meaty fingers and knocked the breath out of me just that easily. Still, I stood my ground.
“You’re not going to touch him again!” I said with more strength than I felt.
The room spun when the back of his hand connected with my cheek. I landed face first into the foul, shag carpeting. There was a scuffle behind me, so I quickly turned onto my back and tried to get up. My mouth filled with blood and the room continued to spin. Zeke had to be one tough guy if he went through this all the time.
When my vision finally cleared, I looked up to see Zeke beating his father unmercifully. His dad didn’t give up and went back in with a punch to his cheek. The thin, paneling wall cracked when Zeke slammed into it, but he shook it off and kept punching his dad in the stomach and face over and over again.
His dad caught him in the stomach and I heard the air squeeze from his lungs as he fell to his knees.
“Come on, you little fucker.” His dad baited him. “Is that all you got? I bet your little bitch hits harder than you!”
Zeke crawled from the floor and went on the attack again. He threw punches so fast his hands started to blur. Once his dad fell to one knee, Zeke attacked harder and then out of nowhere, he reached over for the guitar his mother bought him and brought it up over his head. Things started to move in slow motion.
I saw where this was going and I heard myself scream for him to stop, but before the words left my lips, he brought the guitar down and slammed it into his dad’s back. There was a loud crack and then tiny pieces of guitar flew everywhere.
He brought it up again and this time he brought it down and cracked the already broken guitar over his dad’s face. His dad fell hard and the trailer shook.
Zeke pulled back a broken piece that still had the strings attached. The larger, shattered part of the guitar hung above his unconscious and bloodied father. He looked down at his guitar and then he looked down at the heaping pile of asshole he’d managed to knock out. Sorrow seeped into his big, brown eyes and then he looked over at me. He held the pieces of the guitar up as if to show me what he had done.
It was broken beyond repair, his most prized possession. The guitar his mother bought for him years ago was gone… irreplaceable… gone. I couldn’t help but feel like it was my fault. I was the reason he’d lost something that meant more to him than anything else in the world and once he realized that he’d hate me. I hated me.
Dark, unreadable eyes looked back at me before he looked down again and shook his head in what I assumed was aggravation.
“Are you okay?” he asked roughly as he wiped at his bleeding lip.
Me? Who gave a rat’s ass about me? I was fine. All I could think about was him and his guitar. He’d told me how special that guitar was and I knew what it meant to him.
“I’m fine. Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.” He looked like he was about to cry.
“I’m so sorry, Zeke.”
The floor shifted as I stood up and went to him. I reached out for his hand and he didn’t pull away. Brushing his hair from his sweaty face, his already swelling eye was turning black. He flinched when I ran my finger across the bruise.
“Don’t be, you didn’t do anything wrong. I should’ve stood up to him years ago.” He sat on the couch and the broken guitar fell to his feet. “What are you doing here?”
I sat beside him and laid my hand on his knee. He looked down at my hand and then looked back at me.
“I came to tell you I was sorry. I didn’t mean what I said the other night. I just didn’t want you to get arrested.”
The side of his mouth tilted up and he blew out a deep breath.
“You could’ve just texted me that.”
I went in for the kill.
“But then I wouldn’t have been able to see you.”
He turned to me and his eyes took in my face. Reaching up, he laid his palm against my sore cheek. Anger filled his eyes and he breathed hard, making his nostrils flare.