Page 122 of The Way I Hate Him
“I don’t think you understand just how bad this is.”
Hayes stands from the bed, towering over me with bedhead and sleep still in his eyes. “I’ll be fine, I promise. Open the door before he knocks it down.”
“But . . . how does he know?” I ask, the night fuzzy in my head.
“You pretty much announced to the bar that I was taking you away. Probably took two seconds for someone to text him.”
“Hattie!” he yells, pounding.
“Fuck,” I mutter before I brush my shirt down and walk up to the door, fear clutching my chest. I don’t want to open the door. I don’t want to subject Hayes to whatever Ryland might do to him, but I also know I can’t let him break down the door. So with a deep breath, I unlock the door and open it an inch. “Ryland,” I say as he stares at me with murderous eyes.
He places his palm against the door and pushes it open, just enough to see Hayes standing in the middle of the apartment, hands in his pockets.
“You motherfucker,” Ryland growls right before he charges toward him.
“No,” I say to Ryland as I reach for his arm, but he shrugs out of the way, cocks back his arm, and lunges toward Hayes.
The sound of Hayes’s jaw crunching under Ryland’s fist makes me physically ill.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yell as Hayes stumbles backward. I grab Ryland’s hand, but he shakes me off as he goes in for another punch.
“You think you can just fuck my sister and get away with it?” Ryland screams, the veins in his neck popping, looking so terrifying that I don’t even recognize him. His fist plows into Hayes’s stomach, and he buckles over, letting Ryland get another punch into his side.
Oh my God!
Why isn’t Hayes fighting back?
“Stop,” I scream at Ryland before he can truly do some damage if he hasn’t done so already.
I hop on his back, trying to limit his ability to attack Hayes, but Ryland pulls me off and pushes me to the side, causing me to crash into my dresser, my back slamming against the hard wood. “Fuck,” I cry as my eyes connect with Hayes. Fury takes over him, and just as Ryland goes to strike him again, Hayes blocks Ryland’s fist and returns the punch straight into Ryland’s stomach.
Ryland steps backward, crippling over just as Hayes uppercuts him into the jaw, the crunching sound deafening. “Don’t you dare fucking hurt her,” Hayes says as he closes the distance between him and Ryland, gripping Ryland’s shirt. He cocks back his arm, and I scream at him.
“Don’t, Hayes. Please. Don’t.”
Hayes glances in my direction, which is enough time for Ryland to punch Hayes in the side of the head. As he loses his balance, Ryland hops on Hayes’s back, tackling him to the ground, where they start wrestling each other.
Two large, grown men, rolling around on the floor, tossing punches, grunting, swearing at each other, and all I can do is watch in horror, crying, begging them to stop.
Shirts are ripped.
Punches are thrown.
Blood splatters across the room.
I jump onto the bed because as they roll around, they take out the dresser and the chair, ruin the rug, and destroy the entire apartment.Cassidy’s apartment.
“Please stop,” I cry out, tears streaming down my face as I watch two important men in my life try to kill each other. “Ryland, stop. Hayes,” I sob and, just when I think there will be no end to this, Abel appears at the door, his chest heaving as he takes in the scene in front of him.
“Get Hayes,” he says to me as he sacrifices himself and pulls Ryland by the shoulders. I take a moment when Ryland and Hayes aren’t on top of each other and throw my body onto Hayes, knowing damn well he won’t hurt me. I clutch him, my arms and legs wrapped around him as he breathes heavily against me.
“Let me the fuck go,” Ryland says, and when I glance over at him, my stomach twists with nausea as blood drips down his eye, across his face, and under his lip.
“You’re going to kill each other, and you have a little girl to take care of,” Abel says, the voice of reason. That’s all it takes for Ryland to let go of the tension and to fall backward on the ground, where he clutches his forehead.
Hayes relaxes as well while his arm snakes around my back soothingly, my heart still pounding erratically. Quietly, he whispers in my ear, “Are you okay?”
I shake my head because I’m not okay.
