The first hour I didn’t move from my sentinel over the sidewalk. I bent my head into the rain, shielding the dry spot her body had formed against mine. But then the storm picked up, and the wind swept the rain from every angle, and no amount of shielding from me could keep her spot protected from the storm.   

     The second hour, I wound up sprinting around the courtyard, burning off nerves with high knees, jumps, and side-shuffling. To any passersby, I knew I looked like the man they’d heard referred to as the one who’d gone off the deep end, my suit plastered to my body, running football meets cross country drills in the middle of campus. At ten o’clock at night. In a rain storm.

     I was on my fifty-seventh set of push-ups when my phone shrieked. Scrambling to get to it, I was on my feet and jogging towards Emma’s dorm.

     “Emma?” I answered, feeling a fresh dose of nerves.

     “Patrick,”—it was Julia, and Julia like I’d never heard her, terrified—“get yourself the hell over here. As fast as you can.” Her voice was shaking on the other side. “It’s Emma.”

     That was all I needed to hear, my jog accelerated until the buildings were blurring sheets of dark brown and black as I swept by them. Rain drops hit me like pebbles from the inertia, the ground beneath me gave at every footstep, and the wind cut my face until, if I’d been any less Immortal, it would have stung.

     I was outside her dorm in thirty seconds, ready to rip the door from its hinges when I found it locked.

     Taking a quick surveillance of the surrounding area, finding it free of people as far as my preoccupied mind could tell, I chanced it.

     “Damn it all to hell,” I said, going from banging at the front door of the building to banging on Emma and Julia’s door.

     A couple students milling out of the bathrooms took a double take, but I really didn’t give a rat’s arse if they saw me appear from nowhere. Even in their most wild of dreams wouldn’t they devise the truth.

     “Julia!” I shouted, hammering on the door. “Emma? Let me in.” I was about to take this door from its hinges too when I heard someone scurry across the floor as the lock turned over.

     I threw the door open and took in the scene like I’d found myself in my own personal nightmare. The worst kind of one. The one your parents told you wasn’t real and was just a figment of your imagination. I wanted to believe that now, that this wasn’t real. That this was a figment of my imagination.

     But blood had never run with such precision down someone’s face in my nightmares the way it was on Emma’s.

     “What the hell happened?” I whispered, my words barely choking their way out. Shutting the door, I rushed to Emma. She was draped in a white sheet, curled in a ball on top of her bed. Julia’s hands appeared between us, tucking the sheet tighter around her.

     “I don’t know,” she answered, her body trembling like her voice was. “She just showed up here like this a couple minutes ago. She wouldn’t tell me what happened. I wanted to call the cops or 911 or something, but the only thing she said to me was to call you.” Julia grabbed the black comforter from her bed and parachuted it over Emma. “That’s all I know.”

     “Emma?” I whispered, lowering my head until my eyes were at her level. But her eyes didn’t resemble eyes anymore. Both were so swollen shut they looked like they were plums about to explode. Bright red bruises were splattered over her face like a road map. Blood, both fresh and dried, matted the entirety of her hair, along with the majority of her neck and face. And this was just the damage sustained from neck-up.

     I didn’t have the heart to pull the sheet back to inspect the rest of it yet. Although I knew I had to. It was now my job to do so.

     “Emma?” I whispered again, having to bite my hand so I didn’t burst into tears or bust open the room.

     One corner of her mouth lifted before sagging back into place. “Hi, handsome,” she replied, her voice a ragged whisper.

     I bit my hand harder, but it didn’t stop a tear from leaking its way free. I pressed a soft kiss into her mouth, my salty tear mixing with her metallic blood. I had to share this gentle peace with her before I asked my next question. Before I turned into a merciless angel of death.

     “Ty?” I said, sneering the word like it was poison.

     Her head made the smallest recognition. “Ty,” she answered.

     Running one hand down her face, my hand came away coated in red. I could have made an impression on paper of my handprint dipped in Emma’s blood.

     Red was what I was coated in, red was what I saw, red was what I felt.   

     Rage was what I became.

     “I’m going to kill him,” I said, my eyes falling on just the thing I needed. Grabbing the baseball bat from beneath Julia’s bed, I spun it in the air, catching it in the other hand. “He’s a dead man.”

     A rapping came at the door as I was preparing to twist it open with only one thing on my mind. Revenge.

     A trio of Scarlett brothers smashed in the doorway, their faces ranging from concerned to disturbed.

     “Someone told us they saw Emma stumbling into the building looking like she’d been hit by a car,” Tex said, studying me in my enraged stupor, white knuckles gripping a baseball bat with both hands.

     Stepping aside, I made room for them to pass. “Take a look at what your best buddy is capable of!” I shouted, aiming some of my anger at them for letting a monster like Ty slip under their radar.

     They stood like a trio of statues beside Emma’s bed, looking like they were trying to confirm the battered woman in front of them was their little sister.

     “Did any of you know about this? Did any of you know he was capable of this?” My voice shook with my rage.

     “Excuse me?” Dallas said, getting in my face. “What did you say there, Babe Ruth?” He shoved his chest against mine, his anger jacking up to my level. “How do we know it wasn’t you who beat our sister all to hell with the butt end of your Louisville Slugger?”

     That wasn’t the smartest thing to say to a man who was a hair away from snapping. I shoved him back into his brothers to give my arm some leverage to land a powerful punch. At the same time a black velvet covered pair of arms wrestled around me, two pairs of brother arms wrapped around Dallas.

     “Patrick, knock it off,” Julia yelled, trying to hold a ticking time bomb back. “Come on, Emma doesn’t need this shit right now.”

     “Stop, you guys,” Emma’s hoarse voice carried above the chaos of the room. “Don’t fight.”

     I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to let her words and my better judgment restore my willpower to refrain from throwing Dallas out the window.

