"I'm fine," he replied, dropping his hands only because he felt a little ridiculous still standing there with them up when Dax had backed down already. Rook wasn't quite ready to stop yet; his hands didn't feel any better since he'd stopped shooting, probably because he'd switched to punching without anything to protect them, but there was still some fight left in him, he thought.
"I can keep going, I'm good," he insisted. Anything to not have to go home to his empty house. Now, he could have asked his sister to come over and keep him company, he knew she would have in a heartbeat. She'd have taken his side and burned some popcorn so they could watch a terrible movie on tv and help him forget this...argument with Oberon until one of them apologized.
But that would require telling Abi what had happened, and Rook wasn't ready to do that. He couldn't stomach the possibility that maybe he was wrong and she thought Oberon was right to ask him to ignore someone who needed a lot of help. But even if that was only a slight possibility, he didn't want to put his problems on her. And she liked Oberon, he didn't want to change that because things didn't work out between them as a couple. And if they did work things out, would this fight change her opinion of him? No, he couldn't do that to her. So keeping it to himself it was.