I leaned in to her. “Can you forgive me for being an idiot?” I whispered, glancing between her and Ty, waiting for him to realize I’d slipped into the seat next to the woman he was all territorial over. “Again?”

My attempts at playing it light and making a puppy dog face went over as well as I hoped it wouldn’t. Her glare turned from Ty to me, and I don’t think I was mistaken when those eyelids seemed to drop further.

I leaned away a bit, and that’s when the worst bodyguard in the history of them noticed me.

“Pick another seat, dickweed,” he growled, reaching behind Emma and shoving my shoulder.

I blew a burst of air out my mouth. “Wow, a name I haven’t been called yet. You must have been hard at work on that one all weekend. That must describe while you’re looking especially ugly today.” Grinning my provocation, I continued, “By the way, double black eyes is a great look for you.”

He shoved my shoulder again, harder. “You’re about to have a pair to match if you don’t move away from my girlfriend.”

I squished my face into a puh-lease expression. “From the looks of it, your girlfriend might be catching on to the well-known fact that her boyfriend is a monkey’s uncle.”

I was too focused on Ty, too set on taking out everything raging inside of me, or else I would have noticed Emma’s shoulders tensing to the point of snapping, her face flashing red with her own emotions firing inside. That would have been the wise way to expend my energy, on calming her instead of enraging Ty, but at this point in my male show of dominance, I wasn’t being wise.

“Emma’s not going anywhere,” he said, his mouth twisting up. “And the next time you lure her to your place, for any duration of time, you’re a dead man.”

It was a casual expression any male who’d hit puberty had thrown around, but something intentional in Ty’s words made me believe he wasn’t bluffing. Unfortunately for him, if he came at me with a death sentence, I was invincible to most things manmade, and I wasn’t a man who bluffed when handing out death threats. I’d killed men, many of them, and while it wasn’t a badge of honor I wore on my chest, it wasn’t something I was ashamed about either. I’d never killed a man who had ceased deserving life, and Ty was getting dangerously close to winding up on that list.

“If she comes back, I’ll be all open doors. And arms,” I said, for her, not him.

However, she didn’t look like she was hearing anything but a couple of imbeciles throwing insults around, above, and between her.

“She won’t,” Ty said, his jaw muscles about to pop through his skin.

I shrugged. “She might.” It was working—my blasé demeanor was pissing him off hardcore. I was hoping he was two more retorts away from exploding out of the room in a furious puff of smoke.

“She. Won’t.”

“She probably will,” I replied, cracking my neck from side to side.

“She—”

I was sick of hearing this repeated. “She most definitely will,” I said, fixing my eyes on him. “Begging me to let her in. Begging,” I repeated slowly.

The dormant volcano simmering between us chose that time to explode. Leaping to a stand, she stared hard at him, then at me. Damn, her eyes were taking on that glassy sheen again.

“I am not some prize either of you can claim,” she shouted, all the way to the rafters and down to where a bored professor was laser pointing at something on the screen.

Every last Monday-afternoon-groggy head snapped to attention, followed by bodies twisting in their seats to stare at Emma.

I hadn’t seen that one coming. A full-fledged outburst in a silent classroom of a hundred? Emma seemed more the grin and bear it type.

Pushing past Ty, she ran out of the room, hair flying behind her and tears spilling before her.

“Happy?” Ty growled, towering over me.

“Far from it,” I answered.

One more shove to my shoulder and Ty turned and followed after her.

When the door slammed closed the second time, Professor Camp cleared his throat. “My advanced degrees, unparalleled experience in the field, and all around mastery of all things of a psychological matter would lead me to the intricate, official diagnosis that she suffers from,” he paused, lowering his glasses, “boy issues.” Looking my way, he said, “Mr. Hayward, I’m guessing you play a large part in that. Be on your way,” he said, waving at the door.

I didn’t need permission, but that’s what got me out of my seat.

“Here’s a question for you eager young minds to gnaw on,” he continued as I jogged down the aisle. “Why are you here learning about life when you could be out living life?” You could almost hear a few brains shattering.

The door was closing behind me as Camp barreled on with his education bashing spiel. “And here’s something else—sitting in class is a waste of your time, mind, and—”

The door slammed shut before I could hear the continued pearls in this necklace of wisdom. I jogged down the hallway, listening for voices. I didn’t go far before I heard the ones I was listening for, and they weren’t being spoken in a quiet, or friendly, tone.

Slamming the outside doors open, I saw Ty’s back, his arms and voice flying into the wind. I couldn’t see her thanks to the gorilla exhibiting every mannerism of an actual one blocking her, but I knew she was there.

“You were nothing when we hooked up,” he shouted as another arm burst into the air. “You were on a one way train to becoming a future man sewer before I made the biggest mistake of my life and made you my girlfriend.”

