“Maddie?”
“Garrett!” The voice broke, hitting a higher pitch at the end of my name.
“Jamie? Is that you?”
“Garrett, he’s here! He’s here and he’s angry and I’m scared.”
I threw the comforter off my lap, twisting to lower my feet to the floor to stand, “Jamie, calm down. Who’s there? Where’s your mom?”
“He has her! Please, Garrett, he’ll hurt her, don’t let him hurt her. No, no, no, he’s yelling now. Please, Garrett!”
The world stopped. Every feeling, every sensation, every thought I’d ever had frozen in time as I moved. I didn’t feel my shoulder slam into the wall as I hurled myself out of my room. Didn’t feel the bite of the air against my naked skin when I leapt from the porch, nor the loose gravel digging into the pads of my feet as I ran.
Nothing mattered but her. Getting to her and making sure she was okay. I’d barely made it up her steps when something crashed, and my heart left my chest. It shot straight through my throat, splattering across the door between us like blood on a blank canvas.
My fist wrapped around the knob just as I slammed my foot into the wood and kicked it open with every bit of desperation coursing through my soul.
Movement to my right caught my attention, and my veins turned to ice when my eyes latched onto the scene before me. The red-haired, stick of a man I’d met once before stood in their home. The same man who’d gotten in my face and sneered as he told me Maddie was his wife. The same man who’d been the cause of every record of pain in her drawer.
Aaron motherfucking Walsh, and he currently had his hand around Maddie’s jaw.
My Maddie.
She was dressed in her pajamas, a sweater hanging loosely over her shoulders. Her thick curls were wild and untamed, framing her face and accentuating her wide brown eyes.
I was going to kill him.
The piece of shit went off, but I didn’t take in a word. All I saw, all I heard, was motherfucking red. Like a bull after a flag, I was on him. The feel of his nose crunching under my fist was one of the most satisfying moments of my life, a fucking high I wanted to keep chasing. I wanted to do to him every single thing I knew he’d done to her. I wanted to make him beg.
I snatched him up from the ground, smashing my fist into his face a second time, but a voice behind me speared through my narrow-eyed vision. A voice that would reach me from the bowels of hell itself. I whipped my head to look at her, spotting Jamie standing in the hall, and immediately dropped the unconscious man.
“You all right, J-man?”
He nodded but didn’t move.
“I’m proud of you.” And I was. It took a lot of guts for him to call me, and I knew how hard it had to have been for him to not be able to help his mom. The kid was going to be one hell of a man one day.
His face relaxed at my words, and it was all I needed. Curling my arms under the man’s shoulders, I dragged Aaron Walsh toward the door.
“What are you doing? Garrett!”
It took every ounce of determination in me, but I ignored her voice, continuing out and down her porch. I couldn’t see her right now, not with this fucker’s body between us.
She followed me, continuing to call out as I shoved his body in my backseat. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the goddamn despair in her voice. I knew, before she even uttered her next words, I knew she was about to apologize, and it tore me apart.
I leaned my head on my Nova, breathing in deeply. “Don’t stand there and fucking compare me to him, Maddie. I am not him.”
“What are you talking about, I’m not!”