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He presses in harder, trying to slip his tongue into my mouth and just as I bite down on the muscle, I feel him being pulled away from me.
“Hey!” he shouts.
The next thing I know, Travis grips Aiden by the front of his shirt and slams him into the sand, going down with him.
Dumbfounded, unable to speak, I watch as Travis punches Aiden in the face over and over again, Aiden falling slack beneath his grip. Travis has always been fiercely protective of me, but there’s a darkness in his eyes that I’ve never seen before.
“Travis! Stop!” I hiss loudly, pulling him back, “He’s not worth it!”
His fists keep flying, and it’s like he can’t hear me. He’s lost in a trance. When I hear the crunch of cartilage beneath his fist, and Aiden coughs up blood, I throw myself against Travis’s back and wrap my arms around him, squeezing tight. I’m genuinely afraid he won’t stop, and I can’t have him putting Aiden in the hospital, or ending up arrested.
“Travis, please.”
Finally he stops and Aiden slumps to the ground beneath him.
“Go ahead, narc on me you piece of shit, then watch what happens when I tell everyone you’re a rapist in the making,” he grits.
“Trav,” I whisper loudly.
“Bruh,” Hayden chokes out, “Did you fucking kill him?”
“Hayden!” Lara slaps him in the back of the head. “Are you ok Spence?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Aiden groans, soaking up the blood as it pours from his nose, with the sleeve of his hoodie.
Snatching my hand, Travis spins on one heel and drags me through the sand in the direction of Hayden’s driveway.
“I’ll text you later!” I yell over my shoulder as Hayden and Lara look on, dumbfounded at the events that unfolded.
“What was that?” I look at him wildly.
His jaw is clenched and he’s filled with fury, an emotion that I very rarely see cross Travis’s face. We make it to the car in record time, and he still hasn’t looked at me.
“Travis!” I snap.
“Come on, get in the car Spence,” he says, opening the passenger door of his little Honda.
Glaring up at him, I cross my arms in front of my chest and find myself getting angry. Angry because he’s been gone. He’s been dodging my calls. Then he shows up to play the hero and order me around? What in the hell has gotten into him?
“Only if you tell me where you’ve been.”
Sighing, he leans forward, resting his forehead on the top of the car, “Just get in the fucking car babygirl, I don’t have time for this shit. Little douche bag is probably narcing right now to his fucking dad.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I war with myself. He’s right, Aiden’s dad is a cop, and the last thing I want is for Travis to get in trouble for defending me.
“Fine, but this isn’t over Trav,” I bite out, opening the passenger side door of his Honda and sliding in.
Chapter six
Travis
My brain is moving a million miles a minute and my thoughts are firing off in all directions, trying to process everything that just happened, as I pull out of Hayden’s driveway. I lost control. And now she stares at me with wild eyes, demanding answers from me that I can’t give her.
She wants to understand things that I can’t explain. And on top of it all, rage is seeping through my veins along with the intense desire to go back and finish knocking Aiden’s teeth in.
Spencer doesn’t know who my dad is, or rather what he is. She knows he likes to smack me around and that he’s a general piece of shit, but she has no idea what I’ve been living with. The kind of thumb I’m being squashed beneath. She’s the one person in the entire world that I want to spill my guts to, and she’s right here, but I can’t. She can’t know any of it.