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Something in me goes very quiet.

I’ve done a lot of things to this girl. I know that. I’m not stupid. I spent four years making sure she knew exactly how little she was worth to me. I said things to her that I would kill another man for saying to anybody. I stood over her in stairwells. I made her look at me. I made her look away.

But I never once put my hands on her.

A man should never put his fucking hands on a woman.

But Tessa?

Nobody fucking touches her as long as I’m alive.

I stand.

He’s getting up, too. Off the floor, out of the wreck of the end table, with a cut on his forehead from the lamp and his hoodie twisted around his neck. Twenty-something. Skinny. Pupils so big his eyes look black. He sees me and laughs, like this is a joke, like I’m a joke.

“Dude. Dude. She’s fucking crazy, man—”

I get him by the front of the hoodie, and I put him into the wall.

I punch him.

And then I punch him again.

It isn’t a hockey fight. There’s no jersey to grab, no linesman coming, no rules about where you can put your fist. It’s just a small room, and a wall, and his face, and my hand. He gets his arms up. It doesn’t do anything. I go under them, into his ribs, and when he folds, I go back up, and something gives under my knuckles that I feel all the way up into my shoulder.

It isn’t good. This has always been good before. It’s always felt like letting something out. This doesn’t feel like relief. This feels ugly and wet and loud, and the old woman is screaming his name from the hallway, and somewhere behind me, very small, Tessa is saying mine.

I don’t stop.

All I can see is his fucking handprint on her face.

Somebody hits the side of my head, right above my ear, hard enough that the room tips.

I let go of her cousin and turn. There’s two guys. The second one is already there, a big guy, bigger than me, with a beard and a beer still in his hand. He puts the bottle down on the counter like he’s got all the time in the world and hits me in the stomach.

All the air goes out of me.

I get one back. I catch the first one in the mouth and feel his lip split on my knuckle. But they’re both on me now, and Dylan’s up off the wall behind me, and I can’t watch all three of them, and there’s nowhere to go. A fist in my ribs. Another in my mouth, and I taste blood, hot and metallic. Somebody gets an arm around my neck from behind and hauls back. My shoulder hits the doorframe.

This isn’t hockey. There’s no refs. There’s no Kennebeck and no Barnes coming off the bench. There’s no glass and no gear and no whistle. There are three of them and one of me, in a room the size of my fucking closet.

I’m going to get my ass kicked.

The big one winds up.

And a chair hits him.

One of the wooden kitchen chairs. She doesn’t lift it over her head. She just shoves it, low and hard, legs first, with her whole body behind it, straight into the backs of his knees.

His legs go. He staggers sideways into the counter with a grunt, and the arm around my neck loosens for one second while the guy holding me looks to see what happened.

One second.

That’s all I need. I get my elbow back into the one behind me, into something soft, and he lets go. I turn and hit the big one as he’s coming up off the counter, everything I have, right in the side of the jaw. He goes down. He stays down.

I look up.

Tessa’s standing on the other side of the chair. She’s holding onto the back of it with both hands like it’s the only thing keeping her on her feet. Her hair’s in her face. Her neck is red. She’s breathing like she’s been underwater.