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“Sleep tight.”
After locking her own front door, Kayla was startled by her phone ringing in her purse. Pulling it out, she spotted her brother Calum’s name on the display.
She tried to act cheery when she answered his call. “Hi, brother dearest, what’s up?”
“Don’t ask me what’s up. Kayla Walsh, you tell me right now where you are, you hear?”
Her family was no longer accepting her evasive answers. Leave it to her oldest brother to be the one to get his answers. He was a cop like their dad, and he could act all good cop, bad cop in one single conversation. “Please, sis, we miss you.” See?
“I miss you too, I do, but I needed to spice things up a bit, you know?” She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth, hoping he would leave things be for once. But she already knew that hell would freeze over sooner. He always had to be the big brother, the protector of her and their siblings. He was strong, protective, and, on occasions, overbearing, but everything he did was from a big heart and with the best of intentions.
“Mom’s crying in the kitchen when she thinks nobody’s watching. Dad and the guys are grumpy all the time. Our sisters are bickering more.... Sis, we miss you. Nothing is the same since you left. We never had the chance to say goodbye; you just up and left. You know we’re not stupid, right? If we hadn’t heard from you at all, I’d have put an APB out the minute I realized you left your job, your apartment—fuck, you left your whole life.
“You’ve said you couldn’t say goodbye because you’re not good at saying goodbye, but something’s not right. You know it, and I know it. Now, please let me in. Tell me where you are, and we’ll go out for coffee. Me and you. I promise I won’t drag you back by your hair—well, maybe I’ll throw you over my shoulder.” He chuckled.
Kayla was laughing and sobbing at the same time. She had felt homesick every day since she’d left New Jersey. She cried herself to sleep at night, and when her family contacted her in the past weeks, she’d put on a front and said she was taking a year off for herself. A sabbatical year, so to speak, and she made it sound like she was sick of her life at home and she needed a change. Nothing could be further from the truth. She missed her family fiercely. She missed her bickering, overbearing but loving family so much that she was hurting inside because of it.
“Please, sis. Let me in. Tell me where our Kay-Kay is and let me make it all better.”
Kay-Kay was the name Kayla gave herself when she was only three years old. She wanted to play with her three big brothers when they had run outside in their big backyard. It was snowing, and their backyard had turned fully white. The boys tried to make a snowman, and Kayla wanted to help them with pushing a big ball of snow toward the snowman. She was shouting, “Kay-Kay help!” and her brothers helped her push the big ball. It was one of the first memories she had, and Kay-Kay became a pet name that only her brothers ever used.
She pushed back the tears running over her cheeks and softly said, “Austin, Texas.”
Sweat was drippingbetween Duncan’sshoulder blades down to his back. He was helping his brother Ronan get back into shape for his upcoming fight. Ronan ducked once again and made a play to give Duncan an uppercut. His little brother seemed to know that Duncan was preoccupied, as his thoughts were with Kayla and their “talk” in the back alley at Lucky last night.
Duncan hated that he couldn’t fight professionally anymore. Fighting was his life. He was good at it—no, not just good, he was the best. He started Duncan Dojo with his prize money, and here he was helping the next generation Mills fighter, and Ronan was handing him his ass.
In the beginning of this year, Duncan opened his own dojo in an old empty warehouse in the neighborhood of St. Johns in Austin. Because of his shoulder injury, he could no longer fight professionally. His four brothers and his dad had helped him in making the building ready for its new purpose. The demolition and renovation were over in a heartbeat, because all of the Mills men were built like Duncan—six-foot-four brick walls of muscle.
The dojo had been busy with fighters who trained on the fighting mats and in the two boxing rings, as well as people working out in the fitness area. The fitness area and yoga classes made for a mixed clientele and gave less of a man cave feel to his dojo.
Duncan’s jaw was pushed to the side after the hard blow from Ronan’s boxing glove. “Fuck!”
Ronan danced around Duncan, resembling a little monkey on hot coals and looking smug. His little brother needed to be taught a lesson. “What was it you used to say, Dunc? If you snooze, you lose?”
“Yes, little brother.” Duncan bowed his head, acting defeated, but he was looking at Ronan’s feet in search of his position so he could take advantage of his boasting brother who wasn’t paying attention.
