“Hey again, Belchie.” Ten grinned cheerfully and waved a few fingers. “Guess what? I found that boyfriend you were looking for earlier. You remember Quinn Hamilton, right?”
Belcher’s eyes widened as I advanced toward him. He tried to crawl off the bed but got tangled in the sheets and fell over backwards onto the floor. I helped him up, by the hair.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know,” he sobbed, lifting his hands in surrender. “I swear to God, I didn’t know she was yours.”
“So that made you think you had free reign to kiss her while she tried to fight you off, free reign to hit her, to put your fucking hand down her pants?” I grabbed his wrist. “This hand?”
He screamed when I slammed his hand into the wall, then he screamed even louder when I slammed his head into it next. I remembered seeing the bruise on Zoey’s cheek at Cora’s apartment, so I made sure Belcher had more than a few on his cheeks. Ten had told me Zoey had racked him between the legs, but I didn’t think one hit to the junk was enough. Not nearly enough. So I kneed him there a few times before I planted my fist in his gut. Just when his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he began to crumble, I hit him one last time in the jaw.
But that didn’t satisfy me. I wanted to hit him more. I wanted to hurt him more. I stared down at his unconscious body I’d watched fall to my feet, and my knuckles cracked, thirsty for more blood, more crunching bone, more give of unwilling flesh.
Blood roaring through my system, I turned to Asher, Noel and Ten, who were simply standing back and watching the show with appreciation. “That wasn’t enough,” I growled.
Noel nodded his understanding.
They took me to the university athletics facility to work off some of my adrenaline rush and beat down some of my steam. I lifted weights, I ran laps, I took on a punching bag, but I was too fired up to stop, aching to hit something…someone.
For a while, Noel and Ten kept pace with me and worked out beside me without saying a word. Asher didn’t even bother to try. He camped out on the floor, pulled out his phone, and started to play some game that beeped a lot.
I was still going hard when Noel held up his hands, begging me to stop. He flopped down on the indoor track, collapsing onto his back, and panted hard. Ten was curled up on a pile of floor mats, fast asleep, but Asher was still playing away on his phone.
“Man, you gotta stop or you’re going to collapse.”
I wasn’t even close to collapsing. But I sat beside him anyway, wishing for…I don’t know what. I wanted to see Zoey. The only thing I knew could calm me right now would be to pull her into my arms and bury my face in her hair. I need the smell of her hair, the warmth of her breath on my neck, the softness of her skin under my fingers.
But after what I’d done to Belcher and what I could’ve done to Cora, after knowing all that violence was still in me, yearning to get out, I was too afraid to go near her. What if I scared her? What if she thought I was just like Ernest K. Blakeland?
Besides, she had to hate me for walking away from her earlier? I was so ashamed; I didn’t even know how to start to apologize to her for that.
“Why can’t I stop wanting to hurt someone?” I didn’t mean to mutter aloud.
I think Noel was still panting too hard to have heard me, but Asher lifted his face.
He finally put his phone away and hopped to his feet, looking wide awake. Then he strolled over to sit with us. “Hamilton,” he said on a sigh, situating himself into a lazy sprawl. “You’re not your dad.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “What?”
He motioned to my bare torso where I’d taken off my shirt over an hour ago. “Your back. All those scars. You were beat a lot growing up, right? Well, my dad hit me too.”
I wasn’t expecting him to say that, but I shook my head. “No. My mom did that. I never knew my dad.” My mom probably hadn’t even known who he was.
Asher merely waved an unconcerned hand. “Mom, dad, whatever. My point’s the same. You’re not her. We’re not them. Your mother’s violence is not inside you, and what you just went through tonight has nothing to do with her. You did all that shit to protect someone you love, to get justice for your girl, not because you’re an angry asshole who wants to strike out at the first person in your path.”
Fear sprouted in my stomach. “But what if Zoey thinks I’m like that? Her dad hit her too. What if she hears what I did and thinks I’m like him?”
Asher shook his head. “She won’t. Trust me. To Zoey, you hang the moon. She loves you, man.”
I shuddered and about lost it. “I want to see her,” I admitted. I had been telling myself to stay away. Every awful thing that had happened to her was become of me. But I couldn’t help it. I had to see her. “I know I shouldn’t. She probably hates me, but I just...I gotta see her.”