I launched into a sprint across the lawn, hardly able to wait tackling the SOB.

“I guess I always knew you’d wind up a whore like your mom. I just didn’t see the evidence until this past weekend.”

I would have snapped his back in half had I not pulled back two strides before I rocketed into him. Emma’s scream was the only thing I heard as Ty and I toppled over each other until the momentum from the impact crested.

I landed on top, the red pulsing in me, ready to repay every foul word he’d said to Emma with the business side of my fist.

A pair of hands wound around my arm an inch before fist met flesh. “Patrick—no!” she said, her voice shaking as she wrestled me off of Ty.

The rage died, her touch freeing it. When she had me upright and a body length away from the human sized lawn gnome decorating the grass, she pressed her hand to my chest, looking at me hard.

“You promised,” she said. The promise I wished I wouldn’t have made. “You promised,” she repeated, like she knew my anger was playing devil’s advocate with my rational mind.

“I know.” The last remains of fury released itself in a tremble. “I know,” I said again.

“Keep it then,” she said softly.

What choice did I have when she looked at me like that? “I will.”

“She sure got you whipped fast,” Ty said, upright and grinning his malevolence at us. “I’d say a little something more than studying and sun-tanning occurred this weekend.” Looking at Emma, his grin twisted higher. “What do you have to say about that, Emma? Were you being your typical whorish self with lover boy?”

Like she was already expecting it, Emma caught my arm as I whipped around to finish delivering my message. “Stop it, Patrick!” she shouted, looking desperate.

“Why are you defending him?” I spun on her, trying to see what it was she saw in this loser. I saw nothing but a face filled with dread and secrets. “I’ve never heard one kind word come out of his mouth when he talks to you, so why are you defending who should be your worst enemy to someone who wants to be your best friend?”

“It’s because she knows the only way she can escape her shithole of a life is to glom onto the coat tails of any man who’s dumb enough to not recognize her for the gutter whore she is.”

“You really are a piece of shit, you know that?” I said, seething. Emma’s firm hand holding my arm was the only thing keeping me from charging him again.

“What does that say about Emma then? Since she can’t get enough of this ‘piece of shit’?” Ty said, looking his girlfriend up and down. “I think that makes her a swarming, shit eating house fly. That sound about right?”

“Shut up!” I screamed, feeling the veins bulging in my neck. I’d seen enough of hate in my life to recognize it, and I hated him for talking about her like this. I’d known arch nemeses who’d had more respect for one another than to speak of the other the way Ty was speaking of the woman he supposedly loved.

We were drawing a crowd. Fights happened on Stanford’s campus about as often as a middle class student was admitted. They were going to get quite a show if Ty didn’t shut his mouth soon.

“Why don’t you come over here and make me?” Ty challenged, crossing his arms. “Oh, that’s right. You made my girlfriend a promise that you wouldn’t take a swing at me again, and you’re actually p**sy-whipped enough to honor that.”

Emma’s face had gone from snow white to cherry red. It was one thing for him to humiliate her in front of me, but now he was doing it in front of a generous portion of her classmates. She was squirming from her discomfort. I couldn’t take seeing her like this, and since I couldn’t beat the snot out of him to shut him up, I could think of one other way to get him to shut his trap.

“I might not be able to hit you to shut you up, but I’m fairly certain if you’re beating the crap out of me, you won’t be able to manage anything more than a grunt.”

“Patrick,” Emma whispered, shaking her head, pulling me away from Ty instead of holding me back from him.

“Are you serious?” Ty asked, looking like he was waiting to double check the numbers before celebrating his lottery win.

“Dead,” I said, squaring myself in front of him, my body subconsciously bracing itself for a beating. “I’ll give you two minutes to kick my ass from here to next Monday because I’d rather feel your p**sy punch than hear your filthy lies. But here’s the thing.” I stared at the piece of garbage with unblinking focus—I wanted him to know I wasn’t scared of him and I was serious as a tumor with my warning. “If you ever say another nasty thing about Emma again, whether I hear it or not, all promises are off, and I will relish beating you until you’re reduced to crapping into a diaper and sipping steak from a straw the rest of your life. I have no problem going back to jail, son.”

So I hadn’t been to jail before, but I meant it when I said I’d have no problem paying the price to beat him within an inch of death. In fact, I couldn’t think of a better way to end up in prison.

The crowd had grown again, almost exponentially. That probably had a lot to do with text messaging and “send all.”

“Two minutes, huh?” Ty said, sliding out of his coat and tossing it to the side. “And you think by keeping your word and not hitting me while I kick your ass, that will make me the bad guy and Emma will run into your broken in several locations arms?”