I knew when I left the bathroom and let Knox see my face, nothing would be the same again. I started to shake. I teared up.
I’d never loved someone like I loved Knox… and admitting it and embracing it was the hardest thing to do…
chapter fourteen
(knox)
THEN
I got the word she was at a party and drinking a lot. The last time I talked to her she said she and her mother had gotten into it pretty bad. To the point where they pushed each other and her mother slapped her. She called her mother a whore for sleeping with my father and her mother booted her out.
Some dumb ass friend in college dragged her to a party for fun.
Matteo tried keeping me out of it. The old man tracked me down and put me in a corner to convince me otherwise.
I wasn’t having it.
At the very least he asked if I’d take my leather cut off. Whether it was a test or not, I made it very clear the leather cut would never leave my body.
I took Slam with me and we rode through the hills, just outside the city, where a college campus crawled through the trees. Completely hidden from the real world, it stood and served as a way for people to spend four years figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives.
I won’t lie, it was an easy place to pick up women who were looking for a little outlaw wildness. We always called them one-nighters because if they stayed at the clubhouse for a night, by morning, they were all but begging for a ride back.
The second I went into the house, it was like a fucking movie scene. People everywhere. All of them holding red cups. Beach balls getting bounced around. Music thumping. Out back, the yard was just as full. All eyes were on me and Slam as we walked through the place. I asked everyone in sight where Ana was and most of them knew nothing. Of course they didn’t know her… she didn’t fucking go to college there. She didn’t go to college anywhere. That opportunity in life was pissed away a long time ago.
I finally found her dumb ass friend and asked her where Ana was. She pointed upstairs with a red faced grin.
I turned to bolt.
Slam grabbed for me but I was gone. My shoulders were wide and I knocked everyone out of my way. Two guys made comments at me but I didn’t bother stopping. Slam did though. He never gave up the chance to knock someone’s jaw off. That left me alone as I walked up the stairs of the house. I started with the first door I could find and started kicking them in. There was some crazy shit going on - nothing I hadn’t done in my life up to that point - but I couldn’t stop fearing what I’d find when I found Ana.
The last door on the right was the one.
I opened it and the first thing I saw was Ana on the bed. Her head turned toward me, eyes half shut. Her arms were limp, a red cup on the floor, booze spilled onto the carpet.
Some asshole was on top of her, lifting her shirt up. I saw him kiss below her belly button, his other hand pulling at her jeans, and I lost my mind.
I stepped into the room and the asshole looked up at me. He smiled, like he was a king about to feast.
“Hey, bro,” he said. “When I’m done you can have her.”
Yeah, that wasn’t the right thing to say to me in that moment.
I walked around the bed and grabbed the asshole by his shirt. I threw him so hard against the wall he bounced off it and came flying at me. There was shock in his eyes but that was quickly replaced by tears when I nailed him in the jaw. He flew to the left, into a dresser, knocking everything off it. He stumbled and groaned, trying to mumble something at me. He grabbed a few picture frames and launched them at me but I swatted them away.
When I got him by the back of the neck I slammed his face off the wall, over and over, my mind unable to stop playing images of what this guy intended to do to my Ana. To my darlin’. My girl. And she wasn’t even coherent enough to make a decision and tell this prick not to touch her body.
It might have been ten hits… maybe fifty… but I felt someone grab my arm.
It was Slam.
He pulled me away from the guy and the guy toppled to the ground, crying like a baby.
“Bro,” Slam said to me, “go take care of Ana. I got this.”
Yeah, Slam wasn’t there to stop me from beating the guy. He took over for me.
Slam had massive feet. And he kicked the guy over and over as I tended to Ana.
I kept her head turned to the side as I checked to make sure nothing had happened. The next day I’d get the entire story and truth. That she was upset and just drank too much at once. That some guy was grabbing at her and she sort of liked the attention but had no intention of going upstairs with him. She actually went upstairs to get sick and somehow ended up in the bedroom.
Man, the rage that soared through me during that night and the day after was bad.
But that night I lifted Ana up and made her walk with me.
She finally did get sick - all over my leather cut.
It pissed me off, but it was Ana. My darlin’. My girl. I would have carried her to the end of the world, puke all over my leather, shirt, arm, and leg.
All for her.