ALL THE

RAGE

T.M. FRAZIER

Copyright © 2016 T.M. FRAZIER

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons both living or dead is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

Thank you first and foremost to my husband. I know it’s not always easy being married to me, but you make me feel like it is. I love you with all my heart and soul and thank you for being there by my side through out this book process and all the others. You are my rock.

Thank you to my baby girl for brightening my life every single day. Mommy loves you to the moon and back. I hope that you someday realize you can follow your own dreams, no matter how big or how small. There is no limit on your dreams. As long as you have dedication and imagination you can achieve anything and be whatever you want. Your father and I will always be there to cheer you on.

I’d like to thank everyone in Frazierland for being the most bad-ass group of readers and friends ever. You guys make every single day a better one.

I want to thank Julie for being the best admin and beta reader and friend that I could ask for. My world was made better the day you came into it.

Thank you to Clarissa, Julie, Kimmi, Jennifer, Jessica, and Heather for beta reading and helping out in Frazierland.

Special thanks to Rochelle Paige for taking the time out of your own busy schedule to help make sure Rage and Nolan were ready for the readers. You are an amazing person and I really can’t thank you enough.

Thank you to Ellie and Vanessa and Manda and everyone who helps make my words readable. I couldn’t do this without you.

Thank you to my agent Kimberly Brower of the Rebecca Friedman agency for sticking with me. I know I’m a pain in the ass. I think I say that to you in every acknowledgment. Probably because it continues to be true. Thanks for your wisdom.

Thank you to my parents and my in-laws and my sister and my friends, your support means everything.

To my readers, you make me the happiest author in all the land, especially the members of Frazierland who rock my world every single day. I love you all.

Dedication

This one is for the two loves of my life.

#TeamTLC

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Epilogue

Bonus Scene

About the Author

Sneak Preview from Gun Shy

PROLOGUE

IT WAS ONCE said that if you love someone enough, you should let them go. If they come back to you, they were always meant to be yours.

It’s kind of bullshit.

My story is different than most. I’m different than most.

Because in my story, if you love someone enough, you should first drop the gun.

CHAPTER ONE

Hope

Ten years old

“I DON’T WANNA see any more doctors,” I announced as I burst through the door of Cody’s porch. I’d said it like it was brand new information, when the truth was that it was the same announcement I’d made every time I came home from another useless appointment with another shrinker who didn’t get me.

I plopped down on the old loveseat that had been on the back porch of Cody’s house for as long as I could remember. Spotting a loose seam on the corner of the cushion, I mindlessly started picking at the fraying seam.

“I don’t get it. I thought you asked to go to the doctor?” Cody asked.

“I did, but that was the other doctor. That appointment was yesterday and I only wanted to go because I was positive I had stage four brain cancer,” I inform him like it was a completely normal thing for a ten-year-old to say. “It’s important to get those things checked out, you know.”

For me it was normal.

“Do I need to ask you?” Cody asked, leaning in and pretending to be serious. “Is it the end? Should I call a priest? Wait, maybe in your case you need an exorcist.” He bent in half, wrapped his arms around his middle and had himself a good laugh at my expense.

“I had all the symptoms,” I argued. “I’ll show you my dad’s medical journal to prove it.”

“Okay, so you’re cancer free…”

“Brain cancer anyway,” I corrected. “But this isn’t about those doctors. This is about the other ones. The shrinkers. I don’t want to go to them anymore. I think I’ve been shrink-ed enough.”

Cody looked like he was mulling it over. A light went on in his eyes. “So if you don’t want to go see the other doctors, then don’t flip over your desk anymore when Mrs. Carmine tells you not carve into it with your pencil, or better yet, don’t try and push Jimmy Meyers in front of the school bus again,” he finished.

Like it was that simple.

“Jimmy pulled my hair,” I argued.

“Well, the good part about it is that he’s gonna think twice before doing it again, won’t he?” Cody always saw a side of things I never could. That was why I went over to his house every day.

That was why he was my best friend.

“So?” he asked. “Give me the low down. What did this new doctor say?” Cody asked, tearing open a Kit-Kat bar. My favorite.

He sat down next to me, his knee knocking into my thigh on the small tattered couch. He snapped off two of the four bars and handed me the half still in the wrapper.

“Thanks.” I said, taking a big bite. I chewed and let the chocolate settle into my system while thinking of how to best answer Cody’s question. “I overheard the doctor telling my parents I was…different?”

“Duh,” Cody said, smacking himself in the forehead with his hand. He nudged my shoulder. “This one might be the stupidest one yet because everyone already knows that.”

I shook my head and pursed my lips. “No, the way Dr. Klondike said it, made it sound weird.”

Cody wrinkled his nose and tapped his pointer finger against his chin. “What exactly did he say? Try to remember.”

I bit the side of my thumb, but the second I realized what I was doing, I pulled it away from my mouth and sat on my hands.

I tried to remember how the doctor had said the word while Cody patiently waited for me to answer. He was never in a hurry and he never rushed me for answers like my parents or the doctors did. I felt as if my parents had a limited amount of time dedicated to fixing me, and if they couldn’t do it in that paid hour, then they all gave up to regroup and start it all over the next time I did something that had them making calls and more appointments.

Cody had a level of patience I could never think to reach, but lucky me, my best friend had enough for the both of us.

Finally, it came to me. “He said I was UN-different, because I am emotionally not valuable and disconnected from most people, or”—I waved my hand in the air—“something along those lines.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to remember more, but when you’ve been to as many doctors as I had, they all started to blend together. “Oh!” I exclaimed, pointing my finger in the air at the memory. “He might have also used the words ‘emotionally voided.’” I took another bite of my candy bar and leaned back on the couch, staring up at the bent fan with the broken blade that wobbled as it sadly limped around in a slow squeaky circle.

Another week. Another doctor. Another uncomfortable conversation with a complete stranger. Another look of worry and fear in my parents’ eyes when they’re told that although there was something wrong with me, they couldn’t pin point the cause of it, and therefore couldn’t recommend a course of treatment.

Cody shook his head and spoke with his mouth full. “Indifferent.”

“Huh?”

He swallowed. “I think he said you were indifferent. Not different.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked, pulling my knees up to my chest. Cody was only a year older than me but sometimes it felt like a hundred years.

Having a know-it-all best friend wasn’t always the most fun, especially when he wanted to explain to me the science behind recycling every time the green truck rolled by, or draw me a diagram every time about water cycles every time a storm blew in. But when it came to me and my messed-up brain, Cody’s super smarts came in handy.

Cody finished off his half of the Kit-Kat. Balling the wrapper up in his hands, he tossed it across the room to the garbage can like he was throwing a basketball into a hoop. He missed by a million miles. It hit the wall and went rolling across the room in the opposite direction.

Cody sucked at basketball. Baseball was more his thing.

“It means that you don’t feel things other people feel. Like, do you remember when we were watching that movie your parents said we couldn’t watch? The one where the lady gets run over by the train at the end?”

“Yeah,” I said. Remembering when we’d figured out how to order the rated R movie from the TV remote. When it was over, Cody turned away from me, but it was too late. I’d already caught a glimpse of his tears. The lady got hit by a train after just being told that she was cancer free. She died. It was over. “They didn’t even show the cool part where she actually got hit. They just showed the tracks and her hat floating up into the air.”

Cody stared at me like I’d just proved his point.

“Maybe it was a stupid movie and I’m the only one who realized how stupid it was,” I said, settling further into the couch cushions.

“Okay that might not have been the best example, but I’m just trying to explain to you what the head shrinker meant.” Cody said, tapping the top of my head. “But if you ask me”—he shook his head slowly from side to side—“he didn’t do a very good job.”

I sat forward. “Why do you say that?” I might have been indifferent when it came to sadness, but anger was always alive and well and itching to break free. I met Cody’s golden brown eyes and he flashed me a big-toothed mega smile.

Cody was the only one who could settle the burn of my anger once it started. Not my parents, not the doctors, not the counselors at school. Not a single one of them could do what Cody could with just one goofy grin.

“Nerd,” I said, tossing a cushion at his head.

He dodged it. “They’re not doing a very good job shrinking your head.” He made an exaggerated motion with his arms, stretching them as far as he could like he was trying to touch the walls of the rooms with the tips of his fingers. “ ’Cause it’s as giant as ever!” He reached out and mussed my hair with his hand, causing my ponytail to come undone and my hair to fall into my eyes in a shabby curtain of messy blonde.

Cody burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. His dark hair, almost as long as mine, was also covering his face as he clutched his stomach and rolled off the couch, laughing hysterically until he rolled right into the screen door, scraping his arm on a jagged piece of aluminum. “Crap,” he hissed between his teeth. He held on to his elbow and pulled his arm up to check out the damage. A trickle of bright red blood dripped from the scratch below the sleeve of his T-shirt and rolled down into the crease of his elbow.

I scrambled off the couch and knelt down beside him and lifted his elbow higher so I could look at his scrape. “Are you okay?” I asked.

Cody looked up at me and brushed away some of the straggly hair that had fallen into his eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, standing up off the floor. He reached out for my hands and pulled me up with him. “It’s just a little scratch.”

Cody and I had always been around the same height until last year when he started growing like a weed. I don’t think I realized how tall he’d really gotten until I had to crane my neck to look up at him. His forehead creased like he smelt something bad.

“What?” I asked, taking a step back in case it was me. Maybe extra onions on my foot-long fun dog for lunch wasn’t the best idea.

“Can I ask you something?” Cody asked, which was stupid because that was a question as well.

I gave him a look that conveyed that thought, my lips pursed in a sideways pout and my eyes rolled high back in my head.

Cody waved me off. “Okay, so right now. What did you just feel just then when you got up off the couch and came over to me?”

“I don’t understand,” I said, and then it was my turn to scrunch up my forehead.

He pointed to his arm and then his scrape where the bubble of blood had already begun to dry. “When I hurt myself, you came over here to check on me. What were you thinking when you did that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just saw the blood and I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said, wondering where he was going with all this.

“See?” Cody said like he’d just proved some point I still hadn’t gotten.

“See what?” I asked, biting the inside of my cheek.

Cody waved his arms in the air like the answer was obvious, but I still wasn’t seeing it. “Duh. There’s no way you’re indifferent like that quack says. There’s no way you don’t have any feelings or that you’re indifferent. Because if that were really true then you wouldn’t have cared what happened to me, right? People who don’t care about other people or who don’t have feelings don’t check on their friends to make sure they aren’t hurt. So there you go. The doctor’s an idiot and we can get back to video games.”

Cody kind of had a point, but I didn’t bother to remind him that he was the only one besides my parents that I would have that reaction for. Out of all the people in the world, did caring about only three of them even count?

The week before, an older neighbor had fallen on his bike in front of our house. I watched in fascination from the living room window as he struggled with his obviously broken leg until a car came by and stopped to help.

It never even occurred to me to help. Not once.

It was that thought, the idea that I was broken, that sent the heat of rage soaring through my spine, and it was that anger that caused me to send the entire contents of my mom’s china cabinet crashing to the floor.

“You’ve got to remember that you’re different, not broken. We just gotta fix you up a bit. Make it so that others don’t see all the different inside you.” He winked at me, something he’s been doing a lot over the last few months. Whenever I tried to wink back, I just blinked a bunch of times and wound up looking like a genie ’cause I couldn’t close one eye at a time.

Cody walked over to the TV and started untangling two controllers for his gaming system. “It’s a start, though, right? We’re getting somewhere. You care about me, so what the doctor said isn’t true. I’d say that’s enough headway for today.”

“Sure is,” I agreed, sitting down Indian style on the floor in front of the couch.

“You can’t worry so much about what’s normal and what’s not,” Cody said. I wished it were that simple, but my parents were hell bent on fixing me. Some days I felt more like an experiment in a petri dish than their kid.

I knew I wasn’t normal without a single person having to tell me. My parents didn’t need to spend a single dollar for a professional to tell them something so obvious. “But my parents worry about me. That’s why they’ve taken me to every head shrinker from here to Georgia to try and figure me out.”

“But they’ve only taken you to them because of your anger thing, right?” Cody asked. “I mean the other stuff. The always worrying that you’re sick, the germ thing, the never sleeping, that’s not the thing that gets them calling the doctors, right? It’s just when you get really mad.” I nodded, knowing full well it was my rage and what I did when I had an “episode” that kept them up most nights.

Cody finished untangling the controllers and handed me one. He powered on the gaming console and the little TV sprang to life in bright, animated colors. “Then I think the answer is simple.”

“It is?” I asked. “What answer?”

Cody’s gaze was fixed firmly on the little green character on the screen, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth while he concentrated. His elbows inches away from my face as he dramatically maneuvered his controller around in the air. “Uh huh. We just gotta teach you how to fake it.”

“Fake it?” I asked. “Fake what?”

“All of it. The emotion stuff. First, when you need to unleash the fury, when you feel like you’re choking in your own anger, we’ll figure out something for you to do to let it all out, but not around your parents. Whatever you do, just don’t let them see it. What they don’t know, won’t hurt them.”

That might work.

What Cody was suggesting sounded hard, but maybe it wasn’t completely impossible.

“Okay Doctor Delacroix, what about the other stuff?” I asked, interested to see what else he had in mind.

Cody’s character jumped up into the air and clutched his throat as he died. The game played a sad couple of notes as it sank to the bottom of the screen. My pink character came to life on screen, replacing his.

I didn’t feel much like playing anymore. I set my controller down on the floor and turned to face Cody who did the same. “The indifferent stuff.”

“You can fake that too,” Cody said, sounding a lot surer of himself than I was.

“How?” I asked.

“I’ll teach you,” Cody said, grabbing my hands in his. “When a dog dies in a movie, you are supposed to be sad so you make this face.” Cody frowned dramatically, which only made me giggle. “Or when the hero saves the princess at the end, you are supposed to be happy, so you make this face.” Cody smiled and batted his eyelashes like he was a princess being rescued.

“You’re being stupid,” I said, playfully punching him in the shoulder. The best medicine none of those doctors could ever prescribe was Cody.

“Yeah, I am,” he admitted. “But I’m being serious too. I’ll teach you how to fake it. We can do this.” His grip tightened around my wrists. My eyes snapped up to meet his. His smile straightened into a serious line. “We’ll keep a list of all the things that could help and we’ll cross them off if they don’t. We’ll carry it around always and every time you’re confused about something, all you have to do is read the list.” Cody really was serious. “We’ll do this together,” he promised. “Always.”

“Together,” I repeated, although with only a small fraction of his confidence.

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled.” Cody snatched up my controller and started clicking away on the buttons with his thumbs.

“But what about…?” I started to ask, the half question coming out as a whisper.

He paused his thumbs over the controller. He knew exactly what I was going to ask without me having to finish my question. “Just because you like to do something doesn’t mean you should do it,” he said, repeating the same sentence he always started with when this subject came up. “Is it getting worse?”

I tipped my chin down and gave Cody a single nod. He was staring at the TV, my pink character paused mid-jump. Cody shut his eyes tightly and sighed. He pressed his lips together. After another beat, he started the game up again like nothing ever happened. All traces of worry gone from his expression. Without looking over to me, he replied, “We’ll figure that out, too. Just promise me you won’t tell anyone else. ESPECIALLY your parents.” He finally looked over to me after my character’s life ended on the same hill his green one had. “Seriously. I mean it. If your parents ever found out about it, if ANYONE ever finds out, they won’t just take you to head shrinkers, they’ll…they’ll lock you away.”

“I know,” I said. Google had told me just as much.

Cody reached over, intertwining his fingers with mine. A sense of relief washed over me as comforting as aloe on a bad sunburn. “As long as I have you. I’ll be okay,” I said.

Cody nodded. “That’s right. I won’t ever let them take you from me, but you gotta promise that I’m the only person in the world who will ever know.” He squeezed my hand. “You gotta promise. You gotta say it.”

“Just you,” I agreed. “I promise.” The thought of being taken away didn’t bother me as much as the thought of being away from Cody did.

“Together,” Cody said again with another squeeze of my hand. He flashed one of his superhero kind of smiles before picking up his controller and continuing our game.

I didn’t know what love was, but I thought that how I felt about Cody might be as close as I could ever come to something like love. What I did know for sure was that I wasn’t going to let him down.

Maybe, if I did a really good job faking it, the worried look on my parents’ faces might finally turn back to the happy faces from the pictures lining the hallway.

Pictures from before I was born.

Mom and Dad had been putting their own lives on hold more and more in order to “deal” with their troubled daughter. The doctors’ appointments, the sleepless nights worrying over me, the shared glances at the dinner table they thought I never saw. But I did.

I always saw.

It was for those reasons and hundreds more why they could never find out the truth.

I didn’t want to think what it would do to them if they ever found out that their one and only daughter…yearned to kill.

CHAPTER TWO

Hope

Sixteen years old

THROUGH THE MOON roof, the stars twinkled overhead in the clear night sky. The tall, thin, pine trees rustled overhead, bending down at extreme angles even though the breeze was slight at best. Crickets serenaded us from the nearby brush. A nearby sprinkler shot out from the ground, hissing to life, filling the air with the scent of sulfur, which to me always smelled like rotten eggs. From the center console, some old country love song played on Cody’s iPhone.

It was all mocking me. All of it.

Even the fucking crickets were a reminder that I was a failure.

At life. At love.

At friendship.

At normalcy.

“Here, turn around,” Cody said. I twisted as much as I could in the small backseat. Cody zipped up my dress, snaring a few of my hairs that had fallen free from the pins. He planted a kiss on the nape of my neck.

Still nothing.

I took a deep breath and tried to remember that Cody was my best friend. My ONLY friend. I trusted him. Nothing was going to change between us.

Except that was a lie, because everything was about to change. For him. For me.

Because I was leaving.

Tonight.

The second I turned around to face him, Cody was going to know the truth. I couldn’t hide it, especially not from him. He’d always seen through my lies and that night was no exception.

“Hope?” he asked in a whisper, his excitement over what we’d done moments before in the backseat of his Honda, in the middle of the closed Caloosa State National Park, completely deflated from his voice when our eyes met.

I flashed Cody a small smile, hoping against all odds that maybe he couldn’t see what I was feeling inside.

But he always did.

I was a horrible actress and an abominable liar, but when I told Cody I was leaving Lilly Heights for good after prom, he wanted me to try one more thing, for him. Truth was that I wanted to give it one last try too. The normal thing. I owed him that much. I owed myself that much.

So we did what normal teenagers did after the prom.

And during, I felt nothing.

And after, I felt nothing.

“Hope?” Cody asked again, studying my face.

“I’m here, I’m with you,” I said, trying my hardest to turn my fake smile into a real one, because deep down I wished it was real. I looked down to my lap and twisted my hands, picking at my French manicure.

“Bullshit!” Cody snapped, drawing my attention back up to his face and eyes, which reflected a mixture of hurt and anger. I’d known him since he moved in next door when I was four years old and never before had I seen him so distressed. He was my best friend.

My only friend.

I met his blue eyes and dropped the fake smile.

Shit.

“I told you it wasn’t going to work,” I said, taking another deep breath, snuffing out the anger inside me that threatened to take hold at any moment. I could hold on for a few more minutes. For him. “I told you I’m broken. I told you this couldn’t fix it, but I wanted us to try.”

Cody reached for my hand and I let him link his fingers with mine one last time. A feeling of familiarity I’d always been comfortable with when it came to him. Cody sighed. “I don’t understand. I mean we can try again. Maybe we just need to…” Cody’s grip tightened around my hand. “Hope, be honest. Tell me. We can’t make this work if you don’t…” His continual use of a name I hated was what pushed me over the edge and suddenly the backseat of his Honda seemed impossibly too small.

I felt trapped.

“Make what work?” I snapped, tearing my hand from his and pushing open the car door. I stumbled out barefooted onto the grass and leaned up against the Honda. Cody got out and stood on the other side, the moon highlighting every line on his face I didn’t want to see.

“Us!” Cody yelled out. “Of course us! This is what this was all about, wasn’t it? Seeing if we can make it work as a couple even with your…issues?”

I finally understand how naïve he really was. All this time. All these years of trying to help me, and he still didn’t get it. He didn’t get ME.

I squared my shoulders and launched the truth at him. “What do you want to hear, Cody? That we can live happily ever after? Because you of all people should know that’s not in the cards for me. And what we just did? Sex? Fucking? Do you want to hear the truth when it comes to that to? Because the truth is that I felt numb,” I admitted. “It didn’t hurt. I didn’t really even feel anything. Honestly, I thought about my hair and the pins that are poking me in my brain. Then my mind drifted and I don’t know where I went, but it wasn’t here. That’s the problem, it’s never been HERE.” I reached up and pulled on the two main pins that holding my hair in a pile of tight curls on top of my head. I threw the pins to the ground. My hair fell around my shoulders, the tension instantly relieved. “I feel like a failure, not because this didn’t work, but only because I let you down.”

“You didn’t let me down,” Cody said, rounding the car joining me on the other side. “It’s not like all this is instant. These things take time. There is so much more to all this than…”

“Cody!” Pushing off the car I turned around to face him, gesturing with a wave of my hand down to my pink sequined prom dress. “It’s over. This was it. This was my last shot. You’re standing there looking hurt, and I’m upset that I hurt you. That’s all I feel. I care about you, and I want to love you in the way you deserve to be loved, but I can’t. You’re one of the few people in the world who if you dropped dead, I wouldn’t just step over your body and keep walking. That’s my definition of love. You deserve more than that, Cody, but I can’t give it to you.”

“But Rage,” Cody started to argue, attempting to use the nickname I’d preferred to be called. He took a step closer.

“No!” I said, holding up my hand to stop him. I leaned in through the window of the car and grabbed my bag, slinging it around my shoulders. I took out my phone and tapped out a quick text. Then I pulled out the wrinkled piece of torn notebook paper I’d been carrying around with me since Cody and I first started working on it over six years ago. “There is no ‘but Rage.’ We’ve tried everything and more. It’s been years. I’ve gone along with every idea and every suggestion. And although I’ve managed to fool some people, I can’t fool you and most importantly, I can’t fool the one person who knows who I really am and who doesn’t want me to pretend anymore.”

“Who’s exactly is that?” Cody asked, jealousy in his voice.

I handed him the folded pages. “Me.”

“You keep it,” he said, looking down at my hand at the years worth of suggestions on how to make me normal, aptly titled, THE RULES FOR BEING RAGE.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Cody whispered, tears in his eyes. The psychologists had said I lacked remorse, empathy, and a general lack of respect toward human life. They were right for the most part, but I was capable of caring about a few people.

Enough to know I had to leave, so I couldn’t hurt them anymore. Cody included.

“You knew this was coming,” I said, like Cody knowing a bomb was about to explode would somehow lessen the impact.

“I hoped tonight would change things,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets and looking at me sheepishly through his dark hair, which had fallen over his eyes.

“I’m relieved,” I said, with a small laugh. “There are no lines of confusion slashing through everything now. I know what I need to do.” The roar of an engine thundered through the silence of the night, growing closer until the sound echoed across the tops of the pine trees, calling out to me like freedom.

A single headlight illuminated behind the brush, hiding the driver of the motorcycle behind the shadows.

“Why is he here? You already called him?” Cody asked, tucking in his white dress shirt like whoever was out there could see his state of dishevelment.

“I sent him a text,” I admitted.

“Do you want him?” Cody asked, taking me by surprise. “Is that why he’s here so fast? Is it him over me?”

“What?”

“Do you want him?” Cody asked, pounding a fist on the roof of his car.

“Are you fucking insane? Do you think I would have just let you…” I paused, trying to find the right word so I wouldn’t come off too harsh.

“Let me fuck you,” Cody finished, not caring about harsh. The spiteful tone in his voice was getting under my skin. I shot him a warning glare. He was the only person who’d ever gotten one of those. He knew the drill and reluctantly unclenched his fists and took a deep breath.

“Yes, do you think I would have just let you fuck me, do you think I would have gone through with trying this one last thing to see if I was capable of attraction, of a relationship, of being a normal teenager, if there was someone else out there I wanted?” Cody didn’t say anything, but I could see the regret at his choice of words plastered across his face. “I don’t want anyone. That’s the fucking problem. I don’t want anything except to be me. If you really think I’m taking off with someone else because I want to fuck them then I’m glad I’m leaving, because here I thought you were the only one who really knew me, but I can see now that you never really knew me at all.” I huffed. “To think it only took a few minutes in the backseat of your fucking car for you to forget everything you’ve ever known about me.”

Cody’s regret was written all over his face before my last words had even left my mouth. “I’m sorry, but…” He growled and pulled on his hair. “What about your parents?” Cody asked, grabbing both of my shoulders, digging his fingers into my skin. His anger forgotten. Desperation in its place.

I shook my head. “I’ve already taken care of everything.”

Cody looked toward the parking lot. He shielded his eyes from the single beam of blinding white light that beckoned to me like the warmth of the sun, thawing me from a long cold winter.

I reached out and touched the side of Cody’s face. I smiled a rare genuine smile. “You know I don’t want anyone else, right?” I asked. I needed him to understand it wasn’t him I was running from, but me I was running for.

“Yeah, Rage, but you don’t want me either,” he stated flatly, using my nickname for the second time. Rage was a name Cody came up with but as we’d gotten older he stopped using it and more and more started using Hope again. I knew why. It’s because he wanted me to be Hope. Hope was a girl you dated and took to the movies. Hope was a girl you made future plans with and lost your virginity to in the backseat of your Honda after prom.

I wasn’t her.

I tried to be her. To make her real, but that night the truth was clearer then ever.

Nothing I tried had worked…because Hope Michaels didn’t exist.

“No, I don’t want you. But you have to know that if it was ever going to be anyone, I wished it could’ve been you,” I said. Cody nodded, closing his eyes and leaning his cheek into my palm.

“What will I do without you?” he asked, his words whispering across the palm of my hand. A tear formed in the inside corner of his eye, spilling down the bridge of his nose. He sniffled.

Cody was a straight A student who was destined for the Ivy Leagues. He was a math wiz and a star on our high school’s baseball team. Without me to drag him down, he had nowhere to go but to the top of whatever mountain he wanted to climb.

The bike engine revved and vibrated deep within me, letting me know it was time.

“Do you really wanna know what you’re going to do without me?” I asked. I dropped my hand from Cody’s face and turned, running as fast as I could with my ridiculous tulle skirt bunched up in my fists. “You live!” I shouted back over my shoulder. “And you can keep the list. I don’t need it anymore!” Dried leaves and pine needles stung and stabbed at the bottoms of my bare feet, but I didn’t care.

I never looked back. Not at Cody. Not at my old life.

I ran toward more than just a bike. I ran toward the freedom to be myself. Toward a new life. Toward the real me.

Freedom.

Where I was going, Hope Michaels wouldn’t be coming with me. In her place would be the girl I’d shoved aside for as long as I could remember. The one who mainstream society, my teachers, my doctors, my parents, and even Cody spent a lot of time trying to change into someone else.

When I reached the shell parking lot I hiked up my dress high around my waist and straddled the bike behind the driver, holding on tight to the wall of leather and muscle in front of me.

I couldn’t see Cody, but I could feel his eyes on me as the bike shot forward into the blackness of the night. Into the unknown.

Cody could have Hope, because I wasn’t taking her with me.

With the wind whipping through my hair and my pink ball gown floating all around me, Hope was officially gone.

All that was left in her place…was Rage.

CHAPTER THREE

Rage

MY BAG VIBRATED for the millionth time within a span of three minutes. Since that phone was specifically reserved for calls from only two people, and since very rarely did one call without the other on the line, I knew exactly who was trying over and over again to reach me. I couldn’t ignore it forever, especially since they wouldn’t stop calling until I either answered or the battery died, but I was still running wire. A task that required my full attention.

I’d spent every second of the last three years working and training with Smoke. I was strong both physically and in craft. I turned my need to destroy into a business that, over the past year, had started to thrive as my reputation for getting the job done spread.

ONLY A SMALL handful of my employers knew what I looked like, including Smoke, and I was hell bent on keeping it that way. Anonymity was key. Not just to avoiding blowback, but it was also the key to my success. I could get a lot closer to a target than a leather-clad biker could. Blonde hair, ponytails, and pink T-shirts didn’t exactly raise the same kinds of red flags.

Crouching down, I crawled through the tall brittle brush into an empty field where I was completely concealed, yet still had a perfect view of the three-story building down below. I sat with my legs crossed and finished twisting the last of the wires together when my phone vibrated for the millionth and one time. I set down my light blue LEE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOOL athletic tote I always carried and fished around inside of it for that particular phone until my hand landed on it and I was staring down at a picture of two smiling faces on the screen. I took a deep breath, affixed the required fake smile on my face as if they could see me, and hit the green ACCEPT button. “Hey, Moe! Hey, Va!” I said with practiced cheeriness.

Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake shaking out a warning caught my attention.

“My beautiful girl,” my mom cooed like I was still a baby. “How come you haven’t answered my calls, Mijn Zoeteken?” she asked, using her Flemish nickname for me. I unsheathed my knife from the back pocket of my cut-offs and immediately spotted the bent brush where my new friend was hiding.

“It’s been crazy over here, Mom. I told you, the cafe is open later now so between me and Becs, we don’t get much of a break between the lunch and dinner rushes,” I said. I stood and rounded the snake. Without skipping a beat I lunged forward, plunging my knife into its head, tacking him into the dirt. I withdrew my knife and wiped the blade clean with a disinfectant wipe. I sanitized my hands, all the way to my elbows, with the little bottle of sanitizer I kept hooked to the zipper on my bag before sitting back down to prep the rest of the device.

There was a brief pause from conversation while my parents fired up their ancient electric can opener that sounded like an explosion all its own. They were probably opening a can of soup. My parents were big soup people. Canned or homemade, soup was always on their menu, which I chalked up to being a European thing.

My parents both came from a small town in Belgium, moving to the US for my dad’s job when my mom was pregnant with me. The way they described the place they grew up made it sound like there were only about thirteen people their age in the town. It might not have been an arranged marriage, but I could only assume that based on the population alone, their options were a bit limited at best.

“We’re very happy that you’ve found a friend there,” my dad said, sounding as if he was shouting from the other side of the kitchen, which he probably was. I’ve taught them how to use the speakerphone a million times, but it’s one of those things where I could show them every day and they still wouldn’t grasp the concept. The iPad I sent them last year is probably collecting dust on the shelf next to my mother’s Delfware Pottery collection. Or maybe shouting across the room just made way more sense to them. “Becs sounds like a great girl.”

Becs did sound like a great girl. Too bad she didn’t exist.

When I left town, I didn’t want my leaving to cause any more pain for them than I already had. So I did the unthinkable. I kept in touch. I told them that as long as they didn’t try to find me and drag me home that I would always be in their lives. Smoke thought the idea was ridiculous, but it’s not like we’d ever been a normal family to begin with.

“We know you are busy,” my mother said, clanking dishes around. “Your father and I just wanted to tell you how proud of you we are. After you left us we thought, I mean, your father and I were so worried. And now look at you, trying so hard to be…” My mom paused, but I knew what it was she was trying not to say. NORMAL.

I WAS JUST glad they ate up every morsel of false normality I fed them. Whatever our relationship, whatever lies were involved, it had to be that way. Most importantly, it was working. My mother continued, “Even though we miss you, and even though you left so suddenly, we are just so happy that you’re doing so well.”

I sighed and pulled out my binoculars. Peering through the lenses, I adjusted the focus and then the night vision. I zoomed in on the back door and watched as the last of the night shift workers left the building. Per the client’s orders, the place had to be empty before I was to proceed. I counted as the men and women in coveralls walked to their cars. One, two, three, four. Four, that was all of them. I set the binoculars down and checked the time on my watch. I held the phone between my shoulder and jaw as I pushed the wires into a little metal triangle, pinching the top together.

“Thanks, guys. It’s hard sometimes. And I know you weren’t too keen on me being so far away and all alone, but I know it’s good for me. I feel like I’m better here,” I said, repeating a different version of the same mindless lies I told them every day with as much emotion as I could muster. “Exploring a new city, a new country, it was the right decision for me. I love it here.” The last part wasn’t so much a lie although here was a thousand different places, depending on the job. On that particular day I was less than a hundred miles from Lily Heights, where my parents were probably pulling up their TV trays along side the couch so they could eat their soup while watching Jeopardy.

“Have you heard from Cody?” my mother asked, continuing without waiting for me to answer. “His mother says he’s doing great at Brown and that he has a girlfriend. She says it’s pretty serious and that they are sharing an apartment after the next semester ends. It is so sad you two aren’t close anymore.”

Well Moe, what really happened was that I left my best friend in the middle of the night after we’d had sex and jumped on the back of a bike driven by a biker named Smoke, who was kind of my mentor.

I waited for the feeling. That pit-of-your-stomach thing people say happens when they get jealous or upset over someone else’s happiness.

Nothing.

“He deserves to be happy,” I said, which was both saying nothing and everything all at once. As much as I needed my freedom, Cody deserved to be happy. Thankfully, my mother didn’t push.

“WHAT ABOUT BOYS over there?” my dad shouted. “Anyone catch your eye?”

My mother chimed in immediately. “Or, you know, we would not care if you brought a girl home. Love is love, as they say,” my mom sang, sounding very rehearsed.

“I’m not a lesbian, Moeder,” I stated flatly, although sometimes I thought it would have been better if I were. An attraction to anyone would be much easier than trying to explain or lie about having an attraction to absolutely no one.

“No, no, of course you’re not. See, Thomas? I told you she wasn’t a lesbian,” my mother said to my dad, as if the idea was all his. I knew better. “Although, it’s still okay if you are. I mean were.”

I adjusted my ponytail, tightening the elastic at the base and waving off the long blonde strands that always attached themselves to my fingers and everything else my hair came into even the briefest contact with. “I just haven’t had time to meet anyone and you guys know that moving away was about finding me, not finding someone else. I’m young and not in a rush,” I said, recalling the billboard for a cruise line where I’d gotten that line from.

I could almost hear their relief through the phone, not because I wasn’t gay, my parents really wouldn’t care either way, as they’ve told me a million times. No, their relief was because I was living my life and because I knew they were always listening for traces of the preteen girl in my voice, in my actions. The one with anger issues who was morbidly curious. The one who left her closet doors open at night, hoping the monsters would come out and take her home with them. The one who hadn’t yet learned the art of the lie.

Or the art of the kill.

Half the time I think they went along with the shit I fed them, not because they necessarily believed me, but because it was just easier.

Every time I spoke to my parents, which was daily, it only proved to me that leaving was the best decision for all of us. There was no pain in their voices anymore. Their previous worries about my mental state had been reduced to the worry any parent would have being separated from their child. I liked that kind of worry better than the kind that constantly asked the questions. Is she going to hurt someone? Is she going to hurt herself? Why doesn’t she FEEL like other people feel? Not to mention that the one-girl show I was now actively participating in was way better than being dragged from doctor to doctor.

No matter what I was going through, no matter the looks or the arguments or the constant evaluations, I never blamed my parents for who I was or what I’d become. They were never the problem. They were loving and kind and gave me everything I’d ever wanted. Except the freedom to be me. To explore the things I’d had to keep hidden and buried around them. To hone my skills. To pursue a life outside “the norm.”

“You don’t know how happy that makes us, Mijn Zoeteken,” Mom said. “Hopefully you’re not working too much and have had a chance to explore the city. Is Paris as amazing as you thought it would be? Is is better than Denmark?” The alarm on my phone dinged in my ear indicating it was time. I lay back in the tall grass. Holding the phone with one hand, I squeezed the metal triangle on the detonator with the other. Within seconds, the ground beneath me rumbled and shook as the building less than half a mile away exploded into the night. I watched in wonderment as the sky above me lit up with bursts of fiery shrapnel better than any Fourth of July fireworks show.

The aftermath of my work floated down from the sky and I watched in quiet reverence. What I did was more than just work.

It was fucking art.

Lost in my thoughts, I almost forgot about the phone to my ear until Mom cleared her throat. The ground gave off one last death rattle, indicating the building had fallen. Plumes of orange smoke billowed into the night above me, blurring the stars in false grey clouds.

Not wanting to ruin the moment, I lowered my voice and whispered into the phone, “Don’t worry about a thing, guys.” Sirens sounded in the distance. I smiled a non-forced, not-for-show, rare smile. Warmth pooled in my stomach. “It’s absolutely…beautiful here.”

I sighed again, this time not out of aggravation, but out of a sense of deep and pure satisfaction I felt all the way through to my bones. “And yes, Mom, it’s everything I always thought it would be.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Rage

NEXT TO EXPLOSIVES, tracking people was my favorite kind of job. I thought it was odd that anyone needed help finding anyone anymore. It’s not like it’s hard. Most of the time, all I do is get online and turn on my inner Belieber fan-girl. Within minutes those chicks always knew where, how, when, and who their idol was with. I was the same way, except my clients paid me for my stalking and after I’d found who they were looking for, it sure as shit didn’t end with high-pitched screaming and a selfie.

Well, maybe not the selfie.

Babysitting, on the other hand, was my least favorite job. It was something I’d avoided for the entirety of my junior high and high school careers no matter how many times my parents told me the Jefferson’s were looking for someone to watch their twins after school. Yet the second Smoke called, promising me his next two explosive jobs, I agreed like Golumn with a fucking ring. Next thing I knew, I was high up in a tree, in ninety-degree heat, straddling a branch while waiting for my target (of my babysitting services) to make an appearance.

“You know how fucking boring this is, right?” I whined into the phone.

“Sure do, that’s why I’m not fucking doing it,” Smoke said, sounding amused.

“You suck.”

“Nah, that’s what the bitches are for.” There was a pause, and I heard a shuffling followed by the faint sound of a woman’s voice. “You sleep at all this week?” Smoke asked, changing the subject.

I sighed and adjusted my position on the branch, giving me a better view of the side of the house. I didn’t know why he always asked me that question. My answer was always the same. “I guess that depends on what you consider sleep.”

“Rage, zoning out for an hour or two sitting upright with your eyes open is not sleep,” Smoke scolded.

“Sorry to disappoint you then, Daddy, but no, I haven’t slept.”

In years.

“As much as I like to be called Daddy, I only like a woman calling me that when she’s underneath me and I’m holding her knees up while I shove my cock in her.” Smoke chuckled. “So unless you’ve changed your mind and given up your aversion to dick, then you best keep that shit to yourself.”

Smoke learned very quickly when we met that whatever he considered to be charms were completely lost on me, but he never stopped trying to get a rise out of me anyway. He didn’t understand that in order to be offended by something, you have to care about it first.

I didn’t.

However, it seemed to amuse the hell out of him, so good for him, or whatever.

“Uh-huh, sounds good,” I said, barely paying attention as a light inside the house switched on, bathing the windows in faded yellow. “What exactly am I doing here?” I asked again.

“Just keep an eye on the boy. If anyone who looks like his parents come to the house, you call me. You think he knows where they are, you tell me. It’s simple. I need you to watch everything and report back. Get as close as you can.”

I sat up on the branch and bit the side of my thumbnail. “You sure you don’t want me to just take him out? I’ve got to change the oil on my Vespa and—” Smoke cut me off before I had the chance to tell him about having to get back to watching the eBay auction where I was currently the high bidder on a six-inch serrated steel blade with Swarovski crystal handle. It looked just like the small tattoo on the nape of my neck and it had been on my wish list for months. Fuck if I was going to be outbid by SPONGE_BOB_DAD_6969.

“No. Don’t fucking take him out. Not yet, anyway. Wait for my word,” Smoke sighed, sounding frustrated. “And I’ll change the oil on your fucking pussy scooter after I’m sure this kid doesn’t know where the fuck his shit-bag parents are. But you don’t do shit until you hear from me. Got it?” I heard the distinct sound of a lighter sparking, followed by a light blowing of smoke across the receiver.

“How long do I have to be here for?” I asked, conceding to Smoke and reluctantly accepting my babysitting fate. The auction ended on Sunday, and I knew I couldn’t do it from my phone, not with the reception in this town that had Smoke’s every third word cutting out.

“For however long it takes.”

I huffed. “You owe me for this.”

“I tell you what, Rage. You stop working for everyone and their uncle Albert and work exclusively for me, and I’ll stop throwing you these shit babysitting jobs,” Smoke offered.

I shook my head as if he were in front of me and not on the phone. It was an offer Smoke made often. Often enough for me to already know that it wasn’t really an offer. It was a test. Smoke was a biker but he didn’t belong to any club. “No can do. You know that.” It was our number one rule. Our only rule. No loyalties to anyone, no ties.

“I tell you what,” I started. I could practically hear Smoke’s smile through the phone. He knew exactly what was coming next. “I’ll agree to work exclusively for you…on the day you call the Bastards and get me patched in as an official member. I want a cut too. A pink one.”

“Fuck you, Rage,” Smoke said, without the slightest trace of anger in his voice. Sometimes I changed out which MC I wanted to be a member of and tell him I want to be Warrior, the other big MC in Southwest Florida, but the gist of my joke was always the same.

Smoke was not just my mentor he was a client and I agreed to always do his jobs first. I also agreed that if anyone ever hired me to kill him, I’d as least give him a few hours heads-up.

Well, maybe at least a few minutes.

Maybe.

“How ’bout this,” Smoke started. “You do good for me. Watch that kid and find out where his parents are holed up and I’ll let you take them out like the dogs they are, any way you want. Car explosion maybe?” Smoke paused and lowered his voice. “Would you like that, Princess?” He knew exactly what he was doing. He might not have been able to seduce me with his body, but he sure as shit knew how to seduce me with the promise of creating my art in the form of destruction. My heart sped up and I bit my lip. Closing my eyes tightly, I soaked in and reveled in the whole body shudder that consumed me with want.

The want to destroy.

The want to kill.

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that, baby,” Smoke said.

“I didn’t say anything,” I whispered, trying not to give anything away, but he knew he had me right where he wanted me.

“You can fool some of the dumb fucks out there, but you can’t fool me. I know you only shut that mouth of yours when you’re excited about something.”

Sometimes I hated that he knew me so well. After Cody, I didn’t want anyone to know me at all. The thought of Cody sent me crashing back into reality, the present, and the job at hand.

I focused my attention on the picture I pulled from my pocket. It was one of those school pictures with a typical blue background and the name of the photography company in the lower right corner. The boy had brownish red hair and hazel eyes. A faded bruise on the top of his right cheekbone. His smile was big and bright, although his teeth were too big for his face and he was missing one of the front ones. He was wearing a Tampa Lightning hockey jersey and had a dimple on his left cheek.

“Why is this kid all alone in a shack on the beach, anyway? Shouldn’t he be in school or something?” I asked, again scanning the windows for any signs of life within, aside from the newly turned on light.

“Shouldn’t you?” Smoke quipped. “Besides, I think he’s a few years older than that picture, but that’s all Cannon could scrounge up.”

I rolled my eyes, again like he could see me. Maybe my parents weren’t the only ones who didn’t fully grasp how the phone was really supposed to work. “Yeah, ’cause Cannon is five hundred years old and probably drove to the library to look in the archives when he could have just googled him,” I said, knowing I wasn’t that far off from the truth. Cannon was Smoke’s sometimes assistant.

Smoke laughed again. “Probably,” he admitted. “But I already looked the kid up. He’s got an Instagram account, but nothing on it I need.”

There was movement low in the window of the house. Just a passing shadow followed by a continuous barking. “Great, Smoke, he has a fucking dog. You didn’t tell me he had a fucking dog.” I cringed, remembering the Myth Busters episode I’d watched where they debunked the myth about dog saliva being cleaner than human saliva.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know? That picture and the address was all I got,” Smoke said, sounding less than amused. “You watch your mouth with me. I give you a lot of leeway because we’re cut from the same fucking cloth, but you remember who the fuck you’re talking to.”

I ignored his I’m-a-big-bad-independent-biker-who-deserves-respect speech. “Did you know it’s a fallacy that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s mouth?” I asked. “They actually contain ten times more bacteria and most of that bacteria is harmful in some way. Getting licked in the face by a dog is ten times more hazardous then licking the rim of a public toilet. One swipe of their tongue could send you to the hospital and you could die of some horrible disease that causes incurable diarrhea. You could literally shit yourself to death. I mean, can you imagine? SHITTING yourself to death?”

“I can now. Thanks for the fucking image,” Smoke said flatly.

I continued, “And what they can carry on their skin? There are thousands of types of bugs—”

Smoke cut me off again. “Rage, I actually have shit to do today, and as much as I’d like to hear every little factoid you want to spew about your germ shit, if you keep on complaining, I’m going to cut the brakes on your fucking pussy-scooter,” he warned.

I bit the corner of my thumb. “First of all, stop calling her that. Her name is Delilah. She’s a good scooter and never did anything to you, so cut it out. Second of all, that’s fine with me. Do what you want to my brakes.”

