Page 27 of A Fine Line

“Fuck.”

He knows I understand what he’s getting at. He knows the meaning behind his words is not lost on me. I may be a dumb fucking asshole sometimes, but I’m not so shortsighted and out of touch with my own thought processes that the sudden deviation in my behavior isn’t obvious. And as much as I don’t like it, he’s correct in his long-winded advice that basically equals it’s time to shit or get off the pot. Or, in this case, pin her down or push her away.

“Answer me one question,” Darius’s voice snaps my attention back to him. “If you were to go out there and see some man with his hands on her, what would you do?”

My lip curls, and the weight on my chest is suddenly crushing as I snarl, “With her consent or without?”

“Does it matter?”

I don’t hesitate to shake my head. “Not even a little bit.”

“Then what would you do?”

“You would have to stop me from killing him.”

I’m not exaggerating. The intense pulse inside me at the thought of someone else touching her makes my skin crawl. I feel physically ill and sweat beads on my forehead trickling down my back. I hold my hand up to find it trembling, and my eyes dart to Dare. “Do you think I’m sick?”

Dare snorts out another laugh, one of his hands slapping his thigh as he says, “Lovesick, maybe.”

I step into him, giving him a shove backwards with both my hands. I’ve really had it with all the laughing. “Shut your fucking mouth.”

He only laughs harder, and as much as I want to rough him up, instead, I take a step back and stare up at the ceiling as he gets control of himself. I think back on the last few days, attempting to figure out how the fuck I ended up here, but I come up with nothing. So, I try to say it one more time. “I fucking hate her.”

Darius straightens and moves next to me, swinging an arm over my shoulder and giving me a little squeeze. “Sometimes, it’s the same exact fucking thing.”

I groan loudly, allowing him to steer me out of the bathroom and back into the hallway, where we come face to face with Nettie and Carolina, who are just entering a room across the hallway. They both stop, turning to look at me, so I quickly close the distance between Carolina and me, not stopping until there’s barely any space between us. She looks up at me, her gaze unflinching, and right when she opens her mouth to say something, I spit out, “Fuck.”

Then I turn on my heel and rush down the hallway, but I hear her say, “What the fuck is wrong with him?”

This question is met with more tittering from Darius and Nettie, and I pause outside the next doorway and turn to give Darius a murderous look as I open the door to go inside. He rushes over, doing a half-ass job at stifling his amusement, and follows me into the room, the door slamming behind us.

The piece of shit I attempted to beat to death is cuffed to a chair in the middle of the room. I take a step toward him before I realize I’m moving, and Darius grabs me, yanking me back and pushing me toward the wall as he says, “Nope. You fucking stay over there.”

I push back against him and open my mouth to argue, but his hand comes up sharply, the sting of his palm against my cheek making me flinch away and blink. I’m immediately reminded of the time I had to bust his nose to get him to see reason, so when he says, “Do you hear me, Tony? Do you understand?” I nod, my jaw clenching as I bring both my hands up in surrender and lean back against the wall.

He walks toward the man in the chair, saying something to Anton and Erik that has them changing their position so they’re standing between the man in the middle of the room and me. I roll my eyes, amused that the two of them think they could stop me if I wanted to get over there. Of course, most likely, Darius only wants them to slow me down and give him the chance to return the favor for that broken nose.

I trust Darius to get the job done since it’s obvious that something inside of me has shifted to the point I can no longer see reason. Not that the fucking piece of shit doesn’t deserve to be dead, but we definitely need to squeeze any possible information out of him first.

Darius kneels in front of him, and the man’s head comes up, and he peers at Darius with the one eye that he can still barely open. Darius whispers something to him, and the man nods, that one eye glancing at me before looking back at Darius, and he shakes his head in response to whatever is being said to him.

“Anton,” I whisper-shout. He turns back and looks at me, and I motion for him to come closer.

“Tony?” Anton’s words are directed at me, but his attention is still on Darius.

I answer anyway, “What’s he saying?”

“He’s giving him a choice,” he says as he turns his head to look at me, the corner of his mouth curling up as he continues, “It’s the easy way or the hard way—you know what I mean?”

I glance back at Darius, who’s still speaking softly to the restrained man whose eye is focused on Dare’s face as he nods in understanding of whatever he’s hearing. I turn back to Anton and ask, “What’s the easy way?”

“Darius is the easy way.”

“And the hard way?”

“That would be you.” Anton chuckles and then adds, “Cause you’re definitely going to make it hurt.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

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