     “Shame on you,” I said, wondering if my nostrils were billowing smoke. “Shame on you,” I repeated, figuring if once made him grimace, twice would really bring the point home.

     I was not the enemy. Their childhood friend, their teammate, their drinking buddy, the monster they’d unknowingly sacrificed their sister to was the enemy. “And the bat is going to come in handy when I get close enough to Ty to bash his brains out his ear.”

     The fight left Dallas when Emma’s blood caked hand weaved into his. “It’s all right, Dal.”

     “Like hell it’s all right,” I spat, about to untangle Julia’s arms from me if she didn’t soon. My fight with Dallas was done, my fight with Ty would be done once I ensured he’d never be able to lift a hand to another woman again.

     “What happened, Em?” Dallas asked, covering her hand with both of his as he kneeled beside her bed.

     “Ty happened,” she answered, her shoulder lifting like it was just another day. And that’s when a proverbial light switch clicked on.

     “He’s done this before,” I stated, wishing I could have asked it with an inflection, but I already knew.

     Emma only nodded her head.

     I wanted to dry heave into the closest garbage can. I wanted to scream until I shattered the windows. I wanted to have a moment of weakness, but Emma needed me to be strong. That was the only thing that kept me from tearing myself apart.

     “How many times?” Austin asked, unable to look at Emma, and I guessed it had a lot to do with him being the closest brother to Ty.

     “So many times I lost count,” Emma said, glancing at me. Looking at me like she was waiting for me to run away. Looking at me like she expected me to see a different person bleeding before me on her bed.

     The only person I saw was the girl I loved, and the girl I’d failed to protect. Something I was about to rectify shortly. In fact, I couldn’t stay in this room another second with the broken girl in front of me until I broke the body of the one who’d done the breaking.

     “You guys get her to the hospital to get checked out,” I ordered, shoving them aside as I made for the door. “I’ve got some unfinished business with a dead man.”

     Tex’s hand curled around the end of the bat. “Sorry, boy, but that beating is going to be ours. He beat our sister. He betrayed us. The blood on that bat belongs to us.”

     Tex had remained scary calm the entire time, and I now understood why. His calculating calm had formulated a plan while Dallas and Austin were letting their anger and betrayal drive them.

     “This is my fight,” I said, gripping the bat tightly.

     “This one isn’t. Emma’s been our sister for twenty years, she’s been your girl for twenty seconds,” Tex argued in his scary calm voice.

     “Patrick,” Emma called out, her hand slipping from Dallas’s in my direction, “stay with me. Don’t do this. Don’t repay blood with blood.”

     I stared at her outstretched hand for a solid ten seconds, and then I looked at the cold metal my hands were wound around. What were they still doing there when her warm hand was waiting for me?

     “Fine,” I said, relinquishing the bat to Tex. “Take a swing at his balls compliments of me.” My hand found Emma’s and, somehow, everything felt right in the midst of everything being wrong.

     “I’ll take two,” Tex said, shouldering the bat. “One for you and one for Emma.” Opening the door, he paused, looking behind him. “Anytime you girls are ready. We’ve got some ass to kick.”

     Dallas pressed a kiss into Emma’s forehead, leaving an imprint of lips in the drying blood.

     “Don’t go,” Emma said, wincing as she tried to prop herself up on an elbow. “It’s not worth it.”

     “Yes, you”—Tex looked her hard in the eye—“are worth it. I didn’t watch a sorry excuse for a dad beat our mom to stand by and do nothing when the same thing happened to my little sister.”

     “Don’t,” Emma whispered.

     “Sorry, Em,” Tex said, shuffling the other two out the door. “I’m not the forgive and forget kind of guy. I’m the eye for an eye kind of guy,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “And it’s time Ty Steel felt my wrath.”

     The door slammed closed, locking an overwhelmed Julia, an anxious Emma, and me—and my bloody array of emotions that were so extreme they had yet to be named—away.     “They’re going to ruin everything,” Emma said, looking at the door. “Their scholarships, their spots on the football team, their whole futures.”

     “No, they’re not,” I replied, trying to help her as she rolled back down onto the mattress. “They’re going to ruin Ty. Their futures and everything else will be waiting for them tomorrow morning.” Her split open brows moved into a familiar arch. “Trust me,” I added.

     Her head bobbed once. I took that as an affirmation she believed me.

     “Okay, Em, we need to get you checked out to see if you need any stitches or see if anything’s broken.” In my opinion, heralding from a multitude of doctors, a couple gashes above her eyebrows needed at least a few stitches, and I’d still been too scared to look below the neck. “Can you move or should I call an ambulance?”

     “No,” she said, trying to sit up again.

     I held her down until I realized the significance of the gesture. Removing my hands braced over her shoulders, I realized how delicate I’d have to be about these kinds of situations. How much more sensitive a woman who’d seen the backside of a man’s hand would be to any shows of dominance, physical or emotional. Delicacy was something I wasn’t trained in, but I was certain it was something I could learn.

     She stayed down though, managing to form a smile of acknowledgment with her swollen lips. The lips I’d kissed like there was no tomorrow were now doubled in size on the top and tripled on the bottom, where a gaping wound split it down the center.

     I had to curl my fingers deep into her mattress to keep from punching a hole in the wall.

     “I don’t want to go to a hospital. I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said, closing her eyes. “My night’s been eventful enough without adding a trip to the emergency room to it.”

     I shook my head, not able to cave to her when it was her life we were talking about.

     “Please,” she said, her voice a whimper. “I can’t go there. I can’t roll in that place looking the same way my mom did the last time I visited the ER.”

     I silently cursed. What could I say to that? Even if she was bleeding from every pore, I’d have a tough time forcing her to go when she threw that at me.

     “You need to get checked out, Em,” was all I could manage, but if she said no again, I was up a creek.

     “Jules?” Emma croaked at her friend, who was still staring at the door like she was expecting it to burst open again. “Do you think your dad would be willing to make a home—dorm—visit?”