“And why is that?” Smoke asked, sounding confused and taking the bait.

I lowered my voice and mimicked Smoke’s fake seductive tone from earlier. “Yes, go, cut my breaks, but then good luck figuring out which of your guns I may or may not have tampered with.”

“Wait, what the fuck did you do?” Smoke asked as I clicked the END button and shoved the phone back into my bag. I laughed when it immediately vibrated again. I let it ring.

I hadn’t really tampered with Smoke’s guns, not recently anyway, but the thought of him carefully inspecting each one to figure out if I had was just enough payback for him calling Delilah, my trusted powder blue Vespa, a pussy scooter.

Dick.

My newest job, under protest, was taking place in Harper’s Ridge/Logan’s Beach area, which was a fishing community turned vacation spot for the rich and famous on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

The entire five miles of beachfront had all been taken over by condos, hotels and high rises. In between those buildings was the occasional small cottage being held on to by the owners for the best offer or the stubborn owners who wouldn’t take any dollar amount for their little shacks. These little houses were all built in the twenties and in need of some sort of repair. They had charm, though, unlike the contemporary architecture of the newer buildings. No floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Just sliding glass doors, chipped siding, and country shutters.

An overly tanned, overly wrinkled, seasoned fisherman sat in a chair at the water’s edge, half asleep. His fishing pole, which was set in a plastic pipe dug into the ground, bent at a harsh angle at the top, where either the tide or an awaiting fish was pulling on the line. The fisherman, his chin resting on his chest, was oblivious to his possible catch.

The tiny beach cottage I happened to be watching was up on half pilings with a storage space underneath concealed by white strips of lattice, half of which were missing. On top of that was a deck with a small pool desperately in need of care. The water was at least a foot lower than the rim and was as green as the mildew growing on the faded yellow siding. It was more mote than pool.

There was a condo building to one side and a small fenced in area containing several trees to the other. A sign on the fence read Conservation Area. Keeping five trees out of harm’s way in exchange for all the condos you could build seemed a bit ridiculous to me, but I wasn’t in real estate. I didn’t build or create anything.

My job was to destroy.

From my vantage point, up high on a branch of one of the very special conserved trees, I was concealed from anyone walking by on the beach or glancing through the narrow alley from the main street. Most importantly, I had a great view into the house and of the driveway in the front by the street in case the boy had any visitors. Unfortunately, I’d been there for three hours, and although I knew someone was in there, judging from the sounds of the dog, the TV, and the lights occasionally flipping on and off, not so much as a door had been opened or a window shade drawn.

Just as I’d set my thoughts in stone that the next few days or weeks would be the longest of my life, the back door of the cottage slid open and suddenly, my target was in view. Although he was…different. Because the person who appeared on the deck was the same kid from the picture, the boy.

Except he wasn’t a boy at all.

A little black French bulldog with a white face emerged from the house, snaking around my target, who was still in the doorway. He panted his way around the deck and into the bright sunlight. I assumed it was the little tic dispenser responsible for all the barking I’d heard earlier. He drooled his way around the pool, long lines of foamy, white saliva trickling out from both sides of his permanent frown. His long pink tongue was in the shape of a playground slide, scraping the splintered wood as he waddled from one end of the pool to the other, happily lifting his leg on the hedges, then the two chipped garden gnomes on the pool’s edge. He brushed his paws against the deck like he was trying to bury a bone, then darted away to his next target.

Little fucker.

Every few intakes of breath, the dog made a sound as if he was having an asthma attack. A deep whooping noise barked its way up through his nose and throat and it was like he changed from a dog to baby sea lion.

The sound of this dog’s erratic breathing didn’t seem to concern the guy sitting in the doorway. No, he was very busy staring off blankly into the dirty water of the pool that probably contained everything from the bubonic plague to scurvy, to syphilis or whatever else you could catch on the fucking Oregon Trail.

The guy wore a tight white wife-beater style tank top, his shoulders were broad, the lines of his muscular biceps danced and flexed as he moved his chin from resting on top of one closed fist to the other. He had some sort of tattoo on his back, but I could only make out the part that reached over the tops of his shoulders, stopping just short of his collarbone. His hair was still the color it was in the picture, light brown, tinted with red. It fell over his eyes with a slight curl at the ends. Long enough to push behind his ears and fall around his chin. I couldn’t see much of his other facial features from my aerial tree position, but I could make out a slight bend in his nose.

I was still observing my new target when the dog bent over guy in the doorway was still staring out into space as the dog splashed, huge-head first into the pool. It was then, when he didn’t make a move to save his dog, that I noticed the reason why he wasn’t moving. He was sitting. His right leg stuck out before him, bound in a black cast of some sort and resting on a stand attached to his chair.

His wheelchair.

When my target finally pulled his head out of his ass and noticed his drowning dog, he frantically rolled forward toward the edge of the pool. He called out, “Murray!” as he attempted to reach down into the water for the dog who’d already sunk too far. When that didn’t work, he tried to get up out of the chair, but all he managed to do was tip it over, and with a much larger splash, he joined his dog under the water.

Then nothing.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nolan

UNCLE CALLING FLASHED across the screen of my phone. With a sigh I pressed the red END button, sending him to voicemail for the third time since I’d been back in town. I didn’t have time to deal with my uncle, or anyone else, because I was busy. Super busy. I was smack dab in the middle of week two of having myself a grand ole pity party of epic proportions. Booze and weed in mass quantities were the only things on my immediate schedule.

My summer should’ve been filled with my old friends, parties, then moving into my new dorm in the athletic center of State for my junior year. Instead, I found myself staring at the wall in my grandparents’ old beach cottage, waiting for my circumstances to somehow miraculously change.

I’m gonna be waiting a fucking while.

I’d given up so much to get where I was. The sacrifices I made were well above and beyond what most college athletes were expected to give up. But I did it anyway. For a while it was worth it. A few short months prior to my injury, I was on top of the fucking world. No, I was king of the fucking world.

How the hell did it all go so wrong so fast?

Oh, I know how. Injuries, shit parents, and an athletic scholarship that was pulled out from under me the second the team doctor hinted that hockey wouldn’t be part of my future plans.

Fate is an evil and vengeful bitch.

My hockey dreams headed south faster than the Zamboni could clear the ice and before my skates even touched the rink for the upcoming season.

To top off the shit cake, was of course, the shit candles. Namely, Jessica. More specifically, Jessica and her sudden decision to fill her mouth with all the cock from Harper’s Ridge to Jacksonville Community College. Finding out what she was up to via an Instagram video of her doing said cock-sucking, wasn’t exactly a moment destined to make the highlight reel of my life. It’s not like she was my girlfriend; I’d never had one of those. But I thought we had fun together and she was someone I fucked on a regular basis. To me she might have just been the closest thing to a girlfriend I would ever have and I’d just been thinking that maybe we could talk about being more to one another.

My gran used to say I had the stomach of a mountain goat and that I could probably eat tin cans and be perfectly fine. However, after seeing the video of Jessica’s grand tour-de-cock all over the Internet, my stomach rolled.

In truth, it wouldn’t have lasted much longer than it did anyway. We weren’t in love by any means, we were just comfortable.

At least I’d been comfortable.

I didn’t have Jessica, but at least I’d had hockey.

Until I didn’t.

I’d been destined for the NHL. Now my only future looked more like I was going to be working for my uncle, which I’d been doing every summer until that beautiful bitch named Hockey Scholarship knocked on my door and presented me with a new future on a silver fucking platter.

The truth of the matter was that even though I loved my Uncle, any job after having my dreams crushed was going to seem like a shitty one. Any life other than the one I had envisioned in the NHL was going to fucking blow.

No matter what I knew I had to do, I wasn’t in a rush to do it anytime soon.

It was safe to say that I’d been in a pissy fucking mood, sitting in that dark living room feeling sorry for myself while inhaling the strong smell of mothballs and getting piss-ass drunk and higher than high. The mothballs used to be a smell that was comforting to me while Gran and Gramps were alive, but after they both died, it became a constant reminder they weren’t there anymore.

So there I sat, bouncing a blue rubber ball off the wall, jealous of the fucking ball because I couldn’t maneuver my god damned wheelchair close enough so I could bang my head against the wall in place of the ball.

Murray, the ancient French bulldog I’d had since I was a kid, who I was pretty sure was even older than me, had been yapping for five minutes to be let out. I’d tried to ignore him, but the little shit grew more persistent as he aged, and since he was like seven hundred, he’d grown to be quite the annoying little fucker. Besides the cottage, Murray was all I had left of my grandparents. “Come on,” I mumbled, wheeling myself over to the back of the house. Murray ran out the second I slid the glass door wide enough for him to scoot his little round body through. I positioned myself in the doorway while he did his business. I continued to contemplate the suckage my life had become when I had a thought.

Maybe I just need to get laid.

I’d been coming to Harper’s Ridge every summer since I was a toddler and had moved in permanently after Mom and Dad took off when I was in middle school. I was a local. I knew plenty of girls who would be willing to come over and let me fuck them into oblivion for a few hours.

The kind of company that ended in orgasms and cigarettes.

I was trying to remember where I put my phone, when I heard a splash.

FUCK.

Murray was in the pool.

Sinking.

His little legs weren’t nearly strong enough to carry him back the surface or propel him back over the side onto the deck. A few small whines escaped his little mouth before his head disappeared beneath the surface and he became completely submerged.

I leaned to one side and tried to reach out to him, but it was an impossible thing to do while sitting in the wheel chair, so I tried to maneuver myself out of it so I could lie on my stomach, but in my haste I tipped over my wheelchair and suddenly my wasted summer no longer mattered.

Neither did all my whining and bitching.

Neither did hockey.

Or Jessica.

No. None of the complaining about the shitty hand I’d been dealt mattered either, because in the next few minutes, I wouldn’t have a life to complain about.

I was drowning. I was drowning and I was dying. I knew that because as I was sinking just like Murray had. I opened my eyes under the water and looked up to the surface. Standing up there on the deck was the absolute hottest girl I’d ever seen. Long blonde hair, wearing a tiny white bikini. She was on her cell phone looking down at me. It looked as if she was bickering with whoever was on the other end as she pointed down at me. As each second passed, I knew I was getting closer and closer to the end. I felt helpless, but wasn’t ready to give up. I flailed my arms, about to get her attention, but she held up her index finger to me like she was demanding for me to give her a moment to finish her call.

What the fuck was going on?

This couldn’t be real. I was dying and my last vision before I went couldn’t even be a girl who liked me. I blame that one on Jessica and her lack of gag reflex. It had to be her fault I was imagining the most beautiful chick I’d ever seen and my own imagination couldn’t even pretend to be concerned that I just inhaled a lungful of water.

And then another.

In fact she looked pissed off. Like my dying was annoying her.

Fucking figures.

Black circles started to take over the edges of my eyes, growing larger and darker as I faded further and further away. My cast, which was seven thousand pounds and ironically scheduled to come off in the morning, pulled me down like an anchor. Further and further I sank until my feet hit the bottom.

I was helpless to do anything but watch the girl above me, her face distorted and blurred by the rippling green water. With one last frantic effort, I called upon every muscle in my arms and shoulders to try and swim my way back up to the surface, but it was useless. I never made it more than an inch or two off the bottom.

I must have been nearing the end because after inhaling another burning lungful of water, I imagined that the beautiful girl up on the surface had dove into the pool to join me, her golden hair splayed out all around her like a mermaid. Bubbles floated out of her nose as she swam toward me. I even imagined that she grabbed me by the wrist. I could actually feel her skin against mine as she hoisted me up through the water, dragging me toward the surface with a strength most grown men didn’t possess.

I guess mermaids are strong like that.

When the sun hit my face like a hot wet towel, I opened my mouth to gasp for air but I couldn’t draw it in. I was floating in and out of consciousness at that point, but I’m pretty sure the girl was standing over me, tapping her bare toes on the deck. She growled like she was frustrated and I’m positive she rolled her eyes before pinching the bridge of my nose and tipping my head back. I could feel the side of one of her breasts against my chest through her tiny bikini top, and if I wasn’t about to fucking die, it would have been one of the best days of my life. Who wouldn’t want a to feel a little mermaid tit on their last day? She leaned down lower, her face hovering just over mine for a were about to connect with mine…and it all went black.

I WAS PULLED back to reality with a cough that felt as if I’d been stabbed in the lungs, along with a feeling like I’d smoked every one of the cigarettes my gran smoked during her eighty years on the planet. And as a lifetime three-pack-a-day-er…it was a lot. I gasped for air, finally able to pull a little through my windpipe, but as it entered my lungs, it burned worse than the water. Suddenly, I was shoved over onto my side where I threw up over and over again, replacing more water with air in my lungs. This seemed to go on for hours, although it was probably only minutes. I was seeing stars by the time I could actually inhale again without feeling like I was being ripped apart from the inside.

A little tongue licked my eyeball. Murray. He stood over my face, drooling like we hadn’t almost gone down the fucking river. He shook out his wet coat, sending a spray of water and a dusting of little black and white hairs over my face and into my mouth. I wiped at my tongue with my hand as he sauntered back into the house through the open back door.

She saved Murray too?

Was she even real?

I turned over just in time to see a high and tight perfect ass, which was barely covered in a tiny scrap of white. The bottoms of her ass cheeks on display as she, and said ass, headed down the stairs at the back of the deck.

She was real after all.

She was real, and she was leaving.

I tried to call out to her but all I managed was to cough some more. My throat felt as if I’d taken up gargling glass. “Wait!” I finally managed to scratch out. I struggled to bring myself into a sitting position.

The girl turned around and flipped me off, in the process giving me a great view of her rack, which heaved up and down as she caught her breath. Water trickled down her face framing bright blue-green eyes. I followed the drops as they fell from her chin into the valley between her tits, and suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be the thin strap of white that was holding the tiny triangles of her top together. “Because of you,” she said, pointing at me accusingly. She then pointed into the house. “And that little tick dispenser, I now have to go visit the nearest HAZMAT unit to ward off the fucking plague that’s been incubating in that cesspool of yours.”

“Say what?” I asked, not fully able to comprehend what she was saying, but clearly this chick was not happy with me for some reason. I wasn’t unfamiliar with girls being pissed off at me. Actually, I was quite used to it. I’d crawled out of one too many bedroom windows in the middle of the night without ever calling again. But this chick was on a whole other level of mad.

It was hot.

Everything about her, from the way she glared at me, narrowing her eyes, to the pure anger radiating off of her, screamed hatred.

Fuck, maybe I did know her.

No, there was no fucking way I’d forget that face or that body…or that scowl.

“Clean. Your. Fucking. Pool,” she snapped, enunciating each word separately before turning and disappearing down the steps.

What in the actual fuck?

I felt this deep-seated want. No, a need, to run after her and drag her back onto the deck by her fucking ponytail for yelling at me when the bitch didn’t even know me.

And I would’ve run after her, if I could walk, or move…or breathe.

Maybe I was dead after all, because nothing that happened since I’d opened the back door had made any fucking sense. Or since I’d gotten injured for that matter. I lay back and let my head fall against the deck. I could see the clouds passing over the sun through the thin skin of my closed eyelids.

My headed pounded with the questions.

Who the hell was she?

Where the hell did she come from?

Why the fuck was she so pissed off?

Why the fuck am I so goddamn hard?

CHAPTER SIX

Rage

“ARE YOU SURE it was him?” Smoke barked through the phone, sounding a lot more agitated than usual.

“Yes, I’m sure. Although you were right, he’s older than he is in that picture, and much more…” I paused, trying to find the right word. “Muscley? Is that a word?”

“I got no fucking clue. But you’re positive it was him?” Smoke asked again. “Tell me, what exactly did he look like?”

“Like the picture,” I started, trying to recall his features. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. In my mind I was again standing on the deck, looking down at him while he sunk deeper and deeper into the water. “He has a dimple in his left cheek. He has hazel-colored eyes, not quite green, not quite brown, but bright and big for a man. He’s got a long nose that’s slightly crooked like it’s been broken. He’s pretty tall, I could see that even though he was in the wheelchair. He’s got a busted up leg. The right one. It’s in a cast” I recalled the way the ridges of his ab muscles contracted as he struggled to take his first breath after I pulled him from the pool and tossed him back onto the deck. “He’s got thick lips,” I said thinking of how I was just about to press my lips over his to give him a quick CPR breath when he started hacking up water.

I shuddered, but I was pretty sure that was only because human mouths carry almost as much disease as dogs do. I’d been about to risk potential deadly illness and infection to save some guy just because Smoke said I had to. “Rage?” Smoke asked, interrupting my train of thought.

“Yeah?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you liked what you saw when you looked at this guy,” Smoke said slowly, sounding wary.

I huffed, growing irritated at his incorrect assessment. “You really wanna know what I saw?”

“I do,” Smoke answered honestly.

I paused until I could practically hear Smoke’s anticipation of my answer. “I saw a job that needed to be done and I saw you pissed off at me indefinitely if your target left this world before you got the information you wanted.”

Smoke chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

“But I guess now that he’s seen me, you’ll have to get someone else. Total bummer. Oh well. Win some you lose some.” I was relieved my babysitting days were over. I was practically skipping over to where I’d parked Delilah in an alley between two hotels. I tucked my bag into the storage compartment under the seat and pulled out my keys.

Smoke chuckled again. “Nope, now you get your ass back there, Princess.”

I growled and kicked at the wall. “Smoke! I just spent three hours at an urgent care facility making sure there wasn’t hazardous mold growing in my lungs from that pool…and you want me to go back?” I asked. “I saved him for you! Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not Rage. I need this information. You’re going back and you’re gonna fucking get it for me.”

I leaned against the wall of the alley, shifting the phone from one hand to the other. “He’s seen me!” High up between the two buildings, there was a slit of an opening revealing the sky. A cloud rolled over, coating the small space in temporary grey.

“So he’s seen you? He doesn’t know who the fuck you are. Go back. Make friends with him. Get to know him. Ain’t no better way to find out information from him than to actually talk to him,” Smoke said. There was a little bit of desperation in his voice. Something I certainly wasn’t used to hearing from him.

I sighed. “You do realize that I’m a horrible actress and a really bad liar, right? I mean, I’m okay at first but after twenty minutes with me, the guy is going to want to wheel himself in front of traffic or call the cops.”

“So don’t act.”

“What?” I asked, growing more confused by the second. “How am I going to…?”

“Don’t tell him the truth, but don’t act either. Be yourself. You’re actually pretty funny if you leave out all the death and destruction shit. Lies only work when you believe them, so don’t lie. Tell as much of the truth is possible, but leave out the gory details.”

“You mean the fun,” I grumbled.

I checked under my nails for any lingering signs of pool funk I might not have found between all three of my showers. Smoke was delusional if he thought that somehow this guy would let me get within ten feet of him if he knew anything about the real me, regardless of what I didn’t tell him.

Smokes voice sounded tired. “Rage, I didn’t want to have to say this, but you fucking owe me and I need this. Go to the kid. Make friends. Find out what I need to know and keep an eye in him while I figure shit out on my end. Do this…for me.” Smoke paused before adding one word he’s never said to me in the years that I’d known him. “Please.”

He continued. “You said he’s got a bum leg right? Tell him you’re there to help him for the summer in exchange for a place to stay. If he argues with you, just tell him his uncle sent you. It’s all set up already. Do this for me, Rage. Please.”

Fuck.

I raised my clenched fist to the sky and retrieved my bag back out of the storage compartment of my scooter, slinging it over my shoulders.

“You got me?” Smoke asked.

Puffing out my cheeks I blew out a breath. “Yeah, yeah. Friends. Help. Uncle. Please. Got it.”

“But if the shit fucking hurts you in any way, you let me know, and I’ll gut him in his fucking sleep. I need this info, but I need my right-hand girl more,” Smoke said, breathing fire through the phone.

“Yeah, I got ya. Tries anything. Gutted. Duly noted.” I squared my shoulders and set off down the beach. “Don’t worry about a thing, Smoke. We’re gonna be total besties. What’s his name, anyway?”

“Nolan. Nolan Archer.” Smoke said. I clicked the call to an end.

Dread consumed me as I stopped short of the small shell driveway. The old house looked even more decrepit from my new position on the ground. I’d done some shit in my few years. Things most people couldn’t even conceive, but I could do those things as easily as going outside and checking the mail.

What I couldn’t do was old and dirty. I looked back up at the house and cringed. I also didn’t do FRIENDS.

I’d only had one other friend and that hadn’t exactly ended well. But then again, this friendship wasn’t going to end well either. For one of us at least.

Remembering the look on Cody’s face the last time I saw him still makes me cringe.

It was for the best. I reminded myself. He’s happy now. He has a girlfriend. One who probably doesn’t like to kill people or blow shit up.

I shifted my bag from one shoulder to the other and told myself that this wasn’t the same thing and that this fake friendship wouldn’t be anything like how things were with Cody.

For one thing, I wasn’t having sex with this guy. Like ever. Or anyone else for that matter. Secondly, regardless of what happened in the interim, I was going into this job knowing exactly how things were going to end.

Smoke had plucked me out of a life I hated and handed me the life I’d always wanted. We’d been through so much and he was right, I did owe him. I wasn’t going to let him down.

Moving forward, the only thing Nolan Archer would need saving from…was me.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hope

Sixteen years old

IT WAS MY sixteenth birthday. All I’d wanted was to hang out with Cody and not have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t for a few hours. Instead, my parents paraded every relative I sort of knew through the house, and much to my horror, invited the entire junior class over. They meant well. They wanted a daughter who liked surprise parties and who had friends and who could join group activities, so that’s how they treated me.

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have and all that.

When I walked in the door to the shouts of SURPRISE! and stared into a dozens faces of people I’d barely every spoken a word to…I felt the burn spark to life. The onslaught was sudden; like a free-fall I wasn’t expecting. There wasn’t much I could do but stand there in complete horror as my mom shuffled me proudly through the crowd.

“Moe,” I said, trying to grab her attention as she talked over me, introducing me to “Uncle Yan from the old country who I hadn’t seen since I was in diapers,” and “Aunt Marianne, who sent you that children’s bible when you were three, don’t you remember?” And Lee, “your genius cousin who just got back from a year of traipsing around the world.”

The front door burst open, slamming against the wall and almost coming undone from the hinges. The crowd turned toward Cody as he dashed into the room, cutting through the party-goers on his way to me. When he reached me he spun me around by my shoulders. With one look understanding of what was happening inside me flashed across his face. He led me away from my mother, parting the crowd and pushing me forward toward the stars. “GO!” Cody screamed over the music. I bolted, leaving behind my parents who called out to me as I escaped, and Cody who’d acted as a human barricade, stopping them before they could come after me.

They still couldn’t see the signs. They still didn’t understand.

No one did.

No one but Cody.

It didn’t need to be a party. Or a crowd. Or anything, really. Sometimes the anger came on like an attack and sometimes it simmered under the surface until it exploded. That’s when I did things like push a desk at a teacher, or throw a rock through my gymnastics coach’s windshield. The worst was when I attacked the quarterback of the football team after he’d made some sort of comment toward me about being a frigid bitch, which resulted in me choking him out until his coach had to pry me off of him.

Surprisingly, that particular incident one was handled in private because apparently, the coach didn’t want news getting around that the reason for the bruises around his star player’s neck and the popped blood vessels in his eyes were caused by a girl half his weight, who he couldn’t shake off. I didn’t get kicked out of school, but instead got put under a forty-eight-hour mental evaluation hold at the hospital and afterwards was ordered to cross the hall when I saw Donnie coming my way.

Once I was up in my room with the door closed, I tried to take a deep breath but I couldn’t pull in enough air. The pink flowery walls mocked me. The noise from the party floated up the stairs and seeped under the crack in my door and that’s when it happened.

It started at the base of my spine, growing like a red-hot poker until it was so hot, it was like my every breath was fanning the internal flames causing them to grow bigger, hotter, and higher. I paced back and forth in my room, wringing out my hands and pulling at my hair while adding to the already worn path on the light blue carpet.

Depending on the severity of my mood, some nights when I felt the heat start, I could escape up to my room and pace the floor until it died out. Sometimes that took hours. Sometimes minutes.

Sometimes it didn’t work at all.

The embers of my anger grew until it invaded my nerves, muscles, limbs and mind, taking over like an alien possession. At that point none of Cody’s written rules, no positive thinking, no deep breath could rein me in.

I paced over to the window as the heat reached my ears, burning with the need to unleash the demon beckoning to me. I flung open the window, pushed at the screen until it popped free of the frame, and then leapt. My feet hit the wet grass and I took off into the night, hopping the back fence and running out into the dense woods behind our house. There was no light to guide my way, but I didn’t need light. Cody and I had explored every inch of the woods, creating forts and hideaways since we were barely out of diapers.

I ran until my lungs burned and then I only ran faster, needing to push, to feel the pain, to feel anything other than the bubbling anger exploding inside of me like fireworks. Needing to expel the anger from my system.

When I reached my destination, I felt around the base of the tree for where I’d kept a switchblade between the overgrown roots. I was breathing hard when my hand connected with the metal handle. I pulled it from its hiding place with a roar and with both hands on the blade, I plunged it into the trunk of the tree over and over again, screaming through my anger. Wood chips sprayed out all around me, sap dripping from where I’d wounded the tree.

Scars in the bark from prior trips to the same tree on similar nights peppered the trunk. Nights when I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening to me. When all rational thought left and all that was left was the urge. The need.

The Rage.

Male voices in the distance caught my attention, snapping me from my tirade. A branch snapped. I tightened my grip on the knife and crouched down beside some brush, snaking my way closer to where the voices were coming from. I lay on my stomach, peering through a gap in the leaves where the dense brush gave way to a small clearing. The absence of trees overhead allowed the moonlight in. I could clearly see the scene playing out in front of me.

Two men in black leather vests and dark jeans were standing across from one another. The shorter man with greasy blonde hair had a big smile on his face as he chewed on a toothpick. He held a shovel casually across his shoulders, which was what led me to notice the large hole in the ground in the far corner of the clearing. The other much larger man with black hair to his shoulders and matching beard, was glaring hatred at a third man who was on his knees with his wrists tied behind his back. His mouth was duct taped shut. A dark wet stain formed on the front of his pants.

A gun to his head.

My heartbeat raced. My anger turned to adrenaline, surging through me.

The larger man, the one holding the gun, spoke, his voice deep, and rough, spreading over me like a thick blanket of darkness. “You thought you could fuck with us and get away with it, Jerry?” His nostrils flared. The air shifted as well as something inside of me and instantly, I wished it was my hand holding the gun. Pulling the trigger. Goosebumps broke out on my arms and down my spine. I shivered.

He cocked the gun and I gasped. Not out of surprise, but out of sheer awe.

“No…no, Smoke. Don’t do this. I promise, I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Jerry sputtered.

Smoke chuckled, low and throaty. “You didn’t mean to hurt her? She was a kid motherfucker. You raped her, sliced up her virgin cunt, and gave her a fucking concussion. So don’t fucking tell me you didn’t mean to fucking hurt her just so you can spare your own life you weak piece of shit! It’s too late for that now.” Smoke raised his gun and brought it down, smashing the side of it against Jerry’s head, sending him falling sideways onto the dirt floor. “Mugs, pick this shit-bag off the fucking floor. I want him upright when I blow his fucking brains out.”

I was no longer in control of my movements. Of my thoughts. It was like I was hovering above my own body, watching myself down below. Without thinking I raised up to my knees to get a better view over the brush. The two men in leather dragged Jerry over to the hole and kicked him inside. I’m not sure if Jerry was on his knees or standing, but I could only see him from the neck up.

I swallowed hard, unable to tear my eyes away from the men. Just like when I felt the anger start, I felt cloudy, consumed, except it wasn’t anger that was consuming me.

It was WANT.

NEED.

Pure and primal.

I didn’t realize I’d stood up, or that I’d stepped out over the brush, or that I’d walked directly into the center of the clearing until it was too late.

Jerry noticed me first, watching me as I approached and stopped directly behind the two men. When they noticed Jerry staring behind them they turned around abruptly. Mugs dropped the shovel and drew a gun from under his vest. Smoke turned his gun from Jerry to me. I leaned to the side, looking past the men and trying to get a better look into the hole where Jerry was bleeding from his right eye. He looked up at me and with his eyes, he made a silent plea for my help.

“Who the fuck are you?” Smoke demanded, closing the gap between us in two strides. His beard long enough to brush against his broad chest, which was naked under his vest. Artful tattoos with bold lines and beautiful shading covered the entire right side of his well developed torso and arm, the colorful designs snaking up to the front of his throat to the side of his neck and behind his ear. His eyes were dark brown, appearing almost black when he glared down at me with a look of confusion and anger.

Motorcycle Clubs weren’t something new to me. Lilly Heights was a cut through to Logan’s Beach and Harper’s Ridge where two of the biggest MC’s in the state had their headquarters. I was used to seeing bikers ride through town on the weekends, but Smoke’s cut was blank, void any patches, whereas Mugs clearly had a large one across the back that read “Beach Bastards” as well as several smaller ones on the front with writing I couldn’t make out in the dark.

My gaze flitted quickly between Jerry, to Mugs, to the gun in Smoke’s hand…which he’d raised and was now pointed at my head.

I smiled, mostly because I couldn’t not smile. I pointed to Smoke’s gun and clapped my hands together, unable to form the exact words I wanted to say. I cleared my throat and tried again, attempting not to sound giddy, but it didn’t work. “Can I? Please?” I asked in a shouty whisper.

“Can you what?” Smoke barked. “What exactly are you asking, girl?” He growled, although his face said ‘anger’ and ‘annoyance’ I also saw a trace of understanding.

“Why the fuck are you smiling, girl?” Mugs asked, shaking his gun.

I didn’t acknowledge Mugs, sensing that Smoke was the only one who could help me. I looked and him and then pointed to the hole in the ground where Jerry was moaning and holding the side of his head.

Smoke peered down at me through the long dark hair that had fallen into his face and something between us clicked. Something life changing. Not love, or anything so ridiculous, but something important nonetheless. I knew he felt it too when he smiled, the corner of his mouth turning upwards in a wicked grin. He scratched his head with the barrel of his gun. “How old are you, girl?”

“Fifteen,” I answered, sounding as eager as a little kid on Santa’s lap, like I was about to tell him what I wanted for Christmas. “No, sixteen. Today’s my birthday.”

“Well happy fucking birthday, girl. Smoke, what the fuck are you doing?” Mugs whined. “Let’s take this fucker out and then take her out. She’s a witness now. We can’t let her just walk.” He started to walk toward us but Smoke held up a hand to stop him, waving him back before he could take another step. “Just hurry the fuck up, man. And just know that you’re not getting out of helping me dig another fucking hole.”

I leaned to the side on one foot, stretching my neck to see past the wall of muscle that was Smoke. “I won’t be a witness if…I’m the one who does it,” I offered, standing up straight and bouncing on the balls of my feet.

“You’re not afraid are you?” Smoke asked although I don’t think he was asking to get an answer because he already knew the answer. He crouched down and studied my face, searching my eyes. I knew what he was looking for but I also knew he wasn’t going to find it. Any of it. Fear, hesitation, sympathy, blah-blah-blah.

I bit my lip and linked my hands behind my back, swinging my entire body along with my head as I shook it from side to side.

“You high or something?” Smoke asked, quirking an eyebrow and ignoring another call from Mugs to hurry up and kill me already.

“No,” I whispered, although I was intoxicated. So drunk on excitement that I could practically smell it seeping from my pores.

Smoke raised his gun, again aiming it at my head. He took another step toward me, closing the gap between us and roughly pressing the barrel of the gun against my forehead.

I didn’t budge.

I also didn’t stop smiling. In reality I couldn’t have ripped it off my face if I tried prying it down with my own fingers.

Gun to my head or not, I felt alive.

I felt free.

Smoke’s shoulders shook with a sudden burst of laughter. He holstered his gun and again looked deep into my eyes. The understanding I’d caught a glimpse of earlier flashed across his dark gaze. “I recognize that look,” he said, scratching at his forearm. “Never seen it in a chick before, though. Especially not one so fucking young. Only ever seen it in guys. Guys like me.”

“Guys like you?” I asked, scrunching my forehead. I was curious as to what category he was including me in.

“Yeah, guys like me. The bad guys.” The muscles in his forearms flexed as he cracked his knuckles.

“Please,” I begged, feeling not just that I wanted to be the one to do this, but I needed to be. “Bad, good…” I shook my head fiercely, slapping the side of my face with my ponytail. “I just have to.”

Smoke didn’t take his eyes off me when he called back to Mugs, “The girl’s right. She ain’t a witness if she does it herself.” He moved to my side and turned back around to Mugs so we were both facing him. Mugs huffed again and checked his watch. He lit a cigarette.

Mugs’ skin was a lot paler than Smoke’s. His hair appeared virtually white under the light of the full moon. “Wow, I knew you like some fucked up shit, Smoke, but a sixteen-year-old who begs strangers to let her kill motherfuckers?” Mugs rolled his eyes and flicked the burning ash off the end of his cigarette. “I hope you two deviants will be really fucking happy together.”

“No, that’s not what…” I started to argue with Mugs who mistook blood lust for another kind of lust.

“You don’t gotta explain shit to him,” Smoke interrupted. Lowering his voice, he whispered, “Mugs is a fucking moron. He doesn’t get it.”

“I heard that,” Mugs said, “and what I get is that the longer we’re out here the higher the chances are of getting caught. I mean, I hate to kill and run, but we gotta fucking go.” Mugs turned his gun on Jerry and without warning he pulled the trigger, sending a spray of dirt raining down into the hole.

“What the fuck?” Smoke roared.

I fell to the ground and wrapped my arms around my knees, unprepared for the wave of disappointment that crashed into me like a tsunami. I blinked several times, an odd prickling feeling started behind my eyes, reminding me of the way your foot feels when you’ve been sitting funny for too long.

Smoke knelt down beside me “You okay, kid?” He tipped my chin up to meet his and oddly enough his touch didn’t send me running. Only Cody has ever managed to accomplish that, yet here was this stranger, able to do something it took me years to get comfortable, even with my best friend. When Smoke’s eyes met mine, I lost it.

For the first time in all my sixteen years of life…I cried.

Smoke wrapped his strong arms around me, pulling me against his chest. “I’ll take care of you,” Smoke said, whispering into my hair. “I’ll help you. Would you like that?” he asked and through my tears I nodded, unsure of what I was really agreeing to, but knowing that I needed whatever it was he was offering.

Then I cried some more.

That night my anger sent me running right into the arms of Smoke, and little did I know then, right onto the beginning of a new path I knew I had to take.

“Just kidding,” Mugs said suddenly. He stabbed his shovel into the ground and walked over to where we were crouched on the ground. “Look for yourself. He’s still alive. Just had to know you were serious.”

Again my heart picked up speed.

“You’re a fucking prick, Mugs,” Smoke spat.

“Yeah, I know. Now let’s hurry the fuck up and get out of here. I got shit to do.”

“What’s your name, kid?” Smoke asked, keeping me wrapped up in his strong arms. I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t. Hope didn’t feel right anymore. It never had. The only name that came to mind was the only name that had ever felt right to me. The one Cody called from time to time.

“Rage.” I swallowed hard. “My name is Rage.”

“Rage. I like it.” Smoke held his gun in the palm of his hand, offering it up to me as Mugs trained his own directly at me. “Ever shoot one of these before?” he asked, releasing me from his hulky embrace, lifting me off my feet by my elbow.

“No,” I admitted.

“Stand here,” Smoke said, standing behind me and holding me by the shoulders. He reached over me and handed me the gun. “Take this, hold it just how I’m holding it now.” I did what he said, the gun a lot heavier in my hands than I thought it would be, yet it felt natural.

Normal.

My normal.

Smoke pushed me forward until Jerry’s crouched figure came into view in the hole. He opened his good eye, the other was swollen shut. Even though he saw us, he didn’t move, all the fight in him gone. “Aim like this, and then squeeze the trigger,” he said against my ear. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.”

I’d never been so sure of anything in my entire life.

Smoke leaned in closer. He smelled of soap and cigarettes. “ ’Cause this is life-changing shit right here. You do this and things won’t be the same ever again. This is the kind of shit that haunts grown men at night.” He paused. “The kind of shit that has them begging Jesus for forgiveness.”

“I don’t need forgiveness,” I whispered, squeezing the trigger. Jerry’s one eye stayed open although the life that had been there seconds before was now gone. His stare completely blank. The dirt underneath him darkened as his blood seeped out from the fresh wound on the side of his head.

Being drunk on excitement had nothing on the high of newly spilled blood. A satisfaction I never knew existed fluttered around inside of me, seeping into my every movement like the slow drip of a drug into my vein.

“Oh, yeah? Everyone seeks forgiveness sooner or later, princess. Why not you?” Smoke asked, holding out his hand for the gun, which was still warm from use.

Reluctantly, I let it drop into his hand. I turned back around to face Smoke. “Because…I’m not sorry.”

“Good, that’s the first lesson,” Smoke said, suddenly turning his gun on Mugs and pulling the trigger in quick succession. Three bullets exploded into his chest, sending him teetering back over the hole’s edge until he fell backward into it, his body joining Jerry’s.

“What’s the second lesson?” I asked, staring at the gun as Smoke changed out the clip.

“The second lesson, is that in order to survive you are loyal to no one. You are on nobody’s side except your own.” He holstered the gun under his vest and peered down into my eyes. It had only been minutes since we’d met but I felt as if I’d known this Smoke person my entire life. “You got that?”

I nodded. “Yes, loyal to no one,” I said, but then added, “What about you?”

Smoke laughed and scratched at his beard. “No one, kid.” His dark eyes were shining, practically glowing when he added, “Especially not me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nolan

FOR THE FIRST time in all my twenty-one years, I was early for something. I’d never been a morning person. The only sunrises I’d ever seen were the product of late nights turned early mornings, or because the coach called for an early practice.

Consumed by thoughts of the girl in the white bikini, I tossed and turned all night. By four a.m. I’d given up trying to sleep altogether. By the time the sun rose, I was already out the door, the first person in the waiting room that morning. In even before the doctor.

I fucking hated doctors and their offices and their waiting rooms. After my injury doctors had become nothing more than white coat wearing, bad news dispensers.

The doc poked around my leg for a while asking me if this or that hurt before he removed my cast. When he said my leg was healing nicely my hopes perked up like a dog being offered bacon. He gave me a pair of crutches to practice using to get me up and moving again. I knew I shouldn’t have asked him if hockey was ever going to be a possibility for me, considering I’d already been told it wasn’t, but I was still holding out hope for some sort of miracle. I got my answer in the form of a small smile that was more like an upside down frown.

The doc looked down at me like the pitiful motherfucker I felt like. With one hand on my shoulder, he simply shook his head and handed me a prescription for Percocet, which I promptly tossed in the trash the second I wheeled my ass out of there. If I couldn’t feel the pain, how would I prevent myself from injuring it again? How would I know it was healing?

Fuck the doctors. Fuck what they said. Fuck my fucking leg. In that moment I found a new determination that hadn’t been there the day before. Regardless of what it took I was going to get back on the ice again.

Not only was I going to skate again.

I was going to play again.

A little pain wasn’t going to stop me. No one was going to stop me.

The day before, I’d been ready to give up on everything and now, after being so close to the end, I could only see my way forward. I’d been looking through the tunnel of death and now I had tunnel vision toward the same future that was mine just a few short months earlier. I was going to use every second of my summer proving all the naysayers wrong.

For the first time since my injury, I felt lighter. Fuck ’em if they tell you that you can’t. Then show them that you can, was what my gramps always said. If he were still around, he’d be just as disappointed in my injury as I was, but leaving the doctor’s office that day I think he’d be proud.

At the crosswalk in the middle of our town, I stopped my wheel chair and waited for the flashing red hand on the sign to turn green. Murray, already tired from the quarter mile walk from the cottage to the doctor’s office, was snoring in my lap. I removed my t-shirt, leaving on the wife-beater I’d had on underneath, without disturbing his lazy ass and flung it over the back of my chair, where I’d tied up my new crutches with a bungee cord.

It wasn’t even eleven a.m. yet, but already the temperature was well over ninety degrees. I’d always liked Harper’s Ridge. The heat. The beach. The girls in bikinis 365 days a year didn’t hurt either. The town was as unique as the tourists who visited. I always loved watching them with their cameras around their necks. You could spot a tourist from a mile away because they were always the ones wearing sneakers instead of flip-flops. Their red faces a mixture of sunburn and having just come from a blizzard in whatever northern town they’d temporarily abandoned to claim their piece of paradise. On the rare occasion the temperature dropped below seventy, they were the ones still walking around in their bathing suits, while us locals covered our shorts with our winter gear, which were hoodies, and shivered the entire three steps from the car to the house.

Georgia had been great, too. The weather. The hockey. Lakes instead of the Gulf. Pontoons instead of fishing boats. Fresh water fishing for bass instead of salt water fishing for reds. So different, yet the same. The last two years had been a dream, but I’d forgotten how much I missed this place.

Just yesterday I felt nothing but disdain for the town I used to wait all school year to be able to visit during the summers before I moved here permanently.

A lanky old man with a deep dark tan carried a fishing pole and a bucket, crossing the hot pavement, barefooted and unaffected. He flashed me a toothless smile on his way to the pier.

I felt…better that morning. Still unsettled, but better nonetheless.

I knew the reason for my new outlook on life. The reason I had a life.

HER.

The girl in the white bikini.

Overnight, my imagination had gotten the best of me and I replayed the drowning and then her diving in and saving me, but as it played out like a movie, my subconscious had taken some artistic liberties. Replacing her scowl with a smile. Instead of running away and flipping the bird again, my dream ended with her on her knees, lips wrapped around my cock.

Fuck.

I was getting hard again, just like I’d been all fucking night and every time I thought about her. Not wanting to sport massive wood in public, I adjusted myself the best I could. “Sorry, Murray,” I said, apologized for waking him up and rolling him over to the side so I could adjust my dick some more.

I rolled my chair forward when the light turned green, grateful I could start using the crutches and start putting strength back into my leg. Murray instantly fell back asleep. An elderly woman in her rascal scooter crossed the road with me, saluting me as she passed me by.

I passed by what only last summer used to be cottages just like Gran and Gramps, but were now towering beach mansions, townhouses, condos, and high-end hotels. Gran always insisted that it didn’t matter how much they offered them, that they were going to have to build their fancy buildings around her house because they were going to die in that cottage.

Which was exactly what happened.

Love wasn’t real. Not in my generation anyway. People had become too selfish for love. However, if anyone ever needed proof that it really had existed at one time, they had all the proof they needed in my Gran and Gramps.

Sporting wood wasn’t cool in public, but neither was sniveling about my grandparents. Again, I chalked up my out of character sentimentality to the whole almost dying thing. Which again led to thoughts of the girl. I’d thought about her so much, I found myself looking around for her as I wheeled my way back to the cottage.

Getting laid will solve that right quick.

Digging my phone out of my pocket I tapped out a text to a local girl named Talia, who I’d hooked up with a few summers before. Getting laid was going to be the first step in clearing my head and feeling like myself again. And now that I was feeling better, I was definitely in the mood for some company, even more so than the day before.

I made sure there was no misunderstanding the intentions of my text when I hit SEND.

By the time I got back to the house, Talia had already replied.

On my way. XOXO

Perfect. Talia would help rid me of the enigma that was the girl in the white bikini. Within a few hours, she would be nothing more than someone who was at the right place at the right time. No more than a fuzzy memory.

I was so fucking wrong.

CHAPTER NINE

Nolan

WHILE I WAITED for Talia, I’d showered, something I hadn’t done all that much of over the past few weeks. I was suddenly very grateful I’d helped Gramps install the handicap tub a few years back.

I put on a fresh pair of board shorts and sprayed some of my gramps special cologne from the bottle he kept in the back of his sock drawer for special occasions. I changed into a clean wife-beater, although after Talia arrived I didn’t plan on wearing it long.

I shooed Murray into the hallway bathroom and swiped a pile of mail and newspapers from the counter into the drawer below, trying several times to get the overflowing drawer to close completely.

It wasn’t long before I heard a female voice outside. Scratch that.

Voices?

I rolled over to the front window and peeked through the lace curtain and, as I expected, there was Talia on the porch, her curly red hair piled high on her head. Her ample breasts squeezing out from the top of her top which was three sizes too small which didn’t surprise me because that was just Talia.

It was who was with her that shocked the fucking hell out of me.

What the fuck is she doing here?

She had on the white bikini again, the tied strings poking out of the neckline of her curve hugging pink t-shirt at the nape of her neck. A blue athletic bag was slug around her shoulders, the white strap filling the space of her cleavage. Her long blonde hair was yet again slicked back into a sleek ponytail, which fell just shy of her tiny waist.

