I moan, and the low, weak sound infuriates me.
Balling up my fists, I prepare to knock his head off. “That’s the last freebie you get, you bastard!” I roar.
Before I can make a move, however, Maggie appears in the doorway and yells my name.
Rick spins around, breathing heavily, sweat glistening on his brow. My muscles actuallyachefor action. My veins sizzle with bloodlust.
“I saw you hit him!” she wails at Rick. “That’s assault! I’m calling the police!” She has a blue three-ring binder in one hand and her phone in the other.
“Call them.” Rick laughs, wiping his brow. His stogie is lying on the floor, but he’s too winded and overgrown to bend down and get it. Instead, he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out another. “Nothing will happen. I got friends in high places.”
She looks at me, and all I can manage through the rage is a quick dip of my chin. Rick’s right. He wouldn’t get charged with anything. Sullivan would make sure of that.
“Then get out!” she snarls, her eyes flashing fire. “Get out of this house and never come back!”
In a signature move, Rick spits on the floor. “With pleasure.” He turns to leave. But before he reaches the door, he swings back to me. “Remember what I told you, boy.”
Theboyhits my ears like a percussion grenade. I’m so keyed up, my heart thrumming, my need to maim and dismemberlike a living thing inside me, that I don’t think. I lunge. But Maggie is there to stop me, materializing in front of me like she teleported there.
She shoves her hands into my chest. Hard.
“Don’t, Cash,” she pleads, staring up at me with eyes so big and blue. It’s her eyes more than her words that stay me. “You’re better than that. Better thanhim.”
Rick doesn’t say anything, merely looks us up and down and shakes his head with disgust. He squeezes through the door, slamming it shut behind him.
Uncontrollable fury has me stomping over to the wall. I punch it, leaving a fist-sized hole in the new drywall. It feels good, but not good enough, so I punch it again—and again and again and again—imagining it’s Rick’s fat face.
“Cash!” Maggie grabs my arm, dropping her phone and her binder in the process. “Stop it!”
I know my eyes are wild, because when I turn to her, she takes a startled step back. “I need you to walk away from me,” I manage through a clenched jaw. “Now!”
“No.” She shakes her head.
“Walk away from me, Maggie!”
She winces, but stands her ground. Shoulders back. Chin high. “You can rail at me and the world and your a-hole of a father all night. You can punch as many holes in the wall as you want. But I’m not leaving.”
I glower at her. She glowers right back. For good measure, I pull the flask from my back pocket and take an angry drink. Can taking a drink be angry?
She snatches the flask from my hands and knocks back a big slug herself. Just like that, my blood settles from a rapid boil to a slow simmer. It’s hard to reconcile, but I find myself smiling.
Then, with the rage gone, the agony hits. “Oh fuck.” I grab the back of my head and go down on one knee. My jaw aches where Rick’s meaty fist connected, but it’s my head thatreallyhurts.
She kneels beside me. The flask is on the ground next to her phone and binder, and her hands are on my shoulders. “Cash?”
“Feels like a bomb went off inside my skull.”
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Don’t need an ambulance.” Now that the adrenaline is gone, I’m exhausted. The kind of tired you can’t sleep off. And Ihurt.I’m so sick of hurting. “Help me to bed,” I tell her.
The master bedroom is no longer packed with building materials and piles of rubble, so I’ve moved the mattress in there. I get an arm around her shoulders, and she helps me stand.
“I’m not sure you should go to sleep. You might have a concussion.”
“No. But I’ll have a lump the size of a goose egg tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” She follows me down the hall, switching on the hundred-watt bulb I installed in the bedroom because I wanted lots of light while I worked on the plaster moldings. Now, my retinas are seared by it. White-hot pain slices from the backs of my eyes up into the top of my skull.
