He didn’t say anything, but he looked like I’d hit him somehow.
“Am I supposed to say sorry?” I went on. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
His head snapped up. “You’re supposed to leave me alone. Don’t help me. Don’t be nice to me. Don’t—”
“So I should have left you on the side of the road when you were too drunk to walk?”
Daniel was inches from my face then, and the low volume of his voice in no way mitigated the force behind it. “Yes.”
I blinked at him because part of what he was saying was right. I needed to stop trying to help him. There was a line that I shouldn’t be crossing—weshouldn’t be crossing. The world went on around us; hiding up on my roof didn’t make things better for either of us. In a lot of ways it was making things worse; last night had proved that. Last night… I looked away from Daniel, wrapping one arm around myself, and wished for…things to be different.
“Jill.” The way his voice broke forced me to meet his eye. “Touching you like that when I was drunk…” He was close enough to touch me. Which he did, grazing my forearm with his fingers. His hand moved and hovered just over my lip. “I should have stopped when you told me to. Maybe I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
I doubted that last drink I’d tried to stop him from having in his kitchen had done much. “Maybe,” I whispered, watching Daniel step back and hang his head.
He never saw Sean wrench the door from my hands, moving faster than any warning I could give. I glimpsed Sean’s eyes, so wide there was a complete ring of white around his irises, a heartbeat before his fist slammed into Daniel’s face.
It happened fast, not like in the movies where the camera pans to each person for that perfect reaction shot to draw out the moment of each hit. There was no slap or cracking as fists hit. Nothing but sneakers skidding on the concrete, grunts and the sound pain makes when mingled with breath. And Sean’s spit leaving his mouth. Spit and blood.
I never thought I’d be the kind of person to freeze in a fight, to stand still like a helpless spectator, but I was; I did. Until Sean hit the ground.
And then came the sound. The crunch of Sean’s nose breaking from Daniel’s fist as he followed him down. And me screaming.
“Stop! Stop!Stop!”
I didn’t think about Daniel in that moment—what must have been going through his mind, being attacked like that—or even register the trickle of red at the corner of his mouth. All I saw was Sean on the ground and the blood pouring from his nose…soaking into the fabric of his shirt. And Daniel rearing back to strike again.
I collided with Daniel before he could hit Sean again. He jerked free, leaving me to drop to my knees next to Sean. I dived at Daniel again. “Get off him!”
I don’t know if it was the phrase, so similar to the one I’d used last night on his couch, or the sight of Sean jerking up and putting himself between us, but Daniel froze.
He took in the blood smeared on his hands, Sean with a protective arm thrown out across me, and something like horror touched his eyes. The muscles in his cheek twitched and he stumbled back a step.
And then his face lost all expression until it was like he wasn’t even there anymore. Just a hull, a husk, something hollow and empty and gone.
He left.
CHAPTER 30
Iturned away before Daniel was fully out of sight, unable to look at his retreating form any longer. When he’d hit Sean,I’dfelt the impact. And even though Sean had been wrong to charge out and throw the first punch, it was his blood, his pain that called to mine. Not Daniel’s.
I moved in front of Sean and blanched at the blood running from his almost certainly broken nose. My tone was as soft as the fingers I brushed under his split lip. “Sean, are you… Your face…”
He drew his knee up to stand, then thought better of it when the movement made him hiss. He flinched when I started to wipe the blood off his chin and nose as carefully as possible with the belt from my robe.
I was going to run out of belt long before he ran out of blood. My chin quivered. “Why? Why did you start that?”
The one blue eye that wasn’t swollen shut focused on me. “Jill, I heard what he said about hurting you…that you tried to stop him.”
My eyes fell shut, a rock of guilt weighing in my gut. I let what Daniel said at my door replay in my head, listening for wording that Sean could have misinterpreted so badly.
Touching you like that… I should have stopped when you told me to.
The concrete of my porch was cool under my palm, and the warmth from Sean’s hand sliding over it made me jump. “What did he do to you?” Just those few words caused beads of blood to seep up over his lip and smear, making them look impossibly red and wrong. He’d been hurt because he thought someone hurt me.
“Me? Nothing.” I wasn’t the one bleeding, he was. “But your face… I’m so sorry.”
When I tried to dab at his upper lip again, Sean caught my wrist. Again, the same question delivered with almost zero inflection. “What did he do?” A muscle tensed in Sean’s cheek, betraying that he wasn’t nearly as calm as he was pretending. “He said he hurt you.”
