Page 155 of Shots & Echoes

I moved.

One second, I was across the bonfire, rage scorching through me like gasoline in my veins. The next, my fist was colliding with his jaw, the sharp crack of bone-on-bone cutting through the night.

Chris’s head snapped back. His grin disappeared as his body went down, hitting the dirt with a satisfying thud.

I didn’t stop.

Didn’t let him breathe.

Didn’t let him understand what the fuck was happening before I was on him, my knuckles colliding with his ribs, his cheek, his mouth—anywhere I could land a hit.

He tried to roll away, to scramble back like the coward he was, but I shoved him down, pinning him under my weight, making sure he felt every ounce of fury pouring off me.

“You touch her again—” My fist slammed into his stomach, knocking the air from his lungs.

He wheezed, hands flailing, grasping at nothing.

“You so much as think about her—” Another hit. His head snapped sideways, blood spraying onto the dirt.

Someone shouted my name. I didn’t care.

My hand curled into his hoodie, yanking him upright so he could see me—see the fucking monster he’d woken up.

“I’llkillyou,” I snarled, voice guttural, ripped straight from the depths of my chest.

Chris coughed, spitting red, his breath ragged. His eyes darted around, pleading—for help, for someone to step in. But no one did. They just watched.

Good.

I wanted them to see.

I wanted them to know what happened when someone thought they could take what was mine.

I shoved him back down, his body crumpling like a discarded puppet. My pulse thundered in my skull, my breath ragged as I sat back on my heels, fingers still twitching with the need to keep going.

I headed back to my car and drove like a man with nothing left to lose.

The road blurred under the streetlights, my grip on the wheel tightening every time my knuckles throbbed—sharp, raw pain shooting up my arms with every pulse of my heart. My shirthung in shredded tatters, sticky with sweat and blood, but I barely felt it. I barely felt anything.

I pulled into the driveway, the engine growling low as I killed the ignition. My chest still heaved, adrenaline still humming beneath my skin like an exposed wire, but the second I stepped inside?—

She was there.

Curled up on my couch.

Wearing my hoodie.

Looking so damn right sitting there, wrapped up in the scent of me like she belonged in this space, in this life—with me.

Our eyes locked, and that wild, chaotic storm in my head suddenly stilled.

She didn’t ask what happened. She didn’t need to.

Iris already knew.

I crossed the room without thinking, drawn to her like gravity had shifted, like she was the only solid thing left in a world that refused to stop spinning. She sat up slowly, the fabric of my hoodie swallowing her frame, her lips parting just slightly as I stopped in front of her.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she murmured.

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