Talia was hot—tall and all womanly curves, built like a twenty’s pin-up. White Bikini was shorter by several inches. Not a stitch of detectable makeup. Dark lashes. Full pink lips.

An effortless kind of beauty.

The kind my cock liked because it leapt at the sight of her.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” White Bikini asked, surprising me yet again. Talia’s hand was raised in a fist like she’d been about to knock.

“Ummmm…” Talia muttered, turning around and leaning back to check the house number like she might be at the wrong place. “I’m looking for Nolan,” she said, cocking her head to the side and placing her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

My mouth dropped open when she spoke again. “I’m Rage, it’s short for Regina. Nolan isn’t home right now, but can I give him a message?” She shuffled up to the door giving Talia no choice but to step aside. Talia stared at the girl with her mouth agape as White Bikini rested her hand on the doorknob like she owned the place.

What the hell does she think she’s doing?

And why am I leaning over to unlock the door?

Talia’s nose scrunched up in confusion. “I’m sorry, are you the cleaning lady or something?” she asked, taking a step back onto the side ramp where she was now in a position where she looked up at the girl who’d introduced herself as Rage.

“Me?” Rage asked, flashing Talia a smile that looked anything but genuine. Her lips twisted to the side awkwardly, like she was somehow managing to smile and frown at the same time. It was the most god-awful thing I’d ever seen. I covered my mouth to suppress a laugh.

I could have just opened the door and asked what the hell she was doing there, sent her on her way, and told Talia to come inside, strip down, and hop on my cock, but my curiosity got the best of me and I desperately wanted to see how this odd scene played out.

Rage broke her awkward smile and with a straight face, she said, “I’m his wife. Nolan will be back in a little bit, though, if you want to come inside and wait. He just ran out to get me tampons. He’s so helpful that way.”

Talia took another step back. “I uh,” she said, now standing completely off the ramp where it met the shell driveway.

“I assume you’re here for the nanny position?” Rage asked, patting her flat her stomach, taking her lie a step further. Talia’s eyes widened in complete horror. “I know I’m not even showing yet, but it’s never too early to start looking for good help.”

“I thought you said he was out buying you tampons?” Talia asked, crossing her arms over her chest and jutting out a hip.

“I did,” Rage said, not correcting the lie she’d been caught in. She pointed to Talia’s equally flat stomach. “Wow, you’re expecting too? We should go baby shopping together. I don’t know many people around here and…”

In a huff, Talia turned and jogged off. She was already on the sidewalk and halfway down the street before Rage finished her sentence. I expected the girl I now knew as Rage to be laughing at her own joke, or doing some sort of victory dance for getting rid of my guest, but there she stood, staring at the door. Her face completely unreadable.

“Are you going to open the door or just stare at me through the window all day?” She asked with a sigh. She met my eyes through the lace curtain.

Shit.

My afternoon had just gotten a whole lot more interesting.

Rage

OF COURSE THE second I decide to actually make contact with my target, a girl with cans the size of Lake Okeechobee came bouncing up the ramp to Nolan’s house.

The entire time I was trying to get rid of Boobs McGee, I felt his eyes on me through the window. Yet, I kept going on with my lies, even though I knew he could hear me. A part of me wished he’d open the door and call me out. Although we hadn’t officially met, I was still beyond irritated at the cesspool incident from the day before and liked that I was potentially provoking his anger the way he’d provoked mine.

“Are you going to open the door or just stare at me through the window all day?” I asked after I’d successfully run the girl off. I turned to where I’d sensed him watching me through the window.

“It’s open,” Nolan said. “Come the fuck on in.”

I stepped inside and leaned back on the door, clicking it shut behind me. I scanned the room and gnashed my teeth together.

This is where dust came to die.

“You wanna tell me what the fuck that was all about?” Nolan snapped, jerking his chin to the door. His hands were wrapped around the armrests of his chair as if he were about to snap them off at any second.

Even sitting down in a wheelchair the man was massive, commanding. If I were the type of person who could be intimidated, I might have even described him as such.

I wasn’t.

Shrugging I decided to try my hand at the whole truth thing Smoke had been so gung-ho about. “I didn’t want her here, so I made her go away,” I admitted.

Nolan laughed, although I couldn’t tell if he really thought what I’d done was funny or if he was just laughing because he couldn’t believe it. His unruly hair was long enough to push behind his ears, which was exactly what he did. It fell over his jaw-full of stubble, revealing the even more prominent dimple on his left cheek he’d had in his school picture.

“I saved you yesterday,” I blurted, growing uncomfortable under both his gaze and the silence.

Nolan huffed. “Yeah, then you ran the fuck off.”

“You pissed me off,” I admitted, clutching my bag tighter to my chest. “On a scale of one to ten, it wasn’t the most pissed off I’d ever been. But I’d give it a strong six.” Nolan’s eyes followed my movement and landed on my cleavage. I moved my bag again until it was covering my chest completely.

Nolan cleared his throat. “How exactly did my drowning piss you off?” he asked. It was dark inside the house. Musty. The only light was coming through the living room sliders, which had no covering. Everything from the faded and chipped white wicker furniture, to the small TV on a stand in the corner, was old and dusty. A wayward beam of sunlight illuminated the massive amount dust as it cycloned around in mid-air. I felt my throat closing. I waited for whatever was mutating in that house to trigger some unknown allergic reaction in me and for a second wished I had one of those pen needles I could stab into my thigh when the anaphylactic shock took hold.

My chest grew tight. A pit in my stomach grew. I had the urge to clear my throat. Or cough. Or breathe into a bag. Great. The house was old. Asbestos poisoning was a good possibility. So was lead.

I steadied my eyes on Nolan and tried to focus on his dimple instead of death by dust microbials. “Your pool is disgusting.”

“My pool?” Nolan’s forehead creased and he rubbed the bridge of his nose between two of his fingers. “You were on the phone. You were talking to someone and letting me drown and then you saved me. What the fuck was all that about?”

I shifted from one foot to the other. “Ummm… I was trying to call for help but couldn’t get a signal…”

I was calling Smoke to see if I should just let you drown. You’re alive, so obviously my end of the argument didn’t hold up.

Nolan raised an eyebrow at me. There was no way he believed me. I didn’t believe me.

Shit.

I quickly moved on, “I came back here to check on you and to talk to you about something.”

“I still don’t understand how a pool made you so pissed off,” Nolan said, unable to follow me to the new conversation I was trying to lead him toward.

I bit my bottom lip and looked down at the grimy floor. This was going to be harder than I thought. But if Smoke wanted me to tell this kid the truth then fuck it. It would be completely his fault when his stupid plan backfired. What was the worst that could happen? Nolan would get suspicious? Job over? I might get to end this fiasco early. It didn’t sound so bad.

I let out a frustrated growl. “Okay, so here is how it is,” I said, letting my shoulders fall as well as my pretenses. I almost took a deep breath before catching another glimpse of the dust storm in the living room. Instead I opted for several short breaths. I removed the bag from my shoulders and walked over to the open kitchen, flinging it onto the counter, which looked like it had been recently cleaned, or at least wiped down so I used it as my safe place.

Nolan crossed his arms over his expansive and well defined chest, causing the veins over them to move and his biceps to bulge. His forearms were bigger than my legs.

He cleared his throat.

“Oh, right. My name. I go by Rage, but I lie and tell everyone it’s short for Regina, but it’s really just a nickname I was given as a kid because I’ve had… have issues, anger-type issues. That’s of course on top of the small case of OCD, mild to sometimes major germaphobia, and hypochondria. Oh, but that last one’s been totally better since I deleted the Web MD app from my phone. I don’t tell people my real name because frankly, I’d just rather not go there.” I looked over to Nolan to make sure he was still with me. He was, his eyes following my every movement.

This truth thing wasn’t so bad. So far, so good.

Pushing off the counter I ventured out of my safe place and made my way around the small square space. I surveyed the framed pictures on the walls of family, mostly an elderly couple and a younger version of Nolan. There was a massive amount of knick-knacks covering every available surface, which was all covered by a layer of dust turned dirt. The kitchen, dining room, and living space were all crowded together into one tiny area.

“Keep going,” Nolan said, urging me on. “Don’t stop now.”

“I was nearby when I saw you drowning,” I started. “And when you fell in the pool, my first thought wasn’t to save you,” I said, pressing on a few keys of a small out of tune piano in the corner of the room.

“No?” Nolan asked, although he didn’t sound surprised.

I shook my head, my ponytail swishing from side to side, lightly smacking against my shoulders. “Nope. My first thought was of your gross pool. Of what invisible thing could be lurking in there just waiting to make its way inside me and kill me, like a bomb on a timer. Have you heard of brain-eating amoeba? It’s totally a thing. Look it up. Just not on Web MD. One swim in infested water and some one cell son of a bitch is suddenly up your nose and eating away at your brain. Your very own parasite zombie apocalypse which you don’t even know about until your nose bleeds and you keel over dead.”

Nolan remained silent like he was waiting for me to continue. But when I didn’t say anything, he finally spoke. “You were pissed off at me…because of the pool?”

I sighed. “How did you not get that from ‘Clean. Your. Pool’?” I threw air quotes over the last three words I’d spoken to him before hightailing it to urgent care for a round of preventative antibiotics. Followed by a trip to the swim shop where I tossed my bikini into the garbage and walked out wearing a brand new replacement.

Through the back sliding glass doors, the tiny house made up for its size and condition with an undisturbed view of the Gulf. The sun began its decent, falling quickly behind the small waves. “I’m here for the summer,” I said, still staring out the window. A young boy ran by the deck chasing a Frisbee. “I’ve seen you around, noticed your leg.” I readied myself for what I was about to say next. “I need a place to stay for a little while,” I looked around the room and back at Nolan. “And you look like you could use some help around here.”

Nolan didn’t look convinced. “And you’re uncle thought it would be a good idea for you to have some help.”

“YOU KNOW MY uncle?” Nolan asked. There was a small trace of alarm in his voice, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“No, I just know someone who talked to him recently. Said you might be okay with me staying here in exchange for helping you out.”

“What kind of help?” His eyes again traveled down the length my body. “Besides, what makes you think I need help?” he asked defensively.

I looked at the ceiling and then to the floors. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the six inches of dust on your fan, your floors, and every other surface in this place. Maybe the mold growing in the corner, the slime growing in your pool, the girl with the tongue ring at your door in the middle of the afternoon,” I challenged, unsure of why I threw the girl into the list. So I quickly added, “Do you know how dirty a tongue ring can be if not properly—”

“She has a tongue ring now?” Nolan asked, cutting me off.

I had the sudden urge to push him back into the pool. “I’ll clean this dump. I’ll cook, although I’m better at baking.” I stepped up behind his chair and wheeled him into the kitchen to show him how great I could be at the whole assisting him thing. “I tell you what, I’ll even make sure you don’t drown in the pool for the duration of the summer, if that helps you out any.”

“You running away from something, Rage?” Nolan asked, catching me off guard.

“No, I stopped running a long time ago.”

Nolan was quiet for a moment. I came around to the front of his chair and he extended his hand out to me. “Well, then. I guess it’s nice to meet you, Rage-not-your-real-name, germaphobe-hypochondriac with anger issues, no last name, not running from anything anymore. I’m Nolan, recently injured, ex-fuck buddy decided to become a cum dumpster online, lost my hockey scholarship, wallowing in self pity, alcohol most certainly is a food group, Archer.”

I stared down at his hand like he was wielding a knife. Nolan reached forward like he was going to touch me and I jumped back. “Easy there, tiger,” he said, unclipping the small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer from the strap of my bag, generously applying it to his palms and between his fingers.

Why isn’t he telling me to get the fuck out after all I’d just said? Maybe he’s more demented than I am.

Probably not.

“Let’s try this again,” Nolan said, extending his newly sanitized hand. “I’m Nolan and everything I just said before.”

My stomach flipped. I was about to change my mind and tell him to forget everything I’d just said and leave when he said, “Go ahead, shake my hand, germaphobe girl,” he challenged. Whispering, “I dare you.”

Challenge accepted.

Grabbing his outstretched hand I’d fully intending to shake it quickly and take a step back. But when my palm met the heat of his and his large fingers covered my hand, I lingered for a moment too long. I made a move to pull away, but he clutched my hand tighter, pulling me down so my nose was almost touching his. When he whispered to me again, his cool breath blew against my cheek. His words, so low and quiet they were almost inaudible.

Almost.

Lucky for me I had excellent hearing.

Unlucky more like it.

He released my hand suddenly and I stumbled back. Turning away I again moved over to the sliding glass doors and focused my attentions out the window. Nolan chuckled, following me across the room. I rubbed my thumb over my palm, which was still warm from his touch. The air conditioning must have been as broken as the rest of the house because the room grew impossibly warm.

I should probably check my temperature.

Darkness encroached on the orange sky as the moon and sun changed shifts. This is just a job. A job just like any other. You always finish your jobs. You can do this.

I wasn’t going to let anything distract me from the task at hand, not even the words Nolan whispered to me. The words that left goose-bumps scattered across my skin and my words stuck in my throat. Maybe I’d heard him wrong.

But I knew I hadn’t.

“It’s cute how you thought I was actually going to let you go.”

Smoke had been wrong about him.

Nolan Archer was anything but ordinary.

CHAPTER TEN

Rage

“THAT’S NOT A bike,” Nolan announced from the doorway of the open front door. I’d just parked Delilah next to his Jeep. I smacked a mosquito that landed on my neck and reminded myself to go buy bug spray and citronella candles and maybe some of those zapper things that make the loud noise when it electrocutes mosquitos. Mosquitos were responsible for the plague. Or maybe that was rats. Either way, the mosquitos had to go.

Yes. A zapper was a must.

“Well, it’s my version of a bike. Delilah gets me from A to B just fine,” I said, shaking the dead mosquito carcass off the palm of my hand like it was a pit-bull locked on my wrist.

“Delilah?” Nolan asked in amusement, his eyes dancing as he watched me win the battle over the blood sucker.

“Yes, Delilah. Don’t judge her, you don’t even know her. Are you some big bad bike aficionado or something?” I asked, brushing a pine needle off the back fender of my scooter.

Nolan grabbed the doorframe and lifted himself slightly out of his chair so he could reach the light switch. He pointed down to the area under the house covered with cheap wooden lattice and overgrown vines that was now bathed in light before sitting back down. “Go see for yourself,” he said smugly.

Peering through the lattice and through the spider webs that were thankfully on the other side of it, there, under the house, in a makeshift storage area, next to the molded and decrepit pool toys and rusted fishing poles was the outline of a motorcycle, covered in a grey, thin spandex type material. “Hooray for you, you have a bike.” I said, turning and walking back up the ramp. “Is that supposed to impress me? I mean, the good thing is that it looks like a Harley, so at least it’s not a pussy bike. But I’m letting you know right now if you’ve got a Honda or a crotch rocket under there that I can’t stay here and our deal is off.”

Nolan smiled as I pushed on his chair, rolling him farther into the house so I could make my way back inside. “Then I guess our deal is still on because that, young lady, is a Fat Boy.” He paused and looked at me like he was expecting something. “I take it from your complete lack of enthusiasm that you’re still not impressed.”

I used the throw blanket on the back of the couch to brush the dust off the cushion, which was thankfully covered in plastic.

Nolan rolled around in the kitchen rustling through the refrigerator before joining me. He rolled over and set one of two beers on the coffee table. He took a large bag of popcorn from his lap and tossed it onto the couch. The other beer, he opened by banging against the corner of the coffee table, adding new marks to the hundreds of other identical ones in the same spot. He handed the open one to me and did the same with the other. When I wrapped my hand around the neck of the cold bottle, his grip lingered and he even tugged back slightly. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second before he released it.

A shiver ran down my spine.

It must have been the beginnings of a fever caused by one of the numbers of infections I probably had. I made a mental note to delete the encyclopedia app from my phone as well although since I’d had a virtual hot flash earlier, I was pretty sure the end was near.

“You know a lot about bikes?” Nolan asked.

“Uh, a little,” I said, biting my bottom lip. It was only a small lie. The whole truth thing was all well and good, but a few of the MCs were my biggest clients and were therefore off limits and not allowed anywhere near truthville. “But I grew up in a town with a Harley dealership. You know, one of those big ones with a diner in it. Bikers rode through almost every weekend. My friend Cody and I would sit on top of the picnic tables at the truck stop on the side of the highway and watch them drive off the ramp in pairs. We would go to the dealership and learn the names of all the bikes and shout them out as they passed us by.”

Nolan’s beer was paused at his lips. He looked at me as though he could see right through me even though he shouldn’t have been because what I was telling him was the truth. Well, all except not knowing much about bikes. “What you just said sounds a lot like me as a kid.”

“You grow up around a lot of bikes?” I asked.

Nolan nodded. “Bikes. Bikers. Hard to avoid them in this town,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re aware but we’ve got two of the biggest MCs in the state right across the causeway in Logan’s Beach.”

I nodded and took a sip of my beer, afraid that if I didn’t do something with my mouth the truth about how I not only knew that already, but had been to both the Wolf Warriors and Beach Bastards MCs, would spill out from between my lips.

Nolan clicked something on the side of his wheelchair that released the armrest so he could slide it down. The muscles in his forearms flexed and strained as he lifted himself up and shifted onto the couch, landing with a grunt against the cushions.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, pointing to his leg.

His face was scrunched up in the center. “Nah, thanks for helping, though,” Nolan said sarcastically through gritted teeth. Oh yeah, the boy was most definitely in pain.

“You did just fine on your own,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I usually do, but I saw the doctor this morning and he changed out my old cast for this smaller one so it’s sore as fuck from repositioning it. I’m supposed to start using the crutches but haven’t gotten around to it yet,” he said, positioning his foot so his injured leg could rest on top of the coffee table.

“How did you do it?” I asked out of curiosity. “Hockey, right? Was it in practice or a game?”

“How did you know that?” Nolan asked, leaning away from me.

“ ’Cause I can read your mind,” I said waving my hands around in the air like a mystic. I dropped my hands when he continued to stare at me blankly. “You told me. Your introduction. Remember? You’re Nolan something about injuring yourself in hockey?”

“Oh yeah,” Nolan said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“They got you hopped up on a lot of drugs or something?” I asked, wondering why he was so suddenly distrusting of me when earlier he agreed to let me stay at his house when he didn’t even know me.

“I’ve just got a lot on my mind.” He offered me a small smile. “It wasn’t in a game.”

“What?”

“You asked how I injured my leg. It wasn’t in a game. It wasn’t even in practice. Truth is I got in a fight.”

“I take it you lost?”

Nolan looked at me as if I’d just knocked on his door and asked him if he’s accepted our lord and savior Jesus Christ into his life. “Fuck no,” Nolan spat, rolling his eyes.

“All right then, brawler, is the other guy in a neck brace?”

“No, smart ass. At least I don’t think he is. I was out with friends. This guy I knew from way back, who I didn’t even remember I had beef with but apparently he did, spotted me at the bar and started shit with me. We took it outside. Before I got my punch in he pulled out a blade and sliced my fucking leg open. Hurt like a motherfucker but I didn’t even feel it, not until after I knocked the son of a bitch out.” Nolan sighed and looked to the ceiling.

I didn’t know if I should say something so I stayed quiet while he finished his story. “He’s lucky I didn’t fucking kill him.” Nolan’s knuckles turned white around the neck of his beer, which he then finished in a few long swigs.

He took a deep breath and waved off the memory. “Enough of that bullshit,” Nolan said. “Here.” He reached behind his head and grabbed something before settling back into the couch. He tossed me a remote. “Ladies’ choice.”

I caught it and started flipping through the channels, grateful for something to do with my hands besides bite the side of my thumb, which was a habit I’d never had any luck at successfully giving up, although I’d been trying since I was a kid.

Dirty hands and all.

“You know, you’re the only person I’ve told that story to who didn’t apologize.” Nolan said.

I pursed my lips. “Why would I apologize? I’m not the one who shanked you,” I said. The TV screen flashed in the dark, illuminating the room with every click of my thumb like lightening across a night sky.

“No,” Nolan chuckled. “No you’re not.” We were both silent again for a moment before Nolan suddenly asked, “How are you even doing that?” He pointed to the remote in my hand and then the TV. “You’re flipping through too fast.”

“So?” I asked, continuing my assault on the channel-up button. “And are you sure you’re okay with me staying here? I mean, maybe your parents won’t like it so much?”

Real fucking smooth, Rage.

“Yeah, it’s more than fine. This place was my grandparents before they died.

“Explains the plastic,” I said, shifting around and making the couch squeak.

“Yeah, that was my Gran.” Nolan said. “My parents were never really in the picture. They sell international real estate or some shit. Months usually go by without me hearing from them. This time around, it’s been a long while. Haven’t seen them since Gran and Gramps passed, and honestly, I’m not exactly sitting around waiting for the phone to ring or anything,” Nolan said and I knew there was more to the story. More I needed to find out for Smoke but I didn’t press, not wanting to raise his suspicions.

“Are you close to your parents?” Nolan asked. “Or are they who you are running away from?”

I mulled over his question and thought about our daily calls. I might have spoken to them every day, but did telling lies count as being close? “As close as we can be,” I answered, and thankfully that seemed to be enough of an answer and he didn’t pry.

Nolan pointed to the TV again. “There is no fucking way you can see what show is playing, never mind make a decision to move on with your happy trigger thumb on the button over there.”

I smirked, but not because he pointed out my channel surfing skills, but rather at his use of the phrase, “trigger thumb.” “Don’t judge me the way you judged Delilah. I watched so much TV growing up, I could probably tell you what’s on right now without even flipping, but I don’t know your channel numbers here so keep your holier-than-thou remote rules zipped up over there while I work my magic.” I wrinkled my nose, stuck out my tongue, and just like that I was ten years old and back on Cody’s porch.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re kind of cute when you’re angry?” Nolan asked.

I paused, my thumb hovering over the button. “HA! Not in this lifetime. And trust me, this isn’t angry. You don’t want to see me angry.” The beer must have been going to my head because my anger wasn’t something I wanted to have a conversation about.

There was definitely something wrong with me. Like more wrong with me than usual. I was sure of it. I made a mental note to re-download WebMD after Nolan went to sleep.

I glanced back up at the fan that had caught my attention when I first walked in. That fan was what was wrong with me. And the universe. Yeah, it was most definitely the dirty fucking fan that was wrong with everything in the world. The air conditioning kicked on with a shake sending dark grey dust bunnies falling over the edges of the fan blades, landing on the dining room table. I cringed.

Nolan didn’t seem to notice. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’m curious to see what you would look like all pissed off,” he said, “all red and flushed,” but he wasn’t making fun of me. He wasn’t laughing. The way he said it was low and deep. He might as well have been saying, “I’m curious to see what you’d look like naked.” To me the being naked thing would be less invasive then him seeing me during one of my episodes.

It was getting too personal.

Too much.

Reaching for the forgotten bag between us, I ripped it open and grabbed a handful of popcorn, stuffing as much into my mouth as would fit. I tossed the remote back over to Nolan, who seemed all too eager to take over a much slower-paced clicking regimen while I went back over to the refrigerator to grab more beer, even though mine was still half full. “You shouldn’t be curious,” I muttered to myself. “Cute is the last thing I am when I’m angry. Just ask my parents, my shrinks, my teacher, Smoke, or Cody.”

“What was that?” Nolan called out. Luckily, the TV erupted in a blast of gunfire. I sat back down on the couch and folded my feet up underneath me so I was sitting on my calves.

Much to my dismay, the drooling germ ball of fur Nolan called Murray came waddling out of the back room. Within a few minutes, he was asleep on the couch between us, snoring louder than Smoke did after a night of heavy drinking.

“I love this movie,” Nolan said, taking a swig of his fresh beer. Just then, on the screen, Jason Statham ran through a courtyard. A second later, a car behind him blew up, lifting off the ground in a dramatic ball of fire.

So unrealistic. Cars don’t even make that kind of noise when they explode in real life. Fucking unrealistic sound effects. In reality, a car explosion is nowhere near as dramatic. It’s actually very underwhelming as far as explosions go. “Have you seen this one before?” I asked. “What’s it about?” I smirked.

Nolan nodded, digging his hand into the popcorn. “Yeah, it’s the one where Statham rescues this girl and they run around trying to escape that guy”—he pointed to the screen—“ ’cause he’s after the girl.”

I chuckled.

“What’s so funny over there?” Nolan asked, shifting his eyes from the movie to me. His gaze lingered on my chest before trailing up to my face. I pretended not to notice but I had a feeling that Nolan didn’t care if I noticed him looking.

“Nothing,” I laughed. “It’s just that a friend of mine had this movie thing he did—”

“Cody?” Nolan interrupted. “You mentioned him before.”

I nodded. “Yeah, Cody.” It felt weird saying his name out loud, especially to a target and after so long of not saying it anywhere but in my head, or to my mother when she brought him up. Which she did. In every conversation. “Anyway, he used to do this thing where he would get someone to describe a certain Jason Statham movie, and then they would. Then he would ask them to describe another one, and basically the joke was that basically every Jason Statham movie could be described the same exact way.”

Nolan looked like he was turning that around in his head. He moved his lips around as he thought, talking silently to himself. His lips were full and I caught myself thinking about if they were as soft as they looked when he started to laugh. “You know, I think you’ve got something there.”

I elaborated. “Statham’s character runs from bad guys with some poor girl in tow. Explosions and chaos ensue. Yeah, that’s pretty much all of them. I looked down to my beer and picked at the corner of the label. “Yeah, Cody was always good at pointing things like that out.” Lifting the bottle to my mouth, I took a big gulp of my beer and swallowed hard.

“Is Cody your…boyfriend?” Nolan asked, saying Cody’s name as if it left a bad taste on his tongue.

“Nope. Just a friend.” I sighed. In the spirit of honesty, I added, “He was my only friend.”

“Was?” Nolan asked, turning toward me as much as his stretched out leg would allow.

“Yeah, it’s complicated,” I admitted. “Looking back, maybe I should’ve never been friends with him to begin with.” I didn’t feel like talking about Cody anymore so I shrugged it off like losing my only friend was no big deal. Again, my eyes were drawn up to the fan, the grime sitting on it hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I’d stepped into the house. In my head, the bacteria was multiplying by the second. “Your fan is gross.”

“Kind of like the pool?” Nolan asked, making a disgusted face, and I knew he was mimicking how I’d looked when I pulled him from the pool. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not a complete fucking slob. This place was empty for a long time before I came back here,” Nolan said, joining my observation of the fan as he spoke. “And as you can see”—Nolan pointed to his leg—“I’m not exactly in a position to be climbing ladders right now. The back gutters could use some work too. Don’t think they’ve been touched since I cleaned them last and that was years ago. Deck needs to be sanded, the list goes on. However, if you want to go ahead and start cleaning, you’re more than welcome to go to town on…”

Nolan barely had the words out of his mouth, and I’d already pulled over a chair from the dining room table and grabbed the cheap duster I’d spied in the kitchen, leaning up against the cabinets. It was one of those plastic ones you buy at the supermarket. The kind with the super light flexible handle that always broke within a few uses, but it would have to do.

“What exactly are you doing?” Nolan asked, his ab muscles flexed under his shirt as he made a move to stand up, temporarily forgetting about his leg. “You’re gonna fucking fall,” he growled in frustration. By the time he plopped back down on the couch, though, I was already done wiping the dust from the first blade into a garbage bag. “I was joking, Rage. You don’t have to clean right now.”

I shook my head, grateful that Nolan’s cast kept him couch bound because if he were able-bodied and so much as tried to drag me away from that fan, I’d have had to lay him out. “I’ve been staring at this fucking fan since I walked in the door. This needs to be taken care of now before little dust monsters grow from it in the middle of the night and attack you in your sleep.”

“Is that a thing?” Nolan asked sounding amused. He took a swig of his beer, watching me as I made the fan my bitch.

“It sure as shit is.” I lifted the scooped neckline of my tank top, using it as a temporary face mask.

“What exactly are you doing?” Nolan asked, his voice sounded suddenly strained.

“I’m covering my mouth and nose to protect myself from anything flying off the fan finding a nice, warm spot inside of my body to bloom or grow or rotate or mutate or whatever that particular brand of evil grossness does when it makes more evil grossness,” I answered. I turned to Nolan and held up the formally white, but now completely black, duster. “But the question you should be asking is, do you really want to wait and find out what happens if you do nothing?” My voice was muffled through the thin fabric of my shirt.

Nolan’s smile straightened as his eyes darted down from the shirt, over my nose, to the exposed skin above the waistband of my shorts. He cleared his throat. “I still don’t want you up there,” he muttered gruffly. He sat back on the couch and waved his beer around the room, quickly looking away, back toward the TV. He swallowed hard and his tone lightened. “But by all means woman, continue. Fight the potential dust monsters and whatever their evil will do to me while I sleep. I thank you, kind woman, for your sacrifice in protecting me.” He bowed his head.

Protecting him. That was the real joke.

Except, standing there in his grandparents’ living room, cleaning his fan…it wasn’t all that funny.

I continued on the fan. “You laugh now, but wait until I go to town on that refrigerator of yours. When I got the beer earlier, I saw an inch of mold in the crisper drawer that needs to die. Like yesterday.” Nolan leaned as far forward on the couch as his cast would allow. In a loud whisper, I added, “I’m pretty sure one of the piles of green fuzz winked at me.”

Nolan dropped back onto the cushions and let out the loudest and longest laugh I’d ever heard. It was one of those genuine laughs you didn’t just hear, but you felt. It made me laugh too, as I made quick work of the fan, while Nolan mumbled to himself about me being a weird and funny chick. He clicked away on the remote, probably attempting to find a less predictable movie than anything Statham.

“Why are you letting me stay here?” I asked, focusing my attention on the fan. I hadn’t wanted to ask but my curiosity was getting the best of me. “You should be mad at me for running your girlfriend off, but you’re not. Why is that?”

“Talia? She’s not my girlfriend,” he said, not answering my question.

“I’m just curious why you let me stay here after I did that.” I paused my duster and looked down to Nolan, who was absent-mindedly rubbing Murray’s stomach. His huge head hung off the edge of the couch, his tongue hanging out, covering one of his eyes.

“I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t mad because she’s not important. Or maybe I wanted to talk to the girl who pulled me from the pool and saved my life.” He shrugged and went back to the TV. “Doesn’t matter why. You’re here now,” he said like that answered everything.

“Then she’s your friend?,” I asked, my curiosity getting the best of me.

“I wouldn’t exactly call her that.”

“Then why was she coming to see you?” I asked. The second the question left my mouth, I regretted it because I was met with Nolan’s hazel-eyed stare. He wasn’t looking at me like I was a freak, which I was used to, but like he was genuinely confused by my question.

“I don’t know if you’re fucking with me, or if you really don’t know? Either way I’ll tell you, just answer me honest.”

I shifted my gaze back to the fan. “I sort of know,” I said. Followed by, “But I sort of don’t.”

Nolan remained straight-faced when he said, “I invited her here after my doctor’s appointment because it’s been a while since I’ve gotten laid and I was all messed up about almost dying. You see, this beautiful girl in a white bikini saved me and then ran away. Couldn’t get her out of my head. Talia’s always been down for a good time. So, to answer your question, Rage, she was here this afternoon…to fuck me.” My eyes dropped to his. “I realize it’s not the most chivalrous answer, but it’s also not a bullshit lie.”

Beautiful

He thinks I’m beautiful.

“But then why did you let Talia leave and why did you let the girl in the white bikini stay?” I asked, continuing to refer to myself in third person as Nolan had.

He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Because, I couldn’t NOT let her stay.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rage

NOLAN WAS ASLEEP on the couch by the time I was done cleaning the fan, and then the refrigerator, and then the surfaces, and then the floors.

I’d tapped out a quick text to Smoke letting him know what Nolan said about having no idea where his parents where. I was disappointed, yet not surprised by his immediate response.

He could be lying. Need more. Stay.

So much for being done.

I threw my phone in my bag and noticed that my other one had a blinking red battery on the screen. Knowing my parents would freak out if they called and it went straight to voicemail again, I plugged it in to the only outlet I could find in the living room. Then, with my bag in hand, I made my way down the little hallway that only had two doors. One was a small bathroom, the other was the only bedroom. It was a good thing I didn’t sleep.

My shower took an hour. Mostly because I scrubbed the tile with borax first and disinfected every single inch of the porcelain before I would even consider stepping one flip-flop-covered foot inside the rim of the tub to actually bathe.

Thankfully, there were clean towels on top of the counter. When I was done with my shower, I wrapped one around me and had just finished brushing my teeth and combing through my hair when I heard a familiar ring tone.

I grabbed clean shorts from my bag and reached in farther for my phone, but when I pulled it out the screen was black. Shit, it was my other phone. The one I’d left charging in the living room.

Right next to Nolan’s chair.

I didn’t even bother getting dressed. I scrambled out of the bathroom, still wrapped in the towel, but by the time I made it out there, the ringing had stopped.

I was too late.

Nolan was still on the couch, only now he was wide awake. A huge grin on his face. His dimple on full display. The cord that had been plugged into my phone was dangling over the armrest of the couch. My phone was up to his ear as he laughed and chatted away.

With my parents.

Nolan

I THOUGHT IT would be funny to answer Rage’s phone. Her parents had accents I couldn’t quite place and were all too excited and oddly surprised to hear that Rage had a friend. When they asked me what we had been up to and wanted to hear all about it, I basically told them the truth. We’d just met.

Her parents had just asked me if I was enjoying my time in Paris when I turned toward the movement in the corner of my eye.

I dropped the phone.

There was Rage. Wrapped in nothing but a fucking towel.

Water drops fell from her hair and down the slim slope of her neck. Her hair was wet like it had been the first time I saw her, except now it was down around her shoulders, so long it skimmed her trim waist. And just like the first time I saw her, she was still fucking angry.

Instantly, my cock was hard. I shifted to adjust, but there was no hiding it under my thin shorts.

I didn’t fucking care. There was something primal this girl awakened in me that had me wanting to pull her by her hair and drag her around.

I’d forgotten completely about the phone, about her parents, about fucking breathing. All my thoughts were on her, the curve of her tits peaking out from the top of the towel and the blood rushing to my throbbing hard on. Even with the pissed off look on her face, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to get her under me. What sounds she would make when she came.

I bet I could angry fuck that scowl right off her beautiful face.

Rage stormed up to me and leaned over. I held my breath. She paid no attention to the tent in my pants as she reached between my thigh and the couch to retrieve her phone. She paused for a second and took a breath. “Hello?” she said, bringing it up to her ear. Her voice didn’t even sound like her own. It was way too high-pitched and…friendly. “No Moe, he’s not my boyfriend. Va, no I’m still not a lesbian.” She dropped her face into her open palm and the towel slid down another inch. “He’s just a friend. No, no you can’t talk to him again.” Her eyes darted to me. “He’s really busy and we’re getting ready to…”

I held out my hand and she swatted it away. Thank goodness she was short because I reached up and snatched it from her easily. “Hi again,” I said. Rage turned purple, her lips pursed, and if I looked close enough, I swore I could see a little fire coming from her ears.

“Hi, Nolan. It’s so great to know that our girl has another American friend to talk to and help her out over there in Paris,” her mother said in some sort of accent I couldn’t place.

“Paris?” I asked. Rage’s eyes went wide. Her anger vanished in a flash.

“Please,” she mouthed, pleading with her beautiful blue-green eyes for me to go along with whatever lie she’d obviously led them to believe.

“Yeah, Paris has been a blast. It was hard for me to adjust to being here at first but your daughter has been great. In fact, she’s the one who has been helping me.”

Her parents went on and on. Babbling about dishes and soup. I never took my eyes off of Rage who looked downright petrified. She knelt down next to the couch and rested her chin on the arm rest, looking up at me like the saddest, most beautiful puppy dog I’d ever seen in my life. She barely flinched when Murray walked over the back of her calves like she wasn’t even there. Oh no. She dropped her forehead to the armrest, her hair shifted to the side where I caught a glimpse of the pink dagger tattoo on the back of her slender neck. Whatever was going on in her head. Whatever was happening inside of that brain of hers that had her looking that way needed to stop.

Right fucking NOW.

“You know what? I’m so sorry, but the reception here is really lousy. Is it okay if we call you—” I didn’t finish the sentence, ending the call abruptly and tossing the phone to the side. I wished I could stand. “Get off the fucking floor,” I demanded, the order tearing from my throat. It was harsher than I’d wanted, but it couldn’t be helped. I needed to get my point across.

“What?” Rage asked, blinking rapidly. She leaned back off the couch, but remained on her knees.

“Rage, if I could stand right now, I’d lift you up off the floor myself, but I can’t, so get the fuck up.” She stood, holding the towel tightly to her chest. “Good girl. I don’t ever want to see you like that again. You don’t go to the floor like that. You don’t cower for anyone. Not your parents, not anyone, Do you hear me?” I grabbed her forearm. “I don’t know what just happened there or where that strong girl just went but you don’t drop to your knees for anyone, ever.” I paused, my eyes following the smooth, creamy skin of her leg up her thigh to where the towel only had to move maybe an inch more for me to see all of her. The thought of her on her knees for me left me with barely any control. My voice was dark, deep, and laced with all of the filthy things I wanted to do to her. “Scratch that,” I amended. “You can drop to your knees for me. I’ll be the exception to that rule.”

Rage looked at me as if she was trying to be angry but couldn’t. “You can’t talk to me like that. I don’t take orders,” she said, although she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself more than me. “That wasn’t part of this deal.”

“You know what I think? I think you do like taking orders. I think you want me to tell you what to do.” To prove my point, I moved my hand from her arm and traced the outside of her thigh. The fear her parents had caused to go off in her was fading fast. Her shoulders fell and I could feel the tension leaving her muscles.

I throbbed for this girl. Painfully aroused couldn’t begin to explain how much I wanted to burry myself deep inside her. “Why do you lie to your parents?” I asked.

“It’s complicated,” she answered, inhaling sharply, watching my hand with a strange kind of curiosity. Following it as I slid it higher and higher up her leg. Her reluctance to answer my question only led to more questions. I found myself wondering if her asking about Talia earlier was a product of her naiveté, or maybe just from having been hurt before. Which led me to think about some asshole that could have hurt her. Which made me want to break this imaginary ex-boyfriend’s fucking neck with my bare hands. I let her get away with not telling me more about her parents, although I planned on asking her again.

After all, I lied to her about my own parents.

I was about to reach under her towel and feel to see if I was having the same effect on her she was having on me. I wondered how wet she was. How hot she was going to feel against my fingers. I thought about plunging my fingers inside of her when an echoing BOOM crashed through the living room, followed by a flash of blinding white light.

FIREWORKS. COCK BLOCKED by fucking fireworks. Although cock-blocked might not be the right term to use, because Rage wasn’t a girl I could just flash the dimple at and have my way with. No, Rage was complex and it was going to take more than feeling up her thigh to get her to give herself over to me completely.

“I’ll take the couch,” I said to Rage who, much to my disappointment, had changed out of her towel and into actual clothes. What I wanted to do was rip it off of her and carry her to my bed. There was a look in her eyes. That was what stopped me. Confusion mixed with innocence. “You can have the bed. There are clean sheets in the closet,” I called out, preparing to spend the night on the couch.

Rage came back out of the bathroom, dressed in another pair of shorts. These were white and even shorter than the denim ones from earlier. Her tiny, tight pink T-shirt read, FUCK OFF. THANK YOU. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun that had strands sticking out of it at all angles, some so long they passed her chin. “I don’t need it. I’m good.”

“You’re here to help me. It’s the least I can do as a man to offer—”

Rage cut me off, shaking her head. “When I said I didn’t need it, I meant it. I don’t sleep. It’s one of my…quirks.” She made air quotes around the word quirks, obviously quoting some idiot who’d made her feel bad about her eccentricities. Probably the ex-boyfriend who I was now not only going to strangle, but chop off his balls as well.

“What do you mean you don’t sleep? Like you mean you only sleep a few hours a night?” I asked.

Rage bit the side of her thumb and looked away. “More like zero.”

“How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I zone out for a while sometimes, for maybe an hour or two at most. I’m fully conscious, though, just a little out of it.”

“Come again?”

Rage pressed her open palms together and pointed her fingers toward the ceiling like she was praying. She seemed to always be talking with her hands, acting out what she was trying to say as she spoke the words. “Think of it like meditating instead of sleeping, except I’m not actually meditating.”

“Wow, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Are you ever tired?” I asked, curious as to how she could function without sleep.

Rage shook her head. “Nope. Not really. Besides, you ever hear people complain about not having enough hours in the day?” she asked, a sly smile on her pink lips. “Well, that’s a complaint I don’t ever make.” It was then I realized that while I’d nodded off, she’d done more than just clean the fan. The floors were sparkling and so was every other surface in the house.

“So you just stay up all night and clean?” I asked. She sat down next to me and curled her legs up underneath her as she’d done earlier. Her shorts rode up her legs, exposing the small patch of skin between her pussy and her inner thigh.

Fuck.

“I keep busy” was her response.

Despite my once again throbbing cock, I felt my eyes becoming heavier and heavier. I yawned. Rage watched me, her eyes on my mouth, the same wonderment written across her face she’d had when she was watching my hand move up her leg. “Well, mi casa es su casa,” I said, lifting myself off the couch. This time I grabbed the crutches off the floor instead of the wheelchair. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night,” she said, not looking the least bit tired. I teetered my way into the hall, but before I turned the knob on the bedroom door, I leaned back and stole one last glance at the girl sitting on my living room couch. I pressed my lips together, not wanting her to hear me laughing, but when I saw what she was doing, I couldn’t not laugh.

Rage was staring into the sliding glass doors, observing her reflection…as she practiced yawning. She opened her mouth wide and then closed it, inhaling deeply and stretching. The next time, she covered her mouth. The time after that is when she closed her eyes and did her fake yawn, ending with a long groan at the end of her stretch with her mouth.

It was the same look I wanted to see on her face when I made her come.

Soon.

I forced myself to stop watching her and closed the bedroom door behind me, collapsing onto the bed with Rage’s potential orgasm face burned into my brain.

I lay there for hours before finally drifting off with one last thought on my mind as I slipped into a deep sleep.

This girl is going to fucking kill me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rage

ON A FEW occasions, usually over coffee in the morning or dinner out on the deck, Nolan shared more details with me about his parents, how they were never around when he was growing up, as well as more details about his life with them before he came to live with his grandparents. Every time I reported back to Smoke thinking I had enough, he asked for more. I was beginning to think he planned for me to move in permanently. I believed Nolan when he said he didn’t know where they were so it boggled my mind when Smoke kept ordering me to stay put.

For over a week I’d been at the cottage, and with the exception of the pool, I’d cleaned every square inch of the place. Although it was still in need of a lot of repairs, it was really coming along, and I found that I enjoyed taking the time to make it shine again.

I considered sanding and painting the kitchen cabinets and maybe pulling up the carpet in the bedroom to see what might be underneath. I pushed away those thoughts as soon as they came. I didn’t need to get attached, even if it was just to a house.

When Nolan ordered me up off of my knees the week before, something inside me shifted. He may not have understood why I reacted the way I did, but the why wasn’t important to him¸ rather how I let the situation affect me. I was terrified that every ounce of work I’d put into the relationship I’d built with my parents over the last three years was going to unravel with one conversation with someone I’d just met. The truth of it was that even though my relationship with my parents was based on lies, I wasn’t ready to give them up entirely. Maybe it was selfish of me.

When it hadn’t gone that route and Nolan hung up the phone, I kept replaying what could have happened over and over again in my mind, which was when I crumbled both mentally and physically until Nolan brought me back up to stand again.

Nolan hadn’t tried to touch me again since that night.

The confusing part was that it upset me that he hadn’t. Even worse was that I was asking myself why. The thought that kept crossing my mind, the one that had me the most worried was did I want him to?

What I felt when he looked at me and when he placed his hand on my leg was a full body kind of heat. My skin tingled and came alive. My nipples stiffened and my breasts felt heavy and achy. Then, when he trailed his hand up between my legs, everything inside me tightened. Yes, I definitely wanted him to touch me again. I could spin it a million ways in my mind, but the truth was in the evidence, and since I was being honest with Nolan, as much as I could be anyway, I should probably be honest with myself, too.

Even though I’d never felt it before, not even a tingle of it, I knew exactly what it was that was happening to me when I was around Nolan.

I didn’t even need to look it up on WebMD.

Although, I did.

It had to stop. What I felt HAD TO STOP.

No good could come of it. Which was why I had to spend more time with Nolan and get the information Smoke needed. Whatever the fuck that actually was remained a mystery, but I would do it, and then I’d finish the job like I always did and get the hell out.

Easy peasy.

Right?

