She doesn’t look bruised or anything, which is good, but I still feel like this whole thing is unnatural.
When I look at the worn-out old La-Z-Boy in the corner, I find Dad. He’s fully reclined with the footrest out, his ratty boots kicked up on it, a fucking PBR in his hand that he must havebrought with him, and—of all things—a girl perched half on the arm, half on his lap.
She looks bored as hell, also holding a PBR and scrolling on her phone. She can’t be much older than me, although she looks like life might have dealt her even rougher cards.
In the time it takes him to notice Tristan and I bursting in the door, everyone looking up at us, I also clock his fingers curled around her hip, the pad of his thumb teasing at the hem of her shirt absently. It’s an exact mirror of a position I end up in with Silas a lot of the time. We’re almost the same size, of course, but Silas still likes to pull me into his lap and fold me up smaller, and I love the sensation of his rough fingertips tracing over the sensitive skin of my hip, dipping lower and lower like a constant tease. The physical feeling of being small and caged just does something to me.
I don’t know why, but this weird parallel makes the kindled anger inside of me erupt into a blind rage.
Those are hands that have hurt me, hurt Mom, torn this place apart, and done more drugs and other shit than I can remember, and now he’s sitting here with some fucking stranger, doing a sick parody of me and Silas and our actual, healthy fucking relationship.
I want to kill him.
“Get. Out.”
I bite the words out but don’t wait for a reply before crossing the room toward him and reaching for his shirt. He looks shocked, although I don’t know why, considering how many rooms he’s been kicked out of in his life. It’s easy to get two fistfuls of his shirt and start pulling him up. His beer goes flying in the process. The girl scrambles to get out of the way but ends up on her ass on the floor, which I didn’t intend to happen but can’t process right now.
All I see is his stupid fucking face. It takes a lot of strength to yank him to his feet, but not as much as I’d expected. EMS work has really strengthened my people-lifting muscles instead of my motocross muscles, and I’ve been bulking out in ways I didn’t expect. I’m not tall enough to get him dangling, but I have caught him off-guard, and that makes satisfaction take up residence at the base of my spine, continuing to fan the flame of my rage.
He doesn’t deserve to exist.
Everyone else in the room is squawking behind me, but I’m doing my best to tune them out. I’m here to get rid of the problem, and that’s what I’m doing. Dad starts to fight me, pushing against me and cursing. He’s tearing at my shirt, but not actually throwing punches, so it’s not enough to dislodge my grip.
“Cade!” Mom yells behind me, before I feel her deceptively strong hands tugging at my arms.
He’s already twisted her back to his side again, I see. Just like the other times.
I take a few steps back towards the door, getting ready to push him through and send him tumbling down the couple of steps onto his ass, but there’s something solid in my way.
The thing my back hits must be a person, because thick arms wrap around me from behind and start to squeeze. Not tight enough that I can’t breathe, but tight enough to make more adrenaline buzz through me.
“Stop.” I hear Tristan’s voice, low and steady in my ear. “Stop. Stop. Let him go and take a breath. Stop, Cade.”
It doesn’t make any sense. He’s squeezing me still, while Mom and the woman are both pawing at me, trying to get me to let go of Kyle. I had his ratty old Harley Davidson t-shirt fisted so tightly it must have been choking him out, because his face is beet red now and he’s gasping for air.
They pry him out of my hands, both women pulling him away from me with expressions of horror that I don’t fully process, but I know will hit me later and it won’t be good. Meanwhile, Tristan is still holding me tight, dragging me backwards to increase the distance between me and Kyle. I realize distantly that I’m struggling against Tristan’s hold, although I wasn’t conscious of it, and another surge of anger takes over my body.
The idea of stopping and letting it all go exists. It almost seems like a physical thing sitting just outside my grasp, small and slippery. I’m reaching for it, but the anger is pulling me under like a riptide so my fingertips can only graze the surface of the thing but never get a grip.
I want to stop. I just… can’t.
Plus, I can already feel the prick of shame for my actions waiting for me as soon as I let the anger slip away, and I’m not ready to deal with that yet. Stoking my rage keeps a wall between me and the consequences of my actions, even if it’s only the consequence of shame, for another few minutes. It’s not a conscious decision, but I’m dimly aware that some part of my mind has made this series of calculations, with or without my input.
I keep pulling against Tristan’s grip, but his feet are planted and he’s got height, weight and raw strength on me. There’s a brief crushing moment where more than one reality layers on top of each other, and I think for a second it’s Dad’s hands crushing me, not Tristan’s. It makes me feel a clench of deep, visceral fear that I haven’t experienced since I was much younger, before I try to shake the irrational thought away. It’s Tristan, not Dad. And he’s helping me, not hurting me.
My skin is prickling hot, and I think I might be crying.
Tristan’s still whispering in my ear though, in that same level tone.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you. Just take a breath. Stop. You can stop. You need to breathe.”
It doesn’t make sense, because I am breathing, but it makes me realize that I’m taking gasping, ragged breaths for no reason. I concentrate on that, because the rest of the world seems hazy and more confusing than it did a minute ago. There’s a flicker of an image in my mind of that stupid app. The breathing one, where it has a shape that sort of crumples and re-expands like a paper bag while it counts your respirations.
Slowly, the blinding, overwhelming need to get to Kyle and break his fucking face recedes. It slips out of my body like water, leaving my insides feeling damp and heavy, void of anything of substance, already beginning to rot. I can breathe normally again, and the feeling of Tristan pressing in on me from every angle is helping me keep the last few flickers of anger caged until they extinguish.
Tristan eases his grip on me a little, and for a second I wish he wouldn’t. I can already see the torrent of things I have to deal with on the other side of this moment and I don’t want to, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Instead, I try to make myself feel numb and focus on the situation at hand, instead of whatever fucking emotional bukkake situation just happened in my brain.
When I’m finally standing on my own, Tristan watching me with careful eyes, I have an overwhelming urge to sit down. He puts a hand on my chest to steady me, which doesn’t actually fucking help. Everyone is staring at me now, with some mixture of concern and annoyance, and the embarrassment and confusion is bubbling through me quickly, leaving an acid-trail of agony in its wake.
