And just like that, all the fire inside me dimmed.
“El,” I breathed, still held tight in Boone and Rhodes’s grip.
The group of girls hurried to her side, wrapping her in comfort, creating a barrier around her trembling form. Every eye was fixed on us, onher, on the chaos that had just unfolded.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Mac growled. I turned just in time to see him shoving Miles toward the door. He hurled one more curse at him before slamming it shut so hard the walls shook.
The rage that had taken hold of me—it wasn’t like anything I’d felt before. It wasn’t just anger. It was something else. Something old and deep and buried. Like a wall inside me had cracked wide open.
“That’s enough, you nosy bastards, back to drinking and dancing!” Mac barked, waving the crowd off. He pointed at me. “You.Upstairs. Now.” There was a hard edge in his voice.
I barely got the chance to look at Ellie again before Boone gave me a shove toward the stairs, dragging me up to Mac’s old apartment.
“All right, what the hell was that about?” Boone was the first to speak the second Mac slammed the door shut.
They let go of me, and I moved fast, needing space like I needed air. I paced across the room, ripping my hat from my head and hurling it onto the dining table. It landed with a dull thud, but it wasn’t nearly loud enough to match the noise inside my head.
What the hell was I supposed to say?
My outburst downstairs wasn’t something they could understand—not without knowing everything. And that meant telling them parts of the story that weren’t mine to share.
Mac leaned back against the counter. His tone was clipped, his eyes sharp. “I don’t need a brawl in my bar for stupid shit.”
I lifted my head slowly, jaw locked tight. “It wasn’t because I’m jealous.”
“Oh, shut the hell up,” Boone cut in, waving a hand at me like I was a stubborn toddler. “You were.”
“No. I. Wasn’t.”
“Man, it’s okay,” he added, voice calm now—too calm. “I know you’ve got a thing for my sister.”
Like him saying it out loud would make it easier. Like his blessing was all I needed to calm down right now.
I resumed pacing, needing movement to outrun the frustration building in my chest.
“Yeah, man,” Rhodes chimed in. “Everybody already?—”
“When I say this has nothing to do with being jealous of Miles,” I snapped, cutting him off, “I mean it.”
I wasn’t about to let them reduce what happened to some petty jealousy. Becausefuckthat.
“Then enlighten us,” Rhodes said, pulling out a chair at the table and dropping into it, arms crossed. “Because that’s what it looked like to me. You said something about keeping his hands to himself. Ellie and Miles went on a date, man. He’s obviously going to touch her. When you don’t say how you feel, you can’t expect to claim her.”
“He’s a pig!” I shouted, pointing toward the bar as if Miles might still be standing behind that door.
Silence. Blank stares. Confusion.
And that—that—was what pushed me over the edge.
“My comment was more than just about him getting handsy on the date.” I turned to Boone. “This isn’t the first time he made a scene in the bar. The last time he came out while we were all here he got in Ellie’s face. But that isn’t the worst of it. That fucker put hishandson her. Threw her against the kitchen counter. Screamed in her face. He was angry that she was rejecting him, trying to put him in the friend zone.”
The words cracked open something inside me. My voice dropped, but the fury stayed controllable. “That’s the real reason we left. That trip? That was to get her away from him, to give her a moment to clear her head.”
I saw their expressions shift—first disbelief, then understanding, then something far darker.
“She came to my place in tears,” I said, voice thick. “Red marks on her arms. Her back.”
“What?” Boone said. His voice was eerily quiet and his face had drained of all color.