     Looking relieved to be given something to do, Julia snatched her phone off the desk, biting her mangled nails as the phone rang.

     “Dad?” she said. “I need you to get out of bed and get to my dorm ASAP. Emma’s hurt and she won’t go to a hospital. Will you come?” Julia said, sounding like a formality because she knew he would. That’s what a father was meant to be, someone his daughter would never have to wonder if he was going to come when she needed him.

     Julia nodded. “See you soon. Love you, too,” she added, glancing our way as she tossed the phone back across the desk. “He’ll be here as soon as he can, but he’s way up in San Fran, so it will take him awhile to get here.”

     “Thanks, Jules,” Emma said, sighing. “You’ve done your good deed for the year.”

     “And on that note,” she replied, sliding a drawer open, “I need a cigarette. A pack of them.” She waved her hand at Emma when she opened her mouth. “Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was going to quit, but today was not a good day to quit smoking.”

     Flinging the door open, she jabbed a finger in my chest. “Patrick, I’m leaving her in your care. You okay?” she asked, glancing at Emma and having to glance away. “You got this?” she asked because she didn’t—she couldn’t do it.

     Few people could stomach the reminders of the fragile nature of the human condition bloodied across Emma’s face, but I was one of them.

     “I’ve got this,” I answered, nodding my head at the door. “Get some fresh air, Jules. You did a good job. I can take it from here.”

     “Thank you,” she mouthed at me, looking ashamed and relieved at the same time.

     “All right, beautiful,” I said, situating myself beside her. “I’ve got to get you cleaned up before the good doc gets here.” Given Julia’s oddities, I expected a Dr. Jekyll type to show up, but any doctor was better than no doctor at this point.

     “Let me know if this hurts anywhere,” I said, sliding my arms beneath her and lifting her as gently as I could.

     She lifted an arm to my neck, smiling up at me. “You know, I’ve had daydreams of this. Although you were shirtless, and I didn’t look like I was a post-op facelift patient.”

     “You’ve seen too many romance novel covers,” I said, steering her through the door, trying to glide with as little bounce in my motion as I could. “But I’d be happy to recreate any and all daydreams you can muster up.”

     “Deal,” she said, her voice breaking.

     “Which way to the woman’s restroom?” I asked, looking up and down the hall.

     “Right,” she answered. “The last door on the left.”

     It took me awhile to get there, moving like I was gliding on thin ice, but I didn’t mind the journey with Emma in my arms.

     Putting my ear near the door, I listened for the tell tale signs of bathroom use. Hearing none, I kicked the door open and slid inside. I locked the door, not in the mood to explain why I was in here and in even less of a mood for lookie loos wanting to catch a peek of the poor battered girl so they could cluck their tongues and be thankful they weren’t weak enough to end up in that kind of a relationship. If a girl of Emma’s character could find herself trapped in an abusive relationship, no one was exempt.

     “This would be incredibly suspect right now,” Emma said, pointing her eyes at the locked door, “if I wasn’t certain you couldn’t be attracted to me in any way in my present state.”

     I smirked down at her, steering towards the shower stalls in the back. “I am attracted to you fifty ways to Sunday, Emma Scarlett.”

     A mangled giggle erupted into the quiet surrounding us. “You’re too much of a sweet talker for my own good.”

     “Guilty,” I said, lowering her to her feet, but I kept the bulk of her weight in my arms. “Do you think you can stand?”

     “I made it back to my dorm after . . .” she began, catching herself. “I think I can manage to stand in a shower.”

     Freeing more of her weight, I tested her strength to see if she was right. Her legs weren’t wobbling, her knees didn’t look like they were ready to fold under her, so I let the rest of her weight go. She didn’t even flinch. Cracked open by a pair of unrelenting fists and the woman was standing like a pillar of strength.

     Twisting the shower on, I tested the water until it was warm, but not hot. Warm would hurt, but hot would be unbearable running over all those raw wounds.

     I slid the curtain open for her, motioning it was all set for her, then I turned my back to her. Turning away from the woman I loved as she was about to step into a shower was a hard thing to do, but it appeared that that weekend promise to be a gentlemen had been extended.

     The water ran undisturbed, and I could detect no trace of movement coming from the woman behind me.

     “Em?”

     “I can’t get my clothes off,” she said, her voice embarrassed. “My arms . . . I can’t move them very much.”

     My lids fell over my eyes before I could tell if that curtain of color seeping into them was a familiar color. I gripped the wall beside me for relief.

     “Do you think you could help me a little?” she asked, her voice small. “Unless it makes you uncomfortable.”

     “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable,” I lied, turning around.

     Everything about this situation made me uncomfortable, but unlike what she’d assumed, it wasn’t because I was about to strip my girlfriend of her clothes. It was because of why I was having to do it.

     She turned to me, like she was shy, although I couldn’t tell since her eyes had been punched shut. “Just tug it up and over and toss it in the garbage. Even if the stains come out, I don’t want to look at it and remember what happened.”

     I hitched my hands over my hips, forcing a deep inhale and a clearing exhale before I could proceed.

     Damn Ty Steel straight to hell for forcing me to do this, for putting her in this helpless position. She was clearly uneasy, and whether it was embarrassment, self-consciousness, or awkwardness, it didn’t matter. I only had one solution to relieving discomfort and it had something to do with my dazzling sense of humor. I wasn’t sure if it could cut through a situation this heavy, but I was going to take a hack at it.

     “You’re my girlfriend for one day and you’re already begging me to take off your clothes,” I said, lifting my homerun grin into position. It hadn’t failed me to date. “I must be doing something right.”

     It was working, attacking the heavy with the light. The muscles in her body took a combined exhale as she mimicked my smile. “Or something very wrong.”

     “You’re scandalous, woman,” I said, letting out a low whistle as I figured out how best to remove Emma’s previously lavender, now dark crimson, dress.

