For one second, everyone froze.
Then I went after him.
Maddox scrambled backward on his hands, his shoes slipping in the rain, his mouth already moving because men like him always thought words could buy time from fists.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he spat, rolling onto one knee. “She got you trained already?”
I caught him before he could stand fully and drove my fist into his ribs.
The breath left him in a hard grunt as his body folded around the hit, but he swung wildly and caught me across the jaw with enough force to snap my head sideways.
Pain flashed bright.
I wanted pain. I wanted something physical and honest, something with a beginning and an end. I wanted bone beneath my knuckles instead of Aura’s face in that hallway, tears on her cheeks while she begged me not to make it worse because of her.
Maddox staggered upright and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You think beating my ass changes what happened?”
I smiled through the blood coating my tongue. “No.”
His eyes flickered.
“It changes how you remember it, though.”
I drove into him before he could answer.
We struck the side of the building hard, shoulder, brick, and a sharp burst of pain shooting down my arm. He shoved at my chest, stronger than I wanted him to be, and landed a punch against my ribs that stole half a breath. I caught his next swing against my forearm and answered with a right hand to his mouth.
His head snapped back as blood struck his teeth.
He cursed and stumbled sideways into the rain before coming at me again with enough rage to be useful. His next swing was uglier and, for half a second, less afraid. His knuckles clipped my cheekbone, sending heat blooming beneath my eye.He tried to grab my shirt, but I caught his wrist, twisted, and used his momentum to drive him down against the hood of a parked car.
The alarm chirped once.
Someone inside yelled, “Holy shit!”
Maddox bucked beneath me and drove an elbow into my stomach hard enough to make me loosen my hold. I let him get free because some part of me wanted him upright when I hit him again.
He backed toward the sidewalk, breathing hard, blood smeared across his lip. “She’s not worth this, man.”
I went still.
Rain ticked against my shoulders. The Sin Bin’s neon sign buzzed red and blue over the wet pavement. Behind me, bodies crowded the open doorway, hockey, basketball, and strangers packed into one tense line of witnesses, but nobody spoke.
Maddox should have stopped.
He didn’t.
“She’s got you looking stupid over something that happened years ago,” he said, cruelty shaking beneath his voice. “You weren’t even there. You don’t know what she was like.”
I closed the distance between us.
He swung first.
I ducked beneath it and drove my fist into his stomach hard enough to fold him, then grabbed the back of his neck and brought my knee into his ribs. He made a broken sound and shoved me away, but I came back before he could breathe, my fist connecting with his cheek, then his jaw, then the side of his head when he tried to turn from me.
“Say it again.” I grabbed the front of his jacket. “Say she isn’t worth it again.”
He spat blood onto the pavement and smiled like an idiot with a death wish. “She’ll ruin you too.”
