Despite Patrick’s controlled movements as he set down the bowl of fruit salad and handed out the plates stacked beneath, the fury in his eyes absolutely reflected the same sentiment. He looked like Michael felt - helpless. And even more infuriated that both Angel and Lexie acted like this was somehow normal, even expected, that they’d at some point had a man either threaten or hurt or... ugh, Michael’s imagination was coming up with all sorts of awful scenarios.

“Look, the point is, we’re fine. Some men are shitty. I was lucky, in my situation I was just scared,” Angel said. “A guy tried to follow me home and he was really loud and threatening, but I found a security officer and my story ended happily. I’m safe. That’s when I started taking the self-defense classes and decided I wanted to teach them too.”

Even the thought of Angel being threatened by a man had Michael grinding his teeth. What if she hadn’t found the security officer?

“How did I not know about this before?” he demanded.

Lexie and Angel exchanged a look which spoke volumes as Lexie sat down on the floor between Patrick’s legs as he settled onto the armchair. The kind of look that left the two men out and Michael didn’t like it. Angel hadn’t had a whole lot of female friends, other than Leigh, before she’d started going to Stronghold. It felt weird to be left out, to see the connection between the two of them, an understanding he didn’t, and couldn’t, have. It was disturbing and upsetting, considering the reason.

“It’s not really something I like to talk about,” Angel said. “None of us do. People can be kind of judgmental. When I told the girls in my dorm what had happened, most of them were sympathetic, but some of them wanted to know if I had talked to him at some point, if I’d smiled at him or something - as if that would somehow mean it was okay for him to follow me. Guys were even worse. They wanted to know where I started from, if I was at a party or a bar, if I’d been drinking, what I was wearing, why was I walking alone... and more of them were looking for some kind of explanation which would blame me instead of being sympathetic or angry on my behalf.”