Page 50 of Oathbreaker

He’s here.

Of course he is.

And Dash goes still again.

Fuck.

Talk about terrible timing.

That still only lasts a second before Dash is in Colt’s face, his big hand gripping the collar of Colt’s tee.

Colt doesn’t react, doesn’t try to pull away, doesn’t do anything but stand there as Dash growls, “You fucked my sister!”

“No,” he says quietly, evenly, still not shoving Dash away, still not reacting to the pissed-off male grabbing him by the throat. “I made love to the woman I was falling for.”

“You fucked her and then you fucked her over by leaving.”

Now Colt starts to react, anger bleeding into the lines of his face. “I had every intention of coming back.”

“Right,” Dash mutters. “Same as you were planning on seeing Lindsay Donovan again. And Becky Connors. And Stephanie McDougal. And?—”

“Shut the fuck up.” He rips Dash’s hand off him. “Briar was nothing like them and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything!” Dash shouts. “One second you were dead, and now you’re alive. One minute you were gone, and the next I’m finding out that you fucked my goddamned sister.”

Not going to lie, hearing Dash recount Colt’s former lovers doesn’t feel great.

But neither does what happens next.

Colt shoves Dash.

And Dash shoves him back.

I gasp, thinking about those broken bones, the still-healing cuts, the fading bruises.

“Fuck,” Atlas snaps. “Dash, calm down. Colt, sit your ass down before you fall over.”

Royal takes a step toward them, as though to corral them.

Too late.

Dash throws a punch.

Colt takes it, then throws one back.

And then…they’re fighting.

And it’s brutal and intense and scary and…I react without thinking.

“Stop!” I cry as I launch myself between them.

Something that is supremely stupid.

Because I’ve never been in a fist fight, certainly never in one that involves two people who have been trained with deadly skill.

And I’ve thrown myself in the middle of them.

Right as Dash looses a right hook toward Colt’s head…