Rafe~

Perhaps diving into the crowd wasn’t one of my best ideas ever. But when the muscle-bound security guard standing right in front of them did nothing, I was forced to take matters into my own hands.

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Seriously? How can you ignore something happening a foot away from you? Pussy.

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I’d noticed the tall guy being an ass to the girl earlier in the set, so I had my eye on them when it happened. Jericho and I were playing back-to-back when he, the equally muscle-bound man in front of the security guard, started getting physical with his girlfriend. The look of terror on her face was enough to push me over the edge, so I hit an off-chord to get the rest of the band’s attention.

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“Hey! If you want to hit someone with long hair, why don’t you come up here and take on one of us.”

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“Uhh…Rafe…?”

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I forgot he was the only one of us with long hair now. Still, Jer followed me to the front of the stage where I whipped off my guitar and headset, handing them to him. If I’d thought about it and not solely reacted, I might have found a better solution. For the most part, I thought trading violence for violence was something only idiots did. But sometimes an ass-kicking is what’s called for.

 

“What’s your problem?” he barked at me.

 

“I’ll tell you what my problem is, pal.” I was so mad I was spitting. “My problem is it makes me sick to watch a two-hundred-fifty-pound loser shoving around his hundred-pound date.”

 

“She’s mine. I can do with her what I want.”

 

That was it. I lost my mind. Rage propelled me, and I jumped off the stage.

 

Now, I wasn’t the fighter in the band—that was Zane, for the most part—but I could hold my own. We’d taken part in our share of fisticuffs over the years, mostly in the sleazy holes we played in during the early days. We had drunk guys harass us—which Zane took exception to, igniting a fight—or we had brawls begin on the floor in front of us, saw some guy outnumbered or outclassed, and felt the need to get involved. Learning to hold my own required me getting the shit beat out of me a time or two, but when push came to shove—literally—I was forced to learn how to defend myself, and forced to learn it quickly.

 

It was a decent leap from the stage, so the first pain I got was from the shock of hitting the ground. Security looked like they had no fucking clue how to handle it when a rock star confronts a dick in the crowd, so they sat there shuffling their feet. The asshat wasn’t even paying attention to me. I could have totally taken advantage of that, but I’m a gentleman, so I didn’t. He was again yelling at the girl and had clamped onto her elbow. She cowered and tried to placate him, and when he drew his arm back, another girl grabbed onto it. So one brave hundred-pound girl took on this steroided-out bastard while a whole platoon of security people sat with their thumbs stuck up their asses.

 

When I reached them, the guy had shaken off the girl who came to her friend’s assistance, which landed her on her ass and fueled my anger even more. Now she was shrinking, and he advanced on her, while her friend looked on, shell-shocked. Everyone else in the vicinity acted like they were protecting their girlfriends and opened a decent-size hole so the action was front and center. A not-quite waist-high metal barrier was between us, but the guy could finally hear me, so he took his attention away from the women he was battering for a second.

 

“Hey! What the fuck did I tell you?” I seethed. I’d like to say my high school hurdling aided me in getting over the partition, but I attacked it more like it was a pommel horse. I planted my palms on the top rail and vaulted it, swinging both legs to the right to clear it. It wobbled, but remained upright. He again towered above the girl on the ground, threatening her, and she scooted backward on her elbows while not taking her eyes from him. She seemed to be more pissed than scared, though. I stepped between them and used both hands to shove him so I could make some room to demolish the guy, or be demolished, which was the more likely outcome. But I always found bullies caved in when they were met with any resistance, and I hoped it would be true in this case, too.

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“What the fuck?” he shouted, and took a swing, which I easily ducked. He was probably drunk off his ass. As I straightened, I came at him with and landed a left hook, followed immediately with my right, tagging him good with an uppercut. He stumbled and teetered for a moment like he might go down. Shaking his head, he roared and charged me, knocking me to the ground not far from the girl, who rolled out of the way. This is what I didn’t want. Without my legs, I couldn’t get much force behind my punches and he had the advantage. Now that he faced a real opponent, the guy’s anger became explosive.

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