Do you want me to go?

My eyes flashed open. Oh, God. I’d said yes.

I stood, found my T-shirt inside out on the floor. Righting it and jerking it over my head, I reached for socks and my boots and shoved my feet into them. Grabbed my jacket from the back of a kitchen chair and my keys from the counter.

I could fix this. I would fix this.

I shrugged into the jacket and headed out the door and down the stairs. Getting into her dorm wouldn’t be as easy this time – there were so few people around. Almost everyone had vacated campus as soon as finals were over. I would call her when I got there. I’d have to talk her into letting me into the building. Apologize. Beg if I had to. On my knees.

I hoped to God she answered. I would camp in the back of her truck if she didn’t.

I was about to swing a leg over my bike when I heard footsteps, pounding up the driveway. Jacqueline, running to me – but she didn’t see me. She was staring at the bottom of the steps to my apartment. Her name in my mouth, I moved to intercept her – and then she went down, and I saw Buck, his fist round her hair. Oh, f**k no.

He landed on top of her, but she shoved on to her side, unbalancing him. As she scrambled away from him, he followed.

I grabbed him just as he reached for her, pitched him, and installed myself between them. I glanced at Jacqueline and saw blood coating her chest. A huge, dark circle of it, like a gunshot wound, blooming, fatal. Fuck no f**k no f**k no – but she was scuttling backwards on her hands, and her eyes were wide. If she’d been shot or stabbed there, she wouldn’t be moving.

When he stood, I saw that his face was bloody under his nose. She had made him bleed.

I would make him bleed more.

My eyes had almost adjusted to the dark, but the Hellers had motion-detecting floodlights, and our movements activated one of them. It popped on – a dim little spotlight for our fight scene.

Buck’s dark eyes were focused and unswerving, no alcohol marring his coordination. He tried to circle round, as if I was going to let him anywhere near her ever again. I moved with him, facing him, aware of Jacqueline and her exact location. I felt her behind me as if she was part of my body. Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood.

‘I’m gonna bust that lip wide open, emo boy,’ he said. ‘I’m not f**ked up this time. I’m stone-cold sober, and I’m gonna kick your ass before I f**k your little whore nine ways from Sunday – again.’

Weak words from a weak man. He didn’t know he was already dead. ‘You’re mistaken, Buck.’

I removed my jacket and shoved my sleeves up, and he took the first swing. I blocked it. He repeated the movement – because this ass**le didn’t learn – and I blocked it again. Rushing me, he tried one of his predictable wrestling moves.

Jab to the kidney. Open-handed slap to the ear.

He reeled, pointing at Jacqueline. ‘Bitch. Think you’re too good for me – but you’re nothing but a whore.’

I held my temper by a hair. He wanted it to snap, because people forget what they’re doing when they allow their temper free rein. They make the stupid, critical mistakes that I didn’t intend to make. My temper would remain caged until I had him down and disorientated.

When he tried to grab me again, I snatched and twisted his arm, aiming to dislocate his shoulder. He turned into it, so I didn’t quite wrench it out of joint, but I landed my first satisfying, face-crunching fist to his jaw. As soon as his head swivelled back round, he got another to the mouth. He blinked, staring, seeking an exposed spot. Wasn’t gonna happen.

Enraged, he roared loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood and barrelled into me. As we fell, he got a couple of good punches in before I pivoted, took hold of him, and used his own forward motion to land him on his head. Amazing how many guys are too f**king ham-fisted to see that coming.

I didn’t waste time admiring my handiwork. While he shook his head, trying to see straight after landing on top of his skull, I tackled him – sadly, into the grass, not on the concrete – and hit him. I thought of the terror in Jacqueline’s eyes. Her hair caught in his fist. My name – Landon – the last word my mother spoke.

Snap.

I hit him again. One time after another. And I wasn’t going to stop.

Something pulled me up and off. No. NO. I fought to free myself and was one second from doing so when words broke through: ‘Stop. She’s safe. She’s safe, son.’

Charles. I stopped resisting, and he loosened the tight band of his arms but kept them round me, propping me up as I began to shake. Buck wasn’t moving.

I turned to find Jacqueline, but I knew right where she was. Charles let me go and I staggered towards her, fell to my knees beside her, my entire body shuddering. Her eyes were still wide, her beautiful face bruising, blood speckling her chin and cheeks.

I cupped a palm under her rapidly discolouring jaw. She flinched, and I jerked my hand away. She was afraid of me. Of what had just happened – again. I had failed to keep her safe.

Then she came up on her knees. ‘Please touch me. I need you to touch me.’

I reached out and gathered her carefully, sitting back and pulling her on to my lap, within the circle of my arms. Her shirt was stuck to her chest. ‘His blood?’ I verified. ‘From his nose?’

She leaned into my chest and nodded, looking down at herself in revulsion.

She was a warrior, covered in the blood of her enemy. I wanted to beat my chest in pride, and so should she. ‘Good girl. God, you’re so f**king amazing.’

She pulled at the shirt, panicked. ‘I want it off. I want it off.’

‘Yes. Soon,’ I promised, touching her face, avoiding the bruised spot.

I begged her forgiveness for sending her away, my heart still thrashing under her ear. I could barely hear myself speak. If she never absolved me, I couldn’t blame her.

‘I’m sorry for looking her up,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know –’

‘Shh, baby … not now. Just let me hold you.’ She shivered. My jacket lay nearby in the grass. I wrapped her in it and held her closer, letting my body settle.

The police had come, and an ambulance. They loaded Buck into the back on a stretcher, which meant he wasn’t dead. Charles called us to give a statement to the officer he’d been speaking with, and I rose slowly, drawing Jacqueline to her feet. We were both unsteady, holding on to each other.

Cindy, Carlie and Caleb huddled by the corner of the house in coats and blankets over pyjamas. Neighbours were standing in their yards or staring from windows containing lit Christmas trees. Cheerful holiday lights flashed along with squad car and ambulance lights.