Page 41 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

Except now he had nobody. At least not in this moment. The strangers he asked about Gem and her whereabouts had no idea who he was even talking about. It was like she was an apparition. The ghost of a college student. Everyone had heard of her, but no one could picture her, nor had they seen her, at least not definitively. There were a few equally drunk revelers who had insisted that she had been with a friend they knew or that they had seen her go out the back door, but all searches were fruitless. In the end, she was nowhere.

The panic was settling in now, caustic and sharp, burning his throat.

Where the fuck is she?

All the rooms on the top floor had doors that were open.He’d peeked into each one just in case and had seen the usual sights for those sorts of locations in a sorority house—people hooking up. He would look just long enough to ensure that it wasn’t Gem—not that she wasn’t allowed to hook up or that he controlled who she hung out with, he wasn’t that much of a psycho, but just to make sure she was okay—and then he would move on.

He was about to go downstairs again, hand on the banister, when something caught his eye.

Another room, just on the other side of the stairwell, apart from the others. This room had the door closed.

The acrid burn of his panic turned into ice, freezing over his whole body and streaming into his circulatory system, glacial in his veins.

Without a second thought, he stalked over to the door and threw it open, somehow knowing exactly what he was going to see, yet still completely unprepared for it.

Julia was sitting on the edge of the bed, head lolling in a way that told him she was startlingly drunk, though her gaze managed to focus on him briefly before she looked away again. Her shirt was off and thrown on the floor, leaving her clad in a lacy bra and jeans. There was another person there with her, some guy he recognized, barely, from one of his classes. His shirt was also off, and as Ethan burst into the room, the guy shot off the bed, his head whipping toward the door, unsteadily but clearly with enough of his wits about him—certainly more than the semi-lucid girl he had been fondling just moments before.

If Ethan’s veins had been cool blue seconds ago, they flared white hot in an instant.

Historically, Ethan was not a person prone to rage. It tendedto be more of a slow burn when it came to his anger, and sometimes he even allowed it to fizzle out before escalating further if he deemed a situation unworthy of the time and energy it took for his anger to develop. He very rarely lost his temper and was often the more levelheaded person in a group, the one who talked down the bar fights or de-escalated the worst of the hockey scraps. Sure, he’d had his moments, times when his anger had gotten the best of him and he’d lost his cool, but they were few and far between. He could probably count them all on one hand.

This moment eclipsed them all.

Red flamed in his vision as he strode over to the guy, who already had his hands up and was saying some version of “It’s not what you think—” before choking on his words as Ethan grabbed his throat and forcibly brought him to the ground.

Another reason why he often didn’t let his rage get the best of him was because he knew he was bigger than most people, with a disguised strength thanks to years of athletic training that made his muscles steely but not bulky enough to tip people off to the fact that he could probably take them out. This loser was close to the same height as him but nearly half his weight. Dropping him was like pinning down a slightly bulky feather.

His anger consumed him. He kept seeing Gem sitting on the bed, helpless and cold, unable to properly consent, while thisprickmauled her for his own perversions. Thinking he could cop a feel because she didn’t have her wits about her enough to say no. Ethan’s hand tightened around the guy’s throat, and he shook him once, the guy’s head thudding on the carpet like a rag doll. He felt the guy’s hands clawing at his wrist, his biceps, but he was too far gone to care. He couldn’t hear anything,couldn’t think beyond the roar in his head. Or was that the noise he was making out loud?

Even looking into the face of this piece-of-garbage excuse for a human being, nothing could work to calm him down. Nothing assuaged the rage he felt. If anything, it only grew. Cocking his arm back, the small coherent part of his brain that would never have allowed things to get this far asked if he realized how bad this was going to be.

Ethan didn’t care, though.

Bad or not, the guy had to pay. Ethan had no sympathy for this gutter slime, and he would do whatever needed to be done to paint the carpet with his face.

Suddenly, he felt a hand on his forearm, pulling it back, pulling it away.

Whirling his head around, he turned to see who would dare touch him in this moment, prevent him from meting out justice.

Then he froze.

It was Julia, tear tracks dried on her face, hair all mussed up, mascara under her eyes. Her one hand was holding his arm in a surprisingly strong grip; her other held her shirt to her chest, covering as much of her bare skin as she could.

“Stop.”

Maybe she said it, maybe she mouthed it. Either way, he couldn’t actually hear her, his rage still all-consuming, fist still clenched, offender’s throat still engulfed by his hand.

“Stop, Ethan.Stop.”

She said it again, and at his name, something popped, and sound filled the space like a vacuum. Suddenly everything was too loud—the frightened gasping breaths of the buddy on the floor, the sounds of partygoers downstairs, music blaring, atoilet flushing, a siren in the distance. He could hear itall—everything all at once.

With a gasp, he pulled his hand away and stood abruptly. The other guy gasped and sat up as well, scrambling away from Ethan.

“Listen, man,” he rasped out, hand clutching his throat where Ethan’s fingers had just tightened, “I didn’t—”

“Shut up,” Ethan growled, his voice deeper and more resonant than he’d ever heard it, a preternatural inflection to his tone that even he didn’t recognize. “Shut thefuckup and get thefuckout of my sight before I forget letting you go. Never let yourself cross paths with me again, or I swear you’ll fucking regret it.” The guy opened his mouth to speak, and Ethan interrupted him. “If we live in the same building, move out. If we have the same classes, drop them. If Ieverfucking see you darken my feet with so much as yourshadow, I swear to fucking God, I’ll—”

“Ethan.” Gem’s voice was quiet but laced with steel, her fingers resting on his shoulder before pressing a warning into his taut skin with her fingertips. “Let him go.”