This chapter you find out exactly who it was that attacked Marcus and his beloved Porsche. (Like you didn't already know...)
I have my phone in my hand before I've even exited the parking lot.
This is a bad idea of epic proportions. I shouldn't be interfering like this in Bella's life, but for the second time since I met her it's like I can't think of anything other than protecting her. Of making her life better.
So I drive.
It's a Sunday night, so Jasper will be having dinner with his family, but Riley answers after the first ring, and is waiting outside of the garage within ten minutes.
Like I said, the guy is always up for no good.
I leave my car inside, opting to take Riley's car instead. Even after four in the afternoon he looks like he's only just woken up. He's got a burger in one hand, and the steering wheel in the other, and from the five o'clock shadow on his jaw I'm assuming he hasn't been home yet.
Loos doesn't begin to describe Riley.
"What is it with you and this girl?" he asks as I slide into the passenger seat, flicking aside burger wrappers and other shit that's strewn across the seat. I ignore his question, the question that I seem to ask myself every fucking day, but tell him everything she told me at the diner.
I tell him about the bruises Marcus leaves on her skin. The expectation he has that she'll sell herself for more money. The drugs. The fear. The deadbeat ex in jail. All of it.
I leave out the parts he doesn't need to know - the parts that I know were for me only.
Those details I keep to myself, like pieces of a Bella puzzle that I'm slowly beginning to put together. I lock them away with the other things I'm learning about her. Like she looks adorable in her knit cap, and that she never wears perfume but still smells amazing, and that when she looks at her son she gets this look in her eyes that I would do anything to have directed at me.
"Marcus needs to learn a lesson," I say as my fists tighten in my lap. "We've been waiting for a good enough reason, and here it is."
"Yeah, I get that," Riley answers warily. "And don't get me wrong, Marcus is an asshole of epic proportions who deserves everything he gets, but why her? Why now?"
I don't answer because I don't fucking know.
"Is it the kid?"
Something hot flares deep in my gut, something I can't swallow down – something that's accompanied by the urge to punch Riley repeatedly in his stupid fucking mouth. Emmett has no place here. He's a good kid, who's completely innocent of all of this shit, and just the sound of his name from Riley's lips makes my muscles tense with an insane urge to protect him.
"It's not just the kid," I reply, my fingers tightening around the leather seat beneath my legs. "It's not just her either."
Sighing, Riley turns his focus back to the road. "Then what's this all about, Masen? I've never seen you like this before."
He's right; I can normally keep it together. I'm not the kind of guy who lets people get under his skin. But there's something about Bella. She's not just under my skin, she's everywhere, and no matter how hard I try to keep her at a safe distance, I can't turn off whatever it is inside of me that she's flicked on.
When I think about sitting in that restaurant, the way her face twisted and her eyes went empty as she told me about Marcus, it sends a fire through me like nothing I've experienced before.
"She just needs someone to look out for her," I say finally, through a tight jaw. "She has no one but the kid. No family, no friends, no one to stop someone like Marcus fucking up her entire life."
"And you figure that person could be you?"
I can't describe how desperately I want that person to be me. But I also can't describe how scared it makes me to think of Bella and Emmett anywhere near me and my life.
It feels like I'm careening headlong into something I have no power to stop. And maybe no want to.
"Just drive, Riley."
A few minutes later he pulls up a couple of blocks from the club, and we both jump out.
He opens the boot, waving his hand over the space like a game show host.
I don't even think about it.
"Always with the wrench," chuckles Riley, who reaches for a length of steel pipe as I conceal the tool up my sleeve. He closes the trunk quietly, and we both pull our hoods up over our heads, and I slip a pair of black leather gloves on to conceal the ink on the back of my hands.
We're quiet as we walk, and I can feel the cold steel of the wrench in my sleeve pressing against my arm, its weight like a comfort against my skin. The parking lot is empty, save for the bright yellow dick sitting under the streetlight.
The sun has well and truly gone down, and shadows are dark enough to hide all manner of sin. Which is good, since the shadows are where I live.
You can tell Marcus takes care of his car; the paint is spotless, the car itself is fitted out with all of the extras, and the rims are so shiny I can see my shoes as Tyler and I slip up unnoticed beside it. Riley gestures to the car with a sweeping hand movement, and I round the front, trying to decide where I'll start.
The wrench slides down my arm and into my hand, and I feel the skin across my knuckles stretch as I grip the handle tightly. Standing at the driver's side door, I look at my reflection in the window, the hood of my jacket and the scarf around my mouth, hiding my face.
My muscles loosen, and the skin across my forehead softens as I take a deep lungful of cold air.
This is it.
This is the moment that will change everything.
It hits me like a wave of heat, rolling up my spine and sinking deep into my muscles.
I close my eyes, basking in the core-deep feeling of change, the feeling that after this there's no turning back. Everything I've kept from her, everything I've been so careful to hide, will be out in the open for her to see.
But I'm beyond hiding now.
The shockwave as the wrench hits the Porsche's door ripples up my arm, sending a jolt of pain into my shoulder, but the satisfying crunch of metal against metal is enough to dull the ache. The door shudders and the window shakes, and I can't help but smile at the beautiful fist-sized dent.
