Aura looked from me to Maddox on the pavement and back again.
Her mouth trembled before she forced it still. “Stop,” she said, her voice breaking. “Easton, stop.”
Briggs’s grip loosened when he felt me stop pushing, but Rider kept hold of my wrist.
For two seconds, I looked at Aura, and every violent thing in me turned toward her like she was the only fixed point in the whole fucking world. She had tears on her face again. Because of him. Because of me. Because of all of it.
Then Maddox coughed out a laugh from the ground.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “Listen to your bitch.”
I tore free from Briggs and Rider.
“Fuck,” Rider snapped, lunging after me.
I reached Maddox first.
He tried to crawl backward, but I caught his jaw in one hand and forced his bruised, bloody face toward the doorway. My fingers dug into his cheeks, not hard enough to break anything, but enough to make him understand exactly how fragile his mouth was inside my hand.
“Look at her,” I said.
Maddox groaned and tried to pull away.
I tightened my grip. “Look at her!”
His swollen eyes lifted toward Aura.
She went still in the doorway, the phone still against her ear while tears slid silently down her cheeks.
I hated him for seeing her that way. I hated myself more for turning it into another scene she had to survive, but I was past being reasonable.
“Apologize,” I said through gritted teeth.
Maddox breathed heavily through his nose.
I shook him once. “Apologize to her.”
“Easton,” Aura said. “Stop.”
I didn’t take my eyes from Maddox. “Say it.”
His mouth twisted beneath my hand. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Louder.”
Aura stepped into the rain. “Easton, I said stop.”
I looked back at her.
She shook her head, tears and rain mixing over her cheeks. “I don’t want it.”
Those four words struck harder than Maddox ever could.
I looked down at him, at the bloody, pathetic mess of a man inside my grip, and for one second, I wanted to force it anyway. I wanted to drag an apology from him until it tore his throat raw. I wanted every person who had ever hurt her lined up in front of me, one by one, begging where she could hear them.
But Aura didn’t want this.
She didn’t want his apology. She didn’t want his mouth touching her pain again. She didn’t want one more man deciding what should make her feel better while she stood there shaking and unheard.