     My past was dotted and crossed with kissing women, I was what one might consider a kissing pro, but freeing women of their dresses was new territory for me. Sure, I’d slipped a button or two free, tugged a strap from a shoulder, slid a skirt an inch or two towards the heavens, but full-on removal?

     I was in unchartered territory.

     I slapped myself across the face, then I slapped myself again on the other side.

     I wasn’t being seduced, I was being sequestered because her best friend didn’t have the stomach for it and her brothers were, at present, practicing their swing.

     “So just, eh, undo these few buttons right here above the . . . eh”—my hands were fumbling worse than my words—so much for the incorrigible charmer I used to be—“around the northerly, eh, region . . . here, the”—I cleared my throat to fill in the blank—“area.”

     “Boobs,” Emma provided. “The boob area.”

     Damn skippy they were.

     “Bosoms,” I corrected, shifting a smile down at her.

     Just fleshy mounds of mammary glands and fat, I repeated when my heart started trying to bust out of my chest.

     The unbuttoning accomplished, I moved to Step B of the dress removal handbook. “So now we just slide these thinger-majiggers off,” I said, biting my lip in concentration as I decided what would be the least painful way to get them off her arms.

     I pulled on the neckline, trying to get it over her shoulder, but it wouldn’t stretch far enough. Emma shrugged her shoulder in, attempting to curl her elbow up, but her face blanched white with pain.

     “Now what?” I asked, trying to stretch it over the other shoulder with about as much success.

     “Just rip it off,” she said through gritted teeth.

     Where was a good morphine drip when you needed one? Or a brother who kept one in his medical kit at all times. It would have been a godsend had teleportation ran in the family.

     “Rip it?” I asked, not because I couldn’t tear through the cloth like a sheet of vellum, but because it seemed like I shouldn’t.

     “Rip it,” she repeated. “Just pretend your ravaging me or something.”

     “Emma, I appreciate the innuendos, the parallels, all of it,” I said, letting out a sigh that was all exasperation. “I really do, but right now I’m having a tough time staying upright over here. A little help please?”

     “Fine,” she said. “No more foreplay for you then.”

     “You cheeky little thing,” I said, giving the neckline a sharp tear down the arm. One more on the other side, and the dress fluttered to the ground. It didn’t fall, it didn’t collapse, I swear with my hand to my chest it fluttered.

     And then Emma was standing in front of me naked except for a couple scraps of fabric, or at least I assumed she was because I couldn’t look at her right away. One, because I’d suddenly picked up on this elusive trait that had avoided me at every turn—also known as shyness—and it seemed to be the major influencer right now, and two, because I was scared to see what else Ty had done to her. If he’d been half as attentive to what was below the neck as he had to what was above it, I knew it would be gruesome.

     “So how bad is it?” she asked. “Is it pretty ghastly or really heinous?”

     Washing my hands over my face, I made myself look.

     Her body was speckled with varying degrees of bruising, some bursting bright red on the surface, others going deeper in putrid shades of burgundy. Bruises that were weeks old took up more real estate on her upper arms and legs than undamaged skin did. Blood had crested a roadmap of highways, twisting and turning down her body. It wasn’t half as bad as her face—it was more.

     Ending at her eyes, I said, “Neither. You’re beautiful.”

     She let out a sharp, raspy laugh. “Says the man in shock.”

     I shook my head. “Says the man who knows beauty when he sees it.”

     Stepping forward, I rested my arm around her back. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” I followed her in the shower, angling the head so it would hit low. Water blasting over that face would feel like she was experiencing the beating all over again.

     “What are you doing?” she asked when she noticed me closing the curtain behind us. “You’ll get drenched.”

     I lifted my arms and did a spin. “I am drenched. At least now I’ll be drenched with warm water, not cold rain water.”

     “I don’t know,” she said, stepping backwards into the stream. “I seem to remember that rain water being pretty incredible stuff.”

     I wrestled out of the suit jacket and began fighting with the vest. “I seem to recall that too.” Throwing two of the three pieces of my favorite suit into the garbage can just outside the shower, I rolled up my sleeves as Emma continued turning a slow rotation under the shower.

     The bra and panties I’d assumed were a deep red were lightening with each spin, revealing patches of ivory smattered beneath.

     “Emma,” I said, having no other words as I watched the trails of blood scurry down her, disappearing down the drain, it taking a piece of her into it.

     “I always knew I’d have to paint myself red and get naked to get your attention,” she said, pausing in front of me.

     I didn’t know how she was able to make jokes in the midst of this, when someone like myself—the one man comedy show himself—couldn’t. Maybe it was a coping mechanism she’d learned when this all started, or maybe she just didn’t know what else to say. Whatever it was, I needed a moment alone and she needed some shampoo.

     “I’ll be right back. Will you be okay for a minute?”

     She gave me a thumbs up. “I think I can manage.”

     Ducking through the curtain, I headed for a row of cubbies containing shower baskets full of perfumey goodies and every other item of a bathroom relevance in existence.

     Selecting a couple bottles of shampoo and conditioner, I gave myself an internal pep talk. Telling myself to be the man she needed me to be right now, to set aside my anger and guilt, my rage and remorse, and be whatever she needed.

     The bruises dotting her body like a damn Dalmatian had gotten to me, reminding me that I’d failed her. It wasn’t something I was going to do again.

     Shaking a few shower basket-caddy-thingys, I heard the familiar rattling I was searching for. Twisting off the cap, I removed two of the not-so-much over the counter pain killers, dropped the shampoo bottles in my pockets, and swiped a couple fresh towels from some unsuspecting co-ed’s locker.

     “Here, take these.” I handed Emma the pills as I slid behind the curtain. “Those should tame the pain down to a dull ache.”

     She didn’t ask what they were or whose they were, she just took them. She had every reason not to trust another human being after what she’d been exposed to, and here she was, trusting me.

