Jo reached for me and grabbed a handful of the back of my shirt as I made to go down the stairs. I pulled away from her and proceeded forward. Ryan came with me, and the two of us hit the pavement at the same time.

Brett and the four assholes he’d brought with him chuckled amongst each other and whispered under their breath. There was no doubt in my mind that they were sizing us up, and they were going to realize how wrong they’d been in about four or five minutes. A fight like this never lasted long. It took a lot of energy and endurance. Something I could tell at least three of them lacked due to their massive bellies and meaty necks.

I nodded at the two on Brett’s right side, across from Ryan. “You handle those clowns. I’ve got the other three.”

Ryan nodded. “Pleasure.”

“You’re both cocky bastards, aren’t you?” Brett drawled, rocking back on his heels. His hands were still in his pockets. His boys laughed alongside him, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

I hated guys like this. They were the same as Ghoul back in the Air Force. They thought they were invincible. And they were entitled. Brett thought he deserved Jo. He truly believed that she should be his and that he was worthy of her. He had no idea what kind of woman he had let slip through his fingers because he didn’t have the brain power to understand how incredible she was. And I hated him for how he’d treated her; for the things he’d made her believe about herself.

I had seen her looking at her stretch marks in the mirror on more than one occasion like she wished they weren’t there. I blamed him.

“Are we going to do this?” I asked. “Or are you lot going to stand around with your dicks in your hands, giggling like high school girls?”

That set them off.

All at once, the five of them charged us. I heard Rosie let out a terrified shriek behind us and up the stairs, but I didn’t think about it. I had to focus on keeping these pricks away from the girls. They were an unsavory type, and I didn’t want them anywhere near Jo or Rosie. I knew Jo could handle herself, but this wasn’t a fair fight, and there was no doubt in my mind that these men had no qualms with hitting a woman.

Which was why I had no qualms with fighting dirty. If they wanted to fight five on two, they should have been prepared for my first move, which was a swift kick in the balls to the first guy who made it to me.

He doubled over in pain, clutching his groin, and toppled to his side on the pavement as Brett moved in on me. Ryan was crashing together with the other two, and someone grunted in pain. I trusted that it wasn’t Ryan. He was a capable fighter. I’d seen him in action before. He had to handle his half of the fight if we stood a chance of coming out of this thing on top.

Brett swung at me, and I ducked to the side. He let out an angry snarl and came for me again, this time with his other fist that had remained in his pocket until the last moment. When it came hurtling toward my jaw, I realized why.

The ass-hat was wearing brass knuckles.

I narrowly avoided his fist, but I did not miss the swing thrown by his buddy, who came in hard from the right side and landed a blow to my jaw.

Jo yelled my name.

I staggered back and wiped my hand across my mouth. My tooth had pierced my bottom lip. Blood came away on the back of my hand, and my mouth tasted of copper. A sucker punch. So they had no honor in a fight either, even when the odds were stacked in their favor.

“All right then,” I hissed, spitting blood on the pavement. “Let’s fucking do this.” I stretched out a hand and motioned them forward with a curl of my fingers.

The guy I kicked in the groin was still rolling around on the pavement when the one who punched me came at me again. This time, I caught his arm, spun away from him, and dislocated his elbow over my shoulder. He screamed bloody murder, and I silenced him by striking him in the throat with the side of my hand. It wasn’t hard enough to crush his windpipe by any measure, but it was hard enough to leave him breathless for a good thirty seconds; long enough to scare the shit out of him.

He stumbled away from me, hands wrapped around his throat, eyes wide, desperately trying to suck air into his paralyzed throat.

I grinned at Brett and felt blood trickle down my chin. “Come on, tough guy. Show me what you’ve got.”

Brett’s eyes narrowed. He was sober, which was rather shocking. He really wanted to hurt me apparently because he had the foresight to know coming to this fight drunk would have been a mistake.

He let out a bellow as he charged me. Behind him, about ten feet away, the guy whose testicles were probably swelling to twice their size stumbled to his feet. I could hear him groaning over Brett’s furious yell.

I didn’t get out of his way this time. We collided, and his brass knuckles struck me in the ear, which hurt like a bitch. I gritted my teeth and slammed my palm into his nose. It crunched against the heel of my hand, and he shrieked as blood poured out of his nose. I’d gone for where I’d done the damage last time. I knew it would be easy to break.

He didn’t quit fighting like I thought he would however. He wound back and took another swipe at me. The brass knuckles struck my chest, which didn’t feel all that great. In retaliation, I drove my elbow up under his chin. The force of the blow sent him reeling. He staggered back, dazed, and his knees crumpled beneath him.