In the meantime, I’d been making good on my fake agreement with Nolan. I cooked, I cleaned, and I cleaned some more. I baked too, making more muffins than the muffin man himself. Anything to distract myself from watching him do push ups on the back deck, which was what he was doing when I placed the third batch of muffins in the oven. By the time he strolled through the cottage using only one crutch, I’d already moved on to polishing his Gran’s silver spoon collection.

His leg had been healing, and at his most recent doctor’s visit, they exchanged his cast for an even smaller one that just covered four inches or so above and below his knee. More and more frequently, he used only one crutch, and some times I caught him limping around with only one.

Nolan disappeared into the bathroom and when he came out he was freshly showered, wearing a tight, black wife beater and a pair of black board shorts, his hair slicked back and wet. He smelled like the rain soap he kept in the shower. He approached me slowly, like a cat about to pounce. His hazel eyes shone mischievously as he grinned at me like he had a secret.

You’re not the only one.

The feeling in my stomach, the pull I felt as he stalked toward me, only confirmed what I already knew.

I wanted him.

I didn’t want to want him.

I wanted to want to kill him.

Nolan

I’VE GOT IT bad. I needed to fuck her more than I needed my next breath. I was trying to figure out how to crack the shell surrounding the ever-elusive Rage when I had an idea. An idea that I hoped would have her writhing under me sooner rather than later. “I’m taking you out tomorrow night,” I announced. Rage was sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging her tanned legs in the air, scrubbing my grandmother’s silver spoons with a rag.

The house was so much lighter since she’d come crashing into my life. Not just because it was now dust free and spotless either, but because for the first time since my grandparents passed, it felt more like a home and less like a tomb.

“Where are we going?” she asked without looking up from what she was doing.

Any other girl would’ve asked why I was taking her out. Any other girl would look for some sort of motive or intention behind my every action, and with good reason.

Not her.

I might have been under water the first time I saw her, but even then, I knew right away that Rage most definitely wasn’t like any other girl.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rage

ONE SINK WITH a chipped Formica counter top, a yellow tub/shower combo, and a toilet hidden behind a half wall was all that made up the tiny bathroom. A narrow obscure window high up on the wall, muting the bright light of day. The Faded pink floral wallpaper took up every available inch of wall space with a matching border that ran through the center, dividing the wall in two.

“I think you’re perfectly capable of doing that on your own,” I said to Nolan’s reflection in the mirror as I stood in the doorway.

I’d just finished giving Murray a long overdue bath and I’d come to the realization that he was more grey than black, when Nolan had called to me from the bathroom. I’d found him soaking in the tub I’d scrubbed in order to be cleaner when you stepped out than you were when you stepped in. Nolan’s back was to me against the tile, but in the mirror I could see him clearly, his defined ab muscles disappearing below the water, which was thankfully too soapy to see anything through. Although my eyes still wandered that way.

“Maybe, but what fun would that be?” Nolan asked, wagging an eyebrow suggestively.

I turned to leave.

“No, wait,” he said, and for some reason, I actually listened and stopped. I seemed to be doing that a lot when it came to him. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I got into all this to have my freedom and there I was taking orders from him, a target of all people.

I needed to remember where my fucking balls were, and quick.

“All joking aside, my knee locked up on me and I could use your help,” Nolan said, his voice taking on a more serious tone. “Please,” he added, offering me a small sheepish smile.

“Fine,” I huffed. Walking over to the tub, I sat on the bath mat and leaned over the edge. Just because he affected me, didn’t mean he needed to know that. We locked eyes and I attempted to keep my gaze on his face. “What do you need me to do?”

Nolan pointed to his injured leg. His knee bent at an angle, rising up just above the water. “I need you to press down on my leg a little so I can unlock it from this position,” he said.

“And you can’t do that because…”

“Because it hurts when I try and do it and I’m not good at inflicting pain on myself.” He met my eyes. “But something tells me you’d be really good at it,” he joked.

Winner, winner.

“Well, there’s only one way you’re gonna find out,” I muttered. Nolan chuckled. “Where do you want me to push?

“Right here,” he said, positioning his hands above his kneecap on both sides of the jagged red scar. I brushed off his hands and placed mine where he’d showed me. In the corner of my eye, I got a glimpse of movement between Nolan’s legs under the water. I pushed down.

Hard.

“Fuck!” Nolan cried out as his knee gave under the pressure. I removed my hands. “I thought you were going to at least count to three or something.”

“Why did you think that?” I asked. “You didn’t say to do that.”

“ ’Cause it’s the humane thing to do,” he said through gritted teeth. The cords in his neck were tight. I shrugged. “Can you massage it, please? It’s so fucking stiff, it hurts to even move it.” I looked at him skeptically, searching for the joke that always seemed to follow his requests. Instead, he surprised me by saying, “Please, Rage, I don’t want to have to take the pain shit they gave me. I really hate that crap. Guys on the hockey team popped those things like fucking Tic Tacs. Made them sloppy and it hindered their recovery. I don’t want that.” His eyes softened. He covered my hand, which was resting on the side of the tub with his own. I pulled it back but he held on. “I’m still hoping for a miracle here.”

Reminding myself that no matter what my reaction was to Nolan, I was there under the false pretense of helping him. So helping I would have to do. Again, I placed my hands above his knee, just as he’d shown me and started to slowly massage the area around his scar. He hissed through his teeth at first, but as I felt the stiffness of his strained thigh muscle become softer and more pliable, he let out an approving moan that made my nipples hard. He closed his eyes and rested the back of his head against the tile wall.

“You know,” I said needing to talk. Needing to say something that would distract me from the stirring I saw yet again just under the water, and only a few inches from where my hands were working over Nolan’s leg. “I hurt my leg once too.”

Nolan opened his eyes. “Oh yeah? Doing what?”

“Scooter accident. I crashed my Vespa into a ditch,” I said, offering as much of the truth as I could. I really did crash my Vespa, but it was because of a rookie mistake and the result of being way too close to an explosion, which had been a lot more powerful than I’d anticipated. Blown into a ditch while on my scooter might have been a bit more accurate.

It was a mistake I never made again.

“You break it?”

I shook my head and sat back on my butt. “Nah, she needed a new gas tank and getting the dings out was a pain in the ass. The worst thing was that they don’t make that shade of blue anymore. It’s a classic scooter, so I had to get it matched and I had to have it done three times for them to get it right.”

“I meant your leg. Did you break your leg?”

“Oh,” I said. I lifted my leg over the tub’s edge so he could see the side of my thigh and pointed. “Sixteen stitches, though.” Nolan reached out and slowly ran the tips of his fingers over the three faded white scars before dropping his hand back into the water. I sat back up and continued on his leg. Again, he moaned at my touch and I found myself biting the inside of my cheek every time he made a sound.

“That must have hurt,” Nolan said, seeming genuinely concerned.

“It wasn’t a big deal, really. I’ve seen worse.”

I’ve inflicted worse.

I continued on his leg, although the muscle was now getting tighter, stiffer than it had been before. “I don’t think this is working,” I said, but before I could move my hands away, he clasped his over them.

“No, it’s fucking working all right,” Nolan said, his voice rough. His eyes heavier than before, a sleepy look on his face as his eyes dipped down to the front of my shirt. I must have leaned into the water because the entire front of my white tank top was soaked. My hard nipples on proud display. I don’t usually get embarrassed, but something about the way he looked at me had my face flushing red and heat creeping up my neck and cheeks.

I looked to where his large hand had captured my much smaller one. My attentions were suddenly drawn to what I could no longer ignore. His enormous hard-on had surfaced above the water, the tip touching his stomach above his belly button. When his gaze followed mine, it pulsed against the muscles of his chiseled stomach.

My first instinct was to run. But try as I might, my legs wouldn’t listen to me. Nothing would listen to me. Especially not my eyes which were glued to his cock like it was an animal at the new zoo exhibit. “Like what you see?” Nolan asked, without any traces of smart-ass in his voice. His words drew me out of my gawking and I made a move to jerk my hand from his leg but he only held on tighter. “Here, let you show you something,” he offered. “Trust me,” he said. I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust anyone. But my eagerness to see what he was about to do—my curiosity—was fed by his strained voice.

I didn’t answer him, but I stopped pulling on my hand, allowing it to settle back on his thigh. “That’s a good girl,” Nolan said, his words washing over me. The water was warm and the bathroom was small. It was the reason why I told myself that I felt suddenly hot. Flushed. Although the real reason probably had something to do with the fact that Nolan grabbed my wrist and slowly traced it up his thigh, the way he’d started trailing his hand up my leg in the living room the week before. His muscles twitched and strained against my touch as he dragged my fingertips all the way to where his cock stood proudly out of the water.

Despite having sex with Cody, I’d actually never seen his penis. It had been so dark and all over so fast. I’d zoned out when it all started. Besides having to clean up a mess on my leg, nothing had ever hurt afterward and it was all over so quick, I couldn’t recall a lot of the details.

Nolan took my hand in his, raised it to his mouth and pressed a soft warm kiss to my knuckles, which sent a jolt of electricity up my arm.

Then he surprised me by dragging it back down his abs. I gasped when he wrapped my fingers around his massive cock. The second my palm came into contact with the soft skin surrounding his hardness, it pulsed again. Nolan hissed between his teeth. Wrapping his hand around mine, he started to stroke himself with my hand. Once up and once down. He groaned as we both watched where our hands were connected with his shaft. A full body convulsion, a tingling inside, drew me back out of whatever haze I was temporarily lost in.

I can’t do this.

I tore my hand away and stood. I was almost through the door when Nolan said, “You know what I think? I think you like giving a little bit of that control over to me. I even think you liked it when your little hand was wrapped around my cock.”

Without turning I said the very first thing that came to mind. “Someone once told me that just because I like something, doesn’t mean I should do it,” I said, repeating Cody’s words from when we were kids.

I left, closing the bathroom door behind me.

“Be ready in an hour!” Nolan called through the door, reminding me that he’d said the day before that was taking me out somewhere.

For the first time I thought there might actually be some truth to Cody’s words after all. Although now I knew it had nothing to do with liking to destroy.

And everything to do with Nolan Archer.

Nolan

I’D BEEN AROUND a lot of different people in my short life. Academics, jocks, bikers, junkies, and all sorts of girls.

Never anyone like Rage.

My plan really had been to call her into the bathroom to help me with my knee. My leg was healing, but I’d over estimated how much when I climbed into the tub and the fucker locked up tight on me. It hurt like a car had driven over it, but I’d almost forgotten how much when Rage came in wearing a white tank top and no bra.

I could barely control how achingly hard I was from the moment she walked in, but when her shirt had gotten wet there was no holding back, and suddenly I was the hardest I’d ever been. When I touched her hand to my cock, I almost exploded right then and there. I knew that after she stood up, I could have made her come back. I could have used her hand to jerk me off, but the way she embarrassed so easily when I was staring at her tits made me realize how much I didn’t want to scare this chick. She was so hesitant. So innocent.

So fuckable.

I almost asked her if she’d ever touched a cock before. I wanted to ask her to tell me how she touched herself. Explain to me in great detail what she did to make herself come while I stroked my cock with her tiny hand. As much as it hurt to, I held back. I needed more time to crack through that shell of hers.

Which is why we had a date.

She didn’t know it yet, but Rage was about to become mine.

In every way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Rage

SMALL WAVES CRASHED up against the shore, leaving lines of grey foam behind each time the water slid back into the Gulf. The smell of salt was thick in the humid night air. The breeze was barely enough to rustle a few hairs out of place, but as it grew dark, it brought with it much cooler air that felt great in contrast with how hot it had been that day. The occasional couple holding hands passed by on the water’s edge. I watched as the last of the families packed up their coolers and blankets, wheeling and dragging their beach gear through the sand between the cottages, heading to one of the many pay-to-park car lots.

I’d been outside on the deck, people watching and leaning against the railing with Murray at my feet, when I heard the sliding glass door open and close and then his heavy steps on the old creaking wood. I felt him standing behind me. He didn’t touch me, but my body was entirely aware of his presence. His heat. He smelled fresh and clean from the shower, and when I turned around I noticed that his hair was still wet, slicked back behind his ears. Although he was wearing his usual dark brown flip-flops, it was the first time I’d seen him in anything other than board shorts. His faded jeans were slung low on his narrow hips, his untucked tight white T-shirt hugged his chest and biceps.

“Wow,” he said, looking me up and down. I bit my lip and tugged at the hem of my dress. I never traveled with more than what could fit comfortably in my bag, but had managed to trade my usual cut-off shorts for a simple white cotton sundress, which I kept stashed in there. It had a halter neckline, cut low in the front. It hugged the curve of my waist and flared out, stopping a few inches above my knee.

Nolan cleared his throat. “Come on, I want to show you something,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me toward the steps.

Hands.

Hands are a funny thing. As infants, we are born sucking on our fingers for comfort. As adults, we use them to hold on to one another. To feel. To touch.

My time with Nolan was making me look at hands as something more than the dirtiest part of humans and the transfer point for disease. When he intertwined our fingers, the thoughts that used to be my first when touched, barely registered at all.

Cody and Smoke had been the only other people I’d ever been able to touch without cringing, but with them I never felt the jolt the way I did when Nolan touched me. I’d only known him for such a short period of time, and although I knew our arrangement was temporary, I let him hold my hand, telling myself that it was part of the rouse in order to get the information I needed.

When Murray saw that we were leaving without him, he whined in protest.

“It’s okay, boy. We’ll be back,” I told him.

“I’m actually thinking you’re starting to like him,” Nolan teased.

“That is something I will never confirm nor deny.” How I felt about Murray was still up in the air. Just because I scratched his stomach while we watched TV, took him on daily walks down the beach, bought him an array of different colored sparkling doggy bandanas from the pet section of the grocery store, and baked him specialty muffins for dogs, did not mean I actually liked the drooling little creature with his wonky eyes and dragon breath. (Although, the green toothbrush shaped treats I bought him would help clear that up.)

Nope, it didn’t mean I liked him. Not one single bit.

When Nolan started to descend the steps, I reached over the railing and grabbed one of his crutches. I pushed it into his free hand. He rolled his eyes. “Thanks Mom, but the doc said I’m okay to spend a little time crutch free.” He set the crutch back over the railing and continued leading me down the stairs to the sand below.

“Do you have to drag me everywhere?” I asked, not entirely unhappy at the warmth that spread through my arm as he clasped his big gorilla hand over mine, towing me around like a child with a rag doll. There was something about him holding my hand in his big strong one that I found oddly appealing. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I found myself looking forward to being his rag doll. “Where are we going?” I added as he led me over to the water’s edge. The idea of entering a natural body of water where I couldn’t see what was lurking underneath the surface made me freeze.

Nolan gave my hand a tug. “Don’t worry. We’re not going in there,” he assured me. “The sand is harder by the shore. It’s just easier for me to walk down here than it is through the dry sand. I know why you hate the gross pool, but don’t tell me you don’t like the Gulf either.”

“I like the Gulf, especially the parts where the water turns bright blue and looks like the waters of the Caribbean, but the parts of the beach where the water is darker, and especially at night, it’s not somewhere I want to venture. I just like to be able to see underneath the water,” I explained, ending my little story. “If it’s hard for you to walk out here we could have just walked on the street,” I said, turning back to the cottage, but was stopped short when Nolan didn’t budge and didn’t let go of my hand.

He shook his head. “Now where would the fun be in that?” he asked, flashing me a wink and his customary big smile.

“We walked up the now empty beach. Nolan kicked off his flip-flops and carried them. I did the same. The cold wet sand squished between my toes. Music playing in the distance floated over the water along with muffled voices and the occasional burst of laughter coming from high up on one of the condo balconies. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Nolan asked.

“Because your smile is ridiculous.”

He chuckled and pulled me closer so that my shoulder was almost touching his bicep as we walked. “This smile?” he said, flashing it again, this time crossing his eyes.

I laughed. “Yeah, that would be the smile in question.”

“Fuck no, this smile is anything but ridiculous, I mean, have you seen these dimples?” he asked, pointing to his cheek where said dimple was on full display.

Nolan lifted our hands and guided me to step over a piece of driftwood. “Oh yes, I’ve certainly seen the dimple. In fact, I think it’s the dimple that makes it all the more ridiculous,” I added, looking away so he wouldn’t see my own smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

“Well, you might think it’s ridiculous, but I’m positive that if I’d been drafted into the NHL that the sponsors wouldn’t have shared your opinion. You’d probably be seeing this mug all over toothpaste commercials or billboards.” Nolan paused and turned to look over the water. Our walk became silent for a few moments and I knew he was reflecting on his missed opportunity.

“You know what I would do if I saw you on a billboard?” I asked, trying to pull him out of his thoughts.

“Swoon?” Nolan asked, and just like that he was back.

I bit the side of my thumb. “Heck no. I’d climb up with a can of spray paint and graffiti the entire thing. I’d make one of your teeth black, I’d make the dimple into a huge mole, and I’d give you an eye patch.” I covered my eye with my hand to demonstrate. “You would be a giant, ridiculous, smiling pirate.”

I thought he’d laugh but instead Nolan stopped and pulled me close to him. With a very serious face, he reached out and pushed a stray hair behind my ear. “Rage, the hockey thing probably won’t ever happen for me. I know that, but I’m gonna try again anyway. You have to promise me something, though.”

“What’s that?” I asked, craning my neck to better see his face.

“You have to promise me that if by some miracle I do get drafted some day, and you really do see this ugly mug on a billboard somewhere, that you will make good on your promise to make me into a pirate,” Nolan said, stepping away from me, the breeze taking the place of his large body spreading coolness where his heat had just been.

“Consider it done,” I agreed. We resumed our walk. A part of me really hoped his hockey dreams would come true some day.

But he doesn’t have a someday, I reminded myself.

“Why did you suddenly get so quiet?” Nolan asked.

“Just wondering where you’re taking me.”

“Our first stop is right here,” he said, pointing up the beach.

I looked to where he was pointing, but in the dark all I could see were shadows of the buildings lining the beach and lights from the occasional window. “I don’t see anything,” I said. He pulled me away from the water’s edge to where four wooden stakes were hammered into the sand. Yellow tape connected them at the top, roping off the small area. In the middle of the stakes, in the sand…was nothing.

Nolan crouched down with his injured leg stretched out in front of him, looking over the empty patch of sand. “I don’t get it,” I whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” Nolan asked in a regular tone.

I knelt down next to him and continued to whisper. “I don’t know. This kind of just seemed like a whispering situation.”

“Voices don’t bother them, although it would bother the mama if she was trying to nest, but the eggs have already been laid.” Nolan reached into his pocket for his phone and clicked on the flashlight app. He held the light up to a rectangular yellow sign tacked to one of the wooden stakes.

DO NOT DISTURB

SEA TURTLE NEST

VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO

FINES AND/OR

IMPRISONMENT

“Sea turtles…” I breathed, finally understanding what I was looking at.

Nolan stood back up and I followed. We both stared down into the middle of the nest, which looked no different than any other patch of sand on the beach. Nolan glanced up the beach, toward the few lights still on at even though it was only barely 8 p.m. “Honestly, I was surprised the mama even nested here this season with all the construction and people around. Doesn’t take much to spook them.”

“They get scared?” I asked, circling the stakes as if I could somehow see into the nest from a better angle.

Nolan followed close behind and explained, “Yeah, people want to take pictures of them coming up to shore, or kids want to hop over them and touch their shells. Even a few forgotten beach chairs in their way could make them turn tail and run. The circumstances have to be damn near perfect for them to make their nest and lay their eggs.” He leaned over me, his chin resting on the space between my shoulder and neck. I pretended to be unaffected when his lips brushed across my skin as he spoke. He pointed into the sand. “That must have been one determined turtle to nest in all this,” he said, standing back up straight and jerking his chin up toward the high-rise hotel under construction behind us. A tall, dark grey shadow with two cranes at least fifteen stories high standing still on either side of the building like two sleeping brontosauruses. “When faced with all this, she still chose to stay. Must have nested here before. Or been born here. This might be home to her. Brave turtle.”

“Brave?” I asked, “Maybe just stupid.”

“Stupid? How so?”

“She could have gotten hurt. Her eggs could all be crushed or ruined by humans. By laying her eggs here with all this crap going on, it’s a risk, but she did it anyway. Maybe she should have just run.” I crouched down again, staring off into the sand, not sure if I was still talking about the turtles, or me. “Maybe sometimes running is the better option than staying, even if she thinks this place is her home.”

“Rage?” Nolan asked. I stood and brushed the sand off my knees. “You okay?”

“Yeah, of course. I’m good,” I assured him, looking away so he wouldn’t read my face. I changed the subject. “When do they hatch?”

“Soon. Couple weeks at most. They usually stay under the sand for about two months before hatching. Only one out of a thousand make it to adulthood, though.”

“Holy shit. Then why bother trying?” I asked, thinking the statistic seemed impossibly low.

“ ’Cause, it’s worth it,” Nolan said. “These eggs are her family. Family is always worth it. Family is everything,” he said.

I opened my mouth to respond but shut it quickly. I was going to ask him about his parents again. It would have been the perfect opportunity, but I didn’t want to. What if what he told me was what Smoke needed? What if the answer to his question was the beginning of the end?

I knew that was going to happen—it was inevitable—but I pushed the thought away, not ready to deal with that just yet.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nolan asked again.

“Of course,” I said, turning around to face him. “Thanks for showing me this.”

“Rage,” Nolan started, “where is home for you? I haven’t asked because you didn’t want to talk about your parents after I answered your phone and when you came to my house that first day, you didn’t want to tell me your real name, but now I’m curious.”

“It’s not important.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

I offered him what I could. “Rage is my real name. The one I was given when I was born really isn’t important because my parents are the only ones currently in my life who even know that name, and most of the time, they call me some Flemish nickname anyway. I left home a long time ago, and besides daily phone calls, I haven’t seen my parents since then. Their house never felt like home to me and, it wasn’t because of them. They’re great. They’ve always meant well, their lives and the life they wanted for me just wasn’t…it just wasn’t.”

“So you don’t have a home? You just wonder around?” Nolan asked.

“Sort of,” I admitted. “I have a friend. No, more like a teacher. I stay at his place when I’m in town, but my lack of sleeping weirds him out so I don’t go there too often.”

Nolan’s entire demeanor stiffened. “I thought you said Cody was your only friend? Is this other guy your boyfriend?”

“No! He’s not. He’s like a teacher, sort of. He’s always got a different girl over. And stop with all the questions, I’ve never had a boyfriend!” I yelled, flooded by instant regret the second the words left my mouth.

“You haven’t?” Nolan asked, sounding amused. The dimple reappeared.

“No, I’m too busy traipsing about, taking up with my different boyfriends around the state,” I said, sarcastically, with a dramatic wave of my hands.

“Very cute. But seriously, how is that safe? Being alone out there? There are a lot of bad people out there in the world, Rage.”

Yeah, and I’m one of them.

“It’s a lot safer than you would think,” I said, turning back to the turtles, ready for the conversation to be over. Nolan reluctantly took the hint.

“In a couple of weeks we can come back to see if they’ve hatched yet. If we’re lucky, maybe we can watch it happen,” he said.

“I’d like that,” I said, because I would. I really wanted to witness them crawling out to sea. For once I let myself have that fantasy and in a matter of seconds I’d convinced myself that it was all true. That I would be back to see the turtles hatch.

Nolan grabbed my hand, this time I followed him toward the street. Once on the empty sidewalk, his walk was straighter, his limp barely noticeable. The street was empty except for a lone car or truck passing every few moments. We walked in comfortable silence until we came up to a tiny stucco building no bigger than a shed. “What is this place?” I asked as Nolan held open the door for me.

“This place has the best empanadas in town,” Nolan announced opening the glass door to the tiny cafe. A bell rang overhead. The smell of chilies and bread took up every inch of the place. Steam rose from pots in the open kitchen, which only had two burners and a swinging door, concealing a back room where more steam was coming from what I assumed were even more pots.

“Goon! Where the fuck you been bro?” a short, dark-skinned man with a mustache shouted from behind a high glass counter.

Goon?

“Pinto! My man! Good to see you. It’s been way too long,” Nolan said and the two guys exchanged as much of a bro hug as they could with the glass counter separating them, clasping their hands together and patting each other’s shoulders.

“I heard about the leg, man. That sucks, bro. We’ve all been routing for you back home,” Pinto said. “Oh, and that fucking cunt Jessica. I knew she was a fucking cunt though, brother, because my girl Maria saw her playing Chinese finger cuffs with Tico and his…”

It wasn’t hard to figure out that Jessica was the fuck buddy.

I cleared my throat.

“And who might this be?” Pinto asked, his eyes darting to me.

“This is Rage,” Nolan said, introducing me. “Rage, this old son of a bitch is Pinto. Pinto makes the best empanadas in all of Southwest Florida. I graduated with his brother.”

Pinto put his hand over his heart. “Very nice to meet you, Rage. I’d thank Goon here for his compliment, but that shit be true, yo. Although, my abuelita might argue with you, because it’s her recipe. So in case she’s looking down from heaven, we’ll just they’re the best in the entire world,” he said. He turned to Nolan and smacked his shoulder. “And I’m two years older than you, homie. So cut the old shit.”

Nolan playfully punched him back.

“You hit like a fucking girl. You two hitting up Bunch Beach tonight? Heard they got the pulls going on. Scotty’s out there with the ‘Yota. Can you believe he still has that piece of shit running? You should go check it out.”

“People still partying out there?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah man. You should go say hey. Sure there are some katz out there who would love to say hi to the Nolan Archer.”

“Fuck you, man,” Nolan said with a laugh.

Pinto grabbed two Coronas out of a refrigerator with a glass front and a PEPSI logo over the top. He tossed them to Nolan then pointed to one of only two tables in the place. “Why don’t you two take a seat and I’ll bring you out something special,” he said, rubbing his palms together as if he was formulating a plan. Dozens of colorful tattoos decorated the backs of his knuckles as Nolan led me over to the yellow, plastic table by the large front window. He used the concrete windowsill on the sidewall to remove the caps from our beers like he’d done it a million times before. He handed me one.

“Goon?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Hockey thing,” Nolan explained. “I’ll be right back. I’m gonna hit the little boys’ room.”

While Nolan was gone, Pinto came and set down two white, Styrofoam plates overflowing with an assortment of amazing smelling food. Not only did they have a golden brown empanada on each one but also some sort of delicious looking shredded pork, and what looked like little fried rounds of banana. “Wow, this looks great,” I said, picking up my plastic fork and digging into the food, which tasted even better than it smelled.

“Holy shit. Who needs fucking compliments? All I gotta do is stand here and watch you eat. That’s compliment enough,” Pinto said, flashing a smile. It wasn’t until he raised his hand to wipe his face that I noticed the skull tattoo over his middle knuckle on his right hand. One I’ve seen many times before.

Beach Bastard familiar.

Fuck.

“Does he know who you are?” Pinto asked in a threatening whisper, leaning in close with one hand on the back of my chair.

I scooped another mouthful of pork into my mouth. “What’s the seasoning in this? It’s fantastic,” I said through my food. “I mean the cilantro I’ve already figured out. That was the easy one. There’s something else, though, I can’t quite pin-point.”

“Are you after him, or you fucking him?” Pinto asked, snatching the fork from my hand and plopping it down onto the middle of my plate. He got right up in my face. “Or maybe both?” The fire in my spine started to burn the second he touched my fucking fork.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I deadpanned.

“I caught a glimpse of your tattoo. I know it’s you. I used to run cleanup for the Bastards back in the day. That tattoo was described by a dying man or two left in the wake of the shit I had to take care of because of something you did,” Pinto said, leaning in even closer. “Thought they were delirious. Thought it was all a myth that a girl could cause so much damage. They call you the Angel of Death. Didn’t think you were real until you walked into my place just now.”

“Step back, or you’re gonna learn firsthand why they call me that,” I warned. I was familiar with the moniker. The complete lack of creativity or originality of the nickname was the only thing that bothered me about it.

Pinto ignored my warning, placing a hand on the back of my chair. “You listen up, bitch. That kid’s my friend. Has been since we were in fucking diapers. Anything happens to him and I’ll call my fucking brother. He’s a Bastard, and he’ll be coming for you. Him and his whole fucking club.”

I faked a yawn, his threat just as boring and unoriginal as ‘Angel of Death’.

I pushed away his hand and picked up my fork again. With Pinto watching that hand, I grabbed a handful of Pinto’s balls with the other and squeezed, the veins in my forearms flexing and straining with my the tightness of my grip. He yelped and tried to step back. I only squeezed harder.

I cut off the corner of the empanada and took a huge bite. “Mmmmm, these really are good,” I said in a normal volume before lowering my voice. “Listen motherfucker, I’ll do what I need to do, just like you’ll do what you need to do,” I said between chews. “You step in my business, though, and I’ll not only cut out your balls and feed them to you, I’ll burn this shit hole to the ground. Then I’ll burn your club to the ground.” I looked him square in the eye where tears had formed in the corners. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, or what you think you know, but trust me, whatever you’ve heard is bullshit…I’m much, much worse. If you don’t believe me, I recommend that since you’re a Bastard familiar, that you ask Chop or Bear about me. They’ll tell you I don’t just threaten, I follow through. I kind of hope you fuck up. I’m all too happy to end it all. Your club. Your business. Your brother.” I paused and gave him one last hard squeeze. “You.”

When the bathroom door opened I released Pinto who immediately stepped back behind the counter. Nolan came out, wiping his hands with paper towel. He crunched it up into a little ball and tossed it into the trash as if he were shooting hoops. “Good, right?” Nolan asked, pointing to my plate.

“The best,” I said, looking over to Pinto, who scowled before disappearing into the kitchen. He didn’t come out again.

He didn’t even respond when Nolan called out his good-bye.

Pussy.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rage

THE OCCASIONAL STREETLIGHT did little to break through the darkness, but we didn’t need them to help guide our way because Nolan seemed to know exactly where he was going as he lead me through the night. We walked down the sidewalk in front of the darkened windows of the closed shops and café’s.

Nolan tugged on my hand, and I followed him through a narrow alleyway between what looked like two abandoned beach cottages, which were in a lot worse shape than Nolan’s place. Bright red notices with some sort of warning were stapled over each of the windows, which were boarded up. Nolan released me and turned sideways in order to fit through the small opening, grabbing my hand again when he emerged on the other side and pulling me through onto the beach.

“Where are we?” I asked. What lay before me was not just another place, but another world. In the hundred-foot span between where we just popped out of and the water was a roped off area, a makeshift arena, where two huge lifted trucks with humungous tires were lined up, tailgate to tailgate. A few dozen spectators sat scattered on the connecting dilapidated decks of the two cottages, which I realized was more like a duplex rather than two separate buildings. The spectators talked and refilled their red plastic cups, courtesy of the keg sitting on top of a tire in the sand below, as they waited for whatever was about to happen between the ropes to start.

Several other vehicles were positioned outside the ropes with on-lookers sitting on the tailgates while others were faced forward, shining their headlights into the little arena. “You just wait. This was one of my favorite things when I was in high school. When I wasn’t playing hockey, I was out here.” He brought me right up to the ropes.

“The way you’re built, you could have played any sport. Baseball. Football. Yet you chose hockey?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with hockey?”

“Nothing, but you don’t see how that’s funny? You live in Southwest Florida. A place where it never snows or barely ever gets below seventy degrees, yet you chose to play ice hockey?”

Nolan laughed. “You have a point. I guess I never thought of it that way, though. My grandfather was originally from Michigan and grew up playing on the pond behind his house. He’s the one who drove me around from arena to arena to play. It wasn’t exactly ponds, but it did the trick.”

“Goon!” Someone called out from the crowd. Nolan waved.

“What kind of hockey name is goon?” I asked.

“I was the enforcer.”

I waited for him to elaborate. “Oh,” he said, “I guess you don’t know much about hockey.”

“Guys with sticks. Missing teeth. Canada,” I stated, informing him of the extent of my hockey knowledge.

“An enforcer is someone who the coach sends out to rough things up. Let the other team know when they fuck up and that we aren’t going to take any shit. It’s not an official position. It’s more like something you’re not supposed to do, but we all do anyway. It’s part of the fun. A goon is just another name for it. Never thought I’d get a scholarship, but they recognized that I could skate better than most so they called me up. I was all prepared to work for my uncle one day and the next I was off to college.”

“Basically, you were a fighter on skates.”

“I guess you can say that,” Nolan agreed, seemingly amused at my assessment.

I bit my bottom lip. It suddenly felt a lot warmer than the eighty-four degrees the bank sign on the street had indicated. It made sense that Nolan was a fighter. He turned toward the ropes, giving me a glimpse of his expansive back and thick thighs.

“Scotty!” Nolan shouted. A guy around Nolan’s age with a sunburnt face and a white sunglass tan lines around his eyes hopped down from one of the trucks and jogged over to us.

“Nolan fucking Archer! Rumor had it that your ugly-ass face was around again. You come to see the ‘Yota tear shit up? She’s better than ever,” Scotty said, his bottom lip full of dip. He spit onto the ground then flashed us a lopsided smile, adjusting his blue baseball cap, which had the words SALT LIFE in white splashed across the brim.

“You still got that piece of shit?” Nolan asked, jerking his chin to the truck Scotty had just come from.

“Fuck yeah, man. Keeping her forever. First loves only come around once, you know.”

“Scotty, this is Rage,” Nolan said, introducing me.

“Rage?” Scotty asked, spitting again into the sand.

“It’s short for Regina,” Nolan explained, telling Scotty my usual lie for me. Nolan shot me a sly wink and squeezed my hand.

“Well Rage, you guys wanna sit on the deck for this, or you wanna come on up in the cab with me?” Scotty asked.

Nolan’s answer was immediate. “Fuck yeah, we’re riding in the cab.”

“Then get the fuck in here, Goon!” Scotty said, lifting up the rope so we could cross under it. “You ever been to a truck pull before?” he asked me.

“No, but I’ve heard of them.”

Scotty’s face lit up. “Then Darlin’, you’re in for a real treat,” he said, opening the passenger side door to one of the trucks in the center of the makeshift arena. I was about to climb up when Nolan’s huge hands grabbed me by my waist and lifted me into the cab. He climbed in after me and although he was no longer touching me, my skin tingled where his hands had just been.

“I could have gotten in myself,” I told him.

Nolan lowered his voice and leaned in close. “I know you could have, but I didn’t want you flashing what’s under that little dress to everyone, although I made sure to look.” He ran his nose across my jaw. “Those pink panties you’re wearing are making me rock fucking hard.”

It was the last thing I expected him to say. His words sounded downright possessive. I didn’t have time to process all the thoughts running through my head because Scotty hopped up into the driver’s seat. Nolan put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in closer and I didn’t know if he was trying to protect me from what was about to happen or if he didn’t want me touching Scotty.

Scotty closed the door, revving the engine. “Ya’ll want a beer?” he asked, reaching behind the backseat and retrieving us two large cans of PBR from a cooler. He tossed us each one before cracking open his own and guzzling it, holding the can up high and pouring it into his mouth. When he was done he pounded a closed fist on his chest and let out a long belch.

“What exactly is going to happen?” I asked. Nolan only smiled, cracking open his beer and handing it to me before doing the same for his own. He took a long sip before setting it down on the seat between his knees.

“You’ll find out. Hang on to me, baby,” Nolan said, wickedly. Excitement was all around us, flitting through the air like just lit sparklers. Nolan reached up, grabbing onto a sloppily welded handle above the window. With the other arm around my shoulders pulled me even closer, tethering my body to his. The heat in the air nothing compared to the heat radiating off of Nolan. His eyes were downright wild, as the anticipation of what was to happen grew and grew. Nolan’s gaze kept darting to the tops of my thighs where the hem of my dress had ridden up.

Scotty cranked down the window. “Ya’ll pussies ready for the ‘Yota?” he called out. A wave of shouting voices called back with every profanity there ever was. “Yeah, they’re fucking ready,” Scotty said with a laugh, chugging the rest of his beer in a few large gulps and tossing the can backward out the window where it landed in the bed of the truck with a clank.

A guy with a bullhorn appeared. “ONE, TWO, THREE, GOOOOOOO!” he shouted, followed by a long blast of the horn. He’d barely said three when Scotty shifted the truck into gear and pressed his foot down on the gas pedal, pushing it all the way down to the floor.

“YEEE-FUCKING-HAW, motherfuckers!” Scotty yelled as the truck we were in only made it a few feet before being yanked backward. “Hang on to your vaginas, bitches!” he added. As the tires spun and we got nowhere fast, we began to spin around the arena, first slow and then faster and faster. Wet sand and mud slashed across every inch of the back windshield, making it impossible to see out of.

Needing to know more, to see more, I sat up on my knees and turned around, leaning over the tiny backseat. I slid open the little back window. “What the fuck are you doing?” Nolan demanded, reaching out for me, holding on to my thighs before I could get too far.

“I wanna see!” I shouted, but before I could slide the window open, the truck suddenly bolted forward before coming to a complete lopsided stop. I fell into Nolan’s lap. He caught me, stopping me from crashing onto the floorboard. His forearm around my midsection, the other around the back of my neck where he stroked my skin with his thumb causing tingles yet again, not only across my skin but down my spine. The crowd outside erupted in jeers and cheers. “What the fuck just happened?” I asked, looking up at Nolan and blowing my hair out of my face.

“What just happened, Darlin’, is that we fucking lost!” Scotty said with a smile and laugh that made me think that he might just be the happiest loser ever or doesn’t understand what losing actually meant. The truck, now sitting askew, had us in a crooked almost launch position, with the nose of the truck in the air. Scotty had to stand on the seat and reach around my head to get to his cooler where he produced three more beers, tossing two of them our way. He reached up and opened the sunroof, standing with half of his body out of the when he shouted, “I need a motherfucking rematch, pussies! The Yota will rise again!” followed by the sound of him popping open his beer. He lifted himself out of the truck completely and fell to the sand where he ran around and opened the passenger side door, which I hadn’t realized had been latched over with a metal bar after we’d gotten in.

Nolan hopped down in one graceful leap, but I didn’t miss the wince when he landed on his injured leg.

“How exactly did we lose?” I asked. Nolan was about to pull me down when Scotty jumped between us, picking me up and swung swinging me around. Behind us I heard Nolan growl.

“Sorry, man!” Scotty said, although he sounded anything but sorry. “She’s a fucking hot one.” Nolan took me out of Scotty’s arms. He didn’t set me down, though. Instead, he cupped the backs of my thighs and wrapped my legs around his torso. My arms instinctively went around his neck and for a second I was lost, staring into hazel eyes that appeared greener in the dark of night.

“We lost because of this,” Scotty said, tugging us out of the moment. Nolan turning me toward the back of truck where the entire fender and rear axel been ripped off. The winning truck was driving in circles, making several victory laps while dragging around the lost parts of Scotty’s truck.

“Basically, we broke first,” Nolan said.

Scotty pulled of his baseball cap and ran a hand over his hair, setting it back on his head. “I’ll get those shit heads next time,” he said, throwing a beer can at the other truck as it made yet another victory lap. The can clanked off the windshield and was met with cheers and whooping from both the crowd and the occupants of the other truck. Scotty ran off, chasing the truck and leaping up into the bed joining several other bystanders who had already done the same thing. He unzipped his fly and while holding on to the round lights on top of the cab he pissed all over the back windshield of the truck. The crowd went crazy. Laughing and holding up their beers. Cheering for the ‘Yota man’.

“Let’s go before they run us over,” Nolan said, still carrying me as he ducked under the rope.

“You can put me down, you know,” I said.

“I know I can,” Nolan acknowledged, giving the backs of my thighs a squeeze. “Did you like it?”

“It was incredible!” I exclaimed. “Although I take back what I said about hockey before. Truck pulling is an even odder sport. It’s got to be a lot of work to put the truck back together each time and then destroy it again, but yeah, it was great, totally great.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Nolan said with a chuckle. His fingers dug deeper into my flesh, massaging up the backs of my legs to the crease of my ass, holding me even closer against his large frame. I felt his ab muscles flex under his tight shirt rubbing against the inside of my thighs. The adrenaline coursing through my system was a mixture of excitement over the truck pull and wondering what would happen if Nolan kept touching me. If his hands wondered even higher.

The rush was more intoxicating than any job I’d ever done.

Nolan looked around me, where several other guys were watching us, or more specifically me. He shot them a look that had them all turning back around. Slowly, he released me, sliding me down his body until my feet hit the floor. I felt the vibration of his throaty groan which pulsed through me. There was a glint of something wicked in his eye, a look of something to come which sent shivers down my back.

Whispers and laughter caught my attention and I began to notice and then pretend I didn’t notice, the other girls around us. The ones who kept eyeing Nolan and waving, smiling coyly before they turned their attentions to me, looking me over with hatred-filled eyes. The crowd was growing thicker but between the throngs of people I caught a glimpse of the girl I’d ran off at Nolan’s house weeks earlier.

Nolan set my unopened beer in a cooler filled with ice and filled two red cups from the keg. Nolan handed me a cup and I took a sip, the icy cold beer a much welcomed contrast to the muggy night. Nolan led us back over to the roped and we watched as another pair of trucks lined up and got ready for their turn. “All the people I’ve ever known treat their rides like an extension of themselves.” I said, thinking of Smoke and the love he had for his bike and me with my scooter. Nolan’s bike was being protected under tarps so I knew he would understand where I was going with this. “Some treat their bikes or cars better than their own families, and yet these people…” I waved my arm to where Scotty was now sitting on the roof of the other truck, chugging another beer as the winning vehicle continued its victory tour outside of the arena, driving right up to the waters edge and kicking up a spray of mud. I paused, unsure of how to describe the reckless way they let their trucks be torn apart, but loving it nonetheless. “These people are just—”

“bat shit crazy? Yeah, they are, but they’re having a lot of fucking fun.” Scotty’s screams of ‘YOTA FOREVER!’ trailed off as the truck drove further down the beach until it disappeared in the distance. “But I get what you’re saying. Rides are sacred and these guys get a thrill out of beating the shit out of theirs. Funny thing is that truck isn’t just a toy, it’s Scotty’s fucking ride to work,” Nolan said, followed by a deep burst of laughter.

“No fucking way!” I said, taking another sip. Nolan grabbed my free hand and again linked his fingers with mine, tugging me closer so that my bare leg was brushing up against his jean clad thigh. “Why do you always hold my hand?” I asked, looking down at our intertwined fingers.

“ ’Cause I want to,” Nolan said with a shrug. He dipped his head down and tugged me against him. “You’ll learn that when it comes to you, I’m going to do what I want to, and more than that…” He paused, sucking on his bottom lip. He was so close, his lips almost touching mine as we breathed the same air. “You’re gonna love what I want to do to you. Soon,” he added. There was no time to react or think about what was happening, he closed the space between us, and for the briefest second, his lips barely touched mine when a voice called out, breaking through our connection, prying us apart.

“Hey, pretty boy!” The deep voice boomed. We turned around. A guy wearing a black band shirt and jeans stood up from the deck. He was just about as tall as Nolan and although he was large, his mass was rounded and bulky where Nolan was muscular and sculpted. “Too bad about your leg. Looks like you’re stuck in this town with all us nobodies after all,” the man said and although his words were an apology, his voice was anything but apologetic.

Nolan’s hand tightened around mine. He pushed me behind him as the guy approached. “Nobody. That’s fitting. Accurate description of you actually.”

I stepped back out from behind his body, needing to see what was going on and why this guy was calling Nolan out.

“You have fun up there, pretending to be someone you’re not? Your uncle must be real proud you fucked him over for a fucking hockey puck and a helmet. Must be real shitty knowing what a fucking pussy you turned into, Goon.”

Nolan’s jaw went tight. The muscles in his arms tensed and a thick vein over his bicep pulsed. I recognized his reaction as easily as I’d recognize my own. I could smell his anger as he said, “Shit happens, Griff. I’m back. That’s fucking that, you want to start with me you’re gonna have to wait for another time, I’m kind of busy right now,” he said, taking a sip of his beer in an attempt to hide his emerging anger. I watched both men in quiet fascination, although if Griff kept pushing Nolan, I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to hold off my own anger that had already started to burn and was threatening to turn into an inferno I wouldn’t be able to control.

“Yeah, I’d almost forgotten about your gimpy leg,” Griff said, stepping forward. “And here I was, thinking you was back in town because you saw me on Instagram, pounding my cock into the back of your girl’s throat.”

Nolan huffed. “Jessica? Not my girl. Never was. You can fucking have the bitch,” Nolan spat, narrowing his eyes as Griff stepped down off the makeshift bleachers, the dilapidated old stairs creaking under his feet, announcing each heavy step as he made his way down to the sand until he was right in front of us. He flipped his black baseball cap so the brim was backward.

“Oh, I did fucking have her.” Griff said, smacking his lips, egging Nolan on. “Many many times. She was fun to pass around. Guess she got tired of you up there playing hockey and pretending to be the all-American jock when we all know you’re just plain white trash.”

