come from breaking his nose. Especially since that put me in danger of being arrested. I was not leaving my girls.
Not when that paved the way for that fuck to get to them. Though I didn’t think he had the balls. He’d already come to do what he intended, to scare Hannah, to remind her to never relax, never be happy because he’d be around the corner, waiting to ruin it.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” she asked from the end of the line.
“I need a favor.” I didn’t have it in me to bother with small talk.
“Color me interested.” Calliope was never one for small talk either. “What do you need? You’ve got a few favors in the bank with the whole pulling me out of the ocean and saving my life thing,” she stated flippantly.
Despite my fury, my stomach spasmed at the memory and the offhand way she was referencing one of the worst days of my brother’s life. One of my worst too. I unfortunately had a big collection of worst days that included my daughter clinging to her own life, pumped full of poison meant to save her, doctors giving me percentages on the chances of her living.
I’d accrued a rather healthy amount of bad days.
Dragging Calliope’s lifeless body from the ocean still haunted me. And I knew it haunted Elliot. In true Calliope fashion, she treated it as if it were a trip on the sidewalk instead of a homicide attempt.
I couldn’t think of that night without thinking of Hannah. Her kindness when she owed me none. The comfort she offered me without hesitation. That was my fucking life raft in the storm. That tethered her to me forever, whether she knew it or not.
“I need you to ruin a man’s life,” I told Calliope.
She laughed. “That’s not a favor, honey, that’s my favorite hobby. An early Christmas gift. Text me his info, and he’ll be ruined by end of business tomorrow.”
I clenched my glass, not doubting Calliope for a second. “You’re not going to ask what he did, if he deserves it?”
“Nope. He’s a man. And the residents of Jupiter aside, chances are he does deserve it just with the Y chromosome in play.”
Despite myself, I chuckled. Calliope had a way of doing that. Making you laugh at the most unexpected of times.
“Baby, what the fuck are you still working for? Come to bed. Now.” I heard my brother’s order in the background, thick with sleep.
“Sorry, gotta go,” she said to me. “Got a man to please. Or a man to please me.”
I rolled my eyes, not bothering to listen to anything else before hanging up.
Then I leaned back in my chair, breath creating puffs of smoke as I looked out at our backyard.
