Page 30 of Enzo
Enzo wasangry about something and he and Logan were fighting. I stiffened as soon as it started, every muscle locking up. Although it was just Enzo—I knew Enzo, trusted him—my breath caught, my fingers tightening around the folder in my hands. He wasn’t a threat. None of them were. But my body wasn’t listening to logic, reacting instead to a past that had conditioned me to fear anger, no matter its source. I knew that tone, and no one who worked here would ever hurt me, but I was primed for the abuse that followed anger. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and I froze, waiting, bracing for something I couldn’t predict but knew would be bad. The office door was ajar, and I could hear Logan and Enzo shouting at each other. I should have buried myself in the safety of numbers and schedules, but I stayed.
Logan and Enzo were best friends, but when the shouting stopped, the silence stretched and somehow that was worse, thick with things they weren’t saying. I peeked through the small window—Logan’s jaw was tight, his expression torn between guilt and devastation as if he hated what he was doing but knew he had to do it anyway. Enzo, on the other hand, looked ready to tear the entire office apart.
“We don’t just roll over and let people take advantage, Lo! This is our home.”
“We don’t go out and find the trouble if it’s staying away,” Logan shouted back.
Enzo’s shoulders were tight with barely restrained fury, his chest rising and falling in heavy, uneven breaths. Neither of them moved, neither willing to back down first.
“We stop it before it gets out of hand!” Enzo snapped.
“Not with violence Enzo!”
A chair scraped over the floor and banged the wall as if one of them—probably Enzo—had pushed it away in a temper. I backed away from the window—and held my breath.
Logan’s anger was cold and precise. Enzo’s was a storm, all heat and force, unpredictable and raw. I didn’t want to be here for this, didn’t want to hear it, but I couldn’t seem to make my feet move.
Then the office door slammed open, and I didn’t had time to flinch before Enzo stormed out, all muscle and motion, and plowed straight into me.
“Jesus Christ, Robbie!” he yelled.
I staggered back.
Too loud. Too sudden. Too much.
My heart lurched into panic mode before my brain could catch up. I hesitated, just for a second, as I fought the instinct to flee. I knew Enzo wasn’t a danger, knew I was safe here—but my body didn’t. My pulse pounded, my muscles seized up, and then the panic took over. I turned and bolted for the filing room, slamming the door behind me. My hands shook as I shoved a chair under the handle, and my breath came too fast and too shallow. I stumbled back until my legs hit the cot, then curled up, pressing my forehead to my knees.
“Robbie! Wait!”
Enzo had been angry, but not at me. I knew that. Rationally, I knew that.
Didn’t matter.
I’d seen angry men before.
Angry men had hurt me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus on the rhythm of my breathing, but it wasn’t working. My chest was too tight, my skin too hot, my body too small in this too-big world that kept threatening to crush me.
I despised that my body betrayed me like this, that my past still had its claws in me. No matter how safe I was here, I couldn’t stop the way fear gripped my throat like a noose.
I was shaking with anger. Furious with myself for running and reacting like a scared kid instead of the man I aimed to be. Exhausted by the never-ending battle in my head, I felt the weight of it pressing down on me.
More than anything, I hated that I couldn’t let it go. But I refused to let it define me. I clenched my fists, inhaling deeply, forcing myself to push past the fear, to remember I wasn’t the same person I had been back then. I had built something here, with these men who cared about me. I wasn’t just surviving—I was fighting to reclaim myself, to prove that my past didn’t own me anymore.
“Robbie!” Enzo called from outside the door, his voice sharp and edged with frustration but threaded with something else—concern, maybe. A heavythudfollowed as if he’d rested a fist on the doorframe, trying to rein himself in. “Come on, kid. Open up.”
I wasn’t a kid. I was twenty-three or something close to that. I’d survived too much to be treated like a kid. Every time one of the guys here called me that, it felt like they were brushing aside everything I’d fought through, everything I’d built here. I wasn’t fragile. I wasn’t helpless.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to; I did. But my body wasn’t listening. My pulse was still hammering, my breathing still too fast, my nails bit into my palms.
“Robbie.” This time, softer. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Go away!” I said, but not loud enough for him to hear.
“I’m mad at myself, not you. I know I fucked up…talk to me, okay?”
I couldn’t. Not yet.