     “So I’m not exactly Paul Mitchell, but I can give a not-too-shabby shampoo.” I pulled the bottle from my slacks and presented it like a sommelier holding a vintage bottle of wine.

     She looked between me and the bottle a few times, and then she laughed. Billowing laughter that echoed through the empty corners of the bathroom.

     To say I was perplexed would have been a bit rhetorical given the situation.

     “Look at us,” she said between bursts of laughter. “I look like I was at the epicenter of a rugby squirmish—in my underwear—and you’re in what’s left of a three piece suit, all wet, sexy, and brooding, looking like you’re about to shoot a shampoo ad. A shampoo, by the way, every girl would buy just so they could think of you while they were lathering their hair.” She was laughing so hard by now, she could have been crying.

     “You are mad, you know that right?” I said, incapable of not smiling when she was laughing like it was the best one she’d had in awhile.

     “Of course I do,” she replied, attempting and failing to gain some composure. “But I’ve seen some strange things, and this,”—she motioned between the two of us—“is the oddest one of them all. I feel like I just stepped into some goth, slasher, romantic comedy movie or something.”

     “Since you’ve seen so many of those,” I said, squeezing a gob of coconut scented goop into my palm.

     “I consider myself an expert on that particular genre of movie,” she teased, letting her head fall back to get her hair wet. Another bright burst of red floated toward the drain.

     “Em? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of freaking me out,” I said, focusing on lathering the shampoo in my hands. “I don’t know whether to be relieved you’re smiling and laughing and making jokes an hour after you were beat within an inch of your life or to be seriously concerned.”

     Her laughter died, but her smile stayed securely in place. “Contrary to what you might think due to recent events,” she explained with a sweeping gaze down her body, “today has been the hands down best day of my life.”

     Staring at her broken face, I wanted to cry just then, so I stepped around her so I wouldn’t have to look at what the best day of her life had done to her.

     “I’m going to need a serious explanation for that,” I said, clearing my throat. “Like a detailed outline, followed by a thesis the size of the San Francisco Bay area phone book.” I gathered her hair on top of her head and began sudsing away. The shampoo froth almost immediately took on a pinkish hue.

     “For the first time in six years, actually, for the first time since I met him,” Emma began, trying to look over her shoulder at me. She didn’t make it very far before her jaw clenched in pain. “I stood up to Ty. I gave him a piece of my mind with no buffers or filters. I got in his face and made sure he heard me. For the very first time,” she said.

     “That worked out magically for you,” I said under my breath, rinsing away part of the outcome of her standing up to him.

     “It could have been worse,” she said with a barely there shrug. “I never really imagined my life winding down into old age and a gentle passing into the hereafter. I, somewhere deep in the places I didn’t want to acknowledge, but recognized them just the same, expected I’d pass from this life into the next at the end of a fist.”

     The shampoo bottle I was gripping in my hand burst open. I hadn’t realized I’d been squeezing it to death.

     “How long has this been going on?” I asked, needing to know, and she’d opened the door to getting all the dark flushed out early.

     “The first year he was so good to me, too good to be true,” she said. “And two days after our one year anniversary, I found out too good to be true was exactly that. I remember each beating, each fit of rage, most ignited because I’d been talking to another guy, some just because he didn’t like what I was wearing or a certain look I gave him. After awhile, he didn’t need an excuse. This past year I expected the backside of his hand just as readily as a hug.”

     It was like putting an open flame to my flesh, but I had to keep going. I had to know everything because I had to know all of her. “Why didn’t you just leave him?”

     Her head swayed side to side. “For a bunch of reasons that seem really trivial now that he’s finally out of my life,” she said. “Ty was all I knew, the only guy I’d ever dated, ever loved, ever imagined my life with. I clung to the hope that he’d change back into the man he was the first year we were together. I believed so little in myself that no one else would ever want me, and I was messed up enough in the head to believe that anyone was better than no one.” She paused, taking in a few breaths. I’d been massaging the same area of her head for I don’t know how long.

     “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I whispered, because that’s all I was capable of. I felt as broken on the inside as she was on the outside.

     “I was ashamed. And embarrassed,” she answered.

     “Why didn’t you tell me?”

     “You would have been the last person I would have told,” she said, and before I could launch into a why the heck not?, she cut me off. “Because when you looked at me, you saw this person I’d always wanted to become. You saw the me I would have become if I hadn’t let others and myself screw up my life.” She sighed, leaning into me. “I loved the way you looked at me, and I had this fear that if I told you I was one of those women who found themselves trapped in an abusive relationship, you’d never look at me the same way again. You’d never even look at me again.” Her voice, for the first time since entering the shower, sounded sad.

     Coming around in front of her, I tilted her chin up, waiting for her eyes to find mine. They finally did.

     “Am I looking at you any differently right now?”

     She studied me, all the way into the dark and cobwebbed places of my soul, and then she smiled. A fresh bead of blood broke through the split on her lower lip. “No.”

     “That’s right,” I said, polishing the blood away from her lip. “And to save you the suspense, there’s nothing you can reveal to me about your past or do in your future that will change the way I look at you. I flippin’ worship you, Emma Scarlett. And that’s never, ever, in a million billion years going to change. Promise,” I added, because this, too, was a promise I could keep with unfailing certainty.

     The thing about the kind of love I had for Emma was that it was as unequivocal as it was permanent. That’s the way love, in its pure, undiluted form was—it accepted a person’s bad with their good, their failures with their successes, their past with a boyfriend that beat the shit out of them with their future with a man who would love the shit out of them.

     “I know that now,” she said, pressing her lips into mine. “Sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”

     I wanted to kiss her again, so damn badly I was tempted to turn the shower as cold as it would go, so I thought of something else that might work instead. “Your brothers never suspected anything?”   

     It worked. The mere mention of Emma’s four brothers extinguished the fires.