Nolan muttered something under his breath and clenched his fists. He held me tighter and turned to leave, pulling me beside him as he led our way back into the dark. My pulse picked up as we walked away. A full body heat took over and I struggled to even out my breaths. Nolan was right to walk away. We needed to get far from that situation as quickly as possible because I was seconds away from losing it completely.

Griff called to us as we left, his hatred of Nolan evident in his voice, poking at me and provoking me with every sharp word. “While you’re pretending to be so preppy and polite, the all American fucking JOKE, you can pass over blondie now, and I can introduce her to the same good face fucking I gave Jessica. Don’t worry, dude. I’ll totally give her back when I’m done coming down her throat and making her choke on my cock.” A few of Griff’s friends chuckled.

Nolan stopped and completely stilled. He gnashed his teeth together and then slowly, he turned back around, dropping my hand.

In a few running strides, Nolan ascended on Griff, his fist cracking over his rounded face while his head was still thrown back in laughter. I stood there wide-eyed, amazed by the power behind Nolan’s punch, behind Nolan. Griff sailed backward into the sand. Seeing Nolan so in control caused my anger to fade slightly. He handled it. We could go. If we left right now, I could keep the burn under wraps. “Come on, let’s go,” I said softly. Nolan turned back toward me, cracking the knuckles of the hand he’d just used to set Griff straight when two of the guys Griff had been sitting with jumped down off the deck onto Nolan’s back, pushing him down into the sand. One held him down while the other’s fists flew.

That was it.

From that moment there was no more reining it in.

The familiar heat spread through my entire body like an out of control wild fire. My vision shifted from white to red…to black.

I’d lost any control I thought I had, and in the process I showed every person there that Rage was most definitely not short for Regina.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nolan

I BARELY HAD time to register what was happening when Oben and Ward, two of Griff’s friends who completed the juvenile delinquent trio, jumped onto my back like the cowards they were. After holding me down and getting in a few punches of their own, Griff stood and shook off the sand. “You’re gonna fucking pay for that, you prick,” he spat, wiping at the blood dripping from the corner of his nose. I was in the process of shaking off the two little fuckers when Rage suddenly appeared. A blank expression on her face and an eerie sense of calm surrounding her. Much to my surprise, she stepped right up to Griff.

“Rage!” I called out in warning, but she didn’t respond. Griff wasn’t the kind who cared if she was male, female, or a fucking toddler. His mama was serving time for killing his dad. His view on women in general wasn’t the best and his hatred toward me went a lot further back than hockey and Jessica. Rage ignored me and continued to walk toward Griff. She didn’t protest or even struggle when he lunged for her, grabbing her by the arms, spinning her around so her back was to his chest, her hands pinned behind her.

“You think you’re hot shit, Nolan? Mr. NHL? Mr. Big man on fucking campus?” Griff seethed, lowering his lips to Rage’s cheek. “You think you can take shit from me without me taking shit from you, then you’re seriously fucking mistaken. ’Cause this chick here?” Griff said, running a fat finger down Rage’s cheek. I pulled against Oben and Ward who were struggling to keep me restrained.

That’s when I noticed something about Rage that made me stop struggling. Something that sent chills down my spine and directly into my fucking soul.

She was looking right at me… only she wasn’t. Her eyes weren’t focused. They were shifted up in her sockets like they were about to roll back in her head.

And she was smiling.

Not the fake smile I’d seen her use before. And not the sweet smile like when I made her laugh. This was something else entirely.

It was scary as fuck.

Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Rage,” I said, trying to get her attention as Oben kicked my feet out from under me, sending me falling to my knees in the sand. That was it. This ended now. I didn’t know what was going on with her, but I knew I had to get to her before Griff had a chance to hurt her because if he did I was going to murder the motherfucker. With a roar from deep in my chest, I summoned all my strength and determination and successfully shook off Griff’s two cronies. Delivering hard, cheek bone crushing punches to each one of them that would have made my coach proud.

I left them moaning in the sand and hadn’t made it two steps when Rage spun around in Griff’s grip so she was facing him. With a shrill scream that had a huge circle of onlookers gathering around to see what all the commotion was about, she launched herself at him. Climbing him like he was a tree, she flipped herself around him so that she was on his back, her arms around his throat. She was squeezing. Tighter and tighter until Griff dropped to his knees in the sand. His eyes went from white to red and bloodshot, bulging as he struggled and gasped for air.

I watched in both wonderment and horror as Rage squeezed the life from Griff. Onlookers started to shout. One grabbed a cell phone and muttered something about calling the sheriff. “Rage!” I shouted, trying to get her attention. She growled and squeezed harder, a grunt escaping Griff’s mouth along with the last bit of air in his lungs. “Rage!” I called to her again, coming to stand next to her. I placed a hand on her shoulder. Her focus floundered, just for a second. She removed one of her arms from around his neck and grabbed my wrist, twisting it painfully. “Rage, it’s me. You gotta let go. We gotta go before this get’s bad.” She was looking up at me, but her eyes were still unfocused, almost as if she was looking past me. I set my other hand on top of hers, the one twisting my wrist, and tried again. “Baby, it’s me. It’s Nolan. We have to go. Baby, can you hear me in there?” I whispered as calmly as I could with the pain radiating up through my arm.

When she didn’t respond, her focus solely on draining the life out of Griff, I did the only thing that crossed my mind in order to stop her from killing him in front of thirty witnesses.

I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers.

I stayed there, my mouth on hers until I felt the flutter of Rage’s eyelashes against the bridge of my nose. That’s when I pulled back.

Rage blinked several times in a row until a light of recognition flashed in her eyes. She dropped my wrist. “That’s it, baby. Let go, we gotta go now.” She looked to where she still had Griff in a headlock and peered around me to the crowd who was now watching in amazement as they held up cell phones and were no doubt videoing every second. She was coming back from wherever she’d gone to, but slowly. Too slowly. I wracked my brain for something to say to her to pull her all the way back, and quickly. “Do you want to go back to the cottage and go for a swim in the pool?” I asked. Rage finally released Griff, sliding off his back, down to the sand. Griff dropped to his side with a long throaty moan, thankfully still alive although a part of me was still angry enough to wish she’d finished the jon. Oben and Ward crawled to his side like the pathetic hangers-on they were.

“Your pool is filthy,” Rage deadpanned before leaning forward and collapsing in my arms. I scooped her up and carried her past the onlookers and the whispers. I shifted her gently in my arms so I could fit us back through the alleyway between the cottages and back onto the sidewalk lining the main road.

“Yes, it is, baby. Yes, it is,” I whispered to a barely conscious Rage.

I’d never seen anything like the girl in my arms.

Beautiful. Strong. Fierce and Fiery.

A force greater than any storm and twice as destructive.

In some ways, she was naive. Innocent even. In other ways, she was the devil himself.

I’d never wanted anyone more.

I didn’t know how deep her secrets ran, but I had a feeling that if they were as deep as my own, there was a different kind of storm coming. One I hoped we could weather.

Together.

Somewhere between when she showed up at the cottage and the attempted murder, I’d started to think of her as not just someone who was staying at my house. Not just someone I wanted to fuck either.

I started to think of her as mine.

I carried her back to the cottage. Along the way, I decided it was damn time we stopped skirting around our truths. It was time to share some secrets.

Both of us.

Rage

NEVER BEFORE HAD I crashed so hard after an episode. My eyes were closed, my breaths even. Anyone who saw me would just think I was sleeping, but I wasn’t. I felt every footstep underneath me, every flex of Nolan’s biceps as he carried me back to the cottage and laid me down on the couch.

The blue digital clock on the stove read two thirty a.m. by the time I was strong enough to embrace consciousness again.

I sat up slowly, rubbing my temples. My head throbbed like a bad hangover as I recalled what happened at the truck pulls. It was fuzzy at first but then suddenly it all came back. The sea turtles. Being recognized by Pinto. The trucks. The almost kiss.

Griff.

RAGE.

I covered my mouth with my hand to quiet my gasp. Nolan had seen me.

The real me.

I was compromised.

Professionally. Personally. He knew too much.

Not just last night, but this entire situation had gotten out of control way too fast.

It was over.

All there was left to do now was leave.

When I heard the shower running I seized my opportunity. Sliding the door open, I stepped out onto the deck as quietly as I could. The door screeched as it ran across the rusted old track. When I closed it behind me, Murray was there, sitting on the other side of the glass, whining through his nose and staring up at me with a frown on his grey hair smattered face. “Shhhhhh, I can’t let you out,” I told him. “Go lay down, boy.” I pointed to his dog bed on the other side of the room. Murray turned around like he actually understood what I was pointing to. “Good boy,” I said. When Murray sat down and wagged his tail, I knew it wasn’t his bed that he was so happy to see.

Nolan.

Wet hair. Water droplets shone on his hairless chest and abs. A white towel wrapped low around his trim waist. The hint of whatever back tattoo I’d never actually seen ran over his shoulders. Shadows of what looked like ghostly fingers wrapped around his triceps. “Rage?” Nolan asked. I shook my head and took a step back.

Realization crossed over his face, followed by a flash of hurt in his eyes.

He knew.

“Rage…wait,” he called out, stepping around the couch, his voice muffled by the glass separating us.

By the time I heard the door screeching open, I’d already leapt off the deck and was running barefoot down the sand. It seemed like a lifetime had passed from the day I met Nolan and a lifetime more that I’d been running. Not just from Nolan.

From life.

Thunder boomed in the distance and although I hated storms, thankfully the bellowing of the clouds drowned out the blood rushing through my ears, as well as the voice in my head telling me to turn back around. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop. It was too late.

I planned on running until I could no longer hear Nolan calling my name down the beach, or until the foreign wetness streaming down my cheeks stopped.

I had a feeling I would be running for a very, very long time.

It wasn’t long enough.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nolan

THUNDERSTORMS WERE A comfort for me. Always had been. Gramps and I used to watch them roll through off the water, waiting until the very last second when the rain grew from tiny droplets to total downpour, before we’d even consider going inside. Which was well after Gran had first yelled at us to “get our asses up in the house before we catch our deaths.”

When Rage hopped off the deck and ran down the beach, the storm clouds rolled in over both the shore and my mind. I felt anything but comfort. Lighting lit up the dark sky in flashes, illuminating the ominous clouds. The storm grew larger, more intense, the thunder boomed, rattling the earth like a cheap car speaker rattling a trunk.

The rain turned sideways, pouring down so hard, it stung my skin as I tried to chase her down the beach. I was a fast runner, but not in a towel, and not with a bum leg. For not being very tall, Rage’s legs moved at a pace that wasn’t human. I lost sight of her through the wall of rain.

The second our eyes had connected through the glass, I knew she was leaving.

What Rage and those sexy ass legs of hers didn’t know was that her speed was no match for my determination.

Rage

THUNDERSTORMS SUCK. I’VE never been a fan. When I was younger, it was the only thing that made me want to hide under my bed or seek my parents out for comfort. My parents rejoiced in this bit of normality, but I hated it. Being afraid. Inflicting fear was amazing. Feeling fear was a shit load of no fun.

It was stupid really. I’d seen so much. I’d done so much. And yet the second the clouds roll in, I turn right back into the six-year-old version of me, except I didn’t have a bed to crawl under and hide anymore.

Mother nature unleashing its fury on the earth should have been a comfort to me. A kindred spirit of sorts. Out to wreak havoc upon the earth much like myself.

The thunder crashed overhead so loud and so bold it was like the storm clouds descended onto the beach and were surrounding me on all sides. I was drenched from the torrential downpour, my hair wet and cold, sticking to my neck and face. My heart was racing in my chest as I tried to outrun the storm. I ran until the force of the rain and wind blinded me and the sand turned to mush under my feet. I tried to set up an abandoned beach umbrella and take shelter, but it flew away when I opened it, careening down the beach.

It was around four a.m. Late, or early, depending on how you looked at it. There wasn’t a person around as far as I could see although the rain obscured my view and I could only see fifty feet in either direction until it started coming down so hard I couldn’t see more than ten and then five. I was hoping against hope for the sun to come out early and miraculously chase away the storm.

No such luck.

I trudged through the wet sand. That’s when I realized that when I didn’t take my shoes or my bag.

Or even my scooter.

Never in my life had I ever been so careless. So reckless. Not just with my stuff, but with a job, with Nolan. I should have told Smoke I was done with the second I realized something was different about this job. That something was happening between us.

On top of hating being afraid, I also didn’t like feeling weak.

I leapt over a small concrete barrier and leaned up against the wall of a tall building. I slid down and sat on the sidewalk, my bare feet still getting soaked as the rain came in at an angle. I don’t know how far I made it from the cottage, but all I knew was that it wasn’t far enough.

It would never be far enough.

I’d messed up. How stupid was I to think I could control my nature around Nolan. It had already been weeks. A practical record for me to go for so long without having an episode. How long did I think I could keep it up?

It didn’t matter anymore. None of it did.

I wanted to feel relieved that it was all over, but I couldn’t get there. All I kept thinking about was the look on Nolan’s face when I took off. The hurt. The way he called my name as I ran from him.

The one person I ever had real feelings for. Real attraction toward.

A person who didn’t know me at all.

As much as I wished that the anxiety and the sweaty palms and the racing heart were because of a pool-caused, brain-eating amoeba. They weren’t.

It was him.

I pulled my legs up to my chest and dropped my head onto my knees. My hands shook and my teeth chattered so hard, I could hear them knocking together. My dress was soaked through, keeping the cold rain pressed against my skin like an ice pack.

It turned out that germs and thunderstorms weren’t the only things I was afraid of.

I was also afraid of Nolan Archer.

While one of my fears was still blowing around on the beach in front of me. The other rolled in riding an ATV, emerging from a curtain of rain only a few feet away. By the time I heard the engine over the storm and lifted my head off my legs, he was right in front of me. I reared up, sitting back on my knees. Nolan glared down at me with a downright evil look in his eyes that had me shaking for a completely different reason.

“What the fuck did I tell you about being on your knees?” he seethed.

There was nowhere left to run.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Rage

NOLAN’S WET HAIR fell into his eyes. Water dripped from his chin onto the front of his black wife beater. His eyes were impossibly dark. His chest rose and fell hard with his quick breaths. His nostrils flared and he looked damn feral as he glared hatred down at me. The soaking wet cotton of his shirt clung to every inch of muscle on his broad chest down to his abs.

“Go back home, Nolan,” I said, looking back down to the ground. I let my shoulders fall. “I can’t do this anymore. For the first time in my life I’m tired. So fucking tired.”

Nolan growled from deep within is throat. His fists clenching and unclenching. He cracked his knuckles. “If you’re tired, then I’ll take you to bed. But either way, we ARE doing this right now,” he said. “But first, you need to fucking listen because I’m not going to say this again. Get off your fucking knees.” Nolan reached down and picked me up off the floor by my waist, holding me tightly against his hard chest.

I pounded my closed fists against him, struggling to get out of his arms, but he didn’t move. “That’s not what I meant when I said I was tired. I don’t need sleep. I’m tired of pretending. I did it once. I can’t do it again,” I shouted. “I WON’T.”

Nolan cocked and eyebrow. “Who exactly is it that you’re pretending to be?”

I shook my head “I can’t tell you! I can’t tell you any of it,” I screamed, struggling to free myself and getting nowhere. “It will ruin everything I’ve built.” I pushed against his chest. Nolan released his hold long enough for me to dart around him and back out into the rain where a sudden clap of thunder boomed overhead, echoing between the buildings.

I dropped to my knees in the sand, ducking and covering my head with my hands.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Nolan said leaning over me, covering my body with his.

Protecting me.

I didn’t deserve his protection. If he really knew who I was and what I was there to do he wouldn’t want to protect me anymore. “No! It’s not okay!” I shouted, pushing him off of me and to my feet. “None of this is fucking okay!”

Nolan grabbed my wrist. “Let me explain this to you,” he said, calmly. Too calmly. He reached out and cupped my cheek in his hand, rubbing over it with the pad of his thumb. “You and I are going to have a coming-to-Jesus moment. You’re gonna tell me your shit. I’m gonna tell you my shit, and then I’m going to fuck you. Long and hard, until you don’t remember your real name or the one you chose to go by because you’ll be too busy screaming mine.”

My insides clenched tight and I mashed my lips tightly together, suppressing a moan. “What secrets do you have?” I asked, the air hitching in my lungs. I didn’t mean to lean into his touch, but that was exactly what I did, my eyes never leaving his as I rubbed my cheek along his open palm.

Nolan shook his head. His lip curved upward in a cocky smirk. “Oh no, Princess. Ladies first.”

“You want the truth?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“The truth is that I have to leave.”

“Not gonna fucking happen, baby girl.”

“Fine. The truth is that I’m no one. I’m nothing. I don’t live anywhere and I don’t get close to anyone. The truth is that you know me better than anyone has ever known me, yet you don’t really know me at all. And that’s why I have to leave. You’ve seen too much. You know too much!” I yanked my head away but Nolan tugged me back.

“Bullshit,” he snapped, waving off my answer. “Where do you live?”

“Nowhere,” I said, repeating the truth.

Nolan’s jaw tightened. Gritting his teeth, he looked up to the stormy sky, like he was searching for something, anything but the answers I’d given him. A guttural roar ripped from the depths of his throat, vibrating all the way through to my black fucking soul.

“It’s not fucking enough,” he seethed.

“I know,” I said, turning around again. Nolan came up behind me and pulled my back into his body. The heat between us warming the chill inside of me. “You’re a good guy Nolan. Too good for me. You’re normal. I’ll never be normal. Ever. That’s why I have to go.”

“You aren’t fucking going anywhere. The sooner you realize that, the better,” he growled in my ear and pulled me roughly against him before spinning me around in his arms. I craned my neck, his eyes locking on to mine. Hazel against blue-green. The earth and the stormy sky battling one another for control. With that one look and I knew I was losing. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel this thing between us,” he said, running his nose down my jaw. He grabbed me by the hips, pressing his erection up against my core. “This is what you do to me. All the time. All. The. Fucking. Time. You can’t tell me that I don’t have an effect on you because I know you feel me in here,” Nolan said, pressing his hand flat against my chest. “The same way I feel you.” He dragged his fingers down the front of my wet dress and across my breast and nipple.

I sucked in a breath. It took everything I had not to arch into his touch. Push my heavy breasts and hard nipples into his beautiful strong hands. My body yearned to push back against the hardness I felt throbbing through his wet jeans, mimicking my own throbbing that had been swollen and aching for more.

This is why I have to leave.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want this. Me.” He dipped his head and ran his nose from my shoulder, up my neck to my jaw, inhaling me as he went. A flush of wetness pooled between my legs that had nothing to do with the rain. “Jesus Christ. I can fucking smell how bad you want this right now, so don’t you dare tell me you don’t.”

I shook my head, but Nolan only chuckled.

He laughed at me.

That laugh turned into the finger pushing the button on the same anger I’d showed him I was capable of last night. The burning sensation started, warning me of what was to come. I didn’t try to breathe slowly. I didn’t try to think of something else. I didn’t even try to run away again.

He wanted the truth, so I was going to give it to him.

Obviously Nolan needed to see again what I capable of in order to fully understand what he was dealing with. There was no doubt in my mind that after, he’d let me go without wasting so much as another second thinking about me.

My stomach twisted at the thought. I looked away.

“Fucking look at me, Rage!” Nolan commanded, pulling my chin toward him and looking into my eyes. He went blurry. Like he wasn’t even there anymore. I heard him calling me. I heard him mutter and swear.

Then I heard nothing but a buzz in my ears as the anger took hold, wrapping me up in her torturous embrace, feeding me what I needed, what I wanted. I may not have known how to deal with the emotional shit that makes your chest hurt, but anger? Rage?

That I could work with.

My happy place of chaos.

I didn’t need Nolan.

I was high. Downright giddy.

Until I wasn’t.

Suddenly I was ripped from the arms of my old friend, my vision focusing, Nolan coming back into view. I placed a hand over the stinging sensation on my cheek. “You smacked me?”

Nolan’s face was so close, his nose touched mine. “God damn right I smacked you. I told you I wasn’t going to let you leave and I didn’t mean just running away.”

“You smacked me,” I repeated, rubbing my hand over my heated cheek.

Nolan nodded. “Didn’t want to, but I had to bring you back, baby girl.” Nolan lowered his voice. “Had to. A kiss didn’t work this time.”

“You kissed me?” I asked, my fingers moving from my cheek to my lips. Suddenly, I wasn’t pissed off that he wouldn’t let me go. I wasn’t even pissed that he smacked me. But for some reason, it was the kiss that had my mind reeling. I couldn’t think when we were so close. The overwhelming need to put distance between us took over. I needed to clear my mind.

Without waiting another second, I ducked under Nolan’s arm and took off down the beach.

I didn’t stop.

Did I want to?

That was, I didn’t stop until something hard hit my back from behind and I was sent flying face first into the wet sand. Strong hands flipped me over onto my back. Again, I found myself gazing up into a murderous pair of hazel eyes. These eyes weren’t the kind, beautiful eyes of the boy I’d come to know in the past few weeks.

These eyes were dark and they were FURIOUS.

Nolan searched my face. “My leg may have issues, but you underestimate the fact that I’d break it all over again for you.” He was breathing hard, his thighs straddling mine. “What happened with Griff, is that what this leaving shit is all about?”

I didn’t answer because to say that the one incident was what this was all about would be wrong. It was part of it, but it was just the tip of the iceberg that was my life. “We all got anger, baby.”

“Not like me,” I spat. I bucked my hips in an effort to get him off of me but all I managed to do was put myself in contact with the hardness straining against his wet jeans. I bit my lip to stifle a moan, not wanting him to know how much he was getting to me.

One look at Nolan’s lusty gaze told me I wasn’t very successful.

Nolan furrowed his brows. “Baby, when you feel that temper of yours crossing over to that point of no return, then you take that shit out on me. If you have to unleash whatever is going on in that pretty brain of yours, then you unleash it on me. You give ME your anger and you don’t leave again. You hear what I’m saying? Come at me, Rage. Give me all you fucking got, and I’ll give it right back. Take it out on me. On my body. I promise, I can take it.” Nolan paused, running his gaze over my body, licking me up and down with his hazel eyes. “I want to take it.”

Opening my mouth to argue, I was quickly silenced when Nolan crushed his lips to mine.

In that moment, I was lost. In the kiss. In Nolan. In what he was pressing against me as he kissed me, hard and long. His tongue parted my lips. It was both a dance and a war. I never knew a kiss could be both harsh and gentle. Soft and solid.

I moaned into his mouth, and he rocked against me again, my dress riding up on my legs. If he were to look down, my panties would be on full display.

“You’re so fucking beautiful. I can’t wait to fill that pussy with my cock. I’ve been aching to feel you come while I’m buried deep inside of you,” Nolan groaned, thrusting his hard cock against my panties, rubbing it up and down a spot that had me gasping and wanting to push up against him even more. I had a feeling that Nolan was making sure I understood that what he was going to do to me wasn’t just a promise. “I’m going to fuck the anger out of you.”

It was a warning.

The sun was rising over the water as Nolan smoothed his hand up over my bare thigh, over my panties and then between my legs. I didn’t even realize the rain had stopped. Nolan lifted the edge of the fabric just enough to dip two fingers inside. The second he came in contact with my sensitive flesh, my back lifted off the sand in a jump. He played with my opening. Kissing me harder and teasing his fingers through my wetness. He pressed the tip of one finger inside me, then stilled. “This pussy is mine,” he said, removing his hand from my panties and putting his fingers in his mouth, sucking my moisture from them and groaning. He looked down at me, and for a brief second, confusion flashed in his heavily-lidded eyes.

Nolan settled himself back on top of me, his hand again snaking it’s way into my panties. He pushed a finger inside, but didn’t get very far when he stilled. “You’re so fucking tight.”

I lifted my hips up off the sand, hoping he’d take the hint and plunge it deeper inside of me. Or something, anything to quench the ache that kept building and building. I didn’t know how much more I could take. My nipples were so hard it was practically painful. My thighs shook.

The sound of a child’s high-pitched laugh broke the spell we were under.

“Shit,” Nolan cursed. He stood quickly, pulling me up with him. A family of four emerged from a nearby cottage, a little blonde girl bounded down the steps, chasing after a beach ball twice as big as she was.

Nolan took my hand and pulled me over to the ATV he’d driven up in. He picked me up and set me over the seat. He reached behind his head and tugged on his shirt, lifting it up over his head and setting it across the seat. “You think I’m a normal guy, huh?” he asked with a wicked smile. “You’re not the only one with secrets, Rage.” Before I could ask what he was doing, he turned around and I gasped.

Holy fuck.

I was finally getting a good look at Nolan’s tattoo. It was a full back piece. Colorful and very detailed. In the center was a wolf fighting an eagle whose wings stretched across Nolan’s back up to his shoulders and over his trap muscles. The symbol was one I recognized without even having to read the words scrolled across the bottom.

Wolf Warriors Motorcycle Club

Logan’s Beach

Nolan was right.

I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

Nolan

GRAMPS ALWAYS SAID that if you expected honesty, you must first give it. Which was what I did by showing Rage my back and letting her in on a big piece of my life that I’d been hiding from her.

I wanted her. Body, heart, and fucking soul. That meant we both had some truths to come to terms with, and I hoped I could explain mine in a way that wouldn’t end with me chasing her down again, which was exactly what I’d do if she ran.

Over and over.

I’ve never had to answer to anyone, especially not about the MC. Before Rage, I’d never even wanted to keep a girl around for a few hours. Even with Jessica, I got tired of her if we were together more than one night a week. Whereas with Rage, I didn’t want to let her out of my sight for a single minute.

Something else that was new for me, and something that had my cock dripping with precum, was the notion that Rage, the girl I was about to fuck and make mine, was possibly a virgin. Before the realization hit me that she could be innocent, I was about to take her like a savage on the beach. I’d planned to flip her over and fuck her hard until she was screaming and choking on the fucking sand.

As much as I hated the screaming kid for interrupting us, I was grateful too. I needed to make sure every second of fucking Rage was as amazing for her as I knew it was going to be for me.

So good she will never try and leave again.

If I’d learned anything after her attempt to run away, it was that there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to keep her.

Anything.

We still had some truths to share, but it was going to have to wait, because it was time to show her that she belonged to me, and no matter how much distance she thought she could put between us, that fact wasn’t going to change.

I hit the throttle and raced down the beach to the cottage with only the girl in front of me on my mind.

I planned on spending the rest of the day showing her one truth though. The truth that I’d known since the day we met. The one I felt in my gut and understood better than anything I’ve ever understood in my entire life.

She was mine.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rage

NOLAN IS A WOLF WARRIOR.

This thought ran through my mind over and over and over again as we drove back to the cottage.

How did I not know? Why didn’t Smoke tell me?

Joker, the Warrior’s Vice President, was someone I’d done a lot of work for in the past. Someone who didn’t care for me very much since I’d flat out refused to work solely for him. He was among the handful of people who knew not only who I was, but what I looked like.

Nolan parked the ATV in the storage area under the cottage, where a section of lattice had been removed and was leaning up against the side of the house. He cut the engine and lifted me off the seat, carrying me up the steps. “Put me down,” I said, pounding on his bare chest. “You’re going to hurt your leg again,” I told him, but he ignored me, grunting his argument as he continued to carry me, not setting me down until after he’d kicked open the door of the bedroom.

The second my feet hit the carpet, he slammed the door shut and spun me around against it. He parted my knees and pushed himself between my legs. He was still hard. My head fell back against the door and I closed my eyes as he forcefully rocked into me. His cock sliding up and down against my core. My legs shook with anticipation. My entire body was awash in unfamiliar sensations.

Unfamiliar that was, until Nolan.

“Open your fucking eyes,” he commanded. As much as I told myself I hated when Nolan bossed me around, it was yet another thing he’d been right about. When I responded to his demands, my body responded to being ordered. Humming and buzzing like a street light at dusk.

“I need…answers,” I moaned, swallowing hard as Nolan continued his assault on my senses by grinding harder against me, grabbing the back of my neck and covering my hips with his. Punishing. Bruising. He explored my mouth with his tongue, nipping at my bottom lip with his teeth.

“Answers later,” he said, pulling back slightly. “But only after I show you who it is you belong to.” Nolan snaked his hands up the backs of my thighs, cupping my ass and digging his fingers into my flesh. I let out a yelp when he lifted me up off the ground. I wrapped my legs around him. He reached up a hand and slid the tie holding my ponytail out of my hair. It felt cold as my still wet hair fell around my shoulders.

I should have argued with him. Told him that there were too many questions between us to continue without answers, but then he dipped his head down and bit my nipple through my dress, grazing it slightly with his teeth. All rational thought was gone. In its place was the new life Nolan was breathing into my body and into the two other places in me I’d thought were long dead.

My soul.

My heart.

Both alive and well, heating my blood from within.

It was the thought of heat that caused me to remember my cheek, the sting from his slap fresh on my still-tingling skin.

I raised my hand, and without any warning, I slapped Nolan across the face.

Hard.

He turned his head away from me in the direction I’d hit him. My stomach flipped, unsure what his reaction would be.

Not caring.

“That’s for slapping me,” I said between my teeth, relishing in the feel of the sting now on my palm instead of my cheek.

Nolan turned back around to face me and not even his dimple, which was on full display, could lessen the evil look in his eyes or the crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His skin reddened, the mark taking on the shape of my hand. He chuckled, low and deep. His eyes glistened. Dark and mysterious. A mixture of anger and lust.

“You’re gonna pay for that, little girl,” Nolan warned. His voice was scratchy and throaty. He growled. Something about the primitive sound sent a spark of desire between my legs. I tried to push my thighs together. To find some sort of relief, but all I managed to do was hold Nolan’s hard thigh and even harder erection between my legs, rubbing my core against him. “More,” I demanded, hoping he’d know what it was I was asking for.

Because I wasn’t sure I did.

“Oh, no. Not so fast,” Nolan chided. “You don’t get to get yourself off on me. That’s my job.” He leaned in, his lips brushed against my ear, trailing down to my neck where he sucked and released my skin over and over again. Caressing with his tongue, his fingers kneading my ass cheeks. “I’m going to punish you by making you come until it fucking hurts.” His mouth again found mine. We moaned into each other’s mouths when his tongue parted my lips and our tongues connected.

I felt it through my body and it caused a pulsing sensation inside me that was over too quick. A split second of pleasure that left me wanting more. Needing more.

So much more.

Usually it was anger I lost myself in, but with Nolan, I felt as if I could lose myself in these new feelings, these new sensations.

In him.

You’re already lost in him.

Looking down, I watched in wonderment and confusion toward the place where our bodies were connected, or would be connected, if our clothes weren’t in the way. How something so simple as touch could cause such a big reaction was beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

Nolan’s eyes were on me, watching me watch us. “Fuck,” he whispered, before threading his hand through my hair, pulling on it and yanking my head back to give himself easier access to my throat. “The innocent fucking look on your face right now makes me harder than I’ve ever been.” He groaned, dragging his lips against my skin. “Now would be a good time to tell me if you’re untouched, baby. I gotta know when I’m fucking you if I’m the lucky motherfucker who gets to lay claim on your virgin pussy. The way I’ve already laid claim on the rest of you.”

My pulse quickened the same way it did when I was about to pull the trigger. “I’ve done it before,” I admitted in a whisper. “Sex. I mean, I think I have.”

Nolan furrowed his brows. “Good girl. I like the way you answered that without hesitating. Without embarrassment. Most girls couldn’t do that.”

“I’m not most people,” I reminded him.

“Don’t I fucking know it,” he whispered, searching my eyes, before zoning in on my mouth and running the pad of his thumb over my lips. “There’s a lot of shit people don’t remember easily these days. Birthdays. The name of your postman. Getting fucked isn’t something most people aren’t sure about.” I opened my mouth and lightly bit the tip of his thumb. He dropped his forehead to mine with a ragged grunt. The cords of his neck were strained. A thick blue vein running beneath his ear and down his throat pulsed rapidly.

He reached around behind my neck, untying my damp dress. It fell, pooling around my waist, exposing my breasts. “Fuck, your perfect,” he said before dipping his head and running the tip of his tongue over my nipple, his wet hair tickling my skin. I didn’t know it was possible to be touched in one place and feel it in another, but as he circled the hard little bud, I felt it in my core. I pressed my thighs together, needing to stop the ache that was once again building, in order to answer the question. “Rage,” Nolan said, moving from one nipple to the other.

“Yeah?” I asked, watching him slowly lick around my pink skin, circling it with his tongue before latching on and giving it a quick suck that left me seeing stars.

“Explain,” he ordered, blowing across the now wet skin and making me shiver. I tightened my legs around his waist, trying to pull him closer. Needing to feel more of him.

I closed my eyes tightly, trying to form a coherent thought. “Um. Yeah. Cody. My friend—” I started to say, but when he rolled my nipple into his mouth, sucking and rolling his tongue across the tip at the same time, I bucked my hips from the door.

Nolan lifted off of my nipple, and I whimpered. He grabbed on to my wrists with one hand, pinning them above me. Fire danced in his eyes. “You said he was just a friend.”

I nodded “He…he was. But we made this list when we were just kids. These rules of how to help me be normal. Just a bunch of ideas on how to control my anger and how to hide it from other people, so I wouldn’t have to keep seeing the shrinks my parents kept sending me to.”

“So he wrote on some list that you should fuck him?” Nolan seethed, rocking against me harshly, tearing a cry from my lips. I dug my heels into his back.

“No. I mean yes. It was his idea, but I went along with it. I’d done everything else on the list, and some of it worked. Some didn’t. The fooling people part, I mean. The one person it never fooled was me. It never changed me like I used to hope it would,” I admitted.

Slowly, Nolan slid his hand down my neck and across my shoulders.

“Keep talking,” he ordered, his voice husky and deep.

“I wanted to try this one last thing. For my parents. For Cody… he was my only friend.” Nolan’s hand continued moving south between my breasts, giving my right nipple a pinch before sliding down the front of my stomach. He dipped his fingers just inside the top of my panties, then stopped.

He planted a kiss on my cheek, right next to the bridge of my nose. It was tender. Sweet. And unexpected. “We got a lot more talking to do, but know you don’t ever have to pretend around me. Never. I wouldn’t want that, anyway. Tell me how you don’t know if he fucked you or not.” Realization crossed over his face and his jaw set in a straight, hard line. “Did that motherfucker drug you or something?” He slammed a fist on the wall beside my head. Excitement coursed through my veins and between my legs. “Because I’ll break his fucking—”

“No.” I shook my head, breathing hard. “No, I just zoned out.”

“Zoned out?” Nolan whispered, his anger slowly dissipating.

“I got lost in my mind somewhere. Didn’t come back until it was over,” I admitted. “I assume we did. He didn’t say otherwise.”

“When I fuck you, you will know when,” he lowered his fingers inside my panties. “How hard.” Lower still. “How long.” He glided two fingertips over my clit. I writhed under his touch, trying to coax him lower to where the pulsing was so prominent, it was guiding my every move, my every thought. “I promise you’ll never forget what it feels like to come around my cock.” He reached even lower, hissing through his teeth when he found the pulsing heat between my legs. I rocked forward, searching for more contact. When he circled my pussy lips, coating his fingers in my wetness, I shuddered, a bolt of pleasure shot straight through to my nipples and to the place where Nolan was expertly working his hand.

A pulling sensation started in my lower stomach. A stretching type feeling, an expansion and contraction happened each time he completed a slow torturous rotation with his fingers.

“Tell me,” Nolan said, sweat beading on his forehead. “Were you sore? Did you bleed?” Nolan paused and looked as if he was contemplating something, but after a beat, he shook it off. “Did anything leak from you?” He pushed the tip of a finger inside of me and my inner muscles clenched around him.

“Ahhhh. No. It was…it was on my leg. My…my thigh.”

Nolan’s nostrils flared. “I’ll murder that motherfucker for taking advantage of you while you were practically unconscious.”

I didn’t correct Nolan. Didn’t remind him that I was zoned out, not unconscious. Because just then, the new reality of our situation really sank in.

Nolan. MY Nolan, was a Wolf Warrior. That fact became all too clear when there was nothing about the way he’d threatened to murder Cody that would make me doubt just how serious he was.

It confused me. It left me with a million questions.

It turned me on.

My spine tingled with heat. It wasn’t anger. This different kind of heat radiated through my body and floated across my skin.

“It was a long time ago,” I croaked, the deep voice that spoke barely sounded like my own.

Nolan removed his hands from my panties and lifted me off the door. He spun me around and tossed me onto the bed. “What about before him? After? Have you come for anyone besides yourself?”

“No. Not even myself.”

Nolan sucked in a breath. “How is that possible?”

“I told you, I’m not normal.”

“No, you’re not. ’Cause if I were you, I wouldn’t be able to take my hands off myself.” His eyelids were low and heavy as he gazed down at my body. “You’ve never come before.” It was a statement. Not a question.

I shook my head.

Nolan ran his hand down his face. “Fuck, Rage. I’m about to blow just from thinking about making you come for the first time. Doesn’t matter if I’m the first one inside you. I just want you.” His eyes never left mine as he unbuckled his belt and pushed down his jeans, kicking them off. “But I guess there’s only one way to find out for sure.” His thick cock sprang free, the head dark and purple, bobbing up and down as he walked over to the side of the bed. He stroked his cock from the base of his shaft to the tip, just once. He reached down and slid both his hands up the outside of my thighs, setting my skin ablaze. Dipping his fingers inside my panties, he slid them off my legs. His gaze was hungry as he zoned in on the place between my legs now exposed to him. He sucked his plump bottom lip and released it, now wet and shiny. His cock pulsed and he stroked it again.

My dress was now more of a belt, wrapped in a thin stretch of fabric right above my belly button and below my breasts. He pushed down on the inside of my knee, spreading my legs wider. “God damn, baby. You’re fucking dripping.”

There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t exposed to Nolan.

Except for the truth.

Which, after his own revelation, and after he answered some questions of my own, I knew I needed to tell him.

Everything.

A new sense of excitement was taking hold of me and not just because Nolan put one knee on the bed and then the other, crawling up my body. Slowly. Sliding his skin against my skin. Naked chest to naked chest. The feeling of him on top of me wasn’t something I expected to love, but there was something about the way he looked at me as he hovered over me that had me craning my neck in search of his lips.

When they connected, there was nothing slow about our kiss. We began to claw at one another. My hands roamed around his body, feeling and exploring his chest and shoulders, trailing down his abs like I’d wanted to do for weeks. He caressed my breasts, palming them in his large hands squeezing them. His cock warm and hard against my stomach as he ground against me.

Nolan’s mouth left mine. He moved down my body, licking and biting as he moved farther and farther south over my breasts and stomach. I practically leapt off the bed when he kissed the inside of my thigh. I groaned long and loud, my eyes rolling back in my head from a single touch.

It was pure torture.

Pure delicious torture.

He paused, hovering inches above my clit. My legs spread around his head, he pushed down on my thighs, opening me to him. He blew across my clit, igniting a jolt inside my core. The pulling sensation grew stronger and something was there, behind the feeling, something that needed to be released. “Holy fuck,” he said, his voice deep and needy. “I can’t wait to see what you look like when I make you come for me.”

I lifted my hips off the mattress just as Nolan’s warm and wet tongue touched my clit, licking me from end to end. “Mmmmmmm,” he groaned imprinting his hips on the mattress, his muscular ass rising and falling as he licked around my entrance, sucking on my outer lips. The pulling sensation became so strong it was bordering on unbearable. My face flushed.

Wild hairs fell into Nolan’s eyes as he looked up at me, flattening his tongue and circling my clit. “Ahhhhhhhh,” I moaned, my eyes closing and falling back against the pillow.

“Open your eyes,” Nolan commanded. “Watch me.”

I opened my eyes and lifted my head, which was when Nolan plunged his tongue inside of me and a pleasure so great surged through me, making me buck into Nolan’s mouth. We watched each other. Me as he fucked me with his tongue, and him as I reacted to his every move. He rocked into the mattress with the same vigorous rhythm he licked me with. “It’s too much,” I moaned, pinching my own nipples, searching for something almost within my reach.

Nolan growled into my very center, he lifted off of me, just long enough to say, “Not yet, but it’s about to be.” With his hand that had been holding my thighs open, he pressed together the skin on either side of my clit with his index finger and thumb, pinching it in between and pushing the sensitive bud forward. He lowered his mouth onto me again and lightly sucked. I clamped my thighs around his head, squeezing it, but he didn’t stop. He sucked hard, murmuring about how good I tasted and how he couldn’t wait to be inside of me. I grabbed his hair, threading my fingers through. I was so lost in sensation that I didn’t know if I wanted to push him away or pull him into me, so I just yanked on his hair as I cried out.

Nolan’s ass move up and down on the mattress harder. Faster and faster as he worked me with his mouth. It was when he slipped a single finger inside of me and at the same time nipped at my clit with his teeth, that the pulling sensation exploded. A blinding white light blew through my vision and my body. Waves and waves of pleasure that couldn’t be of this world rolled over me and through me and inside me, until I didn’t know what realm I was existing in.

Nolan groaned a long throaty sound I’d never heard him make before. He stilled his movements, his hips no longer pumping into the bed. He stayed between my legs. A lazy lapping of his tongue replacing the vigorous fucking from seconds before.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked, panting, trying to catch my breath.

Nolan rose and covered my body with his. He pushed his hair back from his face, his lips glistening with my wetness.

The expression on his face was unreadable when he looked down at me and answered, “I have no fucking idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Nolan

SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING on the front door and I wondered if my gun was loaded. Although I have no idea why I wondered this.

It was always loaded.

I then wondered how fast I could kill whoever was at the door and be back in between my girl’s legs.

Not fast enough.

Neither one of us acknowledged the knocking, instead I pushed her thighs farther apart and settled between them. “You made me come on the bed,” I said in a mock scolding.

“I’m sorry?” she offered, as if she didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad.

I shook my head. “Oh no, you don’t get to apologize for that. The way you tasted. The way you pulled on my hair.” I leaned down and kissed her lips softly. “The way you felt when you came on my tongue.” I groaned and even though I just blew my load like a teenager all over the bed, I was completely hard again.

The knocking that we’d been ignoring became a banging, followed by a man’s muffled shouts. “Stay here,” I ordered. I stood and pulled on my pants and retrieved my gun from the nightstand, tucking it in the back of my jeans.

I saw movement from the corner of my eye as I walked out into the living room, and sure enough, Rage followed, tying her dress back around her neck. I didn’t know what I was angrier about. Her not listening to me or her getting dressed again.

“You’re gonna be punished for that,” I said to her as she pulled her long hair back into her hair tie. I heard the sound of police radios.

Before I could even peer through the window, Rage had already opened the door and was leaning against the doorframe, completely unfazed by the two uniformed police officers, who stood on the porch with their thumbs on their gun belts. “Can I help ya’ll?” Rage asked using her very rehearsed smile. Her southern accident much slower and thicker than usual.

“I’m Officer Crest and this is Officer Towers. We’re here to investigate an incident that took place last night.” Rage crossed her arms over her chest and I wanted to rip them down when both officers’ eyes dropped temporarily to her chest.

“We were out last night,” Rage said sweetly.

I wrapped my arms protectively around her, pulling her back against my chest. I didn’t have to guess what they were there for. Griff. With Rage running off on me and what we’d been doing since, I hadn’t given it a second thought since it happened. It didn’t surprise me they were there. Not much happened in Harper’s Ridge, especially with the locals, that didn’t make its way to the cops sooner or later.

Fucking small town gossips.

I used to know all the cops around town, but it had been years since I’d been back. The two uniforms on my porch were strangers to me.

“We’re aware you were out, Miss. We’re here to inquire about an altercation that took place last night around 11:30 p.m. over on Bunch Beach.”

Fuck.

“What altercation?” Rage asked, innocently. Officer Crest smiled back at her, falling for her easy, albeit fake, charm. He may not have been able to see through her lies, but her acting was laughable to me, at best. It was also kind of adorable.

Officer Towers produced a phone from his pocket and pressed a button. He turned the screen around and, sure enough, it was a video of Rage taking down Griff. The caption over the top read “Samsonita and Goliath.” Whoever shot the video didn’t get the two guys trying to take me down and the only sound captured was the cheers from the crowd. So, thankfully, when it came to the part where I was talking Rage down from killing Griff at the end, none of what I had said to her was audible.

Watching the video again reminded me that even though she’d introduced herself as someone with anger issues, I hadn’t realized how deep they ran until that night.

If the law was planning on arresting Rage, they had another fucking thing coming if they thought they would even get close enough to my girl to slap a single cuff on her.

