Page 28 of Catch Me

He looks totally distraught. A lot less cocky than the previous times I’ve seen him. My body burns with the memory, and I shiver.

Behind me, Reid springs into action. Lex and Cade, both alert, move after him. Cade gets to the guy first while Lex gets to Reid. Jules grabs my hand, and we run after them. We sprint down a hallway while Reid yells expletives. My heart is in my throat. I don’t know what the guys have planned, but eventually, we end up in an empty garage bay.

“The fuck?” the guy says.

His eyes are half-lidded. When Cade spins him around to face Lex and Reid, the guy squints. Recognition flickers in his eyes in about thirty seconds, a muted response time if you ask me, considering the waves of hostility floating off the guys in front of him.

The guy lifts his hand in the air. “She made me do it.”

“You piece of shit,” Reid roars.

I flick between the two of them. On one hand, I’m sure Reid really wants revenge on this guy for taking football away from him, but on the other, I don’t want him to get hurt again. Lex stands cautiously nearby, moving between the two as I do.

“She told me you broke her heart.”

That bitch doesn’t have a heart.

“She told me you cheated on her, and that she just wanted you to pay. I swear, I didn’t try to hit you that hard. I didn’t know you were going to get seriously injured. I was just trying to send you a message for her.”

Reid marches up to him until the guy backs up against a pillar in the middle of the garage. His nostrils flare, and Jules and I move around the room to watch. “You think I give a fuck about the hit? Listen here, motherfucker, if you go anywhere near Briar again, I’ll kill you.”

The guy’s head rears back. He smacks it into the pillar behind him, dazing himself for a moment.

I gasp at his words, and the guy looks lazily over at me. Recognition flares in his eyes. “Shit,” he mumbles.

“Yeah,” Reid says. He places his forearm on the guy’s neck and leans in. The guy clasps it, though not trying to move it at the moment. “Do you understand me? If you even so much as look at her, I’ll tear your nuts off myself. You think women deserve to be treated that way? You think Sasha’s somehow going to want you once she gets what she needs out of you? Fuck that.”

“It was just supposed to be a prank,” the guy says. “I thought—”

Reid leans into him, and he chokes. His face turns red while Reid just glares at him, keeping pressure on his throat. “Do we understand each other?”

He chokes again, but nods his head emphatically.

Mercifully, Reid leans away. The guy immediately clasps his hands around his throat. He wheezes in and out a few times. “I’m not doing any more for that cunt, anyway. She told her parents I got rough with her. They almost had my ass thrown in jail.”

Reid moves away, coming toward me. His muscles are still locked up. I want to make sure he’s okay, but at the same time, this guy was in on what happened. He could help us. I sneak past Reid to stand in front of Richards. “I need you to speak up about what you did to Reid. I need you to tell everyone what Sasha made you do.”

The guy looks away, basically looking anywhere but at me. I roll my eyes when I realize what he’s doing. Reid told him if he so much as looked at me, he was going to end him. Apparently in his drunken state, this is his solution to that.

“Please,” I beg.

“Are you kidding me? I just told you her parents almost had me thrown in jail. I’m not fucking with her anymore. I came here tonight to tell her how much of a fucking bitch she is, but that’s it.”

“You owe us,” I growl. “You hit Reid so hard, he got a fucking concussion. You were going to take pictures of me naked.”

A rumbling comes from behind me. The guy tears his gaze off the ceiling and looks over my left shoulder and pales.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He sneaks around me, raising his hands in the air like he’s about to get arrested. “I am, but I’m done with this shit.” When he gets closer to the door, he takes off. We can hear his footsteps thud against the tile as he runs down the hall.

Cade laughs. “I think that guy is about to piss his pants.”

I groan, staring at the empty doorway. We had a shot there, but nothing. The guy isn’t anything but a coward with terrible excuses for his behavior. Even if he did tell everyone what happened, no one would probably believe him.

“Come on,” Cade says, walking toward the doorway back to the party. “We should try to salvage the night.”

We all start walking toward the door, but I pull back on Reid’s hand after he slips it into mine. He’s stiff at first, but when he turns toward me, he shifts back to normal. I eye him. “You were so mad at him,” I say.

His brows pull together.

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