“Do it if you think it’ll make you feel better,” Alex offers, keeping his hands hanging limply by his sides. “It’s not going to bring her back though.”
My fingers tighten around his throat as his words wash through me, but he still doesn’t react.
“Fuck,” I breathe, releasing him and pushing back, bending over and resting my palms on my knees.
Silence ripples around us as I suck in breath after breath, trying to work out what the hell happened tonight.
I didn’t think things could get worse than me having to see another man’s hands on my wife, but this… this… “FUCK,” I scream, my voice echoing into the night.
“Why are you even out here, T?” Alex asks after another long silence.
Spinning to face him, I reach up and shove my hands into my hair, sending pain shooting down my spine.
If he notices me flinch, then he doesn’t say anything.
“I thought you were going home to beat the shit out of a punching bag after being booted from training?”
I think back a few hours ago and it feels like it all happened a million years ago.
Fucking Emmie in that empty classroom, skipping out on the rest of the day until I turned up at training, knowing that Coach would rip me a new one. But it turned out that showing my face and then throwing my weight into anyone who came my way and breaking our goalkeeper’s nose wasn’t what he wanted either.
Motherfucker kicked me out of training and has benched me for the rest of the week. At least he’s not taken Friday’s game from me… yet.
“I did,” I mutter. “Then I got a call to say that Emmie was off her head at some Wolves party in Lovell and I went to get her.”
He stares at me, waiting for me to continue.
“She was with fucking Niall Daxton,” I spit out, my fists curling as the image of him grinding down on her as she came hits me once again.
Alex’s brows rise, knowing me well enough to know that I wouldn’t have let that ride.
I might never have confessed to him how I feel about Emmie after everything that’s gone down between us, but I don’t think he needs me to.
It might only be Seb who truly understands, but they all get it. Either that or they're just so used to my obsessions over the years that they just let me do my thing and hope I don’t take it too far.
I fear that this might be bordering on that, though.
“I shot him,” I finally confess.
“Jesus Christ, T. You shot a fucking Wolf?”
“I grazed her too.” Guilt floods through my veins that I physically hurt her. That I made her bleed, and not with her begging me for it while she was dripping for my cock.
No. She was fucking wet for him instead.
The roar that rips from my throat and echoes through the solitude around us doesn’t sound like it belongs to me. And if it weren’t for the agonising pain in my chest that accompanies it, then I wouldn’t believe it was.
“You were going to Mum?” Alex guesses.
“It wasn’t bad, but fuck. She was fucking bleeding, and she was tripping on acid and fuck knows what else he’d given her.”
He stares at me for a second, sympathy oozing from him, but there’s no way he can comprehend how I’m feeling right now. How much I despise myself for what I’ve done. Even if some of it was out of my control.
I’m meant to be looking after her.
I’m meant to protect her.
We may never have said our vows, but I’ll be fucked if I’m not going to uphold them anyway.
She’s my girl. My wife.
My world. My everything.
Even if she doesn’t want it.
“Come on,” he says, taking a step toward me and throwing his arm around my shoulder, making me wince in pain once more. “You need patching up. You’ve probably got a concussion too.”
“I’m fine,” I argue, although I know it’s a lie. I hurt like fuck and I can’t ignore the blood that’s trickling down the side of my face and dripping from my chin.
“Sure you are, boss,” he mutters, but I don’t miss the mocking in his tone. “Did you warn Mum you were about to drop in on her?”
“No,” I confess, falling into his passenger seat without any argument.
“We’ll call her on the way. I think that’s going to need stitches.”
“Oh my God,” Gianna gasps when she meets us out the front of her house.
Alex had explained what the problem was as we drove here, but I don’t think she really appreciated the state I was in. And as the minutes have passed, I’m finding it harder and harder to deny that I am actually okay.
Every time I move my head, a pain shoots down my neck, and my back hurts, but neither of those is anything compared to my head that’s still streaming with blood. My grey hoodie is wrecked, as is Alex’s passenger seat—not that he’s complained about it yet. Can’t say I’d have kept my mouth shut if the situation were reversed, mind you.
“I’m fine,” I insist, but from the hard stare I get in return, I know I’m not fooling anyone.
“Alex, go to the bathroom. I’m going to need my kit from under the basin. And grab him a fresh set of clothes.”
“You got it,” he says, saluting her before moving into the house.
Her lips part, and I can already predict what she’s going to say. She’s patched us all up enough times that I can read her thoughts.
“You should—”
“I’m not going to the hospital, G. It’s just not happening. Patch me up, then I need to get back to business.”
“Theodore,” she warns in her warm, motherly tone that always makes me feel like a child once again. “Alex is right, the force of the hit that caused that has probably given you a concussion.”
She gestures for me to go ahead of her and I step into her home.
Warmth surrounds me, and it’s not until the huge clock on the hallway wall catches my eye that I realise just how late it is and how much she probably doesn’t appreciate our interruption.
Looking back over my shoulder, I grimace in pain before taking in what she’s wearing.
“I’m so sorry for waking you for this,” I say, my eyes on her robe and slippers.
“Nonsense, Theo. You know I’m here whenever you boys need me. Even if you’d be better off in the hospital,” she mutters.
I take a seat on the sofa and she lowers herself down beside me, her gentle, warm fingers pressing against my head as Alex returns with her box of tricks and a bottle of vodka that he’s swiped from her liquor cabinet.
“This is going to need stitches,” she murmurs, more to herself than me.
“So stitch it. I can handle it.”
Reaching out, I gesture for the bottle in Alex’s hand, and after he’s uncapped it, he takes a swig himself and passes it over.
“Make it hurt, G. I deserve it.”
“I highly doubt that, Theodore. I’ve never met a sweeter boy in my life.”
She winks at me and I bark a laugh, regretting it instantly when pain shoots down my spine.
It doesn’t take long until my laughter is forgotten, and I’m soon gritting my teeth as she stitches me back together.