A knock at the door startles me. I set my phone down and look up to find Dempsey standing in the doorway.

“Hey. Good morning. Is it okay if we go soon?” He speaks softly, his tone matching my mood.

Sucking in a steadying breath, I offer him a tight smile before nodding. I figured it would be like this between us this morning—measured and reserved. But I’m okay being at neutral with him when I’m feeling so raw.

I pick up my phone but accidentally swipe the screen in the process, unpausing the video I still have cued up. Fielding’s muffled voice fills the room, and Dempsey’s eyes dart to mine.

“What is that?” he demands, making it over to the bed in four strides and hovering over me until I’m forced to sit back down.

“It’s a video from last night,” I explain. “It’s… they’re all over social media.”

“They’re?” he growls.

“There’s a lot of them...”

“Show me,” he demands, perching on the end of the unmade bed.

I tuck my legs under me and place my phone in his hands, then exit the video to scroll through all the options.

“These are the ones I’m tagged in. There are more from before I arrived… then others don’t start until I’m at Fielding’s side.”

“Do I just click on it to make it play?”

I can’t hold back my smile at that one. He really does act like he’s forty-seven instead of twenty-seven sometimes. I lean toward him, my shoulder grazing his, and click one I’ve already watched so I know what to expect. Still. It doesn’t make the sounds of fist against flesh any easier to stomach. Dempsey tenses beside me every time someone lands a punch, almost as if he can feel his brother’s pain.

I cringe when I hear myself scream “Stop!” for the first time, my recorded voice tinny. He pulls the device closer to his face and studies it as I pick at the corner of the duvet rumpled beneath me.

“You,” he whispers, forcing me to look up and meet his gaze. “You stopped them,” he states matter-of-factly.

I resist rolling my eyes. Fielding and I explained what happened last night. But I guess witnessing it rather than just hearing about it secondhand garners a different reaction.

His eyes widen as he focuses on the screen, watching me take on a pack of frat boys like I’m Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

“Show me another one.”

I want to argue that if he’s seen one, he’s seen them all. But something about the harrowed expression on his face tells me he needs to see it to believe it. That he needs to know everything he can about what happened last night.

I lean over and scroll through the options, clicking on a video that starts before I arrived.