Page 10 of Back To Our Beginning

His swollen eyes locked onto mine. Fear and trust seemed to battle inside them. I squeezed his hand once more, then I turned and ran like my life depended on it.

I ran up the porch steps and flung the two doors open. I barreled through the back door and found myself in the middle of the kitchen. I immediately took stock of the scene in front of me.

Maddie was standing at one end of the kitchen, holding a softball bat at the ready. It looked like she was planning to swing to the fences. Colleen was cowering behind her, both arms covering her head.

On the far side of the kitchen was a huge, shirtless man with a belly so large he looked like he was pregnant. He was bald as a cue ball, but for all the missing hair on his head, he made up for it by having a pelt of hair everywhere else on his body. He was holding a cast iron frying pan.

“Come near her again, and I’ll send you to Mars,” Maddie yelled.

The furball crouched down, the pan over his head, and started across toward Maddie. How the hell he hadn’t noticed me, I’ll never know. He raised the pan higher, murder in his eyes. Maddie gripped the bat tighter, jaw clenched, ready to swing.

I stepped forward. He never saw me coming, the flea-brained oaf.

I slammed into him from behind, driving him face-first into the refrigerator with a crunch that rattled the condiments inside. He spun, wild-eyed, but I caught his throat in the crook of my elbow and squeezed until his knees buckled.

When he dropped the pan, I kicked it across the room, then hauled him around and slammed him to the tile floor so hard the cabinets rattled. He tried to lurch up. Big mistake. I punched him in the gut hard and fast, twice, until he wheezed and collapsed like the deflated bag of trash he was. Maddie turned to Colleen and dropped the bat.

“Colleen, are you⁠—”

I stopped her. “Eli’s outside, and he needs an ambulance.”

Maddie’s eyes went wide before she pushed past me as she sprinted out the door.

I heard the furball cough, and I looked at Colleen.

“You hurt him,” she told me.

“No, I found him underneath the stairs. We’re going to get both of you help.”

She started to crawl across the floor toward the furball. “Are you okay, Bruce?”

“Are you shitting me?” I asked.

“You hurt him!” she shouted at me. “Get out of my house!”

I looked at the woman with the black eye and fingerprint bruises on her arms and wondered what was wrong with the world. “Lady, your kid needs an ambulance.”

She wasn’t looking at me, she had her cheek pressed against that asshole’s face and I couldn’t leave the house fast enough.

Maddie was exactly where I expected, sitting in a pile of trash, holding Eli in her arms. The boy was crying as she rocked him. Before I could get to them, Mrs. Owens stopped me. She had her phone in her hand. “The cops and an ambulance are on their way. You did good, kid,” she smiled at me.

“Do me a favor. Can you call animal control? That poor dog doesn’t look like it’s been watered or fed in a week.”

“I’m on it.” She walked away.

I looked on as Maddie continued to soothe the little boy.

“It’s going to be all right. I promise, honey,” she said to Eli.

The boy kept crying, and Maddie kept on rocking him until he fell asleep against her. When the EMTs arrived, it looked like she was being asked to cut off her arm when they tried to take Eli out of her arms. It was the first time she looked at me with her big brown eyes since we’d left the house.

“Go in the ambulance with him. Give me your keys and I’ll make sure your Jeep gets home.”

She bit her lip. “Are you sure?”

I stepped up to her and cupped her cheek. “Trust me.”

She let out a sigh. “Thank you, Beau. Thank you for all you did tonight.”