     “Of course not,” she said. “If they did, do you think they would have hesitated to take that baseball bat to him sooner?” We both knew the answer to that. “No, Ty was careful. He made sure the bruises formed in spots that were easy to cover, and he never raised a hand to me when anyone was around. But lately, he started getting sloppy, less careful.”

     How many of those less “thoughtfully” placed bruises had I witnessed this month and taken her word that vicious volleyballs were to blame? I was a fool.

     “Because of me,” I provided, stepping behind her and rinsing her hair for the third time. The water was almost running clear.

     She didn’t provide an answer to that; she didn’t need to. We both knew the truth.

     “God, Emma. I’m sorry,” I said, my arms going limp at my sides. “If I’d have known this was going on, I wouldn’t have been my persistent self and made things worse for you.” I had to lean into the tile wall for support.

     “And then I would have killed him,” I added.

     She chuckled a nervous little one. I didn’t.

     “You want to hear the last point in the best day of my life outline?” she asked, turning to face me, the water beating in the space separating us.

     She waited for an answer, but I couldn’t come up with one. I didn’t want to hear any more as much as I did.

     Refusing to wait any longer, she touched her forehead to mine. I could feel the heat of the gash above her eyebrow against my skin.

     “You,” she said.

     My head felt heavy against hers. I did not deserve to be a proof in her reasoning for a best day.

     “Yes,” she argued with my silent response. “You are everything I always wanted, but never believed I deserved. I still didn’t believe it up to a few hours ago, but I suppose you could say you made me see the light.”

     I was still wordless, it was happening a lot lately, so I wrapped my arms around her battered, bruised, perfect body and gripped her to me like I could suck all the pain out of her.

     “For someone like you, who could have their pick of any woman on the seven continents, to pick me . . .”—her chest heaved heavy against mine—“well, that must mean I’m something special, right? Even if I don’t see it quite yet.”

     I saw the beauty then. I was able to look past the pain framing the moment and get to the core of the moment. I wouldn’t forget tonight for several reasons, but the one that would shine above the others was this one right here. The woman I loved resting in my arms, acknowledging she was more than what she’d always believed she was.

     “You’re the most something special I’ve ever come across,” I said into her hair, clutching her tighter. If I never let her go, I could always keep her safe. That was the only thing I wanted to do right then.

     Never let her go. Protect her. And love her above all.

     “Hey, guys.” A trio of knocks thumped outside the bathroom door. Julia sounded just as frazzled as before. “My dad’s here now. No rush, though.”

     “We’ll be right there,” Emma answered against my shoulder, not moving an inch.

     I pressed a kiss into the bruise exploding over her forehead. “Time to get you to a doc,” I said, shutting off the water and reaching for the bundle of towels piled on the bench. I bundled Emma’s hair into a leaning tower beehive and cinched the other towel around the rest of her before lifting her into my arms.

     “I’m good to walk now,” she said, looping an arm around my neck. “That shower and the pills made me a new woman.”

     “I know,” I answered, unlocking the door and stepping through it. “But I’m not ready to let you go.”

     “Good enough reason for me.”

     She made a pillow of my chest as I sloshed down the hall, my hair, suit, and the rest of me so drenched I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be dry again. It was one of the proudest walks I’d made.

     The door was waiting open for us, and inside I found a silvering man the polar opposite to Julia. He wasn’t a Dr. Jekyll at all, but like the small town docs that used to make middle of the night home visits when I was growing up in the South. He even had the old school black leather bag William and Joseph still carried around with them.

     “My god,” he said like a curse when his eyes floated to Emma. “What happened to you, child?”

     “My ex,” she replied as I situated her on her bed.

     His hands glided down her arms, drawing an imaginary line between the bruises. Then he looked at her face and his face twisted. “Did he come at you with a hammer?” he asked, swearing under his breath. There was the first indication he and Julia shared the same DNA.

     “You should have gone to the emergency room right away, Emma,” he said, scolding her in that non-threatening, affectionate way a father does. “And I’m presuming you’ve called the authorities to get the monster behind bars?”

     Doc Grey and I were going to get along just fine.

     “Not yet,” Emma answered, focusing on the ceiling.

     “Why, pardon my French, the hell not?” He was already reaching for the phone in his pocket, about to do what Emma couldn’t right now, and I wouldn’t because she’d begged me not to.

     “I will,” she said, closing her eyes. “I promise I will, just not quite yet.”

     “Not quite yet?” Doc Grey repeated, his face formed in disbelief. “Emma, your body was beaten as close to death as a body can be before giving over to it. This isn’t something you wait to report a week later.”

     Her head moved against the pillow. “I’ll report it tonight, I swear. I just can’t handle more than one thing at a time right now. Let me get through this,”—her eyes pointed at his opened bag—“and I’ll call them after. I don’t want to go into an interrogation room bleeding and gaping open in spots. I don’t want to be pitied.”

     Her eyes fogged over, travelling back in time to a certain night when she’d lost both her parents in different ways. “Fix me up, patch what needs to be patched, so I can go in there with my head held high.”

     “Child,” Doctor Grey said, patting her hand, “you came through that door with your head high.” He didn’t push calling the men in blue right then after that, he just began riffling through his bag in silence.

     “Julia, my dear?” Doctor Grey said into his bag. “I think you are in serious need of some fresh air.”

     That, and a new pair of nails, judging from where she’d gnawed them down to. Poor Julia, this night had really taken it out of her. The hollows beneath her eyes were blacker than usual and her eyes scampered around more neurotically than normal. She was doing justice to her goth heritage right now.

     “Young man,” he said, glancing at me once.

     “Hayward,” I provided, extending my hand. “Patrick Hayward.”

     Doctor Grey set a roll of bandages on Emma’s bed to shake my hand. “Am I to assume you are the new man in Emma’s life who would never so much as raise your voice to her?”

     “Yes, sir,” I answered.