“This video, which was taken by a spectator at the truck-pulls at Bunch Beach, was posted on a social network site last night and it seems it’s gone a bit viral. Our department caught wind of it, and several witnesses led us here to you,” Officer Tower stated. “Miss, can you confirm that this is you in this video?”

I was about to demand a lawyer when Rage interjected. “Yeah, of course that’s me. Cool isn’t it?” she asked, reaching for his phone. “Can I see it again? Where do I press play? How many views did it get?” The officers looked as fucking confused as I was, although I was hiding my confusion well, hoping Rage was actually going somewhere with this act. “Wow, 247,000? That’s awesome. Can you believe it? Look, this came out better than we thought it would,” she said, holding the screen up for me to see the video replaying again. Her fake smile fell slightly. “Oh, but the sound quality sucks. You can’t even hear what we’re saying.” She shrugged and placed the smile back on her face. “That’s okay. We can handle all that in editing.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, deciding to play along with her game. Rage might not have known how to play the law like I did, having grown up on the other side of it, but she was intelligent, one of the smartest people I’d ever met. As much as I wanted to take control of the situation, I let her lead, trusting her tactics.

“Excuse me?” Officer Crest asked, wrinkling his nose. Rage handed him back his phone.

“Well, I assume you haven’t been able to talk to Griff yet, right?” Rage asked, using Griffin’s nickname like they were best buds, smiling even brighter than before.

“Miss, we aren’t going to disclose any part of our investigation until we find out—” Officer Towers started before Rage interrupted.

“I think you need to go talk to Griff. He’ll set you straight. This is me in the video, I totally admit that. We made it last night and Griff was a total natural. I’m trying to get into film school, but I think it’s him that needs to move to Hollywood. He’s totally believable.”

Both officers looked at each other and then back to Rage, the confusion still marring their every feature. “I made a great vigilante, though, didn’t I? I mean if you guys are here then that means the video is totally believable! NYFA here I come!” She twirled her hair and spun around with her hands in the air.

“Yeah, babe. See? I told you it was good.” I kissed the top of her head. “What?” I asked the officers. “She’s like five three and a hundred pounds.”

“One hundred seventeen,” Rage corrected.

“Sorry, babe,” I apologized, before continuing, “One hundred seventeen pounds and Griff is an elephant of a man.” I pointed out, chuckling. “Do you really think my girl here could take him down? Ya’ll must get real slow down at the department during the summer. You must be real bored to believe this is true.”

“Nolan Archer, right?” Crest asked smugly. I might not have known who he was but obviously he knew me. “Or should I call you Goon?”

Rage continued her celebration dance with a horrible version of the cabbage patch. I watched in wonderment as she hip checked the wall. Laughing when she almost went down on my fuzzy doormat before quickly recovering.

“You can call me whatever you want to call me.”

“Your name, Miss?” Towers asked Rage who finally stilled and came back over to my side.

“Regina. Regina George,” Rage answered without missing a beat. I had to press my lips together to contain my laughter.

The balls on my girl.

“We’ll talk to Griff, and we’ll be back,” Officer Crest said, writing down Rage’s fake name on his little note pad before flipping it shut.

“Don’t be leaving town,” Officer Towers added.

“We’ll be right here!” Rage sang as they got into their vehicle, which was a police golf cart, and drove off at a whopping eight miles per hour. The cart sounded more like a battery-operated child toy than a law enforcement vehicle.

“Regina George?” I asked between my teeth as Rage waved them off.

Rage giggled and closed the door. “What? You’ve seen Mean Girls? Do you have it? We have to watch it?” she asked excitedly.

“Don’t you think we should get you out of here before they talk to Griff and find out what really happened?”

“Nope.”

“And why not?” I asked, completely baffled as to who this creature really was before me, and why a visit from the law left a smile on my face, something that had never happened before.

Rage’s eyes shone wickedly. “Nolan, do you really think that a guy like Griffin is going to tell the officers that a girl a third of his size kicked his ass in front of a bunch of people? Or do you think he’s gonna go along with the fake video story?”

“My girl is an evil fucking genius,” I said, coming around the counter into the kitchen. Rage bent in a curtsy and I couldn’t help myself. I made a move on her, picking her up and setting her on the counter, pushing myself between her legs. I kissed her on the lips, soft at first, and then roughly until I was showing her every bit of what I was feeling for her at that moment.

When I finally pulled back for air, I looked down at her, a worried look on her face. “You said I was your girl,” she whispered, touching her swollen lips.

“Yeah, I did,” I said, leaning in for another kiss. I couldn’t get enough of her mouth. “Now, I’m going to make sure you don’t fucking forget that.” I took her mouth again, tilting her chin up with my hands and cupping her cheek. I pulled back and kissed over her closed eyelid. “But first things first.”

“What’s that?” Rage asked, yawning an actual real yawn.

“Did you just yawn?” I asked.

She shook her head and waved me off.

“No. I don’t yawn. You must be seeing things,” she said. “But tell me, what first things are first?” she asked, her voice lifting expectantly at the end of the sentence, and I knew she was waiting for me to tell her all the dirty details of what I planned on doing to her. But we had time, that could wait. After seeing how Rage handled the officers and how at ease she was with something that would have any other nineteen-year-old girl flipping out, I had questions that couldn’t wait any longer.

“First, Regina George,” I whispered, brushing my lips over hers. “I’m gonna tell you mine, and you’re gonna tell me yours.” Her eyes sprang open. “That’s right. It’s secret time, baby.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Nolan

RAGE PLOPPED DOWN on the deck chair, sitting Indian-style with her legs folded underneath her as she always did. It was late afternoon. I brought her over a plate with one of the sandwiches I’d made while she showered and changed from her wet dress into shorts and one of her seemingly many pink T-shirts. “Nice shirt,” I said. She looked down and stretched out the thin fabric, moving her lips as she read what it said upside down, like she couldn’t remember which one she’d put on. This particular shirt read “YOU’RE MOM’S A BITCH.”

“Thanks.” She yawned again. The fourth time in less than an hour. Her eyes were rimmed in red. The girl didn’t want to admit she was tired for some reason, denying it each time I called her out on it. When she realized what she’d just done, she glanced over to me and declared. “That’s not what you thought it was.”

“Okay,” I laughed. “I believe you. You’re not tired. Got it.”

There was a commotion on the beach. Rage craned her neck to see over my head. I followed her gaze to where dozens of seagulls were cleaning the beach of any food remnants left behind by the day’s visitors, squawking angrily at one another over pieces of popcorn and waffle cone.

“Where do we start?” she asked, tentatively. I was on the other chair, so I could sit across from her, my back to the beach.

“The beginning usually works.” We were going to have this conversation in the bedroom, but the second I saw the bed, I knew it wasn’t going to happen, so I spun us right around and decided that the deck was a lot more conducive for secret telling than the bedroom, where my only thought was getting inside of her.

Rage was already ripping pieces of ham off her sandwich and dropping them down to an eagerly awaiting Murray, who snatched them out of the air before they even hit the deck.

“I can go first if you want,” I offered.

Rage simply nodded.

I took a deep breath and rested my hands on top of my head. “Well, I’ve told you about how my parents were never around, and how they dumped me here with my grandparents until one day, they just never came to get me. But that’s not the entire story.” Rage sat up straighter and leaned in. “What I didn’t tell you was that they weren’t just assholes who abandoned their only kid. They were liars. Thieves. Fuck ups of the highest order. My dad used to beat the shit out of my mom all the time, even saw him take a swing at my grandparents a time or two.” I shifted in my chair, recalling shit I’d much rather not be recalling. “The only reason why they came around at all was because every few months or so, they’d show up and ask my grandparents for money. Only good thing my dad ever did was introduce me to hockey and he only did that because he used to play on a minor league team down in Estero. Well, until he got thrown off the team for fighting,” I said, glancing from my plate to Rage to make sure she was with me.

She was.

“Wait. I thought you were allowed to fight in hockey?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

I scratched the stubble on my chin and tried to figure out how to explain hockey fighting to Rage. “Well, fighting technically isn’t allowed or not allowed. It’s an unwritten rule that you can fight. Players go by a sort of unofficial code of guidelines. It’s pretty complex actually. But I’m pretty sure no matter what league you’re in, you’re not allowed to fight the coach. That’s where my dad went wrong.”

“Oh,” Rage said, biting on the side of her thumb.

“Anyway, without my dad around, and with Gramps getting on in years, I started hanging around with my uncle a lot. He wasn’t really my uncle, but someone my gramps knew. He let me hang around his shop when I was just a kid, and when I got older, he gave me a job repairing motorcycles. Took me under his wing.” When I paused, Rage nodded for me to continue. “He went by Joker, that was his road name. He was VP of the Warriors at the time. He’s our Prez now. I grew up in the club. In the life. Patched in when I was sixteen.” I ran my teeth over my bottom lip. “I know you recognized my tattoo, but how familiar are you with MCs?” I asked, making sure she could follow what I was telling her without getting hung up on club details she might not understand.

Rage looked off at the beach and then back to me. “I told you. I grew up watching them. They were around. Believe it or not, I didn’t grow up that far from here, so I’ve seen that symbol before. But it’s not my turn yet. If I have a question about something you tell me, I will ask,” she said very matter-of-factly. “Oh, I do actually. What did your grandparents think about you joining the club?”

I shook my head and smiled, recalling the look on Gramps’s face the day I got my patch. “Gramps was an old school biker himself. Loved the road more than he loved anything besides my gran. Old man was over the fucking moon when I became a brother.”

“But you still played hockey?” Rage asked. “That seems a bit odd.”

“Yeah, it was part of the deal actually. I wanted to be a Warrior since I figured out what they were, but Joker and my Gramps got together and decided that I couldn’t patch in unless I agreed to keep playing hockey and graduate high school.” I blew out a breath. “I thought the second I graduated that I’d be done with hockey and school and was set on full-time club life, but there was this scout at my last game. He talked to me for a bit after. I didn’t think anything of it. Next thing I know, the coach for State was on the phone asking me to play for him. A scholarship offer arrived by next-day courier on my front door step. Rest is history.”

“The club let you out?” Rage asked, sounding surprised.

She must have known a little about club life to even ask the question, but it was cute she thought leaving the club while breathing was even a possibility. It wasn’t, not in my club anyway.

“I never left the club. I was in it then and I’m in it now. All the way in. Joker told me that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity so he practically forced me to go.” I ran my hand over my arm. “Coach knew what I was into. Said I could play, but I couldn’t flash my colors. I had to leave my cut at home and these as well.” I held out my arm so Rage could see the very faded remnants of my old Warrior tattoos. “Hurt like a bitch getting the tattoos removed from my arms, but I went in and got the back piece at the same time. Back is a lot easier to hide than your arms, and that way even when I was out on the ice and I was still representing my brothers in some way.”

“You must be someone special for them to make that deal with you.”

You have no idea.

“Before I left, Joker had planned on passing me the gavel. When I got the scholarship, he decided he wasn’t going to change those plans until he saw where the hockey thing was gonna take me.” I scoffed. “Now that I’m back he’s been calling nonstop, wants to make shit official. VP then Prez, but I don’t think I’m ready. Not yet anyway. I know once I put that cut back in it means I’m giving up on hockey. I’m not ready to do that just yet.” I looked down at the scar on my knee. “After I got hurt I ready to come back here and jump right back into club life after I spent some time alone being pissed off at the world.”

“What made you change your mind?” Rage asked.

“This girl. I don’t know if you know her.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “But she came out of nowhere. The most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.” Rage smiled. “She saved my life.”

“And your dog’s,” Rage added.

“Yeah, and my dog’s,” I admitted. “The morning after I almost died, I changed my mind. I know it’s a long shot, but I’m not ready to give up on this ole leg. Think she might still have some miles on her yet.”

“Is that it?” Rage asked, tilting her head.

“Is what it?”

“You made it seem like you had more to tell. You said something about your parents,” Rage said, biting her thumb.

Oh yeah, that little piece of information.

“As I said, my parents were bad people. I came here for a quick day visit while the team was passing through town. My parents were here…” I ground my teeth together and gripped the armrest.

“And?” Rage asked.

“Turns out my parents had needed money, yet again, so they took out some sort of insurance policy on my grandparents.”

“They killed your grandparents?” Rage asked straight-out.

“Yeah. They did.”

“So what did you do?” Rage asked, biting her bottom lip.

I shrugged and lifted my gaze to meet hers. “I killed them both.”

I don’t know what I expected Rage’s reaction to be. In the time I’d known her, I’d learned that expectations and Rage did not go together. What I didn’t expect was for her to stand up, lift her T-shirt over her head, and straddle me.

She kissed me. Not an I’m-sorry-about-your-grandparents kiss. An all out fuck-me kiss. Our breaths wild, our tongues seeking each other’s in a kiss that had me thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad if we finished our talk later. Especially when I could feel the heat of her pussy and the dampness through her shorts against my bare stomach. When she bit my bottom lip and sucked it into her mouth, I almost fell backwards into the pool for the second time but corrected our position before that could happen.

Rage didn’t even seem to notice.

Lost in lust, she didn’t pay any attention to the fact that we almost fell into the pool she hated more than anything.

I could fuck her. Right now.

We could both get off and then we could move on to Rage’s story.

Fuck. My cock was painfully hard. I wanted to make Rage mine in every way, but in order to be mine, I needed to know why she reacted the way she did. Why she was kissing me after I told her I’d killed my parents when most people would be half way to the police station by now. I knew her story wasn’t going to be unicorns and rainbows, but I needed to know more about the wild girl in my lap. I needed to know EVERYTHING.

Now.

Because she was mine.

I didn’t want to control her.

I wanted to own her.

That meant I couldn’t fuck her until she held up her end of the agreement. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Summoning all the restraint I never knew I had, I put my hands on Rage’s arms and pulled her back. Her eyes opened. Her lips were swollen from my kiss. Her tits were full, her nipples were standing at attention and they were right in front of my fucking face. I swallowed hard. “First, I gotta hear your story,” I said. Rage whimpered and ground down on my lap. “Ahhh,” I groaned. “You dirty bitch. If you’re trying to get out of this deal, it’s not going to work. But after you tell me what I need to hear, I promise I’ll make you come in every way possible.” I bit the skin between her neck and shoulder. Her head fell back. “Then I’ll make you come and come and come…”

Not being able to resist one little taste, I wrapped my hands around her back and pulled her into me so I could suck one of her perfect tits into my mouth. If anyone walked by on the beach or through the alley between the cottage and the condos, they would be able to see us, but I didn’t give a fuck. I’d let her ride my face out there after she told me what I wanted to know. I slid my hands to her arms and again attempted to lift her off of me, reluctantly releasing her nipple from my mouth.

“Please,” she begged, sliding her heat up and down my cock, which was about to explode. “Just one first. I want you to do what you did to me before.”

What the fuck is this girl doing to me?

I’ve always thought of myself as accommodating. I threaded my hands through the back of her hair and tugged it back, exposing her long, beautiful neck to me. “Just one?” I asked, although it wasn’t really a question.

She nodded enthusiastically, her eyes still closed. No matter how hard I held on to her arms to keep her still, she still managed to rub against my cock. “I’ll make you come once. I’ll give you what you need, baby, and then it’s back to business. This is going to be quick and dirty.”

I stood with her still on my lap and set her on the ground just long enough to shove down her flimsy running shorts, exposing her bare pussy. I wanted to look. I wanted to spread her legs and taste her again, but I needed to regain some control. Even though she was getting her way, she needed to know who called the shots. I picked her back up and she wrapped her arms around my neck. I sat back in the chair, her legs again spread over me, the heat on my stomach almost unbearable. In that moment, I understood the connection between pleasure and pain. My cock was dripping from the tip, the front of my swim trunks drenched in a mixture of both her and me.

“Put your face here,” I ordered, pulling her head down so her face was buried between my neck and my shoulder. Her every little breath and brush of her lips against my skin made my cock twitch. My balls were drawn up tight like I could come at a moment’s notice, but this wasn’t about me. I reached around the back of her thigh with one hand and ran my fingertips up and down the crack of her ass. I pulled her up so that her ass was slightly angled in the air, but her clit was still connected to the steel pole in my shorts.

“Please,” she begged.

The second my index finger came in contact with the hottest, wettest pussy I’d ever touched, I pushed a finger inside and she cried out into my neck. She was so fucking tight, it was like a vice squeezing around my finger. If that Cody person had fucked her, he didn’t do it right, or he had a micro dick because as far as I could tell, Rage was in tact.

And all fucking mine.

The longer we kept this up, the lesser the chances were of me dragging some semblance of truth from her. I pumped my finger in and out of her, dragging her wetness over her clit in a circular motion then pushing back inside again. She ground against my hand and I sped up my pace, fucking her faster, harder with my hand. She was so swollen. So slick. But so tight that when I tried to push in another finger, I couldn’t get far.

I kept her anchored to me, my hand on the back of her neck. My fingers plunging in and out of her heat. “Keep grinding against me, baby. Ride my cock. Rub your clit on me. Pretend I’m fucking you. That it’s my cock inside you.” I groaned when her pussy contracted around my finger, sucking it deeper. “You’re so fucking close baby.”

“Tell me ho..how,” she muttered. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about at first, but then it hit me.

“You wanna know how I killed them?” I asked, pushing in deeper. She did what I told her and was dragging her pussy up and down my length, and for the second time in the same day, I was seconds away from coming in a place that wasn’t Rage’s pussy, which wasn’t what I wanted.

“Yes,” she hissed.

“I made them kneel in the Gulf, facing the moon. I made them apologize first. Then I ended them with a bullet each to the backs of their heads and they died cowards deaths because that’s exactly what they were.”

Rage moaned and ground harder against me, shamelessly and without abandon. “Aaaaahhhhh,” she cried out, along with some other words I couldn’t make out.

I don’t know why I said what came next. Maybe it was because I needed her to know. Maybe because I wanted to feed the twisted side of my girl that was turned on by the idea of me killing someone.

“I’d kill for you, Rage,” I growled against her ear, holding her even tighter, fucking her even harder. “If anyone tried to hurt you. If anyone fucking touched what’s mine, I’d end them…for you.” Rage’s thighs started to shake and her pussy clamped down hard around my finger. She pulled off my shoulder and stared right into my eyes as she came, rocking against me, riding out her orgasm.

She collapsed on top of me and I breathed into her hair, trying to calm myself down after witnessing the sexiest girl I’d ever met come on my hand. I kissed the top of her head.

If I didn’t have it bad before, I did now.

Because I think I just fell in love with Rage.

The place on my neck where her nose landed when she collapsed grew hot under her even breaths. Her bare back rose and fell in a gentle rhythm as I mindlessly traced circles on her arms with my fingers.

Rage was fast asleep.

“Fuck, baby,” I whispered into her hair. “You really are gonna fucking kill me.”

Rage

MUSIC WAS PLAYING. Over and over again, the same short melody flitted through the air. It grew louder and louder. My eyes popped open and I attempted to sit up but a heavy arm was resting over my stomach.

I was in Nolan’s bed. He was curled up next to me on his side, his hair covering his face as he lightly snored. I reached over and pushed his hair back, rubbing my thumb over his forehead and then the bridge of his nose, which he wrinkled when I touched the tip. He shifted closer and sniffled. Sighing deeply.

All that yawning practice had paid off. Nolan truly believed I’d fallen asleep. I wished it really were that easy to fall asleep for real. Instead, I had to pretend I didn’t feel him lift me up and carry me against him to bed. I had to pretend I didn’t feel his hands on me as he tucked me in. But the worst was having to pretend that I didn’t want his hands on me all over again.

I waited there, in my fake state of sleep for over an hour, before I felt Nolan doze off next to me.

The conversation he wanted to have with me could never happen. I was wrong when I thought I could tell him the truth. He could never know. There was too much at stake.

Joker. Of all the fucking people in the world to be Nolan’s uncle, it had to be Joker. The president of the Warriors and the man who wanted nothing more than to see me hanging from his clubhouse with my ponytail wrapped around my neck. He’d never liked me. He liked me even less when he’d shorted me on a payment and I’d turned his house into a blazing ball of fire. It was a little over the top, so was calling him while his house burned to play the song “Burning Down the House” through the receiver while I changed out the headlight on my scooter.

The music started again and that’s when I realized it wasn’t music at all. It was my phone. I took one last look at Nolan, memorizing the way he slept, the way his eyelids fluttered. Then, ever so slowly, I slinked out from under his arm and tiptoed out into the living room where my phone was plugged in.

Smokey the Bear’s picture flashed on the screen.

“Yeah,” I answered in a loud whisper.

“Checking in,” Smoke said. “You get what I need?”

“Yeah. The parents are dead.” I looked around the living room. The full moon casting light over the little living space I’d been stupid enough to start to like. To get used to. A place I’d fooled myself into thinking was my home, even though I knew all along it was temporary. For someone who had a problem with attachment, I quickly grew attached to not only a house…but a Nolan. “I’m out.” I glanced back through the open bedroom door at the mound of man under the covers. “You want me to take him out?” I asked, holding my breath while I waited for an answer.

Goon and Rage never stood a chance.

Maybe in another lifetime, Hope and Nolan could be together, but this wasn’t another lifetime, and I hadn’t been Hope in years, if ever.

“Not tonight,” he said, I covered the phone while I exhaled.

“You sure you’re done there?” Smoke asked.

“Positive. If I got you what you needed then I’m on to the next,” I said, clicking the End button and picking up my bag. I took one last glance around the room and my chest grew tighter.

The feeling only worsened when I drove off on my scooter.

For the first time since I’d left home, the freedom I’d longed for, the freedom I gave up everything for, that had held me together for so long, now felt dark and empty.

“Fuck, baby. You really are gonna kill me,” Nolan had said.

Tears formed in my eyes. I tried to blink them away. I managed to allow for only one to fall down my cheek.

“Not today at least,” I said, wiping my face and sniffling. “Not today.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nolan

I SHOULD HAVE known the fucking yawn was fake. I even saw her practicing weeks ago, but I still couldn’t see past my blue balls long enough to put two and two together.

I’m not a fucking pussy. I wasn’t raised to be a pussy. I didn’t cry during sad movies.

When my grandparents died, it fucking sucked.

When I had to kill my parents, it was revenge. Sweet dick-hardening revenge.

The way I felt at my grandparent’s funeral, as shitty as that was, had nothing on the way I felt when I woke up in an empty bed.

Again I knew.

Rage was gone.

Nothing I’d ever felt before compared to how I felt when I saw the note she’d left, written in letter magnets on the refrigerator.

I AM 1 OF THE BAD ONES

I’d always thought a “broken heart” was just a saying, an exaggeration. I realized I’d been wrong the moment I saw her note, because it felt as if all the air was being sucked out of my chest. I could feel the snaking lines of breakage slicing through me, like someone was slashing through my heart with a razor blade.

That’s the moment I felt my heart actually break. It actually fucking hurt. I bent in half and grabbed my chest as if I’d been shot.

I wish she had shot me.

It would have hurt less.

I was shattered…and then so was the sliding glass door.

I picked up a chair from the dining room table and launched it through the glass with a guttural roar as deep and agonizing as being left behind by the only person I’d ever really loved with only a fucking magnet note as a shitty good-bye.

I watched the jagged pieces of glass as they crashed to the floor. They cut into my feet as I stepped over them onto the deck. The hurt turned into something else entirely, and I only felt one thing.

Rage.

I didn’t give a fuck what she thought. This wasn’t over. It was far from fucking over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nolan

Six months later

RESTLESS.

That’s what I’d grown in the months since Rage left without so much as a good-bye.

Fridge magnets didn’t fucking count.

So restless, in fact, that I finally got around to cleaning the pool and fixing the filter. What was once a green mote of filth was now aqua blue and sparkling.

Syphilis free.

Rage would approve.

Which only pissed me off more.

It may sound stupid, but my biggest regret was not claiming her pussy before she took off. That way, at least I’d have the satisfaction of knowing that she was somewhere out in the world with my invisible mark on her. Although a visible one would have worked too. A tattoo. A fucking forehead stamp.

Rage was mine and I needed the world to know it.

First, I needed her to know it.

My leg had gotten much stronger. I was no longer using the crutches, and I’d been spending a lot of time running on the beach and working out on the deck to gain the strength back I’d lost.

No amount of working out was going to strengthen my mind into not thinking about her, though. No amount of running. No amount of jerking my cock.

And I’d been fucking trying.

Day in and day out was a lesson in patience and willpower and every day, when I hoped it would be the day that either my thoughts of her would start to fade or that I’d get a call with her location, neither happened. Search after search after search without a damn thing to show for it.

I was also in memory hell, tortured by the thoughts of a girl who’d been gone for a lot longer than the time I’d had her.

Actually, it was more like a purgatory of my own making. I was at a complete and utter standstill.

I’d hung my cut on a nail by the front door—a reminder of what was waiting for me. Putting it back on meant that I’d given up on hockey and on getting my scholarship back, something I wasn’t entirely ready to do. My leg was in good shape. All I had to do was make a call to the coach, ask for one of the team doctors to check me out, and see what they thought.

I didn’t.

Until I found my girl, everything else was on hold.

Maybe my inner turmoil was partially due to going so long without pussy.

“Don’t matter how long you stare at that cut, it ain’t gonna suck your dick,” a voice said from behind me. A voice I recognized instantly.

Joker.

I swiveled in my chair, the afternoon sun shone against his back, his grey beard longer than ever.

“You never did know how to fucking knock,” I said.

Joker shrugged and leaned up against the couch. He pointed to my wrinkled shirt and unshaven face. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks. Hello to you too,” I said, taking a swig of my beer.

“So let me get this straight,” he started, running his hand down his long silver beard, which was braided and tied together at the end with a red elastic band. “Is all this self-pity shit still over hockey? ’Cause you look like you got some pussy problems to me. Trust me, I’ve had my fair share myself, can recognize that pitiful shit from a mile away.” Joker walked over to the fridge and helped himself to a beer. “So who’s the pussy that’s gotten away with your balls? It’s not that cunt Jessica is it?”

“Fuck no. I haven’t thought about that bitch since the day I rolled into this place,” I scoffed. Rage was it for me. It was like the second she came into my life, Jessica ceased to exist.

“Yeah, I saw the Instagram video. Bitch looks like she gives lousy head anyway,” Joker said, twisting the top off his beer and tossing it across the room into the sink.

“You have an Instagram account?” I asked. The man had trouble working the remote.

Joker nodded. “Yeah, but it’s mostly to keep up with the grandkids. Ever since Sally moved to Georgia, she’s been making sure to upload new pics of the kids every day for me and my old lady. It’s not like I post anything. Pretty sure the FEDS monitor that just like they do everything else we do. Would be a shame to go down the river for a fucking selfie with a semi-auto in the background with scrubbed numbers.”

I chuckled. “Ain’t that the fucking truth.”

“Speaking of whores,” Joker said. “If it ain’t the cock sucker on the Internet that’s got your panties all twisted, then who is it? ’Cause way I’m thinking, you’ve got to be pretty bad off to be ignoring your Prez’s calls.”

“I was ignoring my uncle’s calls,” I corrected him. “Not my Prez’s. And… the rest is complicated.” I sighed. “So fucking complicated.”

“I came over to check up on you, but I also came over to find out where your head’s at, which I’m guessing is another reason you’ve been ignoring my calls. I’m sorry about your leg. Shit sucks real bad, especially after a special exception was made for you. Nobody else ever got a leave of absence from the club for any reason. But we had faith in you, kid, so that’s why we voted the way we did.” Joker came over and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Still do.”

“I don’t know where my fucking head’s at,” I admitted.

Joker’s tone very quickly went from polite to dead serious. “You do know coming back ain’t optional. If hockey’s a dead deal, you’re back and you’re putting on that cut. Simple as that. Frankly, I’m surprised you ain’t got it on already, the way you said they were telling you, you was never gonna put on skates again.” Joker sighed. “You made promises to your brothers when you patched in, and I’m gonna hold you to them, just like I would anyone else,” he said, his words carrying all the warnings that didn’t need repeating. I’d always knew coming back wasn’t optional.

“It ain’t a matter of coming back. I left the town, not the club. Just because I couldn’t wear a cut around campus didn’t mean I wasn’t a brother anymore, you know that” I said. “I haven’t put my cut back on yet because I feel like if I do, that I’m kissing all the other shit good-bye and I’m not ready to do that yet. Leg’s feeling better, much better. I’ve got to see what this knee’s got left in her and I’ll do it. Soon. But right now I’ve got some other pressing matters.”

“Like waiting on some whore?” Joker asked.

“She’s not some whore,” I said between my teeth. If Joker were anyone else, he’d have my fists in his face already. “It’s more than that,” I said, leaning forward and rubbing my temple. I ran my hand over my face and looked up at my uncle, who was waiting for me to elaborate. “I don’t know what you want me to say. She left. I can’t find her. Got people on it, though.” I finished my beer and walked over to the fridge to grab another.

Joker wandered over to the wall of family pictures my gran had made. Frame after cheap frame of black and white photos, which started at the top of the wall, led down to Polaroid’s and printed pictures, pinned on a corkboard. They were mostly of me. There were a few spots on the wall with yellowed frame outlines from the pictures that used to be there of my parents. I’d torn them all down the second I ended their lives.

Rocking back on his heels with his hands intertwined behind his back, he inspected the pictures as if he were looking for something. “Ah,” he said, plucking one from high up on the wall. “You see this?” he asked, pushing the wooden, green frame into my hands.

The picture inside looked as if it were probably from the seventies. Slightly blurry, the color faded. My gran and gramps were on his bike and next to them was another bike with Joker and a woman I didn’t recognize. I’d never seen or bothered to look at this picture before, but that wasn’t anything unusual, there were hundreds, and this one blended in with the pack. “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the woman.

“Well, it’s not my wife,” Joker said with a laugh.

“Yeah, I got that much, Elton John,” I said, pointing to the white sunglasses he was wearing in the picture. He smacked me on the back of the head.

Joker hadn’t been faithful to his wife Miriam throughout their marriage. It was nothing that anyone, including Miriam herself, hadn’t known. So why he was showing me some ancient picture of a club whore from forty years ago was beyond me. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, his feet at the ankles. “Her name was Grace.”

“And?” I asked, needing him to get to a point and fast.

“And although she wasn’t the one I married. She was…the one.” Joker raised his beer and took a long pull. “I love my kids with Miriam, don’t get me wrong. But Grace and I had a daughter. Sadie. A kid I never got to raise. A kid I never got to see because I was too stuck up my own ass to see straight. I had a lot going on back in those days and I let all the bullshit become more important than my woman and my kid.” Sadness crossed over his face. “By the time I saw my way clear of the bullshit, it was too late.” He looked to his feet. “Way too fucking late.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked.

Joker’s eyes met mine. “ ’Cause son. I’m an old fucking man and I see a young kid like you sitting around like the world is going to come to you. Hockey isn’t going to waltz back through that door and drop to its knees to suck your cock just like the club ain’t. The club also ain’t going to move the fucking armory onto your deck.” Joker paused and tipped his beer to me. “And that girl you’re so hung up on isn’t coming ’round until you decide you’re gonna move hell and earth to go drag the cunt back to where she belongs.”

“You don’t think I want to go to her and drag her back by her fucking hair?” I said, raising my voice. “I don’t know where she fucking is!”

“So fucking find her!” Joker said, even louder still.

“I’m trying! I called Sampson, he’s on it.” I sank back down against the refrigerator.

“Son, Sampson couldn’t find his cock with a pair of tweezers,” Joker said, waving me off. “I tell you what. If you want I can put in a call to my guy. He can find anyone.” He paused. “Well, he can find anyone except the bitch who burnt down my fucking house.” He snarled at the memory. His house had burnt down a while back while I was away at school. I assumed “the bitch” he was always muttering about was some club whore he’d pissed off one too many times. Joker had also been through his fair share of slashed tires and broken windows.

I was temporarily on board with the idea until I remembered one very loud blaring fact. “I can’t give him much to go by.” I laughed at the ridiculousness of what I was about to say. “I don’t even know her real name.”

Joker was unfazed by this fact. “It’s not what you don’t know, kid. It’s what you do know.”

“Which isn’t much,” I said. How could I know so little about someone but be so certain about them all at the same time?

“You probably know a lot more than you think you do.” Joker said with a tip of his chin. He finished his beer and tossed it in the trash.

“I hope you’re right.”

Joker was about to walk out the back door when I called out, “What’s your guy’s name?”

“You’ve actually met him before. Years ago, when you were a kid. Which is the only reason I’m even telling you this ’cause it’s a name I like to keep in my pocket for a rainy day.” Joker opened his cut and patted his shirt pocket. “He goes by Smoke.” He finally said, before disappearing from view.

I’d already assumed Joker was long gone when he leaned his head back in through the open door and added, “The little bitch who burnt down my house, though? That deadly little blonde cunt calls herself Rage.”

Joker didn’t stick around to see the stunned look on my face.

He also didn’t stick around to see me throw my empty bottle against the wall, yank my cut off the nail, or tear the cover off my bike.

Six months had been way too fucking long. Not only was Rage out there in the world but she was out there with a mark on her head from none other than my own fucking club.

Joker was right about one thing, though…it was time to find my girl. I was willing to do more than move heaven and earth. I was willing to walk through hell and back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Nolan

HANSEN’S BAR USED to be a place for the kids on spring break to slum it. Cheap pitchers and beer pong kept the crowds thick with locals in the off-season, and pouring out into the parking lot during the height of it. As the economy turned, so did the bar, which then became the go-to watering hole catering to every MC from Miami to Savannah.

A giant of a man wearing a blue bandana came tripping out of the bar with a brunette under his arm, knocking me into the sidewall. Immediately, my anger flared. I was about to say something, but he spoke first. “Private party tonight,” he said. That’s when I noticed his colors.

Bastards.

I was in the right place.

He leaned up against a post not three feet from the door, the one holding up the WE ID sign. He lit a cigarette and unzipped his leathers. The brunette snapped down to her knees right there in the cut shell parking lot. He grinned at me while spreading his fingers through her hair, gripping the back of her head and pulling her harshly against him. She yelped and chocked while he laughed, blowing out smoke through his nose. “You can’t go in there,” he said.

“Oh yeah? Is that so, motherfucker?” I challenged, assessing the asshole up and down the same way I’d assess someone during a game.

The man, laughed. “Yeah, that’s so. No civilians tonight, kid. You’re gonna have to go get yourself laid somewhere else. Best bet for someone like you is back over the causeway where you came from with the other yuppies.

I opened my black hoodie exposing my Warriors’ cut. The man’s eyes went wide. It felt good to put it back on after so long. Along with supple worn leather, the thing came with power that surged through my veins and made me want to eat this motherfucker like a cannibal. “You wanna call me a yuppie again, motherfucker?”

I was about to put the dickhead in his place when Paco, the exact person I’d been looking for, stepped out from the swinging saloon doors with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was the spitting image of his younger brother Pinto, except Paco wasn’t a familiar like his brother, he was a patched in full-blown member of the Beach Bastard brotherhood.

“Goon!” Paco shouted, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. He pulled me in for a quick embrace. When he released me, his gaze went from me to the man in the bandana, who I was still staring at, visualizing his quick death.

“Jailbird, stop glaring at Goon here and enjoy your fucking head,” Paco said, then turned to me. “Goon, get your fucking ass on in here!” He smiled like there wasn’t about to be a brawl and pulled me by the arm, tugging me in through the doors.

“Paco, you can’t bring him…” Jailbird started, pushing the brunette to the side, who stood and wiped her mouth. He didn’t bother to refasten his leathers, his flaccid dick wobbling around freely as he came toward us. Paco stepped forward too, standing between me and Jailbird. He wasn’t a big man, but Paco had that crazy look in his eyes, the look that said “you don’t know what I’m capable of” that could warn away a fucker twice his size.

Jailbird must have had a few too many to understand that warning because in no way did he back down.

“Listen, Jailbird,” Paco said, the playful tone he’d used in his greeting now gone. “I mean it when I say you go back to that woman and mind your own fucking business. Goon here is always welcome. We ain’t at war with the Warriors, not right now anyway. You still got a problem with that when we’re done with our beer, and I’ll come back out here and we can all kill each other till our fucking heart’s content. Got it?”

Jailbird finally conceded to Paco, mumbling something under his breath as Paco again entered the bar and gestured for me to follow. I flipped off my new friend and shoved him aside as I followed behind.

“Don’t mind him. He’s new and he’s a dick. Bad combination. Plus, he don’t know you like I do,” Paco said, holding up two fingers to the bartender and then another two. The bartender, a man even older than my gramps had been when he passed, set down two beers and two shots.

The bar was crowded with bikers and a few half-dressed women. The Bastards MC wasn’t far from Harper’s Ridge and although I saw a few familiar faces in the crowd, the majority of them were unfamiliar to me.

Paco noticed me looking around. “We’re all here cause we’re going to war. Had to recruit. Go get some men from different chapters.”

“War with who?” I asked. “I know I’ve been gone a while but I would have heard about a new Warriors beef. Besides, you just said we weren’t at war. Plus, if we were you guys would have slit my throat when I walked through the door.”

Paco laughed too. “True. But seriously, you haven’t heard?” He leaned up against the bar.

I shook my head and took a swig of my beer. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied since I got back.”

“Yeah man, I heard about your hockey shit. Sorry about that. Thought if anyone around here would graduate from white-trash to the big leagues, it would be you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

“Bear. That’s who we’re going to war with.”

“No fucking shit,” I said, in disbelief. Chop was the president of the Bastards. Bear was his VP…and Chop’s own son.

Paco ran his hand over his smooth bald head and downed his beer. “Yeah, man. That’s why we are all here. We gotta regroup. Figure out who we got. It’s a big fucking mess.”

“Do you want go to war?” I asked.

Paco leaned close and looked around to make sure no one could hear him when he whispered, “Fuck no, man. But I’m a soldier. Our leader says war, we go to war. You know how this shit works. If you want my opinion, Chop may have the MC at his back but Bear’s got King. I don’t know about you, brother, but that’s one motherfucker I do not want to cross in a dark alley. Or a well lit one. Or any fucking alley.”

That was an understatement. They didn’t call him King of the Causeway for nothing. King ran more shit through Logan’s Beach than most MCs and he didn’t belong to any of them. He was ruthless and unforgiving and lived up to the fear and the hype the town was always buzzing about.

Paco stared at his feet and then looked to the bartender and then to the ceiling. “What?” I asked him.

“Nothing, man,” he said, looking over my head.

“Yeah, that’s why you won’t look at me.”

Paco sighed and handed me a shot. “Whiskey first.” We clinked our glasses and downed our shots. The whiskey burning its way down my throat.

“It’s about your girl,” Paco started, wincing like I was about to hit him. I wasn’t. At least not yet.

“Funny, I was coming to ask you about her too. Was wondering if you could make some calls for me to your sources on the quiet. Gotta find out where the fuck she is and can’t use Warrior resources cause as it turns out, Joker’s looking for her too but for an entirely different reason.”

“I don’t think you want to do that, man. If she’s gone it’s best the bitch stay gone.”

“Paco,” I warned, clutching my beer bottle tighter.

“Dude, I’m not trying to fucking offend you, or even her.”

“Then what are you trying to say?” I asked, turning my beer around in circles on the bar.

“Just that…she’s the fucking devil.”

I stood up and started to close the space between me and Paco so I could punch the motherfucker in the face. He raised a hand between us. “Dude, I’m trying here, but there’s no easy way to tell you this,” he muttered something about “uppity gringos.” “My brother told me he saw the two of you together at the cafe. She’s a fucking pink demon, dude. A ninja with a fucking ponytail. The one they call Rage.”

They call me Rage. It’s short for Regina.

“What the fuck are you saying exactly?” I asked, needing him to spell it out for me. I knew she burnt down Joker’s house, but I knew there was more. I was hoping to find her and ask her face to face, but since I’d yet to find her, I’d have to settle for a face to face with Paco instead.

“My brother was too much of a chicken shit to tell you, but he told me when I rode back into town this afternoon. I was coming to see you next, but this war thing’s got us all crazy and distracted. But basically, dude, what I’m saying is that the girl who was playing house with you? She’s the angel of fucking death. A girl who kills motherfuckers like me every fucking day, and she was on your doorstep, which means she’ll probably be back, because more than likely, she’s planning on sending you to hell a lot sooner than you planned on booking a fucking ticket there.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way.” It’s not that I didn’t think she was capable of killing—it was more that I didn’t think she was capable of killing me.

“The sooner you admit that someone sent her to take you out, the sooner you can save yourself, man.”

“My only beefs are minor shit. I don’t have any problems with anyone who might not want me to keep breathing,” I said, trying not to lose my shit right there in the bar. I could deny it all I wanted, believe it or not.

“Okay, man, I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but fuck it. Pinto said he confronted her when you went to the pisser. He said she didn’t even fucking deny who she was, just took a handful of his fucking nuts and squeezed them so hard that if his girl ever gets pregnant, it would either be a miracle or because the bitch is cheating on him.” He shuddered. “Fuck, don’t look for her. And for your sake, you better hope that girl doesn’t come back either.” Paco handed me another shot. “Like ever ever.”

I downed my shot, and as the whiskey burned its way down my throat, the realization of her betrayal set in.

“You might want to call your uncle and get him in on this after all. You should find her before she finds you,” Paco said, interrupting my thoughts.

I cracked my knuckles. “No. Rage is my business.” Then I said two words I’d said before, but had suddenly taken on an entirely different meaning. I slammed my beer down on the bar.

“She’s mine.”

*     *     *

I SET A plan in motion where instead of searching the planet for Rage, it would have her running to me as fast as her sexy legs could carry her. It was almost too simple. I was actually mad at myself for not thinking of it sooner.

Within hours of the idea taking hold inside my brain, I clicked a button on my phone and set my plan in motion. I sat back and put my feet up, breathing in the warm night air.

Gun in my lap.

The wait had begun.

She may have known I was a Warrior, but Rage was about to learn real fucking fast who I was about to become.

Her worst fucking nightmare.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Rage

FUCK THIS SHIT.

I left one babysitting job and found myself smack dab in the middle of another. It was my own fault. When King called and said he had something for me, I barely registered what he was saying before asking where and pointing my scooter in that direction.

The subject of my babysitting job was Thia, who was Bear’s old lady. Bear was the VP of the Beach Bastards, but according to King, Bear was now at war with his own club. Thia needed to be protected because Bear was doing time and knowing Chop, Bear’s ruthless old man, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot through Thia first to get to Bear. It was all very boring really, but the gist of it was that I found myself in the middle of a fucking orange grove in a house that didn’t need to be cleaned, it needed to be burnt to the fucking ground.

Which I’d suggested.

Rotting oranges were piled at the bottoms of the trees and the smell was almost unbearable. There was no one around for miles except Thia, who had a funny shade of almost pinkish hair, and her weird skinny dog.

Which made me think of Murray and his slobber.

My situation hadn’t changed all that much. I was in a small house. I was babysitting. There was a dog.

Except it wasn’t the right house or the right dog or…the right person.

It was, however, the first time I’d gotten to spend time with a girl my age, who I wasn’t imagining one hundred different ways to kill. Okay, maybe for like the first month or so tops, but after that, it was actually okay. It helped that Thia was a good shot. We’d spent hours a day and many boxes of bullets fucking shit up together. And there was no pretending at all. No having to be someone else.

You weren’t pretending with Nolan.

I thought about him every other memory. Everything I saw made me want to tell him about it. I wanted to tell him about the grove, about Thia. I thought about when he’d told me about his parents. The overwhelming feeling I’d had to both comfort and devour him.

While Thia was asleep, I’d patrol the grove and wonder what he was doing…and how much he hated me. With time, I thought all the feelings and urges Nolan had brought out in me would die back down, but if anything they’d only grown stronger. Every memory of our time together had me wound tighter and tighter until my nighttime patrols turned into jogs and then sprints for hours.

Nothing relieved the ache.

Not the one in my chest.

Not the one between my legs.

SOME TALL, SKINNY guy in a suit showed up at the grove one day with a file in his hand. I could tell right away he wasn’t who he said he was when he tried to pass Thia the file and I spotted the Bastards’ skull symbol tattooed on the top of his hand.

Long story short, I invited him in. Stabbed him through his hand and tied him to a chair.

It felt good to be back in the game. Back to doing what I was good at, but it also felt empty. Darker.

I had been contemplated hanging the son of a bitch I’d stabbed in the hand, because why the fuck not? When my phone buzzed in my sports bra, I didn’t answer because I was kind of busy and it was the phone reserved for parental units only. But it kept buzzing and buzzing and it wouldn’t stop.

I huffed and pulled it out, ready to tell them I was busy and I’d call them back. But it wasn’t a call at all. It was a picture text. The same picture sent over and over and over again.

Nolan.

It was a selfie. He looked very much like he did the day I first came to his house. A huge, ridiculous smile on his face. The dimple as deep as ever. Scruff along his square jaw.

