by Michelle Amy
The man cracked his knuckles. “You want to do this, dipshit? Really?”
Jack didn’t answer. He remained stoically silent as he endured more comments from the drunken buffoon.
“Once I wipe the bar down with your face maybe I’ll show your woman what it’s like to be with a real man. You know? Bend her over and-”
He didn’t have time to get the rest of his sentence out. Jack moved with such ferocious speed that the blubbering jock barely saw it coming. Jack’s fist slammed into his gut, and as he doubled over Jack elbowed him in the nose. A spray of blood shot into the air and cascaded to the floor as the man’s nose broke. He let out a pitiful shriek, then took an angry swipe at Jack.
Jack easily stepped out of the way of the blow. As the blonde man cupped his nose Jack moved in on him again, drawing his fist back and dealing another hit to man’s jaw. He stumbled back a few paces, and a swarm of hands caught him and propped him back out.
My fear intensified ten fold. Behind the drunk man was a group of three more big, intoxicated, angry goons. He had friends. Jack didn’t seem to see this as a problem.
They all went after him at once. I couldn’t help but clutch at my chest as my fear blossomed into panic. Claire squeezed my hand.
Where the hell were the bouncers?
Jack knocked the man who had insulted me down with one last punch to the face. Before his limp body hit the floor Jack was already engaged with the other three, who apparently had no sense of what a fair fight looked like. One kicked Jack in the back of the knees. He dropped, received a blow to the face, and then sprang back up like a vicious cat.
He picked his next target, and in a flurry of movements, brought him to the ground. I didn’t even have time to process what I had just seen.
As he squared off with the two remaining men the crowd that had gathered formed a ring around them. The bouncers were trying to break through, squeezing their way in between the tight knot of bodies. I could see Max, the manager, making his way over from the kitchen. He had a towel thrown over one shoulder and a scowl on his face.
Jack went after the two men that stood before him. The brawl was loud and I saw Jack receive at least two punches to the ribs. He didn’t seem to notice, and if he did, it didn’t slow him down. He brought down the third and turned to the last man, who in a moment of sheer panic tried to escape into the throng of people.
They didn’t clear a path for him soon enough. Jack grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him backwards. Then he buried his knee in his gut and hit him in the back of the neck with his elbow.
The scene I was looking upon now was much more terrifying than it had been moments before. Jack stood in the center of it all, his chest rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. At his feet were the unconscious bodies of all four men. There was blood leaking from a cut on his right eyebrow, and from the corner of his mouth. He spat more of it out on to the floor. One hand rested lightly against his ribs, and it was then that I realized he was in pain.
I wanted to go to him. Claire’s hand was still gripping mine tightly.
The bouncers arrived and burst through the group of people. Max came in behind them and crossed his arms. He stared at the bodies on the ground. “Really, Jack?” He asked, lifting his gaze to the only man left standing.
Jack shrugged. “It was only one, at first.”
Max glared at him. He pointed at the bodies and told the bouncers to bring them outside and call an ambulance. Then he turned his gaze back to Jack. “This is not the kind of publicity my bar needs.”
“These aren’t the kind of customers your bar needs, either.”
“I have bouncers for that exact reason. To take care of the riff raff. You have a day job. Stick to that.”
“They were harassing your staff, and your boys weren’t anywhere to be seen. What was I supposed to do?”
Max rolled his eyes, but that was the full extent of their conversation. I had expected Max to kick Jack out. If this had happened at my old bar, Jack would have been banned for life and the police would have been called. Here, it all seemed so nonchalant. So common place. It made me wonder how frequently this actually happened.
The crowd had dissipated by this point. The story of what had happened was on every tongue, and eyes were alight with glee as everyone told the story and relived the moment. I was sure this was something that would be talked about for days to come.
Jack turned to me. His eyes slid down to look at my hand clutched in Claire’s. She let me go and slipped away, returning to her station at the bar as the line began to form once again, as if nothing had happened.
I had to mentally coax myself to move. I felt nearly paralyzed standing with my back against the counter. What I had just seen was a much more intense violence than what I had experienced with Chris. The anger and the power had been unlike anything I had ever come across, and it all happened so quickly.
I forced myself to leave the safety behind the bar and go to him. He stood with one hand still pressed against his ribs and the other hanging by his side. His eyes were full of something I couldn’t quite place, but it made me feel sad. Lonely.
“Are you okay?” I asked, reaching out for his hand. His knuckles were split and bloody.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He was lying. I bit my bottom lip. “Want to get out of here?”
He nodded.
I grabbed his jacket that he had hung on the back of the stool. Claire watched us leave and called over to me that she would cover for me. I owed her a world of gratitude. We slipped outside and weaved through the line up of patrons waiting to get inside. I used them as cover to avoid the bouncers who were standing with the men that Jack had annihilated single-handedly. They were stirring awake, moaning and groaning with pain as they came to, and the last thing I wanted was for another confrontation- not that they were in any shape to pick a fight with Jack again.
