I picked my way around noisy patrons and pushed into the bathroom. I had to wait in line once I was inside, and for once I didn’t feel like the odd man out because I knew the woman in front of me was wearing a Mauro Grifoni pantsuit that was way more expensive than anything I typically wore to work. It was also a really pretty shade of slate blue, and before it was my turn to disappear into a stall and do my business, I bookmarked the page on my phone where I could buy one for myself. Slate blue was pretty and it was colorful. Slate blue wasn’t a neutral color at all, and if I went ahead and bought it there would be no hiding it as a guilty pleasure when I wore it.
I was putting my phone back in my purse when I bumped into someone in the narrow hallway. I put my hands up to brace myself and looked up into the hazy and obviously drunk gaze of the man I ran into. He was half in and half out of his suit. His shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest even though he still had on a tie knotted up toward his throat. He swayed on unsteady feet and took me with him since he was still holding on to my arms.
I gave him what I hoped passed for a friendly grin instead of a grimace and repeated, “Excuse me,” as I tried to shake him off.
“Aren’t you a pretty thing . . . and so tall. I bet your legs are fucking incredible.”
I recoiled automatically at the slurred come-on and put some real effort into trying to pull free from him. I was annoyed that other men and women coming in and out of the bathroom didn’t bother to say anything to him.
“I have someone waiting on me. You need to let me go—now.” I put extra emphasis on the last word and gave him a solid shove in the chest. He grunted and curled his hands tighter into my arms, which made me yelp. I was going to have a collection of bruises left over from this encounter for sure.
“I don’t want to let you go. I want to give you a kiss.” He was so sloppy and drunk that all the words smooshed together and we almost fell again as he leaned toward my face.
Fed up, I put a hand over his puckered lips and pushed back as hard as I could. “Gross. Let me go.”
I gained a little ground but when the man realized that he wasn’t going to get to put his mouth on mine, he gave me a teeth-rattling shake that had my head snapping back. I let out a yelp of surprise as he screamed at me that I was a stuck-up bitch and I should be glad anyone wanted to kiss my stuck-up ass.
I was going to reply that there was someone in this very bar who was more than happy to kiss my stuck-up ass all the time when that someone was suddenly there and the drunk guy ended up shoved against the wall with two hundred and fifty pounds of furious Zeb Fuller in his face.
Zeb wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t throwing punches. He was simply holding the guy up off the ground by his shirt and threatening to do really awful things to him in a quiet and deadly voice. Only they weren’t exactly threats. They were promises, and the drunk businessman could tell. His eyes zeroed in on me over Zeb’s shoulder asking for help. I sighed and took a step forward so I could put a hand on his coiled shoulder. He felt like a predator about to pounce and go for his prey’s throat.
“Zeb, let him go.”
“He has his hands on you. He made you scream. He’s not walking out of here without bleeding.”
It was all growled through teeth as he shook the man similar to the way I had just been shaken. I’d never seen him like this . . . well, that wasn’t true. He looked an awful lot like he did in that mug shot in the case folder on my desk, and that had panic rearing up and putting me in a choke hold. He couldn’t go down that route again.
The idea of Zeb going away, of him losing everything he had worked so hard for because of me, had done what thinking about my mother and talking about my father hadn’t been able to do. The gates were open, the plug was pulled, the walls were down, and every single fear, desire, want, dream, nightmare I had ever had rushed forth. It wasn’t feeling one thing, it was feeling all the things I had repressed for so long, and it was enough to take me to my knees. I stopped breathing, stopped thinking, and let the flood of everything I had tried so hard, for so long, to pretend didn’t exist carry me away.
Zeb had too much to lose and I refused to be the catalyst for it. I couldn’t cost him or Hyde a future. If I did that I would deserve every awful, hateful word my father had leveled at me. The contempt and scorn that had been my everyday would finally be earned and I couldn’t abide by that. Not for a second. Ancient words about worth and value, about not being enough, started to drag icy fingers along my spine. I knew what it was like to grow up without an ounce of love and there was no way I would ever put Hyde in that position. I would never make Zeb sacrifice like that for me.
I curled my hand over the thick muscle as much to keep myself steady as to make it possible for me to talk directly into his ear. My voice was shaky and raspy but he was so intent on the man he wanted to hurt I doubted he could tell. “You have too much at stake to be tossing this guy around like a rag doll. You don’t want someone to call the cops. That’s the worst thing that could happen when you’re this close to getting custody.”
The guy gurgled as Zeb crammed his forearm into his neck and cut off his airway. “He had his hands on you.”
“I know, but I had the situation under control.” I hadn’t really, and now I was even more out of control than I had ever been. But there was more at stake here than this drunk idiot and Zeb’s natural instinct to protect those he cared about. My bruises would fade, but if he lost Hyde over something stupid . . . I could never live with that kind of consequence. “Let him go. Please.” I was begging and on the verge of tears. I could feel the desperation to get him out of here pulling at me with grasping hands.