How did he get this number?

That’s when I saw it.

I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand. I made an excuse to Thia about a selfie bat signal, and I’m positive that whatever I told her made no sense whatsoever. It was the very first time I left a job mid-torture, or mid-anything for that matter.

What initially had made my heart skip a beat and my stomach flutter, turned into something so dark within seconds. Nolan’s selfie was no selfie at all. He had his back to a refrigerator with pictures and recipes stuck to it with all sorts of magnets.

But it wasn’t his kitchen he was standing in.

It was my parents’.

I ran through the grove, hopped onto my scooter, and sped off. I’d never wished I owned something faster before that day. My palms were sweating. The burn that usually started as a simmer was a full blown fucking fire by the time I hit the only stop sign in town.

Nolan stoked the fire more when, in the same type of letter magnets I’d used to leave him my good-bye message, he had one of his own written out for me on my parents’ fridge.

FUCK YOU

HOPE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Rage

ALL THE LIGHTS were off when I got to my parents’ house. I’d parked my scooter up the street and slung my bag around my shoulders. With my gun drawn, I crawled along the fence until I rounded the house to the backyard.

In the dark, I snuck up the back steps of the porch one by one when I spotted him sitting in a chair in the corner.

Waiting.

I aimed my gun and crept up the stairs slowly and quietly until I was standing right behind Nolan. My gun cocking was the only sound.

“It took you long enough…HOPE,” Nolan said, without turning around.

“Where the fuck are my parents?” I asked, pushing the gun into the back of his head. “If you hurt them, I’m going to do things to you that your fucking nightmares are too scared to come up with.”

Nolan chuckled dark and deep, but there was no humor about it, or about him. “Your threats are…adorable.” He stood and turned around, kicking the chair off to the side. My gaze darted to the gun in his hand. “Tell me, Hope, were you going to threaten me before or after you killed me back at the cottage?”

“I wasn’t going to kill you—” I started, but Nolan interrupted.

“Bullshit!”

“You didn’t let me finish!” I yelled, not caring if I woke up every neighbor on the block. “I wasn’t going to kill you until I got the order. Lucky for you, it never came.”

Nolan gazed up and down my body. “No, but I remember how you felt when you did. On my fingers. On my tongue.”

My nipples went hard instantly. I hoped he couldn’t see, but when his eyes lingered on my chest and he licked his bottom lip, I knew he had.

He wore a tight black T-shirt and faded jeans. They sat low on his hips. His ab muscles flexed through the thin fabric of his shirt. His jaw was scruffy. He was barefoot. The only thing that looked different since I’d seen him last was the addition of dark circles under his eyes. He looked tired.

And angry.

Between the two of us, the anger was palpable, radiating off our bodies like mist rising on a hot night.

My gaze again dropped to his gun.

“Is this what you’re looking at?” Nolan asked, waving the gun in his hand but not aiming it at me. “If it bothers you, I’ll just get rid of it.” He turned and tossed the gun into the dark yard.

“That was fucking stupid.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know, I planned something different at first. The Warrior part of me thought the best way to deal with you was to put you down, like I would any rat.” His nostrils flared. “But I came up with a punishment I think I’ll enjoy much…much better.”

“Tell me where the fuck my parents are!” I yelled. Nolan had about ten seconds before I was no longer in control of my trigger finger.

“They’re alive and unharmed, and that’s all you need to know…for now,” Nolan said taking a step toward me.

I aimed the gun higher at his chest, and suddenly it hit me that it didn’t feel natural like it always had, like an extension of my arm. Instead, it hung heavy off my wrist and I wanted nothing more than to chuck it into the fucking backyard like Nolan had his.

But I didn’t

I couldn’t.

Could I?

Nolan took another step then reached for my gun. I tried to squeeze the trigger, but it was like my finger wouldn’t listen to my brain, rebelling against me.

Just like my emotions have since second Nolan rolled his way into my life.

My empty life.

“What? You can’t do it? I heard you were ruthless. A fucking killer. The Angel of Death,” Nolan challenged, grabbing the barrel of the gun and pushing it into his chest. “You want to kill me? Then do it. Just fucking do it! I’m not gonna run away like you did.” He lowered his voice. “Not ever.”

“Don’t be stupid, Nolan,” I said, “or should I call you Goon?” I needed to just pull the trigger and walk away. Find my parents. This should’ve been easy.

This job. This life. This boy.

None of it was the way it was supposed to be anymore.

Not since the day I pulled him from the pool.

Nolan leaned over, his cool breath against my cheek. “If you wanted to shoot me, you would have already done it.” He glanced down at the gun then back up at me. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

“Maybe I’m just lining up my shot,” I argued.

“Fine then, let me help you,” Nolan growled, dropping to his knees and pressing the gun against his forehead. I looked down to meet his eyes again and expected to see anger, but all I saw was hurt.

“Rage, fucking do it. Shoot me if that’s what you really fucking want!” Nolan roared, his face turning red.

Something inside of me snapped.

I can’t do this.

Not now.

Not to him.

Not ever.

“You’ve already aimed the gun, just pull the fucking trigger,” he spat, jerking the gun against him even harder.

No.

Pulling the gun from his grip, I tossed it out into the yard the same way he had and did the only thing I seemed to be good at anymore.

I ran.

I ran into the woods as fast as I could, past the clearing where I’d met Smoke, past the tree where I’d taken out my early aggressions. When I reached the man-made lake, I hopped the metal rowboat Cody and I had tied up there when we were kids was still there. When I reached the end, I knelt down and much to my disappointment, the end of the rope was frayed and there was no boat to be seen. The trees rustled nearby, followed by heavy footsteps on the rickety pier that vibrated underneath my feet.

“What you don’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t matter how far you run. It won’t change a fucking thing. Until you realize what matters, all your running is going to do is just piss me the fuck off!”

“What matters?” I asked, standing to face him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“All that matters right now is standing right fucking here,” Nolan said, his voice thick and deep. His eyes were the darkest I’d ever seen them, glimmering with wicked intent. One side of his full lips curled upward in a devilish smirk.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I was consumed by him.

Or at least, from the way he continued to fuck me with his eyes, I knew I was about to be.

Nolan took a step forward and I took two back. Our little dance made him chuckle, the sound coming from deep within his throat. With just that little laugh, my insides clenched so hard I gasped.

Nolan’s smirk grew into a knowing smile. His eyes darted to the space between my legs where my shorts had ridden up, exposing every inch of my shaking thighs.

He licked his bottom lip, tracing it with the tip of his tongue.

My inner battle raged on between wanting to run away from him, and wanting to run straight into him. Although, it wasn’t like it mattered which option won out in the end. The pier was narrow, and Nolan was blocking my only way out.

He unbuckled his belt, sliding it out through the loops. Folding it in half, he snapped the leather together. The sound an echoing crack through the damp night air.

Our dance continued as he took another step toward me and I again retreated. “Since you don’t seem to feel the same way, let me tell you what’s going to happen right now,” Nolan started. “I’m going to make you come on my fingers.” Step. “On my tongue.” Step. “And around my cock.” His last step closed the space between us. “We can worry about who gets to kill who after.”

My back hit the railing, trapping me between the end of the pier and his hard wall of a chest. My breathing became even more labored, my chest rising and falling in quick succession against his. Pressing against my stomach, I could feel the heat of his hard cock through the worn fabric of his jeans. My nipples hardened as the ache in my core grew into need. “I’m going to fuck you, baby. Hard. And I’m not going to stop fucking you until you realize that this shit between us is all that matters.”

Every bit of tightness that had been winding up my body over the last six months was nothing compared to having Nolan’s lips within inches of mine, his body pressed up against me, his hard cock nudging against my thigh. “Or maybe I’ll just go straight to the fucking. Since I haven’t been able to think of anything else but being inside you for the last six months.”

There would be no escaping this time.

From him.

From this.

From us.

I’d never been so angry in my entire fucking life.

“I see that look on your face,” Nolan said. “In your eyes. I feel the fucking anger burning off you like wild fire.” He grabbed my hand and pressed it flat against his erection. I moaned, loud and long. He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Fuck, it makes me so fucking hard for you. You feel that? That’s all because of you.”

All I could do was try and breathe, my words gone. I didn’t know the difference between anger and desire. I was trapped in feelings and emotions with no way out.

Nowhere to run.

I tried to snatch my hand away but Nolan was faster. He now held both of my hands behind my back in one of his. His lips skated across my neck and jaw. I turned to bite at him but it only made him laugh.

“Do you remember what I told you? When you feel that temper of yours crossing over to that point of no return, then you take that shit out on me. If you have to unleash whatever is going on in that pretty brain of yours, then you unleash it on me. You give ME your anger and you don’t leave again. You hear what I’m saying? Come at me, Rage. Give me all you fucking got, and I’ll give it right back. Take it out on me. On my body. I promise, I can take it.” Nolan paused, running his gaze over my body, licking me up and down with his hazel eyes. “I want to take it.”

He pulled on the back of his shirt, tugging it over his head and tossing it to the ground. Wrapping his hand around my wrist, he brought it forward against his chest. He pressed my fingernails into his flesh and scraped them down his skin, leaving a trail of red marks in their wake. “If you want to hurt me, hurt me like this.” He dragged my hand from his chest and wrapped it behind my back again before skating a hand down the front of my shorts. “But no more fucking running.”

He stopped just short of my entrance playing with my wetness. My hips shot off the railing at the contact. “Say it, Rage,” he demanded. “Say yes, you won’t run from me anymore, and I’ll give you what you want, baby.”

“I…yes,” I said, because it was all I could say. Because as much as I wanted to hate him, wanted to kill him, I didn’t.

His lips descended on mine and we didn’t just kiss, we tore each other apart. It wasn’t just passion. It was fucking war. An all out fight for a piece of one another. A piece I knew I wanted but didn’t think I could have. “You still feeling it, Rage? That anger of yours still boiling inside of you?”

I nodded as my pussy clenched and wetness flooded my panties.

“Good,” Nolan said, staring deep into my eyes. He pushed one long finger inside me, dragging it in and out as he spoke. “Because I’m about to fuck the anger right out of you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Nolan

I KISSED HER long and hard while I fucked her soaking wet pussy with my fingers. I kissed her until we were both breathless, stoking the fire that had only grown in our time apart. Her full lips and wet tongue against my mouth were both heaven and fucking hell.

Rage was breathing like she was about to unleash fire from her nose and mouth. I knew she was trying to gain control, her fury still evident in her bloodshot eyes and the way her entire body was tense, from her tight jaw to the balls of wadded up muscle her thighs had become. I swallowed hard and even through my own anger, there was no way I could deny that she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I wanted to punish her. Devour her. Take her in every way there was to take her.

Mine.

I was impossibly hard.

Voices echoed in the distance over the trees from nearby neighborhoods. Both the darkness of the night and the line of trees surrounding the small lake concealed us from wandering eyes, but it wasn’t like I gave a fuck if a million people watched. That way they would know who Rage belonged to.

Rage’s pussy sucked on my fingers, milking them as I pushed in and out of her, circling her clit with my thumb while I shamelessly rubbed my cock against her through the clothes that I hated more than I hated the fact that she’d been away from me for way too fucking long.

Never again.

Her pussy was fucking perfection. Warm and swollen and every time I dragged my finger out, it sucked me back in like it wasn’t going to let me go. I wanted nothing more than to feel that on my cock. She writhed against my hand between furious kisses, digging her claws into me like she wasn’t ever going to let me go. Fuck knows I never wanted her to.

If someone asked me to choose between Rage’s pussy and playing hockey again, despite the lies, despite everything, I would choose her. Over hockey. Over school.

Over my club.

I released Rage’s wrists with my one hand, while I brought her closer and closer to the edge with the other. I pushed her harder back against the railing and captured her mouth and her moans as she clamped around my finger. Her heels dug hard into my back. I swallowed her cries and felt my balls tighten up as she pulsed and contracted, riding my hand as she came and came.

I didn’t wait for her orgasm to subside before dropping to my knees and pulling her shorts down and off. With a primal growl, I pushed her back and grabbed the backs of her knees, spreading her legs around my shoulders. One glance at the wetness leaking down her thigh almost had me coming apart. I dove in, needing to taste her orgasm on my lips.

I dragged my tongue over her clit and dove straight into her pussy, which was dripping fucking wet, my cheeks sliding against the inside of her soaking thighs as I lapped up everything she had to give me. She fisted my hair and tugged hard. I reached up with one hand and ran my fingertips under her shirt and over one of her hard nipples. Her face was twisted up like she was fighting herself. Her anger versus her pleasure. I knew who was going to win.

She cried out, on the verge of coming again, and when she rubbed her pussy hard against my face, I was completely done and knew what we both needed. “Enough of this bullshit,” I said standing up and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. She was so tiny, so powerless, yet so strong and so powerful. She was anger and beauty and lust wrapped up in one fierce package.

I pushed down my jeans and stepped out of them. I lifted her up, and with one arm around her waist, I turned her, slamming her back against the partition in the center of the pier. Her legs wrapped around my waist. My cock against her bare pussy, gliding along her wetness. Skin against skin. Wet. Wild. Raw. My cock was aching and ready. Purple, thick, long and ready to take to take what was mine. “You ready for me?” I growled in her ear and she responded my clenching her thighs around my waist, inviting me closer.

Inviting me inside.

We were both breathing heavily. I was barely holding my shit together. All coherent thought left the building the second I lifted her up and the tip of my cock met the warmest, wettest, tightest fucking pussy ever. I paused, trying to regain my control, groaning when she wiggled her hips against me. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I mumbled as I tried to push inside, but the head of my cock was met with resistance that had me breaking down with both frustration and elation. She was dripping fucking wet, down the inside of her thighs and into the crack of her ass.

“Please,” she begged.

“You’re so…so fucking tight,” I groaned, feeling beads of sweat forming on my forehead, as I stroked the opening of her pussy with just the tip of my cock over and over again, while we stared into each other’s eyes, reading each other’s bodies.

“Do it,” she said. It wasn’t a request, it was an order. A challenge.

“You’re really fucking tight. It’s gonna fucking hurt,” I warned, unsure if I was talking about it hurting me or her.

“I want it to hurt.”

With those words, I lost my fucking mind. I captured her mouth again and our tongues tangled as I surged forward, battling my way inside my girl. It was about to be painful for her, but it was painful for me too.

Best pain of my fucking life.

There was no way her perfect pussy had ever been stretched open before. Whatever she thought might have happened, didn’t fucking happen. Rage was mine and mine alone. And if I didn’t know it before, I knew it for sure when the tip of my cock bumped against a barrier when I wasn’t even halfway inside her yet.

“Please. More,” she begged, digging her heels harder into my ass. I lifted her up and set her down on the pier, climbing over her body without severing the connection we had.

“Yes,” she said, while we continued to stare into one another. “Please” she added, bucking her hips against me, asking for more.

So I gave it to her.

Pushing forward, I tore through her virgin barrier in one hard thrust, bottoming out inside of her as we both cried out. I wanted to stay buried in her tight heat forever, but the need to taste what I’d just done consumed me. I quickly pulled out from her and worked my way down her body. Spreading her thighs with my hands, digging my fingers into her soft skin, I darted my tongue inside her tightness until I found what I craved and the coppery taste of her virgin blood hit the tip of my tongue.

I watched her. Her eyes were closed, her face scrunched up. It was then that I realized she was not only still angry, but she was holding back.

I crawled back up her body and lifted her ass off the pier, holding her at an angle, impaling her on my cock in one hard thrust.

I fucked her with everything I had. “Open your eyes,” I demanded, and when she did, I met her gaze. “Don’t hold back, baby. Do you want to scream? Is that what you want? Is that what you need?”

She nodded, her teeth gritted in the sexiest angry scowl I’d ever seen.

“Then fucking scream, baby,” I commanded, picking up my pace until the only word that could be used to describe the way I was fucking her would be brutal. Then I did what I promised her I was going to do and I fucked the anger right out of her.

It started as a small growl from her mouth. A little roar in my ear. Seconds later, Rage was all-out screaming into the night, and I found myself screaming right along with her. I felt her release everything in her little body that had her all twisted. Violently coming around my cock, she gave me everything then took everything I had, milking me as I came inside of her. Whatever was happening between us was more than bodies and orgasms—it was like we were crashing into one another and holding on for our fucking lives.

Rage may not have shot me, but I’d been right all along, because she had killed me.

No death had ever been sweeter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Rage

“NOLAN, WHERE THE fuck are my parents?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath. A burst of laughter shot from his mouth. “Why exactly is that funny?”

He wagged his eyebrows at me and dipped his fingers between my legs rubbing our combined wetness on the inside of my thighs. “Because we just fucked. Because I just broke your pussy with my cock and my cum is still leaking from your pussy…and you’re asking me about your parents.”

“You knew I was different,” I pointed out.

“I sure as fuck did,” Nolan whispered, running his fingers up my stomach, tracing circles on the outside of my hip. “Your parents are at the Belgian American Social Club in Port Charlotte at some sort of festival that involves a mannequin that pees or something. They’ll be back in the morning.” He looked up at the sky. The sun had already started to rise. “Or shortly.”

I smacked my own forehead. “They go to that every year. Wait. How did you know they were going there? Or where they lived? And how did you get my phone number to send me that picture and…” I sat up, continuing to fire off my questions. Nolan reached out and twisted my nipple under my T-shirt to get me to shut up. I smacked his hand away and he grabbed my wrist, gently rubbing his thumb over my palm and planting a soft kiss on my knuckles.

Nolan sighed. “I couldn’t find you for shit, well, except for your bogus Instagram account. Your Photoshop skills suck, by the way. I can’t believe your parents really think that’s Paris in the background. Then I remembered what you said about them being from Belgium, and the exit off the interstate you talked about with the big new Harley dealership where you used to watch the bikes. My sources ran with that information and led me right to your parents.”

“You looked for me?” I asked, biting my bottom lip.

“Every. Fucking. Day.” My stomach flipped.

“What sources helped you?” I asked, curiously.

“The club’s got plenty of computer geeks and hackers on payroll. They made it happen. It’s one of the perks of being a brother in an MC.”

“Shit,” I said, remembering the reasons why I ran in the first place. The MC. Joker.

“Fuck, what now?” Nolan asked, tightening his hold on me like he was preventing me from running again.

“There’s something I have to tell you. It’s about the MC…” I started.

“Yeah, heard you burnt down Joker’s house,” Nolan said with a smile. “But why do you look all pissy about it? I thought that was your thing?”

“No, the fucking fire was magical, but you’re not hearing what I’m telling you. Your president. The man you swore loyalty to. I burnt down his house and he wants me dead.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe I was thinking that could be a slight conflict of interest?”

“How so?” Nolan asked, raising an eyebrow at me and settling back on his elbows.

“Because you. And then me…ugh forget it.”

Nolan chuckled. “I’m just teasing you. I know what you’re trying to say. It’s a problem because you and me are together. You’re mine. I’m not letting you go. You’re coming to stay with me in the cottage until we figure the hockey shit out, and then you’ll come with me wherever I go. I’ll talk to Joker, sort that shit out.”

“You still want me?” I asked. “After knowing what it is I do? I’m sure you heard the nicknames.”

“Angel of death. Rambo Barbie.”

“Rambo Barbie.” I laughed. “I like that one.”

“I’m not exactly the choir boy type myself if you haven’t noticed, and you do what any guy in my MC does. You have a business. You do what needs to be done. You handle shit. The way I see it is that the only difference between you and a guy in my club is dick size.” He looked at me and winked. “I think yours is bigger.” I leapt on top of him and playfully punched at his chest. He held me down so my breasts were pressed against his skin. Suddenly, guilt plagued me.

“I wasn’t going to kill you,” I admitted. “I mean I was, at first. But then I changed my mind. Even if I got the call to do it, I wasn’t going to.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I know you, Rage. Better than you know you,” Nolan lifted his head and gently brushed his lips against mine.

“Oh yeah? What is it you think you know about me, Goon?” I challenged, nipping at his lips.

He swept the pad of his thumb across my cheek and I leaned into his touch. “I know that you don’t love often, but when you love, you love with all your heart. Cause I can feel it.”

“I’m listening,” I said, my heart hammering in my chest. He rubbed gentle circles over my temple before tracing a line down to my jaw. “And?” I asked breathlessly.

Nolan found my eyes once again. “And, I know that when you hate, you hate with all your soul.”

I guess he really did know me after all.

Nolan stood up, taking me with him then setting me down on the pier. He stepped back into his jeans and tossed me my shorts. “Now don’t get used me to me telling you all my secrets,” he said, slinging his arm around my shoulder one we were both dressed. “Old ladies don’t get to know club business.”

“I don’t want to be an old lady!” I shouted, moving out from under Nolan’s arm.

I thought Nolan would get angry at my outburst, but he crossed his arms over his chest and smiled, looking amused. “Then what do you want to be?”

“I just want to be me. Just Rage,” I said.

Nolan closed the distance between us and wrapped his arms around me. “This Just Rage person you want to be, does she belong to me?” He whispered against my neck.

“Yes,” I breathed, tipping my head to give him better access.

“Then it’s all good,” he said, releasing me and grabbing my hand, tugging me behind him. The familiarity of the gesture sent a bolt of warmth through my chest. It’s crazy how much I’d missed such a simple thing like holding his hand.

“Where are we going? Why do we have to hurry?” I asked.

Nolan didn’t stop, just continued dragging me behind him. “It’s morning and your parents will be back soon.”

“And?” I asked.

“And we might wanna go retrieve our fucking guns from their yard before that happens.”

Back at the house, we scooped up our guns. As Nolan was walking me to my scooter I saw something move in the window at Cody’s house. I turned my head, but it was just the blinds swaying from side to side.

Cody was away at school, but I made a mental note to come back and visit him when he was home. Maybe even bring Nolan and introduce him. Cody would be proud to know that although I never reached the “normal” we’d set out to achieve by making the list, I did successfully let someone else into my life, and that was a new normal for me.

A Just Rage kind of normal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Nolan

RAGE HAD TO go get her stuff from the place she’d been staying at for the last six months, although she wouldn’t tell me where that was.

Baby steps.

The plan was that she’d get her shit done and I’d get my shit done, and then we’d meet back at the cottage after.

The first thing on my list that day was a big one. When Joker didn’t answer his phone, I rode over to the clubhouse. Figured I’d drop the bomb about Rage and me and ask if he’d give her a pass, seeing as she was my old lady. Even though I had no plans to tell Rage that was how I saw her and what she would be to me even if I didn’t call her that to her face.

Joker wasn’t there. When I called his phone again, he still didn’t answer, and none of my brothers knew where he was or what he was doing. Knowing Joker, though, he was probably holed up at some club whore’s house.

After that, I rode over to the doc’s office for my x-ray and follow up appointment and told myself that Joker would call me as soon as he resurfaced with a new tale of another woman who now hated him.

“Rage?” I called out, tossing my keys onto the counter. The sliding glass door, which I’d only recently replaced from smashing it when Rage left, was cracked open. “Or should I call you Hope now? It’s weird, but I kind of feel like it also kind of fits you, for some reason. Although, I’m not gonna lie, the name Rage makes my dick hard.” I smiled to myself, remembering the night before, which was all I could think about since we’d parted ways earlier that morning.

It had been awkward as fuck sitting on the table in Dr. Hendry’s office sporting a hard-on. “The good news is my leg is healed and the doc thinks I should try the ice. He doesn’t promise anything, but it’s worth a shot. The bad news is that Dr. Hendry now thinks I want to fuck him.” I sorted through the mail on the counter, tossing it into the trash bin after concluding that it was all junk. “Rage? Get your sexy ass out here, and when you do, it would be awesome if you could be very very naked.”

Silence.

“Murray?” I called out.

Nothing. Not even the usual scratching of his claws on the wood. I took a step into the hallway when pain ripped through the back of my head, sending me crashing sideways onto the floor, my cheek cracking against the hard wood.

The last thing I saw before it all went black was what was at my eye level. Dark jeans and a pair of black boots.

My last thought was of Rage. The image in my mind was of her looking down at me through the murky pool water on the day we met.

However, this time around, her scowl had been replaced with a smile.

A smile I was never going to see again.

Rage

BLOOD.

So. Much. Blood.

Everywhere.

In the kitchen. Splattered across the couch. Dripping from counter’s edge, coating the cabinets below, and the wood floor in dark, thick, RED.

Worst of all were the drag marks.

From the living room where Nolan’s bloody hockey jacket was lying on the floor, to the front door, then all the way out to the driveway where it disappeared beneath the gravel and shell.

Nolan.

Murray scratched at the back door, which was partially opened, but not enough for him to pass through. I slid it open further and sad-looking Murray waddled in to greet me. I frantically picked him up, feeling around his pudgy little body for wounds, relieved when I didn’t find any. “Where’s Nolan?” I asked, hoping against nature that he’d suddenly learned to speak real human words in the time I’d been gone.

Sadly, all he did was drool and continue to whine.

“I’ll find him,” I reassured him, patting his gross little head and meaning every word of my promise.

I pulled out my phone and dialed the one and only person I knew who could possibly be responsible. I closed my eyes as the phone rang, hoping and praying to whatever God might exist that this was all some sort of big misunderstanding.

Smoke’s phone went right to voicemail, where his recording informed me that his inbox was full. I picked up Nolan’s bloody hockey jacket from the floor and stuffed it in my bag.

Over and over again, I called Smoke’s phone with the same outcome.

Out of desperation, I hopped on my scooter and headed out to Coral Pines. If Smoke was sending me straight to voicemail then the only thing left to do was head straight to Smoke.

Hopefully, I wasn’t already too late.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Rage

I POUNDED ON the door of Smoke’s house, which was more like a one-room fishing shack than a house. One square room that was both the bedroom and the living room. A hotplate on the floor was the extent of his kitchen. I heard movement inside, so I pounded harder. “Smoke, open the fucking door!” I shouted.

“Go away!” Smoke yelled out, sounding out of breath.

I didn’t have time for his shit. Neither did Nolan. “He was my job!” I snapped, hoping to appeal to his sense of business.

There was a loud commotion inside, followed by some mumbling. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t opening the door. “Fuck this.” I reached into my bag and pulled out my Swiss army knife, flipping to the small pick. In less than ten seconds, I’d picked the lock and was standing inside Smoke’s house¸ watching him as he nailed some chick from behind. I growled in frustration, but it only made Smoke turn his head and smile, but not stop.

If I shoot him, that will make him stop and listen, I thought.

“Smoke, stop. We have to talk. NOW.”

“No, you’re the one who broke in here. You’re the one who has to wait until I’m fucking done,” he grunted. The muscles in his thighs and ass clenched as he thrust into her hard and fast. Over and over again, he pounded into the girl beneath him who appeared microscopic under to Smoke’s massive frame of muscle. All I could see of her was dark hair and limbs. Although I could hear her.

She was screaming.

Loud.

It seemed like I stood there for an eternity, watching Smoke fuck that chick like he was killing her with his cock. It was the last thing I needed. I needed answers, not the sound Smoke makes when he comes burned into my brain.

When he was done he stood up, uncaring that he was naked and that his dick was still hard and bobbing up and down as he made his way across the room. “Now, what are you going on about? What job?” Smoke asked, rubbing is eyes and yawning.

I sat down on the edge of his bed. The girl Smoke had been banging must not have realized I was there with all the orgasms going on, because now she appeared horrified as she held up the sheets around her chest. “I’m sure your rack is great, chica, but I couldn’t care less about your tits right now,” I assured her, turning back to Smoke.

“You know who. Nolan!” I yelled, standing up and walking over to Smoke. He opened the small refrigerator on the floor and popped open a beer. He lit a cigarette and leaned up against the wall, blowing out the smoke and scratching his beard. “So where is he? What did you do with him?”

“It’s fucking early, and I’ve got no fucking clue what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“First of all, it’s like 7 p.m.!” I stomped on the floor with one foot like a toddler about to throw a tantrum. “And second of all, I’m talking about Nolan! You know, Nolan, the guy you hired me to…” I stopped myself before I said anything too incriminating. I jerked my chin toward the girl in the bed and Smoke’s gaze followed before waving me on to continue.

“You can say your piece in front of Morgan. She ain’t gonna tell shit to no one.”

I huffed out a frustrated breath and continued. “I just came from Nolan’s house. There was blood everywhere. He’s fucking gone. I want to know what you did with him and I wanted to tell you that he’s my problem. My job. Not yours. So where the fuck is he?” My chest was heaving as I struggled to get the words out while maintaining any sort of normal breathing. I struggled to get a hold of my anger as my vision blurred. I couldn’t lose my shit now. I needed to focus on finding Nolan.

There would be plenty of time once I found him to lose my shit later.

Smoke shrugged and took another swig of beer. I reached for Nolan’s bloodied jacket in my bag and tossed it at Smoke. “This ring any bells? Hockey player?”

Smoke eyed the jacket and then looked up at me. “Rage, I didn’t do this,” he said simply. “I never meant for you to kill him, and I never had no plans of killing him myself. Kid could live till he’s three hundred for all I fucking cared.”

“But the job. You wanted me to—”

Smoke held up his hand with the cigarette, silencing me. He sighed and turned over the jacket, inspecting the bloodstains. “Rage, the kid was never a target. The kid was never anything. Neither were his parents.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, backing up as Smoke took a step toward me. I sat back down on the edge of the bed when the back of my knees hit the mattress. The girl shuffled over so I wouldn’t hit her feet. “Then what was he?” I asked. Smoke tossed the jacket at me. I reached out to catch it before it could hit the floor. “Smoke, what the fuck is going on?” I asked, but it came out as a whisper. I could still smell Nolan’s soap on the jacket, and as the blood hardened on his jacket, I was becoming more and more impatient.

Smoke blew out a frustrated breath. “Rage, you been living in this world for a while now. And I don’t regret bringing you in. But you got no roots in the real world anymore.” I opened my mouth but Smoke shut me up when he continued. “And no, a call to your parents here and there don’t fucking count. Your life was quickly becoming as fucked up as mine. I didn’t want that shit for you. Still don’t.” He paused like he was thinking of how to keep going. “After seeing you that first night in the woods and you looking all fucked up about the demons in you, I wanted to teach you everything I knew ’cause I recognized someone who was like me.” He took a deep drag of his cigarette and set down his beer, opting for an open bottle of whiskey on the floor instead. He grabbed the bottle and took a long swig, his throat bobbing as he swallowed down the amber liquid. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “As much as I wanted to teach you about all the shit that I know, so that you wouldn’t go through the same shit I did and have to figure it all out the hard way, I recently learned that being who we are, doing the shit we do, it ain’t all there is to life. I wanted more for you. I wanted you to have a piece of normal. Nolan, he was—”

“What? Nolan WAS what?” I demanded, again jumping up off the bed and coming to stand before Smoke, my eyes level to his chest.

“Nolan was my gift to you, kid.”

“What?” Was all I could manage to say as the truth came spilling out from Smoke’s mouth as quickly as the whiskey kept going in. That’s why Smoke didn’t want me lying to Nolan. That’s why he wasn’t in a hurry for me to leave the cottage.

That’s why he kept telling me to go back.

“Nolan’s uncle, the guy whose house you unfortunately blew up, is someone I’ve known for a long time.” Smoke leaned back against the wall. “You owe me three hundred grand by the way. That’s what it cost to rebuild his house and keep him from coming after you after he called me to find your ass and bring you to him.” He took a drag. “I met the kid—Nolan, but everyone called him Goon—a couple times over the years. I’d even been to a few of his hockey games. Kept tabs on him over the years. When I heard about his injury and that he’d been going through a rough patch, I thought of you,” Smoke admitted, taking another long pull of whiskey. “Liked that he was in an MC. He wasn’t a pussy but he wasn’t a sack of shit either.”

The girl in Smoke’s bed slipped out from the sheets on the other side, pulling a black T-shirt over on her head that must have been Smoke’s due to the sheer size of it. She quietly headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

“You thought of me for what?” I demanded, still unsure of what the hell he meant by all this. “What the fuck did you do, Smoke?”

Smoke dropped the bottle on the floor and closed the space between us. He threw his hands in the air then ran his fingers through his long, slicked-back hair. “Dammit, Rage! Don’t you get it? He was for you! I thought he could be your way to keep one foot in the land of the living and keep you from becoming the fucking female grim reaper!”

I pushed against his chest. “That makes no sense. If any of what you’re saying is true, then why did you tell me I could kill him if I wanted?” I crouched down on the floor and rested my forehead in my hands. The room spun. I’d never been so confused, or worried, along with something else that was making everything inside me hurt like poison making its way through my system.

Smoke laughed softly. He leaned down to me, just like he had that first night in the woods. “I heard the way you talked about him. I knew you had it bad for him ’cause I ain’t ever heard you talk about no one like that. Figured it would take you having to be faced with losing him for you to get your head out of your ass.”

“I could have killed him,” I whispered, the reality hitting me in the face like a bucket of cold water.

Smoke shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe not. Was willing to see where it went and how far gone you were.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What about his parents? What about the information you sent me to get from Nolan about them?”

“That was just a bunch of bullshit. Nolan’s parents are dead. Knew that already. Knew Nolan killed them, too,” Smoke admitted.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Lies. Everything had been a total lie.

“All these lies…so you could set me up with him?” I looked up at Smoke, the reality of what he was telling me finally sinking in, but with the it came a million more questions, one more important than all the others.

“All these lies for you! So you could have one foot in a world where killing ain’t the only thing you’re thinking about. My life is shit ’cause I went down a path I can’t crawl back out of. But you’re young. You’re fucking beautiful and smart. You’ve got time. You can still have someone around who cares about you…someone besides me.” Smoke looked over to the bathroom door that had just opened and then back to me.

“Did you ever think of Nolan in all your scheming? Did you ever think that being with me wasn’t the best thing for him? I mean, I dragged him into all this. He’s part of this and probably hurt because of me and what I do and—”

“Rage, stop!”

“No, don’t tell me to stop. He’s probably bleeding out somewhere because of me!”

“Ain’t no one got beef with that kid. He’s probably fine.”

“No! He’s not. You didn’t see the fucking blood!” I cried, dropping to the ground.

Smoke lifted me up off the floor by my elbow like he did that first night in the clearing, setting me back on my feet like I was fragile.

I held up the bloody jacket. “And if you aren’t the one who did this?” I felt a stinging in the back of my eyes. “Then who the fuck did?” My voice cracked as I tried to hold back the tears that threatened to fall.

Smoke grabbed the jacket from my hands and turned it over, inspecting it on all sides. A crumpled piece of paper fell from the inside when he started undoing the buttons.

We both made a move to pick it up just as the fan on the floor rotated toward us, blowing the paper toward the bathroom where the dark-haired girl stood in the open doorway. She picked it up and unfolded it as she walked toward us. “The Rules for Being Rage,” she said, reading it aloud. She handed the note to Smoke. “What does that mean?”

I felt all the blood drain from my face.

That shouldn’t be here.

It couldn’t be here.

“How?”

Smoke’s eyes went wide as he stared at the paper now in his hands. He looked just as shocked as I was. “What the fuck?” he muttered, tugging on the bottom of his beard.

I snatched it from him, not able to fully believe what he was holding. “It couldn’t be, it’s impossible,” I said, unfolding it completely, ready to confirm that what we were both thinking was wrong.

It had to be.

But sure enough, in multi-colored pen, written in several different skill levels of handwriting, changing between block lettering and script, were the familiar rules written for me throughout my childhood.

Rules I’ve read a thousand times.

Rules meant to contain my anger.

Rules meant to try and make me normal.

Rules I grew to hate over time.

Rules…written by Cody.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Rage

IT WAS ONLY a hunch, but it was all I had to go on. It was surreal pulling up to the park on the back of Smoke’s bike when the last time I was there I was driving away on it. It had been years, but it felt like no time had passed at all. I could almost feel the rough tulle of my prom dress scratching against my legs as I ran toward the excitement of the unknown.

The second he pushed down the kickstand and leaned the bike onto it, I hopped off. He cut the engine and followed me. “Did you call Joker?” I asked for the fourth time.

“Yeah, ’bout a hundred times. The brothers left this afternoon on a ride, but they’re on their way back. Joker’s M.I.A, but I sent him a text and put a call in to some of Nolan’s brothers. They’re on their way back from a ride and heading straight here but it’s gonna take them a while.” Smoke said. “You got what you need?” He pointed to my bag.

I nodded and clutched it close to my chest. “Hopefully, I brought a hell of a lot more than what I’m gonna need,” I answered, scanning the clearing between the pines. I could almost still see Cody’s Honda where it had been parked the last time. It was like its ghost was still there.

Haunting me.

“Tell me again why you let this Cody kid fuck you?” Smoke asked. His words were cruel, but that was just Smoke. “If you were hell bent on giving it away, you know I would’ve stepped in and helped you out with that.” He flicked the toothpick in his mouth from one side of his lip to the other.

The last thing I wanted to do was explain to Smoke that all these years, when I’d thought I’d lost my virginity to Cody, I’d actually lost it just the day before to Nolan.

My chest squeezed.

“Cody was a last-ditch effort to be someone I wasn’t,” I said, not wanting to elaborate. I needed to get to Nolan.

Smoke huffed. “I sometimes get a bit turned around too, kid. That don’t mean I let some punk stick his dick in me when that happens,” he growled. The conversation we didn’t need to be having was growing unbearably long.

“We got more important things right now than you being pissy about something that happened when I was sixteen,” I reminded him.

“You really think this guy is capable? From the way you’ve always talked about him, he sounded like he hung the moon and shit. A real all American clean cut douche bag.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Think you can handle business if it is Cody?” Smoke asked, quirking an eyebrow at me.

“I think you forget who you’re talking to.”

“That’s something I never forget when it comes to you.” Smoke looked around at the empty park. “You sure they’re here? Looks empty to me.” Smoke was right. Even without any lights, I could make out the overgrown grass, the crumbling picnic tables, and the un-raked pine needles carpeting the ground. The place was abandoned, a shadow of what it used to be.

I was about to tell Smoke that I wasn’t sure at all, that it was just an idea, a hunch, but he held up his hand and I stopped. The breeze picked up, gently rustling the tall grass. Smoke inhaled deeply.

“They’re here,” he whispered.

“How do you know?” I asked, peering into the dark, trying to see what he might’ve seen.

Smoke looked over to me and hesitated. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. A sign of affection that had my blood running cold. My face paled. I knew what he was about say because with another sway of the breeze, I picked up on what he already had. I didn’t want to hear the words but I couldn’t stop them from coming out of his mouth. “Hate to say this, but it smells like death.”

My heart dropped.

Sadness. Hurt. Two things I hadn’t been used to until I met Nolan, crashed into me like an out of control bus. My knees buckled, but Smoke caught me before I could hit the ground. I leaned into him for support as he plucked the phone from my hands. “This is what we’re going to do.” Smoke whispered. He released me and leaned down so his lips were level with my ear. “You need to pull it fucking together. Later on, when we’re bathing in this Cody kid’s fucking blood you can fall apart. But not now. Right now, we got shit to do. You need to call on those inner demons I love of yours cause them bitches need to know it’s time to come out and play.”

He was right. I could fall apart later. I took a deep breath and focused on his words. “Our rescue mission might have just turned into a blood bath, but I know how much you like those,” we whispered seductively. “Do you feel it Rage? Do you feel that fucking fire? ’Cause we need it right now. You with me?”

My vision shifted. The reality in front of me became slightly blurry and all I saw was red. “I’m with you,” I whispered.

Smoke leaned over and tipped my chin up. He looked into my eyes. “Oh yeah. It’s time, baby.”

I felt the heat more than ever in my spine as it exploded into the rest of my body like an adrenaline shot to my entire system. I was like a rabid dog who needed to feast. “Let’s go,” I said. We’d barley gotten two feet into the field when a shot rang out, echoing through the tall trees. A bullet whizzed between the few feet separating me and Smoke, landing somewhere in the wooded area behind us, across the narrow dirt road. Startled blackbirds flew from their nighttime perches, their wings batting in quick succession as they emerged into the sky, rattling the branches. Pinecones fell to the ground, landing with soft thuds on the thick bed of pine needles.

Smoke pulled his gun and ducked, but I did no such thing. I just kept walking into the dark, toward the direction where the shot had come from. Toward the murder and mayhem I was about to rain down.

Toward revenge without salvation.

“RAGE, DON’T BE fucking stupid,” Smoke hissed, hopping up and running to my side, gun drawn. His black hair and black clothes concealed him as we moved forward. My pink T-shirt, light blue shorts, and light hair made me stand out like a torch being carried in the night. I didn’t care about being concealed.

I cared about one thing and one thing only…spilling blood.

We reached the end of the clearing where a car was parked with its lights off. Smoke protectively shifted me behind him, but I stepped out from behind his big body and continued moving forward. The full moon shone down from the night sky like a spotlight, encasing the car, a newer model Honda, and the man sitting on top of it, in an eerie yellow glow.

“I can see you, Rage,” Cody sang, picking at something on his nails. “You know, I’m the one who gave you that name. I feel like I deserve some credit for that.” His voice was familiar, but at the same time, it was very different. Higher pitched.

Off.

He hopped down from the cab and walked around the car, trailing his fingers across the blue metallic paint. He stopped when he reached the back of the car, tapping on the trunk.

“Stay back,” I told Smoke, who grunted and shouted something at me I couldn’t hear over the blood rushing through my head. I stepped out from the shadow into the light of the moon just as Cody popped the trunk latch, revealing white fabric drenched in red, wrapped around a lifeless body. The smell hit me not a second after.

Nolan.

Even though my anger, even through the blood lust raging through me, I felt my gut twist.

A part of me hoped that when Cody saw me, he would be the same Cody I’d been friends with my entire life. He’d gone through great lengths to get me there. I didn’t think he was going to hurt me, at least not right away. All I needed him to do was hesitate, just for a second. Just to give me enough time to blow him to fucking hell.

I walked right up to Cody, who looked me over. At first when he saw me, he seemed pleased with himself, smirking and nodding like I was a dog who’d found his way home to his master who’d called for him. But when he looked me over, his wild smile dropped from his face into an emotionless straight line.

Then he lifted the gun, aimed at my chest, and fired.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Rage

AS SOON AS I heard the bullet explode from the barrel, I thought it was over. And it was.

Just not for me.

After realizing I wasn’t dead, I spun around to where Cody had fired after redirecting his aim at the last second.

My eyes landed on Smoke.

Smoke who was facedown in the dirt. A pool of his own blood seeping into the ground around him.

“Serves that son of a bitch right. He never should have taken you away from me!” Cody roared, kicking up dust with his boot and sending it flying over Smoke’s body.

I turned back to Cody. Calmly. Too calmly. I was so focused, I scared myself, my heart thumping out a wildly erratic rhythm in my chest. “I know we haven’t seen in each other in years, dear friend,” I said, my voice flat and forced as I closed the space between us. His eyes went wide, and as he took a step back, he floundered for a quick second before recovering. “But it seems that you, the person who has known me the longest, has forgotten exactly who the fuck I am.” I took a step forward and Cody raised his gun again, this time at my head. I didn’t stop. I would never fucking stop. “And what I’m capable of.”

“He’s alive!” Cody suddenly shouted, taking a step back. Fear replacing the confidence that had been there seconds earlier. “That fucking biker you’re fucking. I didn’t kill him.”

I glanced to the sheet in the trunk then back up to Cody, who shook his head and pointed to the body. “That’s not him.”

“Bullshit,” I seethed. “Then who the fuck is it?” I asked.

“Don’t believe me? Go look for yourself,” Cody said, waving his gun to the car. I ducked under him and peered into the trunk. “Why don’t you learn how to use that thing? You hold it like it’s a fucking dog about to rip your arm off. Where’s your fucking pride, man?”

“Fuck you, Rage!” Cody spat, the gun shaking in his hands, the weight of it in his untrained hand looked awkward and heavy. I yanked back on the sheet and held my breath.

“Why did you do this?” I asked, looking down at the bloodied body of who could only be Cody’s girlfriend. I recognized the golden curls from his social media accounts.

“She’s a gift,” Cody stammered. “For you. I thought…I thought you’d like it.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I can be like you. I wanted to show you that we could be together. That no one could come between us. Didn’t I do good? She screamed and I didn’t even stop. Not even when the shovel got stuck in her—”

“Cody,” I snapped interrupting whatever it was he thought he was doing by telling me that story. “Where the fuck is he?”

“He’s…he’s right over there,” Cody said, pointing to a picnic table in the shadows where something large and dark was lying across the top.

“Nolan!” I yelled, running toward the table. Nolan’s right eye was swollen shut. The other just a slit. Blood stained his face and arms. He was breathing but barely conscious, strapped down to the table like a Christmas tree across the roof of a small car. My relief at him being alive was short lived. My attention shifted to the device strapped between the ropes and Nolan, pressing against his torso.

