Don't Let Go(34)

“Noah, don’t, he’s drunk,” I yelled, turning my back to him and pushing against Hayden, dimly aware that we were developing an audience. “Stop this, damn it!” I yelled up into his face.
“Let him come, if he’s such a badass,” Hayden slurred, wrapping an arm around my neck possessively. Even drunk I could feel every muscle in his torso tensed and tight, wound and ready for a fight. It was an old hurt with him, his insecurity over Noah. His feeling that I never gave my heart to him completely. I thought it was a buried subject. Clearly, not so much. “Maybe I’ll show you once and for all the difference between a real man and a memory.”
As he said it, I felt Noah’s body against my back.
“You don’t want to go there, buddy,” he growled.
“Hayden—” I pleaded, but my voice was cut off as he pushed Noah back, jostling me in the process. His arm around me tightened and I wrestled against him. “Hayden, stop it!”
As Noah moved forward again, Hayden’s awareness of me morphed into more of an annoyance—something in the way of what he wanted. His grip on me turned into leverage to fling me aside, and like something in a slow-motion action scene I saw an empty table coming my way. Or more like it saw me coming its way.
Ruthie yelped as I crashed into it, and it probably looked and sounded worse than it was, as silverware and a metal napkin holder banged to the floor with me.
That was it.
In time that didn’t seem possible, Noah lunged at Hayden and spun him on the spot, wrenching his arm behind him and planting his face on the table. With his other hand he yanked Hayden’s head up by the hair so that he was sure to see me, and leaned down, his face contorted with something unrecognizable to me.
“That your idea of a real man, *?” he growled into his ear, his voice seething. “Throwing her around?”
Ruthie and Shayna rushed to either side of me, taking an arm.
Hayden’s eyes slowly adjusted on me, still reeling from the shock of moving so fast and not seeing it coming. I saw the dawning in his expression.
“I’d never hurt her,” he said, his voice cracking.
“No, you just wear her like a trophy,” Noah said, barking in his ear. Which wasn’t really true, but my current position on the floor wasn’t the place to pipe up on that. “Beat down her dreams so far that she doesn’t even remember she had them.”
What? My head spun, wondering where that came from.
“Was that just your thumb on her?” Noah hissed in his ear. “Or did you join forces with her mother on that?”
I scrambled to my feet ahead of Shayna and Ruthie’s helping hands, the words burning in my ears.
“Noah, I’m fine,” I said. “Let him go.”
He yanked on Hayden’s hair a little harder, pulling his head into an awkward position. “Feel like a real man now? Get your point across?”
Hayden’s face was blood red, and there were angry tears in his eyes. He was too drunk to really know the scene he’d caused, but not drunk enough to not feel the embarrassment.
“Noah,” I repeated, which fell on deaf ears. I wrapped both hands around his arm and tugged, putting my face right next to his. “Noah!”
His head jerked in my direction, and the eyes that met mine were glazed over. Realization hit a second later, and he stood upright again, moving me behind him with one hand before releasing his grip on Hayden.
“Are you okay?” he asked under his breath, and I nodded.
Hayden jerked upward and stumbled sideways, searching for dignity and anonymity at the same time. I grabbed his arm and turned him around so we could walk away. All I wanted was away.
“Don’t bitch about your daughter or trash her in public,” Noah said, his voice thick with simmering aggression. Hayden tensed and paused mid-step but didn’t turn around to face him. “Be glad you’ve gotten to know her at all.”
Heat flashed from my neck to my scalp on the stab, and I looked away as his gaze landed on me.
“Let’s go find your buddies,” I said to Hayden, wondering where they’d been for the floor show.
He pulled his arm free, refusing to look at me. I knew he was horribly humiliated, and horrified that he’d pushed me down. Even in his current state, he was coherent enough to remember that. Never since I’d known him had he ever gotten physical with me, and I’d definitely seen him a lot worse off.
“They left,” he grumbled.
“They left you here?”
He shook his head, running fingers through hair that was sticking up in all directions. “I met them here.”
I blew out a breath. “Well, you aren’t driving.” I glanced at Ruthie and she nodded. It was time to call it. “We’ll take you home.”
Ruthie took over walking Hayden out while I paid our bill. When I chanced a look toward their table again, Shayna was picking things up to leave as well, and Noah wasn’t around. She looked distracted and distant. I walked back over there and smiled politely the way I’d come to expect from her, and she touched my arm.
“Are you okay?” she asked, sounding genuine.
I nodded. “I’m fine. I’m—really sorry he came to hassle you. He’s going to be so mortified tomorrow when he remembers this.”
She shook her head with a smile. “You don’t have to apologize, Jules. It wasn’t your fault.”
Kinda was.
“Well, it was my ex-husband being a douche, so—”
She smiled but her eyes didn’t, and the hands that shouldered her bag trembled a little. “Well, Noah didn’t have to rise to the bait, either,” she said. “That was his choice.”