I spotted his car in the parking lot and headed right for it. Jack followed. The silence between us made me anxious. I had no clue how to handle something like this. Part of me was angry. Part of me was impressed. Most of me was confused and scared.
He slid into the driver’s seat and I got in the passenger side. He didn’t start the car right away. Instead, he closed his eyes and rested his head back. I listened to him breathe and held my tongue for as long as I could.
Then it all became too much, and I felt tears begin to burn in the corners of my eyes. I had to keep it together. I barely knew this man. I had known him for only a couple weeks, and had spent only one evening with him. It had, admittedly, been one of the best nights of my life, but it shouldn’t have been enough to make me feel this incredible ache in my heart for him.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me right away. Without opening his eyes, he finally said, “Because he deserved it. The others were collateral damage, I guess.”
“Collateral damage?” I couldn’t disguise the colour of anger in my voice.
He opened his eyes and looked at me without turning his head. “Yeah. They were a bunch of asshats too, so don’t feel bad for them.”
“Jack, you beat the shit out of them because a moron in a drunken stupor called me a bitch. It’s not worth it.”
“Yes, you are.”
I blinked.
He shifted in his seat and I saw him try to hide a grimace. “Nobody can talk to you like that. Especially not when I’m around. You don’t need assholes treating you that way.”
“No, I don’t, but you can’t stop them all.”
“Only the ones I catch.” He started the car. The engine purred and my seat warmer started up. I stared out the window as he pulled out of the parking lot. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Do you want me to take you home?” He asked.
I nodded.
“Alright.”
I forced myself to keep it together as we drove the fifteen minutes to my apartment. It took everything I had not
to burst into tears. My eyes burned and my throat ached. One tear leaked down my cheek and I tried to wipe it away without him noticing. If he did catch it, he didn’t say anything.
He pulled up in front of my building. He didn’t get out to open my door for me. He was probably hurting more than I thought he was.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, my hand resting on the door handle.
He nodded. “Yeah, this is nothing. Will you be okay?”
His brows were drawn together in concern. His jaw was firm. He was looking at me like he wanted to gather me in his arms and tell me everything was fine. Part of me wanted him to. I wanted him to assure me that he was still trustworthy. He didn’t. He stayed where he was, giving me space.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, unable to stop my breath from catching in my throat as a sob threatened to wreak havoc on me. “I just… I just need to-”
“I get it,” he said. “Don’t worry. Call me, if you want.”
I slid out of the car. He waited until I got the door to the lobby open and then he tore away. I heard his tires screeching all the way down the street and I wondered what sort of baggage he was carrying around with him that made him so angry. That’s what this whole thing had been about, tonight. He was angry, and he needed somewhere to put it, and that crew of assholes made for perfect punching bags.
Maybe Brooke was right after all. Maybe all I had managed to do with Jack was throw myself headlong into another situation that I wasn’t equipped to handle.
Chapter Nine
I wasn’t willing to come clean to Brooke about everything that had happened when I woke the next morning. So I did everything I could to convince her that I was perfectly fine, and that Jack and I were still perfectly fine, and that I was not, in fact, involved with a man with insane aggression issues. I didn’t want her to worry, and I also didn’t want her to walk around the house telling me how right she had been. I couldn’t endure that sort of thing right now. I was still devastated by what had happened that night. I didn’t know where I stood with Jack.
I suppose there was a chance that I was being overdramatic. I didn’t think for one second that he would ever turn that anger on me. But, then again, I would have said the same thing about Chris when we had just started seeing each other. I wasn’t sure that this was a risk I could take again. I had barely escaped Chris with my sanity. Jack had stirred something in me that was much more powerful than what I had ever felt from Chris. If I let myself go any further with him I feared I wouldn’t be able to walk away... even if it became dangerous for me.
I was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee when Brooke came out of the shower. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel atop her head and she was wearing a tank top and tiny little shorts. “Morning,” she chimed, sidling up beside me. “Is there enough for two?”
“Of course,” I said, grabbing her a mug from the cupboard. I poured a cup for each of us and then put a piece of bread in the toaster.
“How was work last night?” She asked.
I shrugged. “Oh you know, same old.”
She lifted a blonde eyebrow skeptically. “Something happened, didn’t it?”
She had an uncanny ability to always tell when I was withholding information from her. I stirred some sugar into my coffee and sighed. “There was a bar fight. Five guys. It was quite literally the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, do tell.” She said, sitting down at one of our barstools at one end of the counter. She wrapped her fingers around her mug and leaned on the counter eagerly.
I leaned my back against the counter and sipped my coffee while my bread toasted. “Well, there was this girl sitting at my bar with her boyfriend- or date, who knows. Suddenly some guy starts hitting on her and wants to buy her a drink.”
“Of course,” Brooke says, rolling her eyes. “Men.”
I smiled. “Yeah. She said no, more than once, and he got angry. Called her a spoiled bitch. Told her to shut up.”
Brooke shook her head. “What an asshole.”