Like a starting pistol has gone off, Riley echoes my movement with one of his own.
The side windows.
The doors.
The rear window and the flashy spoiler. The metal and glass bends and shatters beneath the relentless beating, the sound bouncing off the walls of Blush, and disappearing into the empty parking lot.
Rage, unhindered and raw, roars through me. I'm so blinded by the memory of Bella's eyes – so big and so fucking innocent– that I'm halfway up the front of the car before I realise what I'm doing. Standing on the hood, I smash the wrench over and over into the glass, panting so hard that the air under my hood feels warm and stifling.
But it feels good. God, does it feel good.
I'm so full of adrenaline and rage that I barely hear the sound of the club's side door opening.
"What the fuck?!"
But Riley is already there. He lands a solid blow to the side of Marcus' face, and, blindsided, he falls to the bitumen, clutching a hand to his jaw.
The hood of the car flexes under foot as I watch Marcus, lit by the lone light bulb above the side door, lift himself from the damp ground. Like something dark and vengeful, Riley stands over him, his fist still clenched, the piece of steel pipe in his other hand.
The chassis rocks as I jump from down the hood, shattered glass tinkling against the ground as the car rights itself. I almost have to stop halfway across the parking lot. I can feel the anger coiling inside of my muscles, and feel the pulse in my throat pound against my skin. The state I'm in I don't know if I can control myself if I get any closer.
But this needs to be done. This needs to happen.
If not for her, then for me. Because Marcus deserves this for more than just what he's doing to Bella, he deserves this for just breathing. If Jasper hadn't explicitly forbid me from beating the shit out of him, I would be doing just that. Instead, i'll take from him the one thing I know he cares about.
Clenching my jaw and reigning in the urge to kick his head in, I stop a few feet away from Marcus. His dark eyes size me up from his spot on the ground, and even with a black eye forming, and two guys standing over him, he doesn't make a noise. He doesn't call for help, he doesn't plead, he doesn't beg, he doesn't make a fucking noise. His eyes are tight and his top lip curls back into a snarl that's enough to make me want to slam my fist against it.
I crouch down, resting my arms on my knees, the wrench dangling from my gloved hands.
"Do you know who I am?" he says, his voice firm.
"I don't care who you are."
He leans forward, his eyes as hard as the steel in my hand. "You should."
Riley laughs, and Marcus spits at my feet, narrowly missing my shoes. "I'll find you," he hisses, the snarl turning into something akin to a sneer. "I'll find you, and I'll kill you."
Even though he can't see my face, I can't help but smile. "You can try."
I stand, and Riley knocks Marcus hard enough that he slumps to the side. "He's all yours," he says, disappearing, leaving me along with Marcus.
The leather of my gloves squeaks as I clench my fist at my side. I have to take a deep breath to help keep the bloodlust at bay. This isn't about hurting him, it's about teaching him a lesson.
His time will come.
"You have no idea who you're fucking with," he spits, looking up at me.
A surge of rage bursts through me, and I lift the wrench over my head, as if I'm going to smash him in the head with it. God, how I want to. He cowers, holding an arm up to protect himself, but I lower it to my side instead.
"Neither do you," I say quietly, as I shove him back against the bitumen with my foot. "But you should know,"—I shove the wrench into the back of my jeans— "that I know what kind of scum you are. I know exactly what you do, and who you'll destroy to get what you want." I take a step closer so that I'm standing right over him. "But I am your worst fucking nightmare, Marcus. And if you think this is the end, then you're dumber than you look."
I step to the side, and I can see it in his eyes - the moment he spots his car across the lot.
"You're a dead man," he hisses. "A dead man, you hear me!"
I begin to back away before my anger gets the better of me.
"Have a nice night."
Riley reappears out of the darkness, and I hear the click as he retracts his pocket knife. I don't need to see beneath the scarf over his mouth to know he's got a grin from ear to ear. The hiss of the air leaving the Porsche's tires echoes through the empty lot, following us as we blend into the dark night.
She opens the door, and the smell of something cooking mingled with something that's unmistakably Bella wafts out. I have to clench my fists hard inside of my jacket pockets just to stop from reaching for her.
"You okay?" she asks, gifting me with a gentle smile.
I nod, drawing my hood back as I step into her apartment. "I'm fine."
It scares me what I'd do for this girl – for Emmett. Lie, cheat, steal, bruise, bloody, destroy – I don't know where I would stop.
She fusses around in the kitchen, humming quietly to some show Emmett has on the TV, and all I want to do is kiss her: her mouth, the long expanse of her neck, the little spot right above her cheekbones where her lashes rest – I want to taste it all. I want her so badly I can barely think or breathe or remember my own name.
But she's different. She's not the kind of girl that you just take. She deserves better that someone who takes what he wants, no matter how much it physically hurts to not be able to just kiss her. She deserves someone that she can trust, someone that can show her that she's something worth waiting for and fighting for.
Whether or not I'm that someone I still haven't decided.
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