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He stood in the middle of the living room, looking like a disheveled mess. His jacket had been thrown somewhere, and his tie hung loose around his neck. The top few buttons of his shirt were ripped open at the collar, and his hair was wild, as if he’d run his hands through it a few too many times while he paced furiously.

Pieces of something ceramic or glass were scattered across the hardwood near the wall. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but he already had another little trinket clenched in his hand. He hurled it, and it exploded against the wall hard enough to make me flinch. Rhodes shouted something as he threw it—something that dissolved into a string of swears before I could follow any of it.

I’d seen Rhodes angry before. I’d watched him lose his temper on the football field. I’d heard his voice sharpen during arguments. I’d seen the quieter version too, where his jaw ticked and every word became carefully controlled.

This wasn’t either of those things.

He had no control left.

He snatched something else from one of the shelves and threw it before I could identify what it was. Glass shattered this time, spraying across the floor, and I cringed. All the little decorations in the house didn’t belong to him. They belonged to the owners, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He just angrily grabbed whatever was closest and chucked it across the room as he continued to rage.

My chest tightened as I watched him. There was something terrifying about seeing someone who was always so deliberate come completely undone.

Sariah stood in the kitchen, arms crossed tightly over her chest as she watched him. Not once did she try to stop him. Her eyes tracked his every move, and she looked ready to intervene if necessary. And not once did she look in my direction.

“You need to go, Theo,” Sariah told me quietly.

“No.” I shut the door. “You don’t get to decide that for him.”

Maybe that was an asshole thing to say, but it was my relationship, not hers. Sariah glanced at me. Her expression was hard, but she didn’t argue either. I crossed the room and stopped beside her. Neither of us moved as we watched Rhodes fall apart. He continued to pace, his chest heaving as he breathed hard. His hands flexed at his sides like he still needed somewhere to put all the anger.

“I mean it. You need to leave, Theo,” she repeated. “There’s nothing you can do”

“You don’t know that,” I said, the words coming out with way more confidence than I had.

Because I didn’t know it either. Standing there watching him, I wasn’t even sure Rhodes could hear anything beyond whatever was screaming inside his own head. He’d spent so much of our relationship carefully controlling what I was allowed to see and know about him. But every wall and regulation he kept had come crumbling down all at once.

All that was left was pain wrapped up in an immeasurable amount of anger.

And for one awful moment, I wondered if Sariah was right. Maybe there really wasn’t anything I could do for him. Maybe the smartest thing I could do was to give him space until the worst of it burned out—until he was ready for me.

But deep down, I knew that wasn’t what he needed. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I just knew me leaving wouldn’t help him.

I crossed into the living room, minding my steps. The last thing I wanted was to surprise him when he was already this wound up. He still rounded on me so abruptly that I faltered.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Rhodes snarled. The anger in his voice made my skin prickle. Every instinct told me to stop moving or back away, but I forced myself to take another step instead.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head slightly.

“Get the fuck out of here, Theo.” His face twisted as he grabbed another little statue off the table and chucked it across the room. “I don’t want you here!”

That one hurt, even though I knew he was angry and this had nothing to do with me. But I continued walking toward him, keeping my resolve. I could feel Sariah watching closely, but I kept my eyes on Rhodes. His fists were still clenched, and his breathing ragged. Something frantic built beneath the fury.

“You made me a promise,” I said quietly. “You made me a promise that when things got hard, you wouldn’t run from me.”

Something small shifted in his expression, but I saw it. For the first time since I walked through the door, I knew he’d heard me, so I kept pushing forward as I approached him.

“You don’t get to decide that this is too much for me,” I told him. “You don’t get to look at me and decide I’d be better off somewhere else because you’re hurting.”

His jaw clenched again, but the anger didn’t flare the way it had before. If anything, some of it seemed to drain out of him. And thankfully, he didn’t reach for anything else to throw as I took another step toward him.

“I know you’re angry. You should be angry,” I continued. “What happened today was awful, Rhodes. You’re allowed to hate him. You’re allowed to hate what he did to you. You’re allowed to be pissed off at the entire world if that’s what you need right now.”

His nostrils flared, but he said nothing.

“But you don’t get to use that anger to push everyone else away,” I said. His throat worked as he swallowed hard. I was close enough to see the tears he desperately tried to blink away. My heart broke.

This was the part he was fighting. Not the anger. It was everything else underneath it. All the pain from days had nowhere to go. Rage gave him something to do—something to throw, hit, or yell at. Grief didn’t. Grief just hurt.