Reaching up, he held his side, wincing again when he pressed against it.
“It looks worse than it is, but I didn’t think he’d get as many hits in as he did,” he explained, hissing when I touched his bruised knuckles and making me snatch my hand back. “I don’t want to get the third degree from my family, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
Pointing at the sofa, I followed behind him with my arms in the air in case he fainted—something that made him smirk when he looked behind him and saw them. To be fair, if he fainted or fell backward, he’d take me down with him, but I had enough padding to save us both so we’d survive.
When he got to the sofa, he eyed the knocked over table and looked up at me. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No, Dobby was his usual self. Just ignore it.” My cat, a Sphynx with issues, needed no further explanations.
Giving me a small smile, he sat down gingerly, making me wince with him over every movement. Once he was settled, I perched on the edge of my armchair and examined what I could see of him.
“What do you mean when you say that you don’t want the third degree from your family? You’ve been assaulted. You should call the police and then let your family know what’s happened.”
With his green eyes focused right on me, and I waited for him to explain. I knew he was hiding a lot, but I’d never seen this raw version of Elijah before, and I didn’t just mean the beaten to a pulp one I was looking at. Something in his eyes was different.
“Sometimes I get this feeling like I’m going to explode. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like pressure just fills up inside me. So, I started doing some fights to get it all out and feel like I was in control of something in my life.”
The reason I was biting my lip changed. I knew firsthand what that felt like and had been able to empathize with my friend’s boyfriend Parker when I’d heard a small part of his story, and how his stepmother had abused him. I’d never battered someone to release it, but I’d taken classes in Bartitsu for five years before I moved here, and I guess that’d been my version of what Elijah had done tonight.
I needed to track down a group that did that here once my leg was fully healed. I usually felt better after I’d done it, more in control like Elijah had said.
“Fuck, I’m such a dick,” he groaned, leaning his head back on my sofa and covering his face with a bruised hand. “I didn’t even think that seeing me like this might be a trigger for you.”
Apparently, when I’d gone into my head, it’d looked like I was heading into a ‘special Sadie’ moment. Now I was the dick because he was trying to get out of my sofa and struggling because he’d had the snot beaten out of him.
Pushing him back down gently and hoping that I wasn’t pressing on a bruised area, I waited until he’d stopped moving before squatting down in front of him.
“Sometimes something like this can be a trigger for me, but then sometimes hearing Dobby fart can trigger me. There’s no rhyme or reason with what can set me off—well, except dealing with someone who’s angry and leaning in my space. That does it every time,” I mumbled, thinking out loud.
“That’ll set anyone off, Sadie Odessa,” Elijah reassured me, still fond of my middle name.
Still, I had to concede that he was probably right about this, so I shrugged and continued. “I wasn’t having one of my moments, I was actually thinking about how I did Bartitsu for the same reason. Then I made a mental note to look online and see if there were any groups in the area once my leg was better.”
“Bar-tit-su?” he repeated slowly, frowning at the name. “Is that some kind of British joke?”
Ironically, I’d thought the same thing, but I figured it was just my friend Brixton taking the piss when he’d suggested it all those years ago.
“No, but I can understand why you’d think that. Bartitsu’s an English martial arts style with things like jujitsu, Savate, and bare-knuckle boxing. There’s even Vigny in it,” I told him excitedly, listing some of my favorite parts of it. Sure, when I’d gone to the first three classes, I’d almost peed my pants, but once I started to understand it, I was hooked. “It’s also known as the martial arts style Sherlock Holmes used.”
Elijah stared at me with his mouth open for a moment. “I need to break this down.”
Standing up, I held up a hand to stop him. “First, you need some tissues and ice packs. Sit still, and I’ll be back in a second.”