Page 3

I check my surroundings again, slowly and carefully, letting my eyes move over the scene.

Stacks of lumber. Half-finished framing. A couple of guys hauling drywall across the second floor. Nobody out of place, nobody watching. Still, the feeling doesn’t go away.

It started right after the first fight I did almost eight months ago. At first, I thought I was imagining it. Too many sleepless nights, too much stress. My military training is not jiving with my new civilian life. But it keeps happening—that same prickling feeling between my shoulders, like eyes on me when there shouldn’t be.

The fights aren’t helping. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with those assholes in the first place. But here we are. It’s what I get for trying to be a nice guy. One bad decision. That’s all it takes for your whole life to get dragged somewhere ugly.

The one time I decide to go out and have a drink, maybe find someone to take home, I end up tangled up with the wrong people.

The club wasn’t anything special. Not fancy, not a dump. Just dark lights, cheap whiskey, and music loud enough to rattle your ribs. I was leaving the restroom when I heard it. A cry of pain. The music almost swallowed it, but I heard it anyway. I followed the sound toward the back hallway near the employee exit and found a man standing over a woman.

Her face was red and blotchy, tears streaking down her cheeks. There was already a bruise forming along one side of her face, dark against her skin. Then he raised his hand again. I didn’t think. I moved. I had him on his knees in seconds, his face smashed against the wall, one arm twisted behind his back hard enough to make him scream. Mistake number one.

Mistake number two came when he pulled a knife on me. I broke his wrist before I even realized what I was doing. One second, the blade was in his hand, the next, there was a crack loud enough to hear over the music, and he was on the floor, choking on his own screams.

And mistake number three? Turns out the guy wasn’t just some drunk asshole. He was connected. Not low-level connected either. The kind of connected that makes people disappear. He’s high up in one of the main crime families, which means I didn’t just embarrass him that night. I humiliated him. And men like that don’t forgive things like that.

I probably should just be grateful I’m still alive. That’s what anyone looking in from the outside would say. But some days, I’m not sure death wouldn’t be easier than this. I have to fight every week. I don’t want this life anymore. I don’t want blood in my mouth or bruises on my ribs or strangers screaming for me to hurt someone. But every week, I still show up. Because I don’t have a choice.

There’s a lot of money in these fights. More money than I’ve ever seen in my life, but none of it belongs to me. Every dollar goes straight to Manny fucking Deluga. And the worst part is, I don’t even know when it ends. There’s no date circled on a calendar. No number to hit. No final fight. I have no clue when they’ll let me go, maybe they never will. Which means losing isn’t an option. If I stop winning, I stop making them money. And if I stop being useful, I already know exactly what happens to men like me.

I finish my shift at the construction site with my body aching and sweat dried into my shirt. I have just enough time to get home, shower, eat something, and make the drive to the warehouse.

Home. What a fucking joke. When I was in the military, I met Trent. Boot camp first. Then, our first deployment together. The attraction hit me so hard it almost made me sick. It was instant. The kind of thing that made every look feel dangerous, every accidental touch feel like too much. Especially over there.

I spent almost eighteen months pretending I didn’t want him. I played the role I was supposed to play. Brother in arms, best friend, the guy always at his side. I listened when he talked about girls. Laughed when I was supposed to laugh. Acted like it didn’t tear me apart every time he mentioned taking some woman home when we got back stateside.

He only ever talked about women, so I figured I never had a chance in hell. Then everything changed. It was December. Cold enough that the air burned going into your lungs. Three of our guys got taken out by a roadside IED.

One second, we were talking in the Hummer. Our tires bumping along the dirt road. Next, there was fire, smoke, and screaming. I got lucky. A few cuts, a couple bruised ribs. Nothing serious enough to pull me from active duty.

Trent went crazy with worry that day. He was a wreck that night. He wasn’t with us when it happened. It took over twelve hours for word to get back to him about my condition.

I found him sitting outside alone in the dark, hands shaking so hard he could barely hold his cigarette. When he looked at me, there was something broken in his face. Then he told me he had been in love with me since the day we met. And after almost losing me that morning, after spending hours thinking I might be dead, he couldn’t keep it inside anymore. The thought of me dying before he ever got the chance to say it was what finally pushed him over the edge.

We were supposed to finish our service, come home, and finally start our lives together. That was the plan. We talked about it for hours whenever we could steal a little privacy. Late nights. Long drives. Quiet moments when everyone else was asleep.

We planned everything. Where we’d live. What kind of house we wanted. Whether we’d stay close to a city or buy a quieter place where no one would bother us. He talked about getting a dog. I told him he’d end up spoiling the thing rotten. We talked about kids. He knew that it was my dream to have kids. Create the family I never had.

Sometimes he’d talk about the future like it was already real, like it was something solid we could reach out and touch if we just held on long enough. And I believed him. God, I believed every fucking word. Every promise he made to me. Every time he touched me like I was the only thing in the world he wanted. I built my whole future around him without even realizing it. Like a dumbass, I thought loving someone that much meant they’d stay.

Like with everything else in my fucking life, he didn’t. The only things that truly stay are the memories and the pain. The hurt that never goes away and the nightmares that plague me every fucking night. Just the thought of my night terrors has a shiver going down my spine. I can’t remember a night that I got real sleep.

At this point in my life, I really don’t know what’s keeping me here anymore. I picture how easy it would be to end it all. To go the same way so many other soldiers had gone. Sometimes I sit with my gun in my hand for hours. No one would miss me, really. I’d just be one more statistic, one more ex-soldier who could not take the pressure of civilian life. But for some reason, no matter how many times I think about doing it, I just can’t pull the fucking trigger. Does it make me a coward? I keep hoping that tomorrow it will be different.

Chapter 2

Conor

“Let me guess,” Jess says from across the table, leaning back in her chair with a grin. “You’re not coming to the club tonight because you’ve got something else to do. Something you still won’t tell any of us what it is.”

The table is covered in food, half-empty beer bottles, and the kind of easy conversation that’s mostly carried by Jess, Xavier, and Colton. I stab my fork into my food and don’t look up.

“It’s none of your business,” I say dryly.

Jess lets out an offended sound, but before she can say anything else, I catch the look Ronan throws me. It’s quick. Too quick for anyone who doesn’t know him to notice. Unfortunately, Colton notices everything.

“You know something,” Colton says, turning toward Ronan immediately.