Broken

Part 22

Sophia's Point of View

When I pulled my Jeep into the scrap yard I saw EZ sitting in the doorway of his trailer with his shirt off. I contemplated whether or not I should go talk to him and decided against it. At least that was until I noticed that it looked like he had been beaten to a bloody pulp.

"Shit," I mumbled. I grabbed the first aid kit that I kept in my Jeep and made my way over to EZ.

"What the hell happened to you?" I called out as I approached him.

"I'd rather not talk about it," he grumbled. He looked up at me and I silently cursed to myself. There was a large, deep cut under his eye and his lip was split and still bleeding.

"EZ, who did this to you?" I asked as I got down on one knee in front of him and quickly examined his eye before moving my gaze down to his chest. A couple of his ribs had already begun to bruise and there was a deep cut on his lower abdomen, "What happened?"

"Don't worry about it, Sophia," he said as he pushed me away gently, "I'm fine."

He got up and went into his trailer, slamming the door in my face. I stood up stunned and unsure of what to do next.  

"Hey! Sophie!" I heard Coco call from the door of the clubhouse, "I need to talk to you for a minute."

I grabbed my first aid kit and made my way over to the clubhouse. Coco held the door open for me and then I followed him to the back office. Angel was sitting on the couch with his head between his knees and like EZ, he wasn't wearing a shirt. Coco closed the door and sat on the desk, looking over at me.

"For fuck sakes," I mumbled in Coco's direction, "This better not be because of me. If it is, they can deal with it themselves."

"I tried to stop them..." Coco stated, "but once they got started there was no stopping them. The two of them combined have more testosterone raging through their bodies than I will ever produce in a lifetime. Luckily Taza stepped in and pulled EZ out of Angel's reach."

I stood there shaking my head.  A love triangle with the Reyes brothers was not at all what I had in mind when I came home from Florida.

"I'll leave you two alone," Coco said after a minute, "I think you two should talk."

After Coco left the room I sat on the desk across from Angel and didn't say a word. I was astounded and speechless. It was never my intention to put them against each other and even though I believed it wasn't all my fault, I felt guilty. Angel had stepped in and single-handedly turned the situation on its head when he decided he was in love with me.

His shoulders rose with every breath he took and not once in the five minutes that I sat on that desk, did he look up at me. I finally had enough and jumped off the desk and knelt in front of him. I rested my hands on his knees and forced him to look at me. With one look I knew he had won the fight against EZ by a landslide.

"What did he say to you, Angel?" I asked him quietly, "What could he have possibly said that would make you kick his ass so badly?"

"It wasn't just about you, Sophie," he replied, his voice hoarse, "Yeah, it started out that way, but then it was just one thing after another. Things from our childhood. How I could never measure up in our parents' eyes. Other things came up too, but I really have no desire to talk about it. It just escalated and I went off on him, and he let me."

There was a small mark on his face and his nose was a little bloody, but other than that, there wasn't a mark on him. Angel had mentioned once that EZ had always been the golden child and he had always been somewhat of the black sheep of the family. I always thought that he was exaggerating slightly on that piece of information, but seeing the look on his face at that moment, I knew it was true. His eyes were red, there were black circles under his eyes and he looked like he would rather be anywhere but there.