THE BASTARD WOULDN’T stop squirming.
Somehow, he broke my grip for long enough that he could take a swing at me, but he missed me and got Mom, instead.
Or maybe that was what he’d intended to begin with. Wouldn’t surprise me.
Mom didn’t even make a sound, even though he’d pelted her hard enough that she crumpled to the ground at my feet before I got him back under my control, my thumbs pressing on his windpipe.
“You fucking bastard,” I said.
He laughed. It made me want to end him right now. I could do it. It’d be easy. A bit more pressure, and his life would be over.
“You think this is funny?”
He couldn’t speak, but his eyes shifted to somewhere behind me.
I took one quick glance over my shoulder and immediately wished I hadn’t, because Natalie was racing toward us. “What the hell are you doing out here?” I demanded. “Go back inside. For all we know, Hayes is on his way here. Please, Nat.”
But she didn’t respond to me. I might as well have been invisible to her. She kept coming and didn’t stop until she was at my mother’s side.
She got down on the ground next to Mom. Only then did I realize she had something in her hands, because she had to set it down in order to help make my mother more comfortable.
“I’ve got you. Help’s on the way. You’re going to be all right,” Natalie said. “Ethan and I are going to make sure of it, okay?”
Then she shifted things around, and I was able to see what it was she’d brought out with her—Carter’s iPad.
Fucking brilliant. Maybe she shouldn’t be out here at all, but at least she was being smart enough to gather evidence.
Once she had some cloth covering the gash my father had opened up on Mom’s cheek, she picked the iPad up again, moving it so she could capture all the visible wounds on my mother before turning it back to the two of us.
“Tell us what’s going on, Ethan,” she said, calmer and more in control than I’d ever known her to be. It made my chest full to bursting with pride, but there wasn’t time for that now.
I took a quick glance back at her to be sure she had the camera on me now. Then I squeezed my father’s windpipe harder, making sure he couldn’t make a sound. “My bastard father’s been beating the shit out of my mother. He’s been doing it for years. Decades. He used to beat me up, too, until I got big enough to fight back. Now he’s trying to tell the world that I’m full of shit. He wants to discredit me as a witness, saying that I’ve been making up stories my whole life about how he beat me and my mom up, and now I’m spreading lies about Hayes Lennon beating you up. Well, here’s the evidence of what he’s done to my mother.”
Mom whimpered, but she didn’t try to deny it. Thank fuck for that. Maybe this could all work out for the best in the end. Maybe this would be the final straw, the way I could get her out of the shitty situation she’d been in since before I was born.
If this wasn’t enough, if she hadn’t reached the end of her rope yet…
I couldn’t even think like that. It had to be enough.
“Mrs. Higgins,” Natalie said, “we got video of your husband striking you just now. I just want you to know that.”
“But it’s…” Mom’s voice shook so hard I could barely hear her. “It’s no use.”
“What’s no use?” I demanded. “You don’t have to go home with him. You can stay here with us. You don’t ever have to go home with this son of a bitch again.”
Before she could respond, two squad cars came around the corner, their lights flashing and sirens blaring. The officers got out of their cars with their weapons drawn, two from each vehicle.
“Hands in the air,” one of them shouted at me.
“I’ll put them in the air as soon as one of you restrains him,” I bit off.
“We’ll restrain you both at the same time,” he shot back.
I nodded my agreement.
Two of the officers came forward to deal with breaking us apart. I waited until one of them had my father’s hands in cuffs behind his back before willingly releasing him.
The other officer nodded for me to turn around.
“Am I under arrest?” I demanded.
“Not yet. Not until we have a better understanding of what’s going on here. But since you were just choking this other man, I think we’ll all feel safer if you’re cuffed while we do this, all right?”
I met Natalie’s eyes over his shoulder. They were full of fear. My father was spewing a litany of curses while the officer who’d cuffed him led him a few feet away from us, and another officer—a woman—bent to the ground next to Mom and Natalie.
I nodded my agreement. “Go on. Cuff me, but get someone to take care of my mom.”
“We’ve got an ambulance on the way,” he said, taking his cuffs out and moving behind me.
“You all right, ma’am?” the female officer asked Mom.
She started to nod, but then a sob tore free.
“We need to get her checked out at a hospital,” Natalie insisted. She lifted a bloodied piece of cloth away from my mother’s cheek. “This one’s fresh, but it looks like she’s probably got a lot more injuries.”
“As soon as the ambulance arrives,” the officer said.
Razor and Dima pulled up within moments of one another, both of them hurrying out of their cars to see what they could do. Dima went into the house to check on Carter and Snoopy, and they both ran back outside with him. Carter went right up to Natalie and sat on the street, crisscross-applesauce style, drawing Snoopy down to sit next to him.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked him.
He sniffled, but he nodded resolutely. “Why’d they put you in handcuffs? Are you gonna go to jail?”
“He’s not going to jail,” Natalie reassured him. And I hoped she was right, but it was a thin hope. I’d had my hands on my father’s throat when they’d pulled up. Maybe it was in defense of my mother, but I’d still been strangling him.
Within minutes, the cops had everyone separated to be interviewed about what had happened. I kept an eye on Natalie, Carter, and my mom the whole time, patiently answering the officers’ questions.
After twenty minutes or so, they’d stopped asking me questions for the time being and had me sitting on the curb, still cuffed. Dima and Razor both came over to sit next to me.
“Not looking good, man,” Razor said.
“They’ll arrest me,” I replied. They had to.
“You’ll get off, though.”
“Maybe. Probably. But there’ll have to be a trial.”
“Fuck,” Dima muttered.
That about summed it up.
I watched as the paramedics loaded my mother onto a gurney and lifted her into the back of the ambulance, despite her sobbing protests.
“I’ll go,” Dima said. “Calling London to come, too. She’ll leave baby with Dana and Zee.”
I nodded, because I was too choked up to say anything.
He got up and jumped into the back of the ambulance with the paramedics and my mother, his phone in his hand to make the call.
“This is going to be major news,” Razor pointed out.
“I’m going to be suspended.”
“Surely they won’t—”
“Wanna bet?” I cut in. I cocked a brow at him. “When has anyone in the league been arrested for anything and not been suspended? At least temporarily.”
“But they’ll rescind it pretty fast. Once they can look at all the evidence…”
“It’s not going to be fast.”
He grunted. “Maybe not.”
Then he looked over at Natalie, Carter, and Snoopy. My kid and his dog were sticking like glue to her side. They had to be scared out of their minds, but Carter was handling this better than a lot of grown men would.
“He flies home tomorrow?” Razor asked.
“Yeah.”
“They can come home with one of us tonight. You know—if they have to keep you overnight or whatever. Whoever Natalie feels most comfortable with.”
I nodded because I was too choked up to respond.
He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Gary. The sooner he knows what’s going on, the sooner he can work on getting you out.”
Hell. I’d hardly thought about the team’s response, let alone the league’s. This was quickly becoming a much bigger nightmare than I’d ever anticipated.
And now I had to figure out how I was going to explain all of this to Kinsey, too.
Just when I most wished I could bury my head in the sand and never bring it out again, Natalie caught my eye. She tugged Carter onto her lap, and Snoopy rested his chin on top of my son’s knees—and then Natalie gave me the smallest smile.
I’d gone and fucked up a lot of things in a single stupid move—but maybe not everything.