Page 127 of Look, Don't Touch

My fist levers back to send him to his maker.

Maybe he won’t die. Maybe someone will pull me off him before I bash his stupid face into the back of his skull. Maybe they won’t.

A fraction of a second before I release the coiled rage and amped muscles, Hota’s vehement Japanese plows through my frenzied emotions and collides with my brain.

Hailey needs you more than he needs to die.

The clench of my fist goes slack. I release my hold on the fucker’s tie. He clatters to the ground like the sorry sack of meat and bones he is. Slowly, I blink. The haze of absolute fury dissipates like a slow-rolling fog.

I see the blood. I see the faces around me stretched in horror. I see the crowd parting and security rushing my way.

My head turns. Hota’s face is drawn in disappointment. I know it’s not in me, but for me. And that’s worse. It makes my insides go cold.

His gaze falls to the floor, and I follow it down.

Hailey. My siren.

Nothing in life has prepared me for seeing my future ripped to shreds before my eyes by my own hands. Not even losing my entire family.

Hota crouches low next to my sobbing siren.

When she reaches out and shoves him away, the cold bits in my chest turn to jagged shards of ice.

Despite my frozen body, I push forward, determined to get to her. If I can just wrap my arms around her, just hold her close, everything will be okay.

I can fix this. I will fix this. I have to.

A hand wraps around my bicep. I shake it off.

“Hey, I’m talking to you,” a deep voice with a heavy Queens accent announces. It’s the first I’ve heard from him.

I don’t even look in his direction. I’m ten feet from Hailey and closing, when Natalia breezes into the mix. She swoops down beside my siren and drapes an arm around her shoulders. Laurent moves people back with French that slaps their cheeks for daring to look.

Astor stealthily comes out of stage left, steals his coat, and drapes it over Hailey. My siren grabs her aunt as though she’s the moor and I am the storm.

My feet freeze to the unforgiving floor.

“Hey, look.” Queens is in my ear and on my arm again. I don’t look, not at him anyway. I watch as Nat and Astor help my siren off the marble and rush her toward the kitchen, away from the crowd, away from me. Hota and Laurent clear a path for them.

“I’m going to have to take you in.” He wrenches my arm around, trying to spin me in his direction. The man comes up to my pecs. He’s dressed in a security guard uniform, but everything about him says off-duty NYC cop. The overconfidence stance. The overzealous grip. The over-inflated biceps and slight paunch.

I don’t fight him. I don’t much register that he’s touching me. I don’t much care where he takes me either. Lock the fucking door and throw away the key.

“Excuse me, Officer?” Karris’s smooth as silk voice brushes my consciousness. “What is my client being charged with?”

That snaps my gaze to my angelic-looking but devil-like friend.

He doesn’t spare me a glance. His astute gaze is locked on the bulldog on my arm.

“Assault and battery,” the officer spits.

“Against who?” Karris’s head tilts as though there isn’t an unconscious man behind him that the paramedics are loading onto a stretcher.

“The almost dead guy behind you.” The cop juts his thick chin toward the scene that still has an eager crowd. Now, their phones are out, recording.

“Did you see my client strike that man?” Karris asks this as though he has every right in the world to do so. He has a law degree…in corporate law that he hasn’t used in ages.

The officer doesn’t respond.

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