Fear and sickness rolls through me, but no matter how much I kick and scream and fight, he continues to push and pull and yank. I can feel my skin being grazed and cut up by the rocks in the dirt, can feel my thighs bruising from where he is pressing them down with his knees and his weight.
“Get off me!” I scream uselessly, digging my nails into him hard enough I feel the wetness of his blood run down my fingers.
“You’ll like it,” He tells me, “Just fucking stop fighting!”
“Get–”
My words are cut off as Patrick yells out as he is suddenly yanked off me. He lands on his back and a man moves in quick, throwing one punch, then two, then three, his fist striking Patrick true, connecting with his face. I can hear bones cracking with every hit, see the blood as it covers the man’s bare knuckles.
I’m so frozen it takes me a second to see Patrick is no longer moving.
“You’ll kill him!” I lunge forward, wrapping my arms around his to stop his next punch.
My eyes finally see his face and I swear the whole damn world stops moving.
“Kolten?”
Kolt stops, releasing the hand that was tangled up in the front of Patrick’s shirt and straightens up, dark eyes bouncing around my face before his expression softens and he says on a whisper, “Hello trouble.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ishouldn’t have come.
Which is what I say every time I do. It’s alwaysthis is the last timebut then I’m here once again. Watching her, taking in her pretty face, seeing her sunshine smile but I hide from her. I never let her see me.
Which is why I’m in this booth. It’s dark, cloaked in shadows which keeps me hidden from her, but I can see her clearly. Her cheeks are flushed with heat, the fine hair around her temples dampened with sweat, and the smile on her face is as fake as they come.
I’ve seen her smile. I’ve seen the beauty of it, the light and that one on her face? That’s more grimace than anything else.
Going to her is an itch under my skin but this is as close to her as I’ll allow. Even when I see another guy getting too close, even when she’s clearly not interested but he persists.
My hands fist on the top of the table, nails digging into the palms of my hands. It’s not the first time she’s been asked out while I’ve been watching but she’s never said yes. And it gives me far too much satisfaction to know she’s still single.
The guy is drunk, handsy but she keeps him away and protects herself but still, it takes everything in me not to throw him through a damn window.
I stay in my booth, my eyes never straying from her and it’s near close when she finally looks in my direction. Fuck, I miss her.
Is that even normal?
To be this damn obsessed?
She stares toward me, confusion tugging down her brows as she tries and fails to see me properly but it’s while she’s focused on me, the fucker takes advantage again.
And he goes too far.
I can’t risk her seeing me, not when it puts her in danger. I have rules to follow now that I’m in Farrow’s inner circle, rules that forbid me from having contact with my past. I didn’t much care what it would do to me, but if they find out, my punishment would be their pain. And I was never going to risk Nessa. Not again.
Slipping out of the booth I head to the bouncer on the door, the fucker isn’t even watching what’s happening in the bar, instead he’s getting handsy with a college kid.
Anger pulsates through me as I grab him and forcibly tug him toward me.
“Get in there,” I growl “And fucking protect your staff!”
Rage fills his face, “And who the fuck are you!?”
“You either get in there,” I step in close, “And get him off of her, or you’ll be eating through a tube for the rest of your life, do you understand me?”
He wants to fight me, I see the war on his face but ultimately, he backs down, turning to where I point. He doesn’t say a thing as he escorts the drunk guy out the bar and away from Vanessa, and with him gone, and not allowed back in, I decide to leave. She would have eventually come to me and if she was close, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself.
