Sleet Sugar by S.J. Tilly

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

ZACH

I should‘ve known. I should’ve known that I would ruin everything. I should’ve known that I was all wrong for my Sugar.

I barely even had her before I lost her. I want to blame everything on that asshole, but I can’t. It’s me. I’m the problem. Too angry to control my actions. Too stubborn to give up when I should. Too volatile to be loved.

I’m supposed to be tough. An Enforcer. But I couldn’t even protect her when I was 20 feet away. I don’t deserve her. I never deserved her.

I knew I should have gone with her to the bathrooms. That place was filled with drunk testosterone. Women should be able to look sexy and not be hassled, but that’s not reality. Just the other day a whole room of women told me as much. I should have gone with her. But I didn’t. I let her walk away alone, trusting she’d come back in a few minutes.

But as the minutes ticked by, I just stood there. Tuning out Jackson and Luke and everything else. I was too eager to get my girl out of there and take her home. I was thinking with my dick and not with my brain.

It’d been long enough, I should’ve gone to find her. We weren’t that far away but it was crowded and dark, and I should’ve moved closer.

I noticed a commotion between two people at the mouth of the hallway, but I could only see the back of the guy. I assumed it was just another drunk couple. But when the guy stumbled back, I looked closer. I caught sight of Izzy just as her hand flew up to slap the man.

I was stunned. Stunned into inaction for a fraction of a second.

My animal brain registered the danger and my feet started to move.

My eyes never left the pair as I shoved through the crowd. I didn’t know what had happened between the two of them, but the man must have done something really bad if it moved Izzy to violence. Being the sweetest creature I’ve ever met, I couldn’t even imagine what sort of behavior would cause her to lash out that way.

I was halfway to them when I saw the man strike her.

This man. This large, imposing man, struck a woman. My woman.

Anger is often described as seeing red. But that’s not what happened to me. My vision exploded into black.

The rage was instant and all consuming. And even through the dense fog of fury, I closed the distance between me and my target in a blink.

I didn’t think. I didn’t need to. I just acted.

Unlike my Izz, I can be moved to violence. I can be moved to violence easily. But this wasn’t like beating on a guy during a game. This was as personal as it gets. This was vengeance. Payback. This was about teaching him a lesson.

I poured my raging temper into this man through knuckles and power. He hurt my sweet girl. He imprinted fear into her memory, into her innocent mind. He exposed my failings as a protector. And I didn’t know how to make him understand his wrongdoing, other than to beat it into him.

I could hear myself shouting, but I can’t remember the words. I just kept seeing his hand hitting my Sugar’s face and it made me madder and madder. I wanted him to know how bad he fucked up. I needed him to know that he would never do it again.

I honestly don’t know if I would’ve stopped. I wanted him dead for causing my girl pain. Some rational part of my brain knew that death wasn’t the correct punishment for his crime. But I was lost to my wrath. Rational thought wasn’t a part of it.

The sound of my teammate’s voices and the feel of their grip on me, started to clear the haze from my vision. And then it was like a gust wind came through, snuffing out the flames of my explosion.

Some part of me found enough awareness to let go of the piece of shit.

I finally realized it was Jackson and Luke who were still holding on to me, but I couldn’t make out their words. My mind was still coming into focus.

And that’s when I heard it. “Zach.” That’s all she said. That’s all she had to say.

Shrugging off the hands on me, I turned. And I found my Sugar looking like a different person.

Everything about her body language said scared. Her shoulders were hunched over, her gaze on the floor. Her cheek was already starting to bruise, and there was a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth.

The sight of the damage made me want to turn around and finish the job, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Izzy. Tears were streaming down her face and her hands were trembling so badly her fingers were a blur when she raised them to cover her lips.

My heart clenched so hard I worried it might cease to beat. All I could think to do was say her name. Call her Sugar. Let her know I was there.

I thought it couldn’t get worse, but when her eyes met mine, I saw how deep my failures went. I saw her pain and worry and hurt. She’d been put in a terrible situation because I didn’t protect her. She was injured and scared because I wasn’t there when she needed me. And on top of it all, my girl witnessed me losing control.

I was like a rabid beast. Too late to help her. Too wild to stop my own attack. I didn’t belong around civilized people.

But looking into Izzy’s eyes, I saw the thing that cut me the deepest. I saw fear.

And in that moment, I felt like I was a kid again. A little kid trying to reach for affection that just wasn’t there. Wasn’t available to me.

Ever since I met Isabelle Thorpe, I wanted her to love me. If I could have nothing else in this world, I wanted to have her heart. I wanted to know that someone as precious as her could find a partner in someone as flawed as me. You can’t be with a person that scares you. You can’t love something you fear.

In that moment, her eyes held such a story. But it wasn’t one of hope. No, it was like all my stories - one that would end in tragedy.

Like a physical tear across my soul, I felt her slip through my fingers.

My names for her suddenly became childish. She was never mine to name. She was never mine to have at all.

The woman watching me with a cloud of toxic emotions in her eyes was Isabelle. And that’s the only name I have the right to call her.