A fist slammed into his face.
"You son of a bitch, you wanna die?!"
Max Lambert went down hard.
Alden looked like a man possessed, breath ragged, throwing punch after punch.
Everyone panicked. They shoved me forward to stop him.
I grabbed his arm. Alden threw me off. "Get off me!"
I crashed into the corner of the table, and the kettle of boiling water tipped over the back of my hand. The pain ripped a gasp out of me.
"Stop it!" Louisa choked on a sob and wrapped herself around him. "I don't want to drag you down with me!"
Alden froze for a second, then pushed her away, his face blank and cold.
"This has nothing to do with you. I did it for Grace."
The restaurant manager rushed in with the officers and hauled them both out.
Before he left, Alden gently smoothed a hand over my hair.
"Grace, don't come after me. I don't want you seeing any of this. Go home and wait for me."
Eyes red, Louisa stumbled out after him.
The private room fell dead silent. Someone murmured under their breath.
"Was Alden really losing it for Grace's sake? Because it kind of felt like it was for Louisa…"
I stared at the table, expressionless. At that full bowl of peeled shrimp.
I have a severe seafood allergy. Severe enough to kill me.
Alden knew that. And he hadn't noticed at all.
The same way he hadn't noticed the back of my hand, scalded red and raw.
Because his mind, from start to finish,
was on Louisa.
I lifted my head slowly. Through the glass of the private room,
I caught the scene at the restaurant entrance.
Louisa's strap was torn off, and she was crying, shaking, a wreck.
Alden stood there in silence, head bowed, tearing off his own jacket and draping it over her with the gentlest hands.
The next second she threw herself into his arms, and his arms closed around her.
Stroking her hair, over and over.
I stood up and left.
In the cab to the hospital, my phone chimed without stopping.
Louisa's post had a new update.
The post was blowing up, the comments multiplying.
"That's not pursuit, that's harassment! I checked the rest of this poster's page about her 'dream guy,' and she's just a clingy mistress. Her dream guy already has a girlfriend. She's exhausting."
"Why didn't you change his application to a top state university nearby? Why did you have to switch it to a vocational school? Are you trying to ruin him on purpose?"
Louisa replied earnestly underneath.
"He's too brilliant. I was scared that at a good college he'd meet other, better girls, and then he wouldn't choose me anymore."
"Only when he falls, when he sinks down to a vocational school where nobody fights over him, will he understand that I'm the only one who won't look down on him, the only one who'll stay by his side for life."
A few people with twisted morals cheered her on.
"True love conquers all. These days you have to claw your way to the top. We support you, OP!"
Louisa liked the comments backing her up, then fired back at the ones cursing her out.
"He doesn't actually love his girlfriend. He's just trapped by the fact that her parents once saved his life."
"It's not harassment, it's mutual! Just now someone made a dirty joke about me, and he came down on that guy with everything he had. His girlfriend got hurt and he didn't even care."
"And this wasn't the first time. Before the SATs, some thugs from the trade school were harassing me, and I called him for help. He dropped his girlfriend on the spot to come save me."
"After he taught those thugs a lesson, they went to the school for revenge and roughed up his girlfriend. She called him for help over and over. He didn't pick up a single time. All because I said I was hurt, and he was frantic to get me to the hospital to check on me."
"The truth is I wasn't hurt at all. I'm the one who sent those thugs to the school to settle the score with his girlfriend. I just wanted to see who he'd really choose. Me, or her."