“I know. Anyways, the girls boyfriend gets up, rolls up his sleeves, and then this epic brawl breaks out. Turns out the drunk guy had three friends, and they all went after him.”
Brooke’s eyes were wide. “Is he okay? Did you have to call an ambulance?”
I stared down at my coffee. “He kind of laid waste to all of them.”
Brooke laughed. “Seriously? That’s bad ass! I wish I had been there to see it. You only ever see that kind of thing in the movies. You know?”
I nodded. “Right. Movies.”
Brooke shifted in her stool. “So he was fine?”
“Well, not fine,” I said. “He got a bit roughed up. But I think he’s okay. His girlfriend seemed pretty freaked out by the whole thing. I don’t think she realized he was that way.”
“What way?”
“So angry. I’ve never seen anything like it, Brooke. It was like... it was like he hated those guys with every fibre of his soul and his purpose was to destroy them.”
Brooke shrugged. “Hey, we all have our issues, right?”
“So that doesn’t seem like a giant red flag to you?”
Brooke put her coffee mug down and eyed me. My toast popped and I turned my back to her to lather it in peanut butter. I took a bite.
Brooke cleared her throat. “So, Alice, is there any chance that this angry fighter may have been a guy named Jack?”
I swallowed my bite and hung my head. “Yes.”
She surprised me by not laughing. I turned back to her. She was looking at her coffee and I could tell she was thinking hard. “Are you going to keep seeing him?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “The other night with him was one of the best nights I have ever had. No. It was the best night I’ve ever had. It felt right. I felt safe and like I could be myself. He made me feel the way you make me feel. Like home.”
Brooke smiled lightly. “Well, those are all good things, right?”
“Yes,” I said, “but last night scared the hell out of me. I don’t want to be with someone who can fly off the handle so easily. It’s going to get him in serious trouble one time.”
“Well, maybe. Or he’ll just keep kicking ass.” She had a playful grin tugging the corner of her lips.
I frowned. “He will meet his match eventually, and I won’t be able to watch it happen.”
“Is that what scares you the most? Or is it that you can’t trust him anymore?”
That was a good question. I mulled it over for a minute. “I’m most afraid of him getting hurt because he jumps into a fight he can’t win.”
Brooke stood up. “Then, it’s pretty clear to me that you just need to talk to him. Get back on the same page. Tell him why it scares you. He may not understand.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. She was probably right. She always was. “Yeah... I suppose I can do that.”
“Unless, of course, you are willing to walk away from him entirely.” Brooke shrugged. “Maybe you’re over him. Maybe he was just a one night stand.”
“No,” I said rather hastily. “He wasn’t a one night stand.”
Brooke smiled. “Then you should fight for him. He fought for you.” She shrugged one shoulder and padded down the hall back to her bedroom. She left her door open and I heard her start opening drawers as she searched for what to wear.
“Thank you,” I called.
“You’re welcome,” she hollered back.
I felt some of the anxiety that had settled in my chest evaporate. I wasn’t willing to walk away from him because of this. I could stick it out a bit longer. I could see where this was going to go. I couldn’t ignore the way I was feeling about him.
Chapter Ten
When I woke up the following morning the first thing I did was reach across my bed which was drowning in pillows, and blindly sought out my phone on my night stand. My hand fumbled around knocking over an old water bottle and an alarm clock that I never used before I felt the rubber of my
phone case. I clicked the home button and peered at the screen as I lay sprawled on my back.
No new messages. No missed calls. No nothing.
I had been hoping, against all the odds, that Jack would have tried to reach me at some point in the middle of the night. If my life had been a romance movie, that is exactly what would have happened. He would have called and I would have answered, and he would have confessed his love, then told me to go to my front door, where he’d be standing with a bouquet of flowers and an apologetic smile and we would forget the whole thing ever happened. Then we would walk off into the sunset.
Alas, my life was not a chick flick.
I groaned and forced myself to sit up. From there I set out on the grueling endeavour of preparing for the day. As I showered and dressed my mind swam with images of Jack, and my heart swooned at the memories of our evening together. I thought of his body and his voice and the way he looked at me. I thought of the way he made me feel when he listened to me talk, of the way he looked at me when I laughed. Then I thought of his angry fists barreling down on the man’s face last night at the Red Rose.
When I finally left my room Brooke was sitting at the kitchen counter eating a bowl of cereal. Her hair was tied up in a tight knot on the tip top of her head, and her make up was soft and pink. “You work today?” I asked, sidling up beside her on the other stool.
She nodded as she swallowed a bite of Cheerios. “Yup, living the life. What are your plans?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I have the day off and the apartment to myself... the possibilities are endless.”
Brooke grinned and indulged herself in the bizarre habit of drinking the remaining milk from her cereal bowl. I watched and said nothing. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Well, I can think of one or two things you could do to pass the time.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
She hopped off her stool and put her dishes in the dishwasher while she spoke. “First, you could put something cuter on. You look like a frat girl.”