Chapter 165 Prisoner Again

He was so strong, so powerful, that a direct blow from him to my head would certainly crush my skull. When he swung his fist at me, I knew then, I was a dead woman.

So I waited, with my eyes closed, for the impact, assuming my world would fade away soon. Rowan’s sweet face was all I saw before my eyes

But rather than feeling the direct impact of Ethan’s fist to my head, instead, I felt a rain of debris-bark, leaves, small twigs-as Ethan instead made contact with a large elm tree I was standing next to.

His rageful battle cry rang out around me as the splintered wood hit me in the face and shoulder. I raised my arms to shield my face and waited for the storm to pass.

When I opened my eyes again, the tree was demolished. A large chunk of it was missing on the far side, and the trunk was bent backward like it would topple over any second.

My eyes then went to Ethan. Blood was pouring from his hand, the skin mangled and shredded from where the bark had bitten into his flesh. However, he didn’t stop. He continued to punch the tree over and over again until his fists were coated in so much blood and cuts that I could barely tell their original shapes.

When he was finally done, he left his fists half buried in the tree trunk and he was still panting heavily from the exertion of trying to keep from hitting me. The blood trickled down from his fingers along the tree trunk, forming a small puddle on the ground.

Eyes wide, mouth agape, I stared at him, not knowing what to say. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Had he really just punched a tree instead of me? Nearly destroying a sixty-foot elm rather than my face?

He didn’t spare a look at me, and his eyes were red and moist. For a second, I thought, if he were to cry, he would cry blood instead of tears.

At seeing the wounds on his hands, my gut instinct was to offer to help, to try to fix it. Standing there in obvious pain, even though he wasn’t so much as gritting his teeth, I knew that Ethan was more vulnerable in that very moment than he had ever been before, even when we were making love, even when he confessed to me about his broken heart, even when he’d told me that he loved me for the first time.

But then I remembered-there’s no fixing Ethan. After all of this time of me trying to correct his erratic, unacceptable behavior, perhaps that lesson had finally sunk into my skull, even if his fist didn’t.

He might be vulnerable at the moment, but in a matter of seconds, his countenance would change. He’d bottle that emotion right back up, and he would go from the emotionally available, open person I saw standing before me now back to the heartless monster I’d come to know of late.

Even as I watched him, I could see his countenance change. His eyes were narrowing again, and his face crumpled into a scowl, not because of the pain but because of the anger.

Punching the tree hadn’t made him feel any better.copy right hot novel pub