This time Damien didn’t see it coming—he only heard thecrunchas Gwynn turned his face into handsome paste. Dull, throbbing pain spread through his jaw, up his cheek, and into his eye. Damien grunted in pain and braced himself for the extended trilogy when Gwynn made a garbled cry of outrage.
“Calm down.” Harley’s voice was gruff, but otherwise stripped of emotion. “You’re going to break your hand if you keep punching like that. You need to lead with your first two knuckles.”
“Harley!” Damien croaked, equal parts offended and terrified. After what he’d done, it served him right that Gwynn was getting lessons on face demolition from a SEAL, but it seemed particularly callous coming from someone as lighthearted as he knew Harley to be.
Damien lifted his head, half-expecting to find Harley physically guiding Gwynn through the finer points of a knock-out punch. He wasn’t. Harley had restrained Gwynn from behind, his arms hooked under Gwynn’s armpits to keep him from advancing. Gwynn struggled, but Harley didn’t let go. At some point during the brief scuffle, Gwynn had thrown his suit jacket aside. It lay crumpled on the cobblestone. Damien was only mildly surprised that Gwynn hadn’t gone full Hulk and left it in tatters.
“Let me go,” Gwynn growled, jerking violently to the side. Harley, who was probably used to restraining men twice his size, didn’t so much as flinch. “Let mego!”
“No can do, Gwynn. I don’t mind a little placenta warfare, but when fists start flying, I have to step in.”
“He slept with my son!”
“Yeah. I heard.” Harley fixed Damien with an unreadable look that made Damien duck his head from shame. “But adding a felony to your record isn’t going to change that. What’s done is done.”
Gwynn took several shuddering breaths, but the anger never left his face. While he spoke with Harley, his eyes were zeroed in on Damien, and Damien had no doubt that in Gwynn’s mind, he was already dead a thousand times over. “The second you let me go I’m going to murder him.”
“Which is why I’m not letting you go.”
“You’ll have to at some point. You can’t hold me back forever.”
Knowing Harley, he probably could, but Damien wasn’t about to crack a joke. Not now, and maybe not ever again. He kept his silence and applied pressure where Gwynn had clocked him. While Harley had Gwynn distracted, what could he do to help Matthew?
Damien’s gaze flicked to his boy, who’d wisely put his back to the greenhouse wall. As long as he stayed out of the fight, then—
Damien’s temple twitched.
While Matthew had done the smart thing and sought to protect himself, the look on his face wasn’t one of terror, but of outrage. Now that his father was restrained, Matthew left his post by the wall and inserted himself between Gwynn and Damien, shielding Damien about as effectively as a freshly planted sapling.
“Dad, stop.” Damien couldn’t see the expression on Matthew’s face anymore, but he heard the glower in his voice. “Damien didn’t do anything wrong. I came on to him. He tried to turn me down.”
“He got you pregnant!”
Matthew clenched his fists. “And?”
“You’re achild.”
Matthew bowed his head, but the tension didn’t leave his body. In a small, hollow voice, he asked, “Is that what you think of me?”
No one spoke. Damien, stomach tied in knots, stepped forward and set his hand on the small of Matthew’s back. “Matthew, he doesn’t—”
“Don’t you fucking touch my son,” Gwynn snarled. He flung himself forward in an attempt to break free from Harley, but Harley yanked him back. “Get thefuckoff him.”
“No!” The snarl came from Matthew this time, so startling that even Damien took a step back. “You don’t get to tell him what he can and can’t do with me. I’m sick of you treating me like I’m still sixteen years old. In case you didn’t notice, I’m an adult. I’m just as old as Alex was when you shoved him onto the kitchen island and fucked a baby into him. Don’t come at Damien like you’re some sort of moral authority, you fucking hypocrite!”
Oh, this was bad.
Damien took his hand from the small of Matthew’s back and placed it on his shoulder, but Matthew jerked away from him and took another step toward Gwynn, who looked ready to go full Mount Vesuvius on whoever got too close.
Fuck.
“This is my life,” Matthew growled. He stood just short of arm’s reach from Gwynn. “This is my choice, and nothing you do or say is going to change that.”
Damien winced. There was no way he was going to be able to talk Gwynn out of a total meltdown. It was like Matthew had seen the active volcano that was the situation bubbling and smoking, and concluded that the best course of action was to throw in a freighter’s worth of C-4.
“You don’t understand what you’re saying,” Gwynn hissed.
“Is that so?” Matthew’s fists shook. “Do you think he’s taking advantage of me? Do you think he lured me into the back of his van and did this to me against my will? You don’t know the truth.”