     Putting two fingers to Emma’s pulse, he nodded once. “You don’t need to be here for this,” he said, his fingers moving just outside the largest gash gaping over Emma’s cheekbone. “Would you mind escorting my daughter outside and watching after her? It seems Stanford is not the safe haven I was foolish enough to think it was.”

     That was an impossible question to answer without offending someone. Why would I want to leave with Julia when Emma was here? Wherever Emma’s here was was where I belonged.

     “Go ahead,” Emma said, interrupting my thoughts. “You can grab some dry clothes out of Austin and Dallas’s room on the first floor on your way out.” She wove her fingers through mine then, squeezing them, seeing I was not in the mood to go anywhere. “I’m in good hands. Trust me.”

     And there were those words. I did trust her, but I didn’t want to if it meant leaving her. Trust was a complicated thing that could really screw with your head. In the end, though, I decided to follow through on trusting her.

     “All right,” I relented, looking at the doc. “Call me if you need anything. Anything. And call me the instant you’re done if we’re not back before.”

     “It’s a few stitches and a handful of bandages, son,” Doctor Grey said, meaning to assure me, but it did the opposite. “It’s not open heart surgery.”

     That was an ironic phrase to use because that’s just like what I felt was taking place on me.

     Heaving a sigh, I opened the door, holding it open for Julia. “Be right back,” I promised, kissing Emma’s hand as I followed Julia out the door.

     “Be right here,” she replied as I closed the door behind us.

     Julia was already halfway down the hallway, walking with the disjointed movements of a zombie. I followed a few steps behind her all the way to Austin and Dallas’s room on the first floor.

     “Do you have a key?” I asked in front of their door.

     Twisting the handle, the door clicked open. “The Scarlett boys don’t have to lock their door. The first and last guy who borrowed a pen without asking ended up naked, tied to a tree in the middle of campus, and coated in honey and feathers.”

     I trailed Julia into the very college guy dorm room, right down to the beer posters featuring models bursting from their bikinis and the stale scent of body odor and laundry piled in the corner. “No one would dare step foot in this room uninvited unless they were prepared to face extreme public humiliation.”

     “Except for us,” I said, smiling tightly at her, as I shuffled through the few clean garments shoved into a dresser drawer.

     “Yeah, except for us,” she said, heaving down onto a bed. I’d guess it was Dallas’s due to the Dallas cheerleader poster above the bed on the ceiling, but that seemed too cliché even for a guy like him. “This is a night of firsts, right?” The few note laugh she let out was sharp and neurotic.

     “Jules?” I said, selecting the lesser outfit of two evils—boardshorts and a Stanford sweatshirt were only about a thousand times better than baggy jeans and a bedazzled muscle tee. “How are you holding up?”

     “Let’s see,” she said, clicking the heels of her shiny purple boots together like she wanted to catch the nearest tornado out of this dark land of Oz. “My friend looks like she was mauled by a tiger, I ignored that internal voice that’s been telling me since freshman year that something just wasn’t on the up and up with Ty’s and Emma’s relationship, and I failed my friend in all the important ways, so I guess I’d have to say I’m holding up about as well as a house of cards in a hurricane.” She sighed, tapping her heels together faster. “Thanks for asking.”

     “Jules,” I said again, slipping out of the clothes plastered to my body right in front of her because she was focused on staring two holes in the ceiling. The gothiest of goth men could have been twisting his nipple rings a foot in front of her and she wouldn’t have noticed.

     “This is all my fault, Patrick,” she whispered, her boot clacking diminishing. “I should have told someone. I should have confronted Ty. I could have asked her if my suspicions were right. I could have at least asked her,” she repeated in a self-incriminating tone.

     “Crap, Jules,” I said, cinching the shorts tight since Dallas’s or Austin’s shorts were size extra-beefy. “You feel like you’re to blame, and I feel like I’m to blame. And maybe we are in some way because we failed to act when we could have, but there’s no maybe about who holds all the blame for failing Emma in every way a person can.”

     “I should have kneed that guy in the balls every time the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when he was around,” she said, sitting up in bed, looking at me like she didn’t even notice I’d changed. “That would have been on a daily basis.”

     “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” I said, plopping beside her and squeezing her knee.

     “Damn straight,” she muttered, leaning her head on my shoulder in a way that felt child-like. “I hope Emma’s brothers save a piece I can take it out on.”

     The door exploded open right then, bouncing off the wall it smashed against. Three grim faced Scarlett brothers barged in, blood smatters creating patterns over their clothes and faces. They barely took any notice of Julia and me sitting on the edge of the bed, so I suppose it was safe to assume we’d been issued a get out of jail free card given the gravity of tonight.

     “We are finished. Ruined,” Austin said under his breath, sliding his hands behind his head and gripping it like he was going to rip his hair off.

     “Give it a rest, Austin,” Tex sneered over at him, looking up and down the hall before closing the door. “The only thing you lost tonight was a career in middle management. Dallas is going to lose any chance he had of working for the government as a certified genius who screws supermodels, and I lost any chance I had of playing in the big times.” Tex gave Austin’s chest a half-hearted shove. “So do me a favor and shut the hell up.”

     And this was the point I felt was a good time to interrupt. “What happened?” I asked, already deducing from their conversation and clothing they’d found Ty and delivered a message.

     Dallas’s eyes narrowed into mine. “Revenge happened.”

     “We messed him up good, man,” Austin said, pacing around the room with his hands still laced behind his head.

     “What did you do to him?” I asked slowly, looking to Tex since he seemed the calmest of the three.

     “Nothing that he didn’t deserve,” he sneered.

     I swallowed, continuing to look at Tex. “Did you kill him?” I was already at war with myself over which answer I wanted to hear. I didn’t want to arrive at an answer before Tex gave me his.

     “He had a pulse when we left,” was his answer. Seemed cryptic was going to be the tone of things tonight.

     “Yeah, barely,” Austin said, stopping to glare at Tex before resuming his pacing. “Who knows if he still did by the time the ambulance arrived.”

