“What’s the matter?” he goaded as we turned around to leave. “Scared to lose in front of your girlfriend?”
Will pulled against me to sneer at Ben. “I’ve already won. Natalie is mine and you’re just a little bitch who can’t even get it up. Natalie told me—”
“—Will!”
Holy fucking Christ this is going from bad to worse. I clapped my hands to my face. I hadn’t told any such thing to Will, but it was true and Will had somehow guessed it.
The chair fell over as Ben stood upright, all 6’2” and 180 pounds vibrating with rage. The leaner, smaller Will was itching for a fight. His normally light, kind eyes narrowed at me, his face purpling. I could see a small gleam of hurt behind the rage.
“You told him our personal shit?”
I opened my mouth angrily but William beat me to the punch. “She told me nothing. I just guessed that you were a boring, lame asshole whose cock didn’t work. Guess I was right.”
My mouth lifted into a small smile. “Don’t look at me like that. What right do you have to judge me? You’re the one who put all my naked pictures online and tried to destroy my career. Fuck you, Ben.”
I took Will’s hand and turned around, not before Ben’s heavy footsteps launched across the kitchen. I fell to the side as William pushed me away and I screamed as I fell on the floor.
Ben’s huge body collided with William’s smaller one. The table and chairs went flying as he knocked them aside. Will ducked as Ben’s ham-sized fist came swinging at him.
“No! Stop fighting!”
William sank his fist under Ben’s ribs and the bigger man grunted. The blonde man slammed Will into the wall, cracking the plaster and knocking the wind out of his chest. He caught a vicious blow on the side of his head and Will stumbled, momentarily stunned.
I sprinted forward and kicked the backs of Ben’s knees and he fell instantly. Will grabbed a fistful of his blonde hair and kneed him in the face. There was a sickening crack and a gush of blood.
I screamed and knelt to Ben’s side.
“HELP ME!” Ben screamed through a fountain of blood. “HELP!”
“Shut up!”
Ben used his shirt to stem the flow of blood from his nose and I dashed across the kitchen to get paper towels. Fuck, this couldn’t have gone any worse.
Will was completely unsympathetic. “Calm down, you big baby.”
“Will, that isn’t helping.”
Two male voices shouted into the apartment. “Police! What's going on in here?”
Will made threatening moves towards Ben, but he continued to scream.
“Help!"
The cops raised their guns as they entered the kitchen. I threw my hands in the air as they look at Will and I. Oh, Shit.
“He attacked me!” Ben moaned. “They broke into my house and he attacked me!”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The color drained from Will’s face as the cops whipped out handcuffs.
He lured us here to do this. He knew this would happen. A wave of nausea made me double over.
“Want to press charges?”
His thick arm pointed at Will. “Just against him.”
What? “Ben, what the hell are you doing?”
Ben’s thick, bloodied face stretched into a grotesque smile. I collapsed on one of the still standing chairs as Will’s wrists were handcuffed together. “Officers, you don’t understand. This is a complete misunderstanding. He’s not the one who committed the crime!”
One of the cops looked tired with us already. “You can follow us to the station and file a report, but I have to arrest him.”
“Tell them the truth!” I screamed at Ben, who was sitting still on the floor, clutching the handful of paper towels to his face.
He just smiled.
Sickened, I raced to the foyer where the cops were hauling him away. “Will! I’ll get you out of there! Don’t worry.”
Looking sick, Will nodded at me and ducked inside the back seat of the car. I descended the steps, watching his face behind the window. Slowly, the blue and red lights blurred together and I wiped my eyes.
“If you come inside, I’ll call a cab for you. I have to call a tow truck for that asshole’s car.”
I spun around and saw Ben standing at the top of the staircase. “Why are you doing this to me? Have you completely lost your fucking mind?”
Something flickered in his blue eyes, maybe there was a tiny bit of regret buried somewhere inside there. Every part of me was radiating heat. I don’t think I’d ever been so angry in my life. I didn’t understand how someone could be so petty, to actually set up my boyfriend to be arrested because he was jealous.
“You never used to talk to me like that, Nat. What happened to you?”
“Are you disappointed that I’ve finally learned to stand up to your bullshit?”
He disgusted me. I wished Will had hit him harder. I pulled myself to the top of the staircase and my knee shot upwards, hitting him straight in the groin.
All six feet of him crumpled to the ground and I laughed with savage pleasure as he cradled his balls.
“That’s for posting naked pictures of me on my LinkedIn. I’m going to sue you and you’ll be disbarred. You’ll never practice law again.”
I wasn’t sure he could hear me. He was still rolling on the ground, holding his balls. I walked down the steps, leaving him there to scream in pain while I opened my phone and called Jessica. Something inside me said that this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
Chapter 10
It was past midnight and I was walking alone on the streets of Oakland. I placed my feet in front of me mechanically, my brain frozen. It was almost as though I just witnessed someone being shot. The numbness that gripped my brain wouldn’t let me think about anything but placing one foot in front of the other. It was hard to believe what had just happened.
Ben had completely lost his mind. There was no other explanation for why he would do something so petty, but this wasn’t just the action of a jealous ex. No, he had leapt far beyond jealousy and had crossed into the rather scary territory of creepiness. Ben wasn’t a bastard when we were together, but somehow he became one when we were apart. Will was carted off to jail because of me, and now I’d dragged Luke into this mess.
Un-fucking believable.
My pocket buzzed and I slipped my hand inside for the phone.
“Hey.”
Jessica’s voice was a nervous bubble of energy. “Natalie? Where are you? We’re stopped near Ben’s apartment.”