No.
Yes?
Could he be reading this right? Could something violent be happening? He was paralyzed, half bent to the side. Five guys, baseball bat—
“Sam, these guys could kill you!” the stocky guy yelled at the thin guy.
Sam. Dalton’s insides went to ice. He knew it was Ian’s Sam. As the group of men attacked, knocking Sam down, Dalton ran unthinkingly into the street. Fortunately, a car’s honking brought him out of his panic.
Forcing himself back to the sidewalk, in spite of the instincts making him want to go hit and fight—not to mention the liquid feeling in his gut—he tried to figure out what to do. He was supposed to be able to deal with this; his brothers had insisted he take self-defense classes.
Those classes and reality were very different.
Stop overthinking. He ran to the door of the Monte Carlo, blurting “Call the police,” as soon as he spied the host. “Someone’s getting beat up in the alley. I think it’s a bashing!”
Dalton dashed across the street, checking for cars, then paused to text Ian—911 I think Sam’s getting bashed behind the club—before continuing to creep toward the scene, hiding in what shadows he could find.
Oh God, Sam’s friend was down and they were circling around, kicking him over and over. Dalton’s body revolted, forcing him to stop a few seconds behind a dumpster for some dry heaves. So not safe. But he couldn’t just watch. He texted Ian again while assessing the situation as well as he could manage. What was the best approach? If he jumped one guy, the others would just attack him, right? He wasn’t good at this fighting thing, in spite of all his brothers’ practical instruction when they were kids, but maybe—
The guy with the bat lifted it over his head, about to slam it into the head of the man on the ground.
Dalton was most of the way down the alley before Sam struggled up and jumped on the batter’s back. Dalton stumbled in surprise, halting only a few feet away as the guy shook Sam off, then started taunting him. Pretending to swing, while the rest of the bashers watched and laughed.
Oh God. Dalton took a deep breath, sliding his shoulder along the brick wall, and inched closer, looking for an opportunity. Almost there.
Sirens.
“Sam!” From the other end of the alley, two more people were running toward them. Distracting Dalton, so that too late he turned back to see the basher swing at Sam with real intent this time, bat slicing through the air.
Sam was already falling, even before being hit. Avoiding it? Dalton tried to stop the bat’s arc, jumping the attacker, using his body weight and momentum to take the guy down. A jolt shuddered through his skeleton as the wood connected with Sam’s head. Then they were all three on the ground.
He couldn’t check on Sam, because the guy he’d knocked over squirmed under him, trying to punch him, and Dalton remembered enough of self-defense to avoid that. Or so he thought until the guy’s fist connected with his jaw. His neck made a snapping noise, stopping his head from flying back any farther. My brothers really weren’t hitting me that hard.
Shake it off. Except he couldn’t because he’d never been hit like that in his life, and it hurt. Disoriented, he rolled onto his side to curl into a ball and found an ankle right in front of his nose. His hand shot out and grabbed it, yanking back until everything connected to the ankle—the batter’s whole body—came down again with a thud he felt reverberate in his gut.
Yay me. Fuck you.
Then police were swarming everywhere, and they grabbed the batter when he jumped up once more. Dalton stayed where he was. It seemed safer. His muscles wanted to dissolve right there, but his eyes flickered around frantically, watching everything: the police cuffing someone, and two of the attackers being dragged back toward them by a big blond guy. Meanwhile, some black-haired guy was kneeling next to Sam, looking panicked.
Ian. Dalton needed to tell him. He still had his phone in one hand. It took some concentration to make his fingers hit the right letters. They hit him in the head with a baseball bat. If that didn’t get a response, Ian wasn’t the boyfriend Dalton thought he was.
An officer was suddenly talking to him, ordering him to stand up slowly, keep his hands in plain sight.
“I’ll cooperate. It wasn’t me. I’m not one of them.” Dalton gave up the security of the pavement, getting to his feet without using his hands, which wasn’t easy.
It took a few minutes to straighten things out, but soon Dalton ended up waiting next to a patrol car for a detective to come and question him. He felt almost normal, in a hyper-real kind of way. Totally still as everything bustled around him. An observer of the scene but apart from it.
When Ian arrived, Dalton’s heart nearly melted. Face pale, fingers trembling, he clung to Sam’s hand until the very last second, just before the ambulance doors closed on his arm.
“Sam, please, just be all right, okay?” Ian begged.
It was so sweet, Dalton forgot about what was really going on for a second while watching them.
“Hi there, Dalton? I’m Detective Johnson, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Oh yeah. I’m a witness to a crime. Dalton turned to see a guy in a rumpled pair of cargo pants and one of those department-issue nylon jackets. “I’m Dalton Lehnart.” Oh, maybe he needed to show some identification?
“I hear you did pretty well against one of those guys.”
“I did?” Dalton’s brain scrambled to catch up. “My brothers insisted I learn self-defense.”
The man nodded. “I know one of ’em, your brother Peter?”
Of course. Peter was a detective too. “He’s the oldest.” As if it mattered.
“Good guy,” Johnson said, sounding satisfied. Did that mean he didn’t need to see Dalton’s driver’s license? “Okay, why don’t you tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”
What a bizarre fucking night.
First he’d dragged Ian to some bar to apologize, then nearly confessed his feelings for the guy. But Ian had saved him—when Tierney had choked out that he was jealous of Sam, Ian jumped to the wrong conclusion. Except it was right.
“Shit,” Ian had said. “It’s true? You’re gay?”
Fessing up to that was easier than telling him what he’d really been saying.
Right after that, Ian had gotten a text, gone white as a sheet, and run out of the bar.
Tierney was still staring after the dude trying to figure out what was going on when his cell rang. It was his brother, Chase, and he almost didn’t answer.