Keeping my head down, I peeked up at him with just my eyes.
“Think about it,” he continued into the air. “You say it when you bump into someone in the grocery store or when you’re late for a doctor’s appointment. How the fuck can that word possibly be the only one in the English language appropriate to say to the ex-girlfriend that you royally screwed over? How do you apologize for the biggest mistake of your life?” After a minute, Zach walked back over and sat down next to me again, pulling my hands into his. “I’m sorry, Kacie. I’m so, so sorry. I’ll gladly say it to you every day for the rest of my life. I wish more than anything I could take back that day, take back that stupid moment when I decided you guys would be better off without me. Who knows? That may have been the case, but I wasn’t better off without you. You were my life and I threw you away. All of you.”
What the hell was I supposed to say to that? I would never know what my life would have been like had he stuck around, and honestly, I didn’t want to know. I was happy where I was, proud of what I’d been able to accomplish as a single mom. My hands were shaking in his as I thought about what to say back, how to follow that up. Before I could form a coherent thought, headlights appeared at the end of the driveway.
We both looked up, squinting our eyes at the approaching lights.
“Who is that?” Zach asked, not letting go of my hands.
As the car got closer, I realized it wasn’t a car at all, but a truck. A big black pick-up truck.
Brody.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I pulled my hands back quickly as the truck screeched to a stop. I’d barely made my way to the end of the porch when Brody came walking purposefully up the steps. “What’s going on?” he questioned, looking from me to Zach.
“Nothing, baby. Let’s go inside and talk.” I put my hands on his chest, hoping to slow him down, but he walked right through me.
“Brody Murphy!” Zach grinned as he walked over with his hand out. “Nice to meet you. I’m Zach, Lucy and Piper’s dad.”
The world moved in slow motion as I watched the realization of what Zach had just slurred reach Brody’s brain. His head slowly turned to look down at me. His normally crisp green eyes were filled with anger. Intense, seething anger. I could only imagine what he thought he just saw as his chest heaved under my hand.
I cupped the sides of his face, trying to get him to look at me instead of through me. “Listen to me, this is not what you think it is. Let’s go inside and talk. Please.”
“Don’t leave me hanging, bro.” Zach laughed, motioning toward his still outstretched hand.
Brody was looking at me, but his mind was somewhere else. When Zach laughed, Brody’s eye twitched and that was it. I grabbed a fistful of his sweatshirt and pulled back as hard as I could, but I was too late.
Brody reeled back and swung with his right arm as hard as I’d ever seen anyone hit another person. It happened so fast, Zach didn’t even see it coming. He was still smiling when Brody’s fist connected with his jaw, making the most horrific crunching sound. Zach stumbled back, holding the left side of his face. His hat was askew and he was obviously disoriented and in severe pain, but that didn’t stop Brody from lunging for him again. He grabbed a handful of Zach’s shirt and pulled him forward, hard.
“What the fuck are you doing here, dickhead?” Brody roared through clenched teeth.
“Whoa, whoa!” Zach threw his hands up in front of himself. “Calm down.”
“Fuck you!” Brody snapped, punching Zach even harder than before, this time with his left fist. After another fierce collision, Zach covered his head with his hands, either in pain or self-defense and wobbled his way over to the railing.
“Brody! Brody, stop!” I screamed. I tried wrapping my arms around his core and pulling him off of Zach, but I would’ve had better luck trying to move the Empire State Building. I barely got out of the way when Brody reared back and punched Zach once more, sending him flying over the porch railing and onto the grass down below.
Brody walked over and stood at the railing, glaring down at Zach. Blood droplets fell from his knuckles onto the porch, but it didn’t seem to phase him one bit.
“I’ll ask you again. What the fuck are you doing here?”
After he rolled around in the grass for a minute, Zach sat up and held each side of his jaw, which I was sure was broken—probably in more than one place. “I came to talk to Kacie about the girls,” he mumbled, opening his mouth as little as possible.
“The girls? You have no goddamn business discussing anything about those girls.”