“Jesus Christ, man. Unzip his pants and suck him off, already,” the man beside me snapped.

He blasted into frantic, slurred laughter, coiling his fist and offering it to Hunter for a pound. He was promptly left hanging, as Hunter stared him down with an expression that suggested he was going to maim him with his empty pint glass. The man dropped his fist, raising both palms in surrender.

“All I’m saying is you’re wasting your time with Wilma Flintstone over here. I died a little listening to her salivating all over your lap. Don’t you have a friend to save you from this date from hell? Did she scam you into thinking she’s hot on Bumble? What’s going on? Y’all don’t look like a natural fit.”

The guy beside Hunter—Rude Guy’s companion—coughed out a potato chip, almost toppling backwards on the bench with laughter. A few people stopped what they were doing, quieted, and sent curious glances our way.

The taunts hit me like hail. Hard and painful and cruel, like that boy on the balcony in the wintertime who didn’t want to go away.

Like Hunter felt when I first saw him.

I felt the heat of the humiliation on my cheeks, the sting of tears stabbing the back of my eyeballs. There were many things I wanted to say, scream, throw in the man’s face, but I couldn’t. I was too frozen to speak up.

And Hunter…Hunter just stared at him.

“Look, man, you’ve got the looks. You obviously make a fine buck with how you dress. You can do so much better than this ratty-looking thing,” the guy continued, throwing a thumb my way. “Just sayin’ what everyone in this room is thinking right now.” He grabbed his beer and finished his drink in one gulp, throwing the empty pint behind his shoulder comically, wiggling his brows. The pint smashed on the floor.

Nobody laughed. Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed.

Hunter’s left eye twitched—just the one tic. Other than that, he was very still.

I wanted to die. To cry. To shoot a poisonous arrow through Rude Guy’s heart. To run away from here as far as my feet could carry me. Pack my things and leave Hunter’s apartment. I wanted to change my name and my hair color and my wardrobe. Start over somewhere new, where nobody knew me. This guy didn’t know me. That’s why he’d said it.

He didn’t know who my father was.

Who my brother was.

He wasn’t scared of the aftermath.

How many more men I’d known had viewed me the exact same way as this guy, but never voiced it aloud because they were scared?

I stared at the jerk, knowing my face was beet red. From the corner of my eye, I could see our waiter running over with a shot of Baileys in his hand, half of its contents sloshing over the already sticky floor. He was making his way to me, I realized, my lungs deflating.

Breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

And to make matters worse, Hunter had checked out.

“Not now, you idiot!” Hunter finally snapped, expanding like a dark cloud, suddenly soaked with his own anger. He rose in one thunderous movement, flipping the half-full plate of the guy beside him and watching as its contents fell into the man’s lap.

I shrank on the wooden bench, watching’s Hunter’s eyes narrow into two slits of fury.

“What’d you just say to me?” My roommate bared his teeth, Titan-like, tall and formidable and bigger than this place. Than this moment. It looked like he was growing bigger and bigger, like the Hulk. “Get the fuck up and repeat yourself, you useless sack of shit.”

The rude man relished the opportunity for a brawl. He stood tall, chin up, chest expanded, peacock-like.

“I said your girlfriend is ugly, and now that I see how goddamn offended you are about it, I’m thinking maybe she ain’t really your steady ride. Maybe she’s your beard. A pretty boy like you has no business being with a girl like her. If…” He raised his hand, taking a deliberate, comic pause. “…she’s the one with the pussy between you two.”

The pub’s walls rattled with laughter, the beers on the tables splattering everywhere. I clung to my tattered self-control, keeping my wobbly chin up, although a part of me wondered how I was going to stitch my self-esteem back together after this.

It wasn’t just torn; it was massacred.

“I’m going to butcher you,” Hunter’s voice was so low, it sounded like it came from an animal. The look on his face—one I’d never seen on him before—of brazen determination dipped with fury, made my bones rattle. There was a zing of insanity there. I recognized it well. My father had the same glimmer in his eyes before he went on his late-night jobs.

“Oh, yeah?” The guy placed one hand on his rounded waist.

He was pudgy, but strong. Fat and muscle corded together into a boar-shaped man. You could tell by his body language—rotten smile, palms open—that he loved to fight, did it often, and wouldn’t hesitate to break Hunter’s neck.

“’Cause it seems to me like all you’re doing is standing there, throwing empty threats my way, pretty boy.”

The pimply waiter ran to the back of the tavern, probably to get his superiors. A few people lowered their heads, possibly debating whether to break things up between the two men.

I managed to stand. I leaned toward Hunter across the table.

“Don’t bother. He’s a waste of space, oxygen, and probably porn clicks.” I tried to inject humor into my voice. “Let’s hit the road, Hunt.”