Chapter 260
Casper's POV
The words were designed to provoke, to push him past the point of no return, and they worked exactly as intended. His face went purple with fury, veins standing out on his neck and forehead, and I had just enough time to think this is going to hurt before he charged forward like a bull, his shoulder catching me square in the chest and sending me flying backward off the bar stool in a tangle of limbs and spilled alcohol.
My phone went skittering across the floor, the screen cracking as it hit the ground, and I heard the distinct crunch of plastic and glass as the stranger's boot came down on it with deliberate, vindictive force. "Guess you'll need a new phone," he snarled, and I would have laughed at the absurdity of it all if I wasn't too busy trying to remember how to breathe, too busy cataloging the various ways this night had gone from bad to catastrophically worse in the span of a single phone call.
"You think you can just hit on my girlfriend and walk away?" the stranger demanded, hauling me up by my collar with one massive hand, his breath hot and sour against my face. "You think being a Thornwood means you can do whatever the hell you want?"
"I'm Casper Thornwood," I slurred, the words coming out thick and unsteady as I tried to summon some shred of the authority I'd once wielded so effortlessly, but my legs weren't cooperating and the world was spinning in ways that had nothing to do with the alcohol. "I can—"
"Here," Aaron interrupted, sliding a bar towel across the counter with an expression that was equal parts pity and exasperation, and I realized with a start that I'd been reaching for another drink, that even now, even in the middle of this disaster, my first instinct was to drown my problems in whiskey. "Clean yourself up, Thornwood."
I took the towel with numb fingers, my mind still trying to process the fact that my phone—my connection to Ronan, my only link to information about Elowen—was now a pile of broken glass and shattered circuits on the floor. The blonde woman was standing off to the side, her arms crossed and her expression smug, clearly enjoying the spectacle of watching her boyfriend defend her honor against the drunk asshole who'd dared to suggest she was easy.
"I'm sorry," I said, the words directed at her but meant for someone else entirely, meant for Elowen who wasn't here and would never be here again, who I'd driven away with my own stupidity and Cassian's cold logic and the desperate, misguided belief that we could protect her by breaking her heart. "You're not my type. I have—had—someone, and she was perfect, and I destroyed everything because I'm an idiot who listens to my brother instead of my gut."
I wanted to show her Elowen's picture, wanted to pull out my phone and prove that the woman I loved was real and beautiful and so far beyond anyone else that it made my chest ache just thinking about her, but my phone was broken and my hands were shaking and the stranger was advancing again with murder in his eyes. Rage bubbled up in my chest, hot and fierce and completely irrational, because none of this was his fault but he was here and Elowen wasn't, and that made him a convenient target for all the anger and grief I'd been carrying around like a weight around my neck for the past six months.
I lunged at him with a roar that came from somewhere deep in my chest, somewhere primal and wounded and desperate for any kind of release from the constant, grinding pain of existing without her. My fists connected with his face, his ribs, anywhere I could reach, and I didn't care that he was bigger, didn't care that his friends were joining in, didn't care about anything except the sweet, terrible relief of physical pain that I could understand, that made sense in a way emotional agony never would.
Chairs crashed to the floor, tables overturned, glasses shattered in a cacophony of destruction that felt oddly appropriate for the state of my life. Someone's fist caught me in the stomach, driving the air from my lungs, and I stumbled backward into the bar, my hand closing around the neck of a bottle that I brought down on the stranger's shoulder with a satisfying crack of breaking glass. More people were joining the fight now, drawn in by the chaos or their own grievances or simple boredom, and I welcomed them all with open arms and closed fists, losing myself in the violence because it was easier than facing the truth of what I'd become.
My broken phone lay forgotten on the floor, Ronan's connection severed, and somewhere in the back of my mind I registered that Cassian was going to be furious when he found out about this, that Dad was going to be even worse, that I was probably destroying whatever shreds of reputation I had left. But the thought only made me smile through the blood and the pain, only made me throw myself back into the fray with renewed vigor, because if I couldn't have Elowen, if I couldn't be the man she deserved, then what was the point of being anything at all?
Cassian will be so pissed, I thought as another fist connected with my jaw, stars exploding behind my eyes. But not as pissed as Dad... Good!