Beautiful Broken Promises(100)

“Look, I’ve never handled emotional situations well. Hell, I once pushed Audrey away when push came to shove. I’m probably not the guy to go to for this type of thing.”

“He told me to leave Kate…” I repeated. “He doesn't plan on seeing me when he gets home.”

Jace kept quiet the remainder of the drive, and I used that time to sort out my thundering emotions and calm my quiet sobs. I couldn't let Kate and Braden see me this torn up. I wiped my tears dry. With my ring fingers, I massaged around my eyes, starting from my cheeks and working them out in little circles. I couldn’t go back with swollen eyes; Braden would know. Who was I kidding? Braden would know, regardless.





- TWENTY -

LANE -

Blood. It was splattered across my shirt and covered my hands. Even though I could tell it was mostly from his nose, it still made my stomach turn over. Those suckers really leaked when knocked just the right way. I’d seen it happen and I had been covered in it just like this a time or two, except every other time, a bell would chime or a ref would call for us to separate.

The part that worried me the most is that I hadn’t even fully unleashed. It had been building up to that point though. If he hadn’t passed out so quickly, I would probably still be working him over. Jaxon and Jace could have pulled me away a million times, but my fists still would have sought out his face.

I watched a trail of red liquid glide down my fingers and drip with a small splash on the ground. It hit me that I had done all of that with Raegan standing only a few feet away. She’d had to witness the rage inside of me that I tried to keep calm every single day. Ironically, boxing had helped me control my strength and harness it into something I was really good at. But I needed the restrictions. I craved the rules and the ropes that told me when to go hard and when to pull back. Not this concrete parking lot free-for-all.

I heard the sirens blaring closer, and the anger I felt toward myself reached an astronomical level. I thought I had been thinking of Kate. Of Raegan and Braden. I thought I had been avenging them somehow. But would Kate be proud of me for successfully pummeling the reason she had been taken from me for the first four years of her life if it landed me in jail for assault?

Jaxon shoved tissues and a miniature bottle of sanitizer in my hands and mumbled something about cleaning myself off. I ducked into my car and quickly scrubbed the carnage from my hands. The tissues flaked and it took even more time for me to remove all the pieces than it did to get rid of the blood. I bathed my hands in the sanitizer until the bottle was practically empty.

“I’m f*cked,” I groaned when Jaxon moved to the open window.

“Nah, I think I can handle this. See that guy getting out of the cruiser? He’s put me in handcuffs more times than I can count,” he chuckled.

“Dude, that doesn't sound like you got this. It actually sounds like the opposite, in fact.”

“I used to put some excitement in this boring town for him. He likes me.”

I groaned at his less-than-reassuring words. “Where’s Rae?” I managed to rasp out. I couldn’t look at her earlier… I didn’t want to see the disappointment or—God forbid—fear in her eyes.

“Probably at Jace’s.” He didn't sound too confident in his words and my heart squeezed tighter than my fists. How could one single moment f*ck up everything? Kate, Raegan, and Braden had become everything in my life that I didn't know I wanted. They were my sunrise and sunset—every single day. It was the four of us, and I wouldn’t recover if it became any less than that.

I reached behind me in the backseat, praying for a spare shirt. Thankfully, my gym bag sat on the floorboard so I quickly tossed on an old, sweaty shirt, welcoming it if it meant I could shed the bloody one.

When I exited the car, Adam was pushing up off the ground, holding his shirt up to his nose. Looking at him only caused me more agony and fury. If he made any eye contact with me whatsoever, I’d maul him again. I proceeded to the opposite side of my car so that I couldn't even catch a glimpse of him in my periphery.

“Jaxon Riley… boy, tell me you didn’t do this mess.” The sheriff casually pointed to Adam’s scrawny, crumbled form.

“You know me, Mack, I can never pass up an opportunity to bring some spontaneity to your day,” Jaxon responded with a cheesy-ass grin, and I was baffled by the dynamic between these two.

“Tell me what happened and why I gotta get the damn parking lot cleaned up,” the sheriff’s gruff voice replied.