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With me going pro though, I haven’t been able to come here at all. But since there’s no soccer — yet — I can come here anytime I want and beat the crap out of shit.
Although I have to say it’s not all that satisfying when all I get to beat up is this body bag rather than an actual person. Because believe it or not, I did have a real live human punching bag, my friend Reign Davidson. One of my soccer friends who’s ready to go pro this coming January. He had his own issues and liked getting beat up. But ever since he got together with the girl of his dreams, Echo Adler, he’s been too happy to hang out with the rest of us sad losers.
So here I am, trying to find satisfaction and peace, but from the looks of it, it ain’t happening.
Giving up and deciding to go back home, I take a quick shower and change into a fresh pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt in the locker room. I drive back to my childhood home where I’m currently living, wondering for the thousandth time why. Why the fuck am I living in the same house that I couldn’t wait to get out of all my life?
I could very easily live in a hotel or something.
Actually I could very easily have not come back to Bardstown in the first place and flown out to practically anywhere in the world in my quest to escape my overbearing brothers. But I wasn’t willing to leave Callie completely alone with that jerkface. While all my brothers have kinda come around — there’s still some animosity though, between them and Reed fuckface Jackson — I’m the only one who hasn’t forgotten what a player he used to be.
And now that they have a baby together and Callie is foolishly in love with him, it’s even more imperative to keep an eye on that fucker so that he doesn’t fuck up. Like he had in the past, so here I am.
As I’m pulling up in front of the house, I see someone sitting on the front steps.
My brother, Stellan.
I park behind his car and climb out of my truck, my gut tight and my eyes pinned on him.
He stands up as I reach him, his face stern and disapproving, and I say, “Fancy seeing you here.”
Shifting on his feet, he replies, “You’re not picking up anyone’s calls.”
“I lost my phone.”
His eyes — dark like mine — flicker down to my pocket before he comes up and says, “It’s in your pocket.”
It is indeed.
Still I say, “Are you sure that’s my phone? It could be, as they say, a roll of quarters or a candy bar.”
He looks at me for a moment. “Are you using a euphemism to refer to your dick?”
“Are you saying that I shouldn’t care about your delicate sensibilities and just come right out with it?”
His eyes narrow with displeasure.
“It’s a joke,” I tell him then.
“Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?”
“Not everything, no.” I shake my head. “Some things are though. You should try it sometime.”
His face remains stern. “I think I’ll pass.”
I shrug. “Your call. But if you go on like this, pretty soon people won’t be able to distinguish between you and our big brother.”
Again, a joke.
While Stellan, Shepard and I have dark hair and dark eyes, our big brother Conrad has dirty blond hair and blue eyes. He’s the only brother that looks even remotely similar to Callie. I guess they both took after our mother while us three, we take after the father who abandoned us.
Anyway, there’s no chance anyone could ever mistake Stellan for Conrad.
Not in the looks department at least.
Their demeanor, however, is a whole ‘nother story.
“Gio said that you’re still refusing therapy,” he says instead, choosing to ignore me.
The muscles in my gut tighten further. “You should tell Gio that he needs to keep his mouth shut. Or I will shut it for him.”
He exhales a sharp breath. “Yes, because that’s what you do, don’t you? You shut people’s mouths.”
“Apparently yes.” I clench my jaw. “So maybe you should consider yourself lucky that I haven’t taken measures to shut yours yet. Although you’re cutting it very close.”
With that, I bound up the steps, leaving him there, and open the front door.
I’m about to step through when Stellan says, “Ultraflex won’t be the last brand to drop you, you know that, don’t you? One by one they’ll all drop you if you don’t play. All your dreams and goals and everything that you’ve worked so hard for is going to go down the drain.”
Ultraflex is a company that makes exercise equipment, and before the whole incident happened they’d signed me as the face of their new designs that they’re launching next year. They’d just announced it when it happened and apparently they’d gotten so much heat for it that they finally made the decision to drop me. Gio had called with the news last week.