     “You guys called an ambulance?” I asked, wondering just how deep the Scarlett brother stupidity ran.

     Tex nodded once. “I’d rather face aggravated assault charges than manslaughter.”

     The mood of the room went from sullen to heavy. Suffocating heavy. The Scarlett boys had done just what I’d wanted them to do, what I’d wanted to do myself—ram Ty’s face so hard against the wall separating life from death that he’d regret every last strike he’d landed on Emma.

     The difference between me and them, though, was that I knew just how many hits a man could take to put him a toe from death before putting him a toe over. It was a skill that was an art, one that required an exorbitant amount of restraint and finesse, neither of which the three brothers before me possessed.

     They were going to be spending some time behind bars for either nearly killing or killing a man. Because of me. Because I’d let them go in my place. Because I stayed behind with their sister while they dealt out a mountain of revenge on the monster that had haunted her. They were going to lose everything they’d worked for since they’d been children in an abusive household because I’d failed to act when I knew I should have.

     “It was nice pretending we were going to end up doing something other than pressing license plates,” Dallas said, reaching into the mini-fridge and cracking open a beer. “I guess the piece of shit dad gene caught up with us after all.”

     Austin lurched in his face, slapping the beer Dallas was upending out of his hand. It smashed against the wall, causing an eruption of liquid.\

     “You’re making jokes?” Austin seethed, going red-faced. “You’re making jokes? Maybe you don’t like reaping the rewards of the hard work we put in growing up, but I do. I didn’t plan to end up wasting away my twenties in a jail cell.”

     “None of us did, Austin,” Tex said, not seeming phased that two of his brothers were about to throw down. “And Emma didn’t work her butt off to end up trapped under the hand of a guy like dad, either. Things change, life changes. Get over it.”

     “Did anyone see you?” I asked, shifting in spot, devising a plan on the fly.

     The brothers stared at me like they’d forgotten I was there.

     “Ty saw us,” Tex said, his jaw set. “He answered the door drunk, looked at us as if he was bored, and said, ‘What?’ like he knew exactly why we were there and wasn’t the least bit concerned.” Tex’s hands clenched open and closed over his knees. “That loser deserves what he got and I’m happy to accept what I deserve for doing it. I’d do again.”

     “Did you leave any fingerprints?” I asked, directing it at Tex since Austin was a wreck and Dallas was still jumpy from post-fight adrenaline.

     “Nope, just knuckle, boot, and bat prints.”

     “Where’s the bat?”

     Tex cocked his head behind him. “In the trunk of Dal’s car. Why? You planning on going to the batting cages tonight?”

     I ignored the sarcasm, knowing time was a luxury we were going to run out of soon. “Did any of you make any calls or texts from the time you left Emma’s room until now?”

     “No,” Tex answered, looking to his brothers. Both shook their heads. “We were a little preoccupied.”

     “Not even to Jackson?” I would be surprised if the oldest Scarlett had been left out.

     “Since he’s at a business conference in Chicago,” Tex said, “he wouldn’t have been a lot of help to us tonight.”

     “Did anyone other than the six of us know where you were going?” The other questions were important if my thrown together plan was going to work, but this was the one that mattered. The one that landed them in or kept the Scarlett brothers out of jail.

     “No,” Tex said, his voice irritated. “What’s with the twenty questions? You planning on majoring in criminal justice? Maybe law? Because we could use a good lawyer right about now.”

     Turning away from them, I crossed my arms, staring out the window at the rain as it continued to assault the world around us. Less than four hours ago, I’d been wrapped around Emma, knowing I wouldn’t have to let her go ever again.

     Well, as they say, that was then and this was now.

     “Okay, listen up,” I began, crossing my arms. “This is what you’re going to do. Julia’s dad is getting Emma patched up right now. Once the doc is done, you’re all going to get in Austin’s car and drive to my place. No detours, no stops, no bathroom breaks. You’re going to grab a change of clothes before you go and burn the ones you have on now. Emma will know a good place to burn them.” I let myself have one second of that memory—a bonfire, a girl, and an almost kiss—savoring it with a smile. “You only pick up the phone if I call. You only answer the door if it’s for me or if it’s for the cops. If they find you there and want to question you, let them in and tell them you have no idea what happened tonight. Say that Emma wouldn’t tell you what happened to her, so you drove her to her boyfriend’s”—I grinned again at my new title—“house, hoping he’d know what was going on.”

     Turning back to them, I found three blank faces. “You are not to say anything about Ty. Play dumb about anything Ty related.” I gave each of them a stern look, hoping they realized the deep crap hole we were in and would listen.

     Austin’s blank expression was the first to crack. “And what happens when Ty tells them the truth and the cops find out we lied? We lose all credibility and rot in jail a few years longer.”

     “Leave that to me,” I said. “I’ll take care of Ty.”

     I don’t know if it was my face or the way I’d said it, but that was all the explanation the brothers needed. No one looked even close to the tip of another question.

     “Jules,” I said, gripping my hands over her shoulders where she still sat huddled on the bed. “If anyone was to question you as to what happened tonight, what would you tell them?” It wasn’t coercion, and I wouldn’t bribe, plead, or beg with her to lie. If she didn’t want to lie, I would respect that and readjust the plan as needed.

     She shrugged, looking up at me with nuclear green eyes. “What happened tonight?” she asked innocently, like she didn’t have the foggiest.

     “I love you, Jules,” I said, kissing the top of her head.

     “Yeah, well, don’t forget,” she said, back to picking at her nail polish, so I knew the worst of the shock was over. “First name of your first born. That’s my price.”

     “First and last name of our first and second born,” I said, charging for the door, ready to get this done. “Tell your dad thanks for everything.”

     “Hey,” Tex called after me. “Where are you going?”

     I grinned—this part of the plan I was looking forward to. Immensely.

     “I’ve got to make a hospital visit.”