As Brett went down to the pavement, Swollen Testicles made a second attempt at taking me on. I spat more blood out of my mouth as he charged. I let him run into me. I was bigger than him and had a good fifty pounds on him. He slammed into me and bounced off. He was disoriented, and I took the opportunity to strike him twice successively, and he fell flat on his ass at my feet.

“You done?” I asked, my voice angry and hard.

He nodded weakly. I’d hit him hard enough to render him senseless. I doubted he even knew who I was.

Brett was trying to get to his feet, but his attempts were pathetic. The guy I’d struck in the throat was starting to recover, but he was backing away. Apparently, I’d knocked some sense into him. He didn’t want to play this game with me anymore.

I looked over at Ryan. He seemed to have had the same success as me. One of the goons who had tried to take him down was lying facedown on the pavement, unconscious, while the other clutched his hand and moaned weakly. I assumed Ryan had broken a few of his fingers. Or his wrist. It probably depended on how much the guy had pissed him off.

“You good?” I asked my friend.

Ryan nodded and shook his hand out. The knuckles of his right hand were split and bloody. “Yeah. You?”

“I’d be better if this asshole hadn’t used brass knuckles,” I growled as I turned my glare back to Brett, who was still on his knees.

Headlights lit him up where he sat as the taxi pulled into the parking lot. I nodded to Ryan, who went to the driver’s door to explain that we had been jumped, and we wanted to get away from these guys. Then he hurried over to the women, who were still up on the porch.

Ryan brought them to the cab. Jo paused at the back door and looked back at me over her shoulder. “Come on, Zach. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Be right there,” I said, nodding for her to get in the car.

She hesitated for a moment before sliding into the backseat beside Rosie. Ryan got in the front seat and started to give the driver the two addresses we needed to be dropped off.

While they sorted that out, I approached Brett, who was looking up at me with hatred in his eyes that matched my loathing of him. I dropped to a crouch in front of him.

“You and I don’t need to like each other,” I started, “but I need to make something perfectly clear to you. You are a thing of Jo’s past. You will not show your face around her or Sam again ever, or I will be there to pound you into dust. Do you hear me?”

Brett licked blood off his upper lip and looked away from me. I grabbed the front of his shirt and wrenched him toward me.

“I asked you a fucking question. Do you hear me?”

Brett nodded. “Get your hands off me.”

“This will look like a cake walk compared to what I’ll do to you if you ever pull any shit like this again. I’m warning you Brett, stay away from her. You need to take a long look in a mirror and figure out what the fuck you need to change. I’ll give you a hint: everything.”

I got to my feet and nudged him with my boot. Then I looked at the other four, who were all getting to their feet and nursing their wounds. “And you lot,” I spat. “You’re a joke. He only lost his woman because he treated her like shit. Pick your battles better.”

“Just go,” Brett mumbled weakly.

I spat a last mouthful of blood on the pavement and did as he said. I got in the back of the cab and was pressed shoulder to shoulder with Jo when the cab driver turned sharply to peel out of the parking lot.

We were all silent for the first couple minutes of the drive. The driver’s eyes kept flicking to his rearview mirror to stare at me like he was afraid I might beat him the way I did the boys back in the parking lot.

“Are you all right?” Jo whispered softly after we were a few minutes away.

I nodded. “Are you?”

“Of course, I didn’t get hurt,” she said. “But you’re bleeding.”

I wiped my face with the hem of my shirt. “I’m fine. Promise.”

Rosie was sitting in shocked silence on Jo’s other side. She peered over at me and fidgeted with her hands in her lap.

“Sorry, Rosie,” I offered. It was obvious that I’d frightened her. Violence was always a different thing when you saw it right in front of you.

“For what?” she asked quickly.

“For you having to see that. It wasn’t pretty.”

“No.” She paused. “But I’m glad Brett got his ass kicked. Again.”

I cracked a grin, and she smiled too. She was still a little shaken, as was to be expected, but her smile told me she wasn’t afraid of me, and that was a relief.

The cab driver pulled up to the curb in front of Ryan’s house. He paid the driver and hopped out to open the back door for Rosie. She accepted his offered hand, and he helped her up onto the curb and then ducked down to say goodnight to me and his sister.

“Hey, Ryan?” Jo called when he turned to leave. “Don’t have too much fun in there with my best friend.”

Ryan blushed and slammed the door closed. Jo grinned up at me, and we both chuckled at her poor humor. Then we watched Ryan wrap his arm around Rosie’s waist, and the two of them walked up the path to the front door as our cab pulled away and made for Jo’s place.