Page 43 of Breaking Bristol
She shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here with her. Something was happening with me, and I needed to get the fuck gone. “You ready to get outta here?”
Her body swayed, her eyes were droopy, and she had a concerned smile on her face. “Yeah. I need to use the bathroom first.”
I placed my hand on the small of her back and steered her toward the bar. “I gotta close the tab, then I’ll take you.”
“I can go to the bathroom on my own, Matthew.”
“You can wait a minute.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
I angled my head to the right. “On the left side.”
“You can watch me if it’ll make you feel better. I’ll meet you back here in three minutes.” She smacked her lips against my jaw and dipped out from under my arm, then headed down the hall.
With her hand on the handle, she turned her head and flashed her teeth as she wiggled her fingers at me before disappearing inside. I whistled to get the bartender’s attention, not giving a shit it was rude. He closed me out, and I left him a big-ass tip to make up for being a dick, then moved to find my woman.
I leaned on the wall across from the bathroom for less than sixty seconds before I pushed off and opened the door. “Bristol, baby, you okay?”
“Yeah, I might be a few minutes, though.” There was something off about her voice.
“Everyone decent in here?” I asked before I went all the way in.
“Yes, but I’m fine, Matthew. I’ll be right there.”
That wasn’t happening. I went all the way in and found her crouched down, comforting a woman who had clearly been crying. “Everything okay? She hurt?”
When Bristol turned her head fully to me, I got a better view of the woman and sucked in a breath. She recognized me, too, and rolled her red and watery eyes. “I’m fine, Beck. I told her I was fine. Y’all can go.”
Anger whipped through me at the clear aftermath of her being hit. “Who the hell did that to your face?”
“Why do you care?”
I shouldn’t have, but when a man takes his hands to a woman, he needs to pay. “I get that we’re not friends, Paris—hell, I don’t even really know you—but you’re clearly not okay right now.”
“Nobody really knows me,” she muttered.
She was probably right, but from everything I’d seen and heard, she made it that way. Paris Donovan was known far and wide as a callous, evil bitch. She was a mean girl from Warrenville and had fucked with my cousin Susie on more than one occasion, and throughout the years, I’d heard lots of stories about the destruction she left in her wake from people who had no reason to lie.
Still. She’d never personally done anything to me, but even if she did, I wouldn’t be okay with a man hitting her. “Let me take a look at it, Paris.”
“No. Nothing’s broken, not physically.”
I couldn’t force my help on her. “Is he here?” I couldn’t imagine so, because if anyone in this bar saw a man take his hands to a woman, said man wouldn’t have a chance at leaving unscathed.
“He was never here. Seriously, I’m fine.” She started to get to her feet, and Bristol stood with her. I pulled my head back when I saw her top ripped at the side. “I came in here to get away from him. He’s gotta be gone by now.”
“What the fuck happened?”
Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her head, so Bristol answered for her. “She was meeting a guy here for a date, and he… misunderstood the plans for the evening and didn’t like that Paris wasn’t down to have their date be a quickie in the back of his truck.”
“Jesus. Sorry, Paris. That’s messed up.”
“It’s what I’ve made men think I am, so it’s my fault he—”
“It is not your fault.” Bristol took hold of Paris’s upper arms and leaned in. “It is not your fault, you hear me? A man harming a woman says nothing about that woman and everything about him, no matter what signs or assumptions he has. Got it?”
I moved to the side when the door swung open. “Shit, sorry.” A drunk woman fell against it and pointed at me. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”