Page 88 of Serenade Me

He snickers and pushes his face close to mine. “Why? Because you’re going to hit me with your itty bitty bow? Yeah, I know who you are. Can’t even play a proper instrument. Go take your groupie and fuck off home.”

“She’s not my groupie.”

“In that case, maybe she won’t mind coming home with a real man then.” He reaches for Anca, and before I know what I’m doing, I swing and my fist makes contact with his jaw. The pain through my hand is blinding, but it doesn’t distract me from watching him recover and pull his own arm back, ready to swing at me.

His arm comes around in an arc, almost in slow motion, and I feel my body duck out of the way. The momentum of his swing helps me as I run forward, ramming my shoulder against him, taking him down to the ground.

“Oh my god, Marius!” Someone yells out. But it barely registers.

His knee comes up and slams against my chest, and for a second all I can see is stars.

I can feel myself dragged to my feet, hands grabbing under my arms, pulling me up.

“Get off me!” I struggle out of the hold. I spin around and lunge back at him, forcing him to take a few steps back.

“Fuck you, asshole,” he slurs.

I whip my hand back to slap the smugness of his face and feel it make contact.

There’s a scream.

“Anca!” Cadence yells and I spin around to see Anca stumbling back, her hand holding her cheek.

Oh my god. What happened?

“Anca!” I yell, but before I can take a step towards her, a fist slams into my cheek and knocks me to the ground.

“Jez, no!” She screams again, just as he looms above me. I reach up to cover my face, but he’s pulled away before he can hit me again. I can just make out Brad and Sebastian dragging him out the door as I sit up, my vision blurry.

“Come on, Marius.” Cadence and Hailey pull me to my feet.

“Where’s Anca?”

“Don’t worry, she’s fine, we gotta get out of here. Now.”

I can just make out the flash of camera phones in our direction as someone throws a sweater over my head as we rush out of there and into a waiting taxi.

“Guys. What happened?” I ask as soon as the taxi pulls away from the curbside.

“Anca… she got hurt.” Cadence said, her face tight.

“Fuck. BY who?”

“By you, Marius. By you.”

The stars come back and blind me and I lay back against the seat as the world falls down around me.

***

“Where’s Anca?” I say as soon as I open the door to the joint hotel suite.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Jez spring up from his seat, before Brad pulls him back down, patting him on the shoulder, whispering something to him.

I ignore him, even though it’s hard to, with my aching cheek reminding what just happened between us.

“She’s resting, Marius. Probably just let her alone until the morning,” Sebastian replies, walking over to me and Cadence, who lets him lead her over to the couch.

“Just leave her alone from now on.” Jez says, his voice tense, even as he tries to stay in his seat.