My hands started to shake. I cracked my neck and jaw to relieve some of the tension that had me wound so tight, that not only would Cody be dead at the end of all this, he wouldn’t make it out with a single limb intact. I spun around as he approached. “This is my other gift,” he said as I breathed fire, feeling the hatred burning in my lungs.

I launched myself at him and was mid-air, about to take him down, when he took a single step to the side, holding up a small black remote with a flashing red light and a single button.

I stopped my attack but not my forward motion. I was right up in Cody’s face when I said, “Your gift to me is wrapping explosives around someone I love? Shooting someone I care about?” Nolan coughed and I turned. He moaned and red sputtered from his mouth, dripping down his chin onto the table.

Cody nodded. “I saw him come to your parent’s house on his bike, so I watched him. Then I saw you arrive, and I knew this biker was something to you. Saw the way you looked at eachother. What shocked me the most is when he kissed you. Fuck, you never even let me kiss you. I thought you couldn’t feel love and suddenly it’s written all over your face? Or is that just something you told me to blow me off?” His eyes shone wickedly. “None of that matters now. I remember how much you love explosions. I’ve been learning. Practicing.” He took a step toward me. It was my turn to move back, so I didn’t snap his arm in half and accidentally detonate the bomb strapped to Nolan.

“All this time!” I yelled. “All these years and you’re pissed off at me? Why? Because I left? Because we tried the list and it didn’t work? Why Cody? Why now?”

“See, I knew this would happen” Cody said, tapping the gun against his head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been good at the whole feelings thing, so I get that. I totally do. But I needed time to be able to offer you my grand gesture,” he said, waving his gun around in the air. In the corner of my eye, Smoke shifted, just slightly. Then his eyes opened and landed on me. I didn’t look over at him, not wanting to draw Cody’s attention. “And I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, Hope, but you are very high maintenance. It took a while to learn all this. Explosives, gun shit, all that took time.” He lowered his voice. “But you’re worth it. Always have been.”

“I’m gonna rip your fucking throat out with my bare hands!” I screamed.

“Awe, baby. Now, is that anyway to treat someone who went through all this trouble for you?” He held up the remote, his thumb hovering above the button. Again, I paused, looking back at Nolan whose eyes focused and unfocused as he struggled to stay conscious. I closed my eyes tightly.

In order to save Nolan, I’d needed to take some control and attempt a different approach. Anger was my zone, my center.

But it wasn’t Cody’s.

Cody’s weakness…was me.

He must have seen the shift in me. Maybe it was when I turned back around to him and my shoulders fell in defeat. He smiled. “When we were kids, I was going about this thing with you the wrong way. Instead of teaching you how to be a normal kid, we should have been learning all this stuff together. Instead of running off with that son of a bitch” he said, fire dancing in his eyes as he stared daggers at Smoke who thankfully closed his eyes in time. Suddenly, I had hope. Hope I could get all of us out of here alive. I knew what I had to do. I just hoped Smoke was with it enough to catch on before it was too late.

“We could have been together all along,” Cody continued. “And I know, I know, I pushed the sex thing too soon.” Cody looked me up and down from my Keds to my ponytail, pausing between my legs and my chest. “But you’re just so fucking beautiful, Hope. I couldn’t help myself.” He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and flicked my ponytail off my shoulder with the tip of his gun. I cringed. He circled around me slowly, appraising me like cattle.

“But we didn’t,” I spat. “You let me believe that. What you did, Cody, while I was zoned out? You came on my leg. I’d thought I’d given you that part of me, but I was wrong. Found that out when I gave it to Nolan.”

My stomach rolled at what I was about to do.

But my stomach was no match for my will.

Cody’s face turned red with embarrassment. He was about to say something when I interrupted. “So…let’s try again,” I said. I stepped back and unhooked my bag from my shoulders. I grabbed my T-shirt and sports bra at the same time, pulling them over my head. I put my hands on my hips and pushed out my bare breasts.

“What? What?” Cody stammered, waving his gun at me and staring down at my naked chest. “What are you doing? Is this supposed to be some kind of trick?”

I pressed my palms to his chest. He’d lost so much weight, he was a fraction of the baseball player he used to be. “No, no tricks, Cody. You’re right. This is all right. I didn’t even give us a chance last time. Since we didn’t make it happen on prom night. Let’s try again.” I stood on my tiptoes and pressed a small kiss to the corner of his mouth, praying that Nolan was too unconscious to see what I was about to do in order to save two of the three only men I’d ever cared about.

The other was going to die when all was said and done, but first things first.

I’d taken out hundreds of people, but saving lives required a lot more than just a need to destroy and some wiring or bullets. It required tact. Something I wasn’t sure I had, but I was about to find out.

“Rage, if this is a trick, I’m gonna blow that motherfucker up so fast…” Cody warned, raising his detonator in the air.

“Sssssshhhhhhh,” I said, pressing my index finger to his lips. “I tell you what. You can frisk me if you want, but all my supplies are over there in my bag.” I pointed to where I’d tossed them both to the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Smoke was slowly getting up. He rolled o to his side and noded at me. As much as I wanted him to start blowing holes in Cody’s head, I knew he wouldn’t. I was too close to both him and Nolan. If he started shooting, I was either getting shot or getting blown up.

Cody’s lust blazed in his eyes and I knew I had him. “Get on the fucking table,” he ordered roughly, gesturing to the picnic table next to the one Nolan was strapped to.

“I was thinking somewhere a little more private,” I said, turning up the end of my sentence into a question. If I could get him away from Nolan long enough Smoke could remove the ropes.

Cody waved me off and pushed me toward the table. “This is private enough,” he said with a laugh. His voice turned cold. “Now get on that fucking table.”

I glanced from Nolan who’s eyes were closed and then back to Cody. Reluctantly, I stepped up onto the bench and sat down at the edge of the table. Cody stepped forward and shoved my knees apart, standing between my spread legs. “Lean back and put your hands on the fucking table,” he demanded. “Good girl. Now if you so much as lift a palm from the wood, and I don’t care if you’ve got a fucking splinter or if a snake comes out and bites you, I press this button and your biker goes BOOM.”

It was the first explosion of my life I wasn’t looking forward to. The first one I was even attempting to prevent.

Smoke had begun to crawl toward his gun slowly so he would go unnoticed. I never wished someone could crawl faster in all my life because if Smoke didn’t get to his gun soon, there would be no way to get around what I’d just set in motion.

Regret flooded through me like a tidal wave of wrong.

A twig snapped, and Cody jumped back from me, waving his gun at Smoke who froze, still several feet away from his gun. “It was too good to be true to think I killed you,” he said, turning to me and sneering. “I knew you were up to no good, Rage. Maybe that’s my fault for teaching you how to be a good liar. But now you’re gonna fucking pay for it.” He looked at Smoke and then to me. “Get the fuck up,” he ordered Smoke, aiming his gun at me. “Get over here right fucking now, or I’m gonna blow a hole in her fucking head.”

Smoke stood on wobbly legs. Blood dripped from the bullet hole in his bicep. Cody backed away from me, his gun now trained on us both. “Rage here wanted to get fucked, and as much as I wanted to be the man for the job, it seems that I can’t do two things at once right now.” He held up the button. Nolan moaned again. He was only a few feet from us and had enough explosives around him that if Cody pushed that button, all three of us would be in pieces within less than a second.

Smoke growled as I wrapped my hands around my breasts to cover myself.

“Oh no, you don’t get to cover up. Put your fucking hands back on the table, Hope,” Cody ordered, the flashing light in his hand the only reason I reluctantly complied.

Smoke stood protectively in front of me, shielding me from Cody. “What exactly are you trying to do here?” Smoke asked.

“You are the one who took her from me. You drove her off in the middle of the night, and I never heard from her again. I want all of you to know how that feels. To have something taken from you. To be wronged.” He looked at Smoke but aimed his gun at my head. “So now I’m gonna take something from you. From both of you. I’m going to take away your free will. Your right to chose. I’m going to take this from you like you took her away from me.” Cody laughed, low and deep. Tears formed in his eyes.

“What the fuck are you saying, motherfucker? What exactly is it that you want?” Smoke boomed, his voice echoing throughout the park.

Cody sniffled. His eyes became darker. His jaw tensed. His shoulders straightened with newfound determination to make us suffer. “What I’m saying, is that you two are gonna fuck, and I’m gonna watch while you find out how it feels to have something taken from you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Rage

“NO,” SMOKE SAID, crossing his arms over his chest. Cody fired the gun, the bullet grazed my shin, which felt like someone had raised an ax and swung it down on my leg.

“As I said,” Cody spat, “this isn’t a fucking choice. You do it and you can watch her die first before I kill you.”

My world was crashing around me. I didn’t feel rage or anger. I felt defeat. I turned to Smoke. “It’s…it’s okay,” I said reluctantly.

“Fuck,” Smoke said, dropping his head into his hands.

“Now,” Cody demanded.

“Shut the fuck up for a second!” Smoke roared. He looked to me, his gaze dropping momentarily to my bare chest before he caught himself and looked away. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered, although there was nothing to apologize about.

I shook my head. “Don’t be. We gotta get out of here,” I whispered.

“This isn’t what I ever wanted,” Smoke said. “I’m a guy, so I can’t say I never imagined it. But I want what’s best for you and that’s never been me.” He paused and jerked his chin to the table behind me where I heard Nolan moan again. “That’s him.”

I nodded. “This is just a job, Smoke. We always finish the job. No matter what,” I said, wanting to rid the hurt from his voice. I didn’t glance back at Nolan. I couldn’t. I closed my eyes tightly then opened them again, I looked back up at Smoke. “Right?” I asked, staring into his eyes, seeking his agreement.

“Right,” Smoke said softly, although his expression said otherwise.

“Clothes. Off. Now,” Cody demanded. “Or I shoot her other fucking leg and then her fucking head.”

“I’m not taking my fucking cut off,” Smoke argued. Every muscle in his neck tensed.

Cody snickered. “I don’t have all fucking day here. Shut the fuck up and do it already!” His voice was a mixture of anger and hurt and lust, and I just wanted it all to be over.

“It’s okay,” I said again to Smoke, who shot Cody one last death glare before standing between my legs.

But it wasn’t okay. It was anything but okay.

I’d offered everything up, including my humanity and my soul in exchange for the freedom that being a vessel of destruction brought. And now I was hurting inside. But not for myself. For Smoke. And especially for Nolan, who I prayed was still passed out and not about to witness the death of something that had never really had the chance to get started.

Us.

Playing a role was one thing. I’d never actually wished to be someone else before. But for a brief moment, when Smoke was tugging off my shorts and panties, I truly wished that I was Hope Michaels, and not the devil who looked like an angel.

But an actual angel.

An actual good person.

Someone worthy of the two men I’d put in the middle of my shit situation. It was all my fault. I let them in. I let them get close to me, and look what happened.

Get a grip, Rage, I commanded myself. You’re stronger than this.

I shook off my unhelpful thoughts and tried to refocus.

I am Rage. A tracker. A killer. I am strong. I am capable.

I do what it takes to get the fucking job done.

Smoke pushed his long dark hair out of his eyes and unzipped his jeans, pushing them down and pulling me to the edge of the table. He spread my legs and stepped between them. His hard cock poking into my stomach. “I’ll try not to hurt you,” he whispered. “Fuck, it’s the first time in my fucking life I wish I wasn’t able to get hard.”

“Just do it,” I said. Feeling myself retreating into the numbness that I’d experienced with Cody, but as much as I wanted to zone out completely, I couldn’t get there.

“Put her on top of you so I can see better,” Cody demanded, his voice hoarse.

Smoke grunted and lifted me up by my waist. He turned so that he was sitting at the edge of the table and I was straddling him. “I’m so sorry,” he said again as he spit into his hand and rubbed it onto the tip of his dick. He grabbed the base of his shaft and lowered me onto him, quietly groaning under his breath as he pushed up into me.

That’s when I made the biggest mistake of my entire life.

I opened my eyes. There, over Smoke’s shoulder, I found myself in the last place I wanted to be, locked in Nolan’s gaze.

“Fuck her, God dammit!” Cody roared, firing his gun into the air.

Smoke pushed up into me roughly. I wasn’t remotely ready. It hurt. It hurt so much. “Just think of all the ways we’re gonna kill him when it’s all over,” Smoke whispered to me as he moved me up and down on top of him.

The entire time, I was unable to look away from Nolan, who even with one eye swollen shut, with the most vengeful look on his reddened face, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

That moment changed my life forever.

It was the moment I stopped being able to go numb when I needed to retreat. It was the moment I realized that what I’d been feeling for Nolan was love.

Smoke grunted one last apology, lifting me off of him and coming onto his own stomach. A tear dripped from the corner of Nolan’s eye.

I may have loved Nolan, but in that moment I hated myself.

It was also when the bullets started flying, followed by an explosion.

Nolan

SICK. I WAS going to be fucking sick. I didn’t want to watch but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I tried to scream through the gag in my mouth, but it muffled the sound. There was nothing I could do but watch as some other guy fucked MY girl.

I was being untied. By who I didn’t care. I didn’t even register the voices whispering to me or who it was who put the gun in my hands. Cody may have knocked the shit out of me, but it was nothing compared to what he’d done to that girl in my living room, gutting her like she was a fucking slab of beef.

The second I was free, I stood up, ignoring the spinning sensation in my head. I started pulling the trigger. Over and over and over again, I walked toward Cody, blasting one bullet after the other into him until he was a pile of hole-filled dead flesh in the dirt.

The explosion happened fast and quick. When I turned around I saw a poof of smoke coming from the trees. Joker and a couple of my other brothers walked out from where the explosion had just happened. “All taken care of,” Joker said. “Looks like you got things handled over here.” He pointed to Cody’s body, but I didn’t answer him. Instead, I turned toward where the guy who’d just fucked my girl was buttoning up his pants. I aimed my gun at him and fired, forgetting I’d just used all my bullets on Cody.

“Kind of wish you had bullets left in there,” he said. I lowered the gun and ran over to Rage, scooping her up in my arms. “That’s Smoke. It wasn’t his fault,” Rage said, not sounding at all like herself. She was meek and quiet.

I fucking hated it.

“You might want to get the fuck out of here before I can reload,” I warned Smoke, who with a nod to me and a sad smile to Rage, turned and disappeared.

“I…I…” Rage stammered, but there was nothing she had to say.

“You don’t need to say shit right now. You’re alive. I’m alive. That’s all that fucking matters.” Rage looked at me like she was going to respond, but her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out cold in my arms.

“I got cleanup,” Joker said, pulling out his phone. He pointed to Rage. “The little arsonist gonna okay?”

“You know who she is?” I asked. “ ’Cause if you don’t think I’m going to walk out of here with her then—”

“Shut the fuck up, son,” Joker interrupted. “That guy you just threatened? Smoke? He paid off her debt to me a long time ago. Girl’s not on my hit list. Not right now anyway. Smoke explained to me about the two of you briefly on the voicemail he left me when he asked us to come here. Van’s parked in the lot, keys inside. Now go on, get her out of here and take care of her. Come to the clubhouse when you can. We’ll talk more then.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I scooped Rage up into my arms and left the park where both of us had lost a piece of ourselves and wondered after all that had happened if those were pieces we could ever get back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Rage

I WOKE UP in a familiar room. But it wasn’t the familiar room I wanted to wake up in. This one was decorated in pinks and teals. Designed for the daughter my mother wanted, not the one she had.

“Mijn Zoeteken, I am so happy you’re awake,” my mom said, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of the bed. My father followed, sitting on the other side. “Nolan brought you home and said you were injured, and we’ve been in such distress. He’s such a good boy, you know. I’m glad you found each other. How’s your leg feeling? You shouldn’t go down slopes you aren’t trained for. Nolan was right, you’ve always been a dare devil, but it’s best you stick to the bunny slopes on your first try.”

Nolan had dropped me off at my parents’ house. My chest tightened. I clutched the top of the comforter. He probably couldn’t even look at me, but didn’t know where else to dump me.

I tugged off the covers and inspected my leg. It was just a scratch. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” my father said. You had us worried, but the doc came and said there was nothing wrong with you and that we should just let you sleep.

“Three days?” I asked, sitting up. My head was pounding.

“And your mother is right. You shouldn’t ski on slopes you aren’t prepared for. It’s dangerous, and as much as we are so happy to have you home again, we want you to be—”

“Va,” I said, interrupting him. “I think you both know I wasn’t skiing. I didn’t hurt my leg on any slope. I was never in Paris. EVER.”

The gasps of surprise that I was expecting never came. Instead, my parents linked hands across my bed. My mother brushed a loose strand of hair off my face. “We know, Mijn Zoeteken. Your Photoshop skills are shit.”

My father started laughing and then my mother. Suddenly, I was in the twilight zone where my parents laughed about my lies. “What the hell’s going on?” I asked.

“Hope, my darling. We know you’re different,” my mother said, looking at me with a loving look in her eyes. “We don’t know what you do out there but we know it is not what you say. To be frank with you, we don’t want to know.” My mother continued while my father nodded and squeezed her hand. “We want you to be free and happy. So to us, you were skiing in the mountains just like that boy downstairs said you were. As long as you’re not out there hopped up on the heroin or campaigning for Donald Trump, your father and I are content to live in ignorant bliss, because we know it means we can keep you in our lives.”

My turned my head from side to side, looking between the two of them. “I can’t believe…” I paused. “Wait, backup. Where did you say Nolan was?”

“Downstairs,” my father said. “He’s been here the entire time. He refused to leave your side until your mother forced him to go downstairs to eat breakfast a few minutes ago.”

I leapt off the bed and leapt down the stairs. There is no way this was reality. I’d slept, my parents stopped pretending like they believed my lies. And the man I loved, who’d watched as another man fucked me, had been by my side while I SLEPT for three days. There was no fucking way…

But there was. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, he was there, sitting on a barstool at my parents’ breakfast counter, looking unshaved and disheveled with dark circles under his eyes as he picked apart a piece of toast.

“Hi,” I said, tugging at the bottom of my T-shirt, not realizing until just then that I didn’t have any shorts on.

Nolan looked at me for one second and then two. In those two seconds, it seemed like an eternity went by, and I wished I could be in his mind and know what he was thinking. I didn’t have to wait long. He stood up, knocking the barstool to the side and wasted no time making his way over to me. He picked me up, sat me on the counter and kissed me like I was his world.

I kissed him back with everything I had and everything I was. “I’m so sorry,” I said when we finally pulled back.

Nolan shook his head and kissed me again, silencing me. The next time he pulled back he said, “You’ve never been one to apologize. I don’t want my girl picking up all sorts of bad habits now just because she’s in a relationship. Besides, my girl doesn’t apologize.”

“No? And you like this girl?” I asked, my heart racing.

Nolan dipped his head down and brushed his lips against mine. “No, I don’t like her,” he said, searching my eyes and flashing me one of his big ridiculous smiles. “I love her.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

WE SAID OUR good-byes to my parents, but only after promising we’d come back over for dinner soon. My mother handed me a recipe for potato leak soup after Nolan had told her he was moving me in with him. I think she assumed I’d go all Julia Child and become some domestic or something. I smiled and took the card politely, watching out of the corner of my eye as Nolan tried not to laugh.

“Oh and here. I got the blood out,” my mother said, coming out from the laundry room with Nolan’s cut in her hands.

“Thank you, Mrs. Michaels,” Nolan said with polite Southern charm, shrugging it back on. “You did amazing. I can never seem to get blood of out this thing.” My mother clasped her hands together and pulled Nolan in for a hug. “Anytime, you just bring our girl back to see us soon.”

“I will,” Nolan said, pulling me into his side. “You can count on it.”

I looked between my parents and Nolan and decided that I didn’t care if I was living in the twilight zone.

I liked it there.

Back at the cottage, Nolan and I spent a lot time loving up on Murray as we watched the sun set from the deck. I promised the flea monster I’d take good care of him and I wouldn’t leave him alone anymore. It felt good to be back in the house I’d grown to love with the stupid dog I’d learned to love, with the sexy biker I was over the moon in love with.

After dark, Nolan took my hand and led me down to the beach. He wasted no time pushing me down into the sand. Then his lips were on mine, his weight on top of me. Crushing me. The pain in my chest was no longer from thinking I didn’t feel enough to be with him, but from knowing how much I loved him.

Nolan snaked an arm around my waist and roughly pushed me farther back into the sand. His lips didn’t leave mine as he made quick work of our clothes. His fingers grazed my wet and ready entrance, dipping into the lining of my bathing suit bottom and shorts. He pushed the fabric to the side, and I moaned at the lack of contact.

I was in real pain. Body. Soul. Heart.

I never wanted it to stop.

Nolan’s lips punished mine. His cock was hot and hard against my opening as he pushed inside of me. Moaning into my mouth, be began to pound into me. Hard. Fast. Frantic. It was then I realized what he was doing. Every thrust was him taking out his anger on me.

Punishing me.

Saying the things with his body that he hadn’t yet said with his words.

Nolan spoke with his lips against my neck as he grunted, each thrust harder than the last. With every pull out, I squeezed around his cock until I thought I was going to pass out from both pleasure and anger…and fear. “You don’t get to fucking kill me. You don’t get to fucking leave me. Never again. You got that? No matter what happens. You don’t get to assume we’re ever over, because we will never, EVER, be over.” He punctuated the last remark with a hard thrust that made my head crash backward into the sand.

“Say yes,” he demanded. “I want to hear you say the fucking words.”

“Yes,” I breathed. He pulled out of me, dragging against every nerve ending he’d just ignited before stretching me back open with each deep push inward.

“Things got fucked up, but we’ll find a way. You’re still mine. Ain’t shit gonna ever change that,” Nolan groaned out. Slamming into me harder and harder.

We looked into each other’s eyes and something passed between us. A look of relief, like he was finally satisfied that I was done running, washed over his beautiful face along with a heavily lidded look of desire as he began to punish my body all over again in a way that had me seeing stars and crying out his name, as his cock set off sparks of pleasure inside me. He picked up my thigh, angling me so his thrusts were deeper, harder. It was painful, but it was exactly what I needed.

This punishment.

This night.

This boy.

This love I never thought I was capable of.

“Tell me you love me,” he demanded, thrusting faster and faster.

“I…” I couldn’t get the words out. The way Nolan was looking at me, the way his abs were contracting while he fucked me, it was all my body needed to tip over the edge in an orgasm that had me digging my heels into Nolan’s back. I reared up and bit down on his shoulder as it washed over me in waves that knocked the wind out of me. I felt it from my toes to my core, which was convulsing so rough I screamed out in sheer terror of its force.

Nolan roared into the night, following me over the edge, the cords of his neck tightening, his teeth bared as he came. Long hot spurts flooded inside of me, dripping out as he rode out the pleasure of his own torturous release.

“I love you,” I whispered.

I thought freedom was how I felt after I left home. I thought being alone was freedom. It wasn’t. It was just being alone. I now knew what true freedom was.

True freedom was giving myself permission to love.

True freedom was Nolan.

It was only through Cody, Smoke, and especially Nolan that I learned that just because I can kill, doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart.

I could have both the night and the day, the passion and the poison.

The Hope and the Rage.

Nolan

“THAT WAS BY far the hottest fuck of my life,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. I rolled off of her to the side, keeping Rage tucked in close. We still had a lot of talking to do but we needed to be close, to feel connected. I needed to let her know that the shit in the park didn’t affect how I felt about her or make me want her any less.

“Really?” she asked. Then she surprised me when I saw pink creeping up into her cheeks. Rage was actually blushing.

Which made my cock twitch.

Which had me leaning over and prying her knees apart so I could climb on top of her and settle between her thighs. With my cum still dripping from her freshly fucked pussy, I pushed back inside her, every time better than the last. I was hell bent on another sexual exorcism by way of mind-blowing orgasm.

What had I ever complained about last summer? Hockey? School? My uncle? My leg? The club?

As it turned out, last summer was the best one of my life after all.

That summer was the best of my life. You could even say it was all the Rage.

The End

EPILOGUE

Rage

I NEVER HEARD from Smoke again. When I tried to call his phone, it was disconnected. When I went over to his house, it was vacant with no trace that anyone had been living there.

I don’t know where he’d taken off to, but wherever it was, I’d hoped he knew I didn’t blame him for anything that happened. After Nolan got over the initial shock, he admitted he didn’t either, although he said it with fury in his eyes.

Nolan tested out his leg several times on the ice, and with Joker’s blessing, was putting in some serious workouts. The coach and the doctors agreed that he would be coming back on full scholarship when the season started back up.

Which was why I was standing in the Dean of Admissions office.

Walking around the dark room, dressed in green and golds, I realized I’d never been in such a fancy office. “Mallards? Seriously?” I asked, lifting one of the plastic duck things off its display perch and tossing it to the dean who caught it, cradling it in his arms like it was a child and not an ugly fake plastic duck.

“What do you want from me?” the dean asked, his voice as shaky as his hands. I couldn’t blame him. If I were him, I’d be wary of me too.

“I need you to write a letter for me,” I said in my sweetest voice as I took a turn around the room, looking over the thick paintings with ornate gold frames.

“A letter? What kind of letter?”

I ran my hands over his enviable bookcase, my fingertips brushing first editions that should be in a museum and not in the office of the Dean of Admissions. I turned back around in time to see Rollo press down on the dean’s shoulder, forcing him back into the big chair behind his desk. “Why, an admissions letter of course,” I said with a smile, twirling my knife in my hands.

“For…for who?” the dean asked, raising his eyebrows, and I laughed because I didn’t have so much as a high school diploma, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

I shook my head and leaned forward on the desk, moving all his pens, which were organized by color into one big pile in the center. “Me,” I said, slapping my fake file down on the desk.

I opened it to where a small picture was paper-clipped to the inside flap, and although it wasn’t my best picture, it was the best I could do on short notice. I contemplated making one of those videos like Elle did in Legally Blonde, but since I was getting in on threats and not credentials, it was probably unnecessary.

“Yeah…yes…sure,” the dean stammered.

I clapped my hands together and bounced up and down. I leaned over and gave the dean a high-five to the head. “All right, I’m outta here.” I was about to leave when I realized I’d forgotten something. “I think it goes without saying that if you so much as mention this to anyone, that I’ll put your insides on your outside and string you up in the fucking quad like a Cinco de Mayo piñata.” I nodded to Bubba and Rollo, two of Nolan’s fellow Warriors, who were keeping guard, standing on either side of the dean, watching over his shoulder to make sure he did what he was told.

I walked out the door and skipped down the hallway.

As it turns out, I liked being an old lady after all.

BONUS SCENE

Rage

“CAN WE TALK?” I asked, peeking my head into a very messy office. Bear was standing in the middle of a pile of paperwork, but looked up when he heard me.

A scowl already on his face.

Shit.

“Depends,” he said, standing up and crossing his arms defensively over his chest. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t trust me either.

“On what?” I asked, entering the room and leaning against the wall with my arms behind my back.

“On what the fuck you want,” he snapped.

I shrugged and clasped my hands together, squeezing tight to avoid fidgeting. “Stuff. A job?” I managed to squeak out. I wasn’t used to asking anyone for anything. It was unfamiliar and made me highly uncomfortable. That and I’d royally fucked up when it came to Bear. The only job I’d EVER fucked up on, yet he was the only person who could help me.

“Sit,” Bear commanded, pointing to the couch in the corner. I crossed the room and Bear didn’t take his eyes off of me the entire time. I pushed some papers aside and plopped down on the hard cushion. A plume of dust billowed into the air. I coughed and waved it away, but remained seated.

“Is that blood?” I asked.

“Yep,” Bear answered without looking to where I was pointing, which was at a dark stain on the hardwood floors that took up most of the room.

“Head injury,” I stated.

“How do you know that?” Bear asked, finally looking up at me. I sat cross-legged on the gross couch.

“Lots of blood, but it’s puckered like there was a lot of matter in it. Nothing makes more of a mess than someone getting their brains blown out. Plus, there is that,” I said, nodding to the wall where a huge splatter formed a halo and then ran toward the floor. It was dry, of course, but there was no mistaking the markings. “It’s too high for a chest injury.”

“What the fuck was it that you wanted? Because if you want to kill me, you should do it before I go through these fucking papers. Lord the fuck knows I don’t know how I’m going to straighten out this mess,” Bear said, running his hand down his face and staring hatred at the files and strewn about papers that took up all the space on the floor the dried blood didn’t.

“I heard what happened. With your dad. I’m sorry,” I offered.

“No need to apologize. I’d kill the fucker again if I had the chance,” Bear said, suddenly raising his eyebrows at me. “Wait, did you just fucking apologize?”

“Yes,” I said, without making any excuses. “I did.”

“And you’re sitting on the most disgusting couch known to man,” he stated.

“I am,” I said, smiling to myself. Proud in a way. It was still fucking gross but I was thrilled that it wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I entered the room, and that it didn’t send me running out of it.

“Why the fuck are you here, Rage?” Bear asked again.

I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Okay, so here it is. I was wrong. I’m sorry about leaving Thia, but I had to, and trust me someday I’ll tell you the story, but it was for a guy, not just any guy but THE guy.” I started to ramble.

“I heard. Goon. Warrior,” Bear said, rolling his hand around for me to keep going. “Your point?”

“My point is that I have a proposition for you.”

“Go on.”

“I want to pledge my loyalty to the new MC,” I blurted out. “Well, to you and to the Warriors, but that’s it.”

“And why would you do that? You’ve always said you’d never do that. It wasn’t your thing.” Bear stood up and leapt over a stack of files. “What’s got you changing your mind?”

I flashed him a small embarrassed smile.

“The guy,” Bear said, and it wasn’t a question.

I nodded. “Yes. The guy. But not just the guy. I used to do this…thing I do—”

“Murder and mayhem,” Bear interjected.

“Yes, whatever. Well, I used to do it as a release, and I wanted people to fear me because I didn’t want to get close to anyone because bad shit happens when you get close to people.”

“Now you don’t care if people fear you or not?” Bear asked, crossing his arms over his chest like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

I cleared my throat. “No, but I’ve learned recently that I’m even more frightening when I have something to fight for. Someone. So if you’ll have me, I’d like to be on your team. Team Lawless.”

“What’s the catch?”

I sighed. “I may not be available every time you call. I’m doing something else that may take up a bit of time. And I want your loyalty back. For me. And for…him. MY him. Goon. Nolan,” I said. “Just like you’d give to the family of any of your brothers.”

Bear nodded. “I’m still pissed at you for leaving Thia like that. But since you’ve suddenly turned smart and it seems that you’ve regained your senses, you might want to think about finding her and apologizing yourself. The only reason I didn’t come after you myself was because she told me not to. For some reason, my crazy bitch likes your even crazier ass.”

“I like her too,” I admitted.

Bear shook his head and blew out a breath. “I don’t know if I can get used to this new Rage. Gonna take some time, that’s for fucking sure.” Bear paused. “Fuck, I know what you’re up to.”

“Huh?” I asked, looking around the room at random things, anywhere to keep from looking at Bear.

“You’re trying to unite the MCs.”

“I didn’t say that. I wasn’t here and I didn’t say that. But if I were here and I did say that, then it would be a really, really great idea to give each other a reason to not want to kill each other moving forward.”

Bear scratched his beard and grinned.

“So…yes?” I asked.

He let out a breath. “Yeah, but don’t fuck it up. You know what happens when someone crosses me. I don’t give a fuck that you’re a girl, you cross me and I’ll unleash hell on you and Goon,” Bear warned.

I nodded, his warning did nothing to diminish the pure joy surging through me.

Bear walked me down the steps toward the gate. On the way, we passed several members who were all cleaning up as if a tornado had touched down the night before.

A bloody tornado.

“One hell of a party ya’ll had here. Sometimes you just need a good old fashioned blood bath to get the juices flowing, don’t ya think?” I asked.

Two brothers walked by, one of them tapping the other on the shoulder and whispering in my direction. I returned their whispers with a sweet and over enthusiastic smile, which quickly had them turning their attentions back to the banner they were raising. With one of them on each side of the courtyard, they pulled down on ropes attached to a pulley, raising the huge black sign so that it would be the first thing everyone saw when they first crossed through the gates. It read THE LAWLESS, MC in bright white lettering, which matched the new patches I’d noticed on Bear’s cut.

“I’m gonna have to agree with you on that one,” Bear said, taking in the destruction.

“Oh!” I exclaimed as we reached the gate, clapping my hands together. “There is one more thing I want.” I pointed to the only garment of clothing I ever saw Bear wear besides dark jeans. “I want a cut,” I said, hopping on the balls of my feet.

“No fucking way,” Bear said with a laugh. He lit a cigarette. “Don’t you think Goon would be a little pissed that his old lady is wearing a Lawless cut? You didn’t want a war, right?”

“But he won’t give me one, just a stupid little one that says OLD LADY on it, and that’s not what I want. But why not? Because I’m a girl? That’s fucking sexist. I could take down most of the brothers in here without so much as having to touch up my nail polish,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and tapping my foot on the ground. “Just because I have a vagina and not a dick doesn’t mean—”

“You having a pussy has nothing to do with it,” Bear said, still smiling, unaffected by my tantrum.

“Then why?” I asked, furious that although I just pledged to him and his MC, my sort of loyalty, the loyalty I’d never so much as thought of giving anyone else in a professional context, that he would still deny me as a member because of my lack of dick.

Bear put a cigarette in his mouth, letting hang from his lips as he grabbed my shoulders and spun me around to where my scooter was parked. “Because of that,” he said, pointing to my scooter. “This is an MC, a MOTORCYCLE club, and darlin’, that thing ain’t no Harley.”

“My apologies” I said sarcastically, placing my hand over my heart and turning back around. Shielding my eyes from the sun as I looked back up at Bear, I craned my neck to meet his amused gaze. “With all the death and destruction going on around here, I kind of skipped over the motorcycle part.”

“Happens to all of us from time to time,” Bear admitted with another laugh. He shook his head. “I can’t promise you anything. We vote around here now and there is protocol that needs to be followed, but I tell you what, apologize to Thia, and I’ll see what the fuck I can work out. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said hopping on my scooter. Turning the key, I kicked it off the kickstand and backed slowly out of the gravel lot.

As I drove off in a loud buzz that was nothing like the roar of a motorcycle engine, but a sound I loved anyway, I could hear Bear’s rumbling deep laughter as it followed me on the wind all the way to the main road.

For once, the sound of someone laughing at me didn’t make me murderous. Suddenly, my own laugh burst out from me, trailing behind me as I sped down the road toward the endless possibilities the future might hold and a life I could make whatever the fuck I wanted out of it.

About the Author

T.M. Frazier resides in sunny Southwest Florida with her husband and daughter. She loves music, reading, traveling, and annoying Mr. Frazier.

LINKS

Visit her AMAZON author page here. Join Frazierland, the best group of readers in the entire universe here. Order signed paperbacks here.

Other works by T.M. Frazier

King Series:

King

Tyrant

Lawless

Soulless

Standalones:

The Dark Light of Day

All the Rage

Coming Soon-ish:

Preppy, the life and death of Samuel Clearwater

Other awesome shit

And now a little sneak preview from one of my favorite authors…

A psychological thriller

By LILI ST. GERMAIN

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Girl meets boy.

Girl and boy fall in love.

Boy accidently almost kills girl’s mother.

Boy goes to prison.

Boy gets out of prison.

And then the real horror begins.

When Cassie Carlino was seventeen, her world ended.

The boy she loved was the boy who ended her world; Leo drank too much, got behind the wheel and smashed his car into her mother’s as she drove home from work. He went to prison, and Cassie went to live with her stepfather.

Now, Leo’s getting out.

He’s coming back to Gun Creek.

He’s coming back for her.

GUN SHY is a psychological thriller, releasing on June 27, 2016. This sneak peek contains the first three chapters. The full-length book will be released in ebook and paperback formats.

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;

“ ’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.

The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,

And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”

“O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

– Mary Howitt

YOU WOULD THINK that when you bury someone deep enough in the ground, you’d be able to keep them hidden. Smooth your shovel over fresh-tilled soil, compact it under your boots, and pray nobody ever digs there.

But dirt doesn’t let you forget what lies beneath it. It keeps settling, leaving a hollow in the earth, a dip in the landscape that reminds you of the horror encased within. A hollow that demands to be filled until it becomes a mound, rising up instead of curving down. You give it one body, then two, and three, and still it hungers for more.

Lie down, Death whispers, greedy in its want, a faint rasp carried on an autumn breeze.

Join me.

CHAPTER ONE

I AM A girl with a darkness inside me. Carefully placed. Cleverly concealed. A darkness that could devour you.

ONE HAND ON a cold pane of glass, watching the snow fall outside. It’s so pitch-black out here in the woods, you can’t see a thing. You can only feel fingers digging into your hips, hot and insistent, a tug of hair, a smack of skin, and the snowflakes as they fall through the weak pool of light that the porch light illuminates below. I think he likes it like this, up on the bed, against the window, as if somebody might see. But nobody could ever possibly see. It’s too dark. No streetlights. No houses for a clear mile in every direction.

Just us, and the silence, and the darkness.

And the snowflakes, steady as they fall, through that yellow beam below.

You could never count them all. One blink and you’d miss some. One sharp stab of pain that drives your face into the mattress, and you’d miss plenty.

And that’s the point, I suppose. You keep counting. You watch the snow fall, and you count every snowflake your eyes can catch, until it’s finally over.

The darkness wasn’t always there. I was bright and shiny once. There was no tarnish at my edges, no very bad thing that existed inside me. I had a mother, and a boyfriend, and a life, and I was loved. I had plans and goals and aspirations.

One moment and they were all gone.

I know what you’re thinking. You think I went mad when I saw Leo being burned alive, or when I gazed down at my comatose mother in the hospital after, as words like Brain swelling and head—on collision drifted through the air, meant for me but headed somewhere beyond.

Or maybe, maybe, you think it was that first time, on the kitchen floor, a tangle of limbs, mouth pressed to palm, fingers squeezing wrists.

And every time I’d tell you, you were wrong. That, even as I cried in the aftermath of Damon’s sudden interest in me, I still was a girl without a black coal heart.

I can tell you the exact moment the darkness burrowed in to stay. I imagine it like some filthy worm, coming up from the earth, chewing a neat circle in my skin and wriggling in. Finding that hollow space beneath my heart, in my ribcage, and curling up. Sated. Satisfied. Warm. I feel it sometimes, when I’m frightened, and my heart won’t slow down. It beats like mad, like a machine gun with the trigger locked on. I can’t breathe. My vision tunnels. In those moments, I imagine the worm, how happy he must be, how comforted by my fragility.

It’s strange how you know something has happened, even if you can’t remember it.

When you wake up in your bed, and the sheets beneath you are wet, and you haven’t wet the bed since you were little, a three year old girl who started to cry because she’d slept through instead of getting up and going to the bathroom.

Eighteen years old, naked, and laying in a cold, wet spot, damp thighs and a bitter taste on your tongue. The taste of a medication you took once after your dad died and you started having nightmares that kept you awake. The bitter pill that your mother crushed into a glass of milk for you, the one that knocked you under and held you there so that you could still see the nightmares in your sleep, but could no longer wake up from them. It was terrifying, and it’s terrifying now. It’s in your mouth and in your nostrils and down the back of your throat.

You have been drugged.

Somebody has undressed you, tucked you into your bed, and they have left something inside you.

A darkness. A coiled, buzzing midnight that becomes all you’ve ever known.

You don’t like it at first. It frightens you.

The darkness is where nightmares come to life.

But after time goes by, you start to feel differently.

You begin to realise that the darkness you’ve been given is not a burden, but a gift.

CHAPTER TWO

Thanksgiving Eve, 2014

The day of

I’VE NEVER FELT rain like the rain we had that night.

It didn’t fall from the sky so much as it drove into the ground, each drop an individual missile that indented the earth and turned firm-packed dirt to mud. It bit at your skin like tiny stinging bullets, if you were stupid – or unlucky – enough to be caught out in the deluge.

It’s imprinted in my mind like it’s still happening now, on a constant loop.

I smell disinfectant as Clare, the owner of the diner where I’m working, wipes spilled beer off the bar.

Truck lights flash past on the interstate, on their way through our tiny town, in and out of Gun Creek in fifteen seconds. We have plenty of customers here, but nobody ever stays longer than a meal and a bathroom stop. The truck stop out front lies empty most nights, the once bustling stop in the road usurped by a fancier one up the highway fifty miles or so, with it’s shiny gas station and fast-flow gasoline pumps and sealed parking lot for the trucks to pull in for the night.

This diner is the most alive part of our town, and it’s dying.

There’s a storm outside tonight, not unusual for this time of year, but the business it’s bought us is incredible. Dana’s Grill is heaving; I can’t remember the last time I had to seat customers at the bar while I cleared off tables. I overheard a couple truck drivers talking about some flooding North, and I’m guessing the shiny rest stop has been cut off by the deluge.

I’m handing change to a table of truck drivers when I hear the sound. It’s dampened by the unrelenting rain, the water almost delaying the shock waves from breaching the diner.

A loud bang. The sickening screech of metal twisting, accordioning in on itself like a can being crushed underfoot. Every head in the diner swivels to look outside, just as a crack of lightning lights up the world in an eerie blue-white flash that lasts but a second.

A bright red car with a black racing stripe down the middle. It’s on it’s roof, skittering down the road with a horrible scraping sound. It hit something, hard. What did it hit? Not a tree. There aren’t any trees on this stretch of highway, save for a few dying lemon trees that somebody planted out the front of Dana’s Grill years ago and left to try and survive in the blistering hot summers and fatally cold winters that make up our little spot in Northern Nevada.

Whispers begin to flow through the diner before the car has even skittered to a stop on the tarmac. An accident? Somebody call nine-one-one. What’s going on?

I drop the change onto the table, missing the guy’s large, oil-stained hand completely. Coins roll in ten different directions, and the guy glares at me, clearly unimpressed.

I’m not paying attention to him, though. I’m staring at what I think I just saw, what I definitely heard, waiting for another crack of lightning to show me I was imagining things.

“Hey, you okay?” One of the truckers asks me. He’s wearing one of those baseball caps, the peak so low I can barely see the whites of his eyes as they reflect my horrified expression.

My mouth is dry. It wasn’t his car. I just spoke to him.

“My boyfriend drives a Mustang,” I say slowly. An odd taste fills my mouth, and it’s a moment before I realise I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood.

“Oh, hell,” the trucker says, putting a hand on my shoulder as a set of headlights roll through the rain on the highway, stopping in front of the wrecked car. I know that car. I’ve driven that car more times than I could count. Candy Apple red, with a black racing stripe. I’ve held it’s parts in my hands, their oily black lifeblood smeared over my skin, and watched as Leo put it back together over several years.

It’s not him.

We lived in a small town, and when it wasn’t football season, there was very little to do except sneak away to have sex, and having a car made that so much easier. Hence our rebuilding of the old Shelby Mustang that Leo’s father had somehow acquired but never gotten to fixing. That car was going to take us to our new place, after we finished school. It was going to take us to Vegas so we could get married, the weekend he turned eighteen. It was going to take our first baby home from the hospital in ten years when we were settled and ready to start a family. We might’ve been young, and stupid, but Leo Bentley and I already knew where life was taking us. Life was a candy apple red Shelby Mustang, and it was going places. Places that weren’t Gun Creek.

I snap out of my inertia as the headlights of the Sheriff’s car stopped in front of the red car up ahead. Tearing my apron off, I drop it on the ground, sprinting for the front doors.

“Cass?” A voice comes in from my right. Hands fall upon my arms, a face leaning down into mine that I know but can’t place, even though I see it every day.

“Cassie!” the face yells, and suddenly, two green eyes spring into focus.

“Leo,” I say to the face.

Those eyes scrunch up in confusion. “Cassie, what’s going on?”

I need for him to let go of me. I needed to get to the red car up on the highway to tell myself it isn’t Leo. That it’s anyone except Leo.

“The car!” I yell, shaking myself free of green eyes’ grip. “It’s a Mustang. Let go of me!”

Bobby Chalmers. That’s his name. The quarterback of Gun Creek High’s football team. The little kid who pulled a chunk of my hair out in kindergarten. He’s seventeen now, like me. His eyes go wide as he lets me go, and then I’m smacking my shoulder against the heavy double doors at the entrance to Dana’s, leaping off the front steps and almost breaking my neck as I land on icy asphalt. My teeth start chattering almost immediately. It’s below freezing tonight, and the rain is turning yesterday’s snow drifts into pale, grey sludge.

My Sketchers sink into the sleet, and I fall over a couple of times. I’m getting closer. The wind whips my hair around my face, matted blonde strands sticking to my lips and teeth as I keep running and falling. Running and falling and getting back up.

Almost there.

“Cassie!” A voice yells from the diner. I don’t even look back. I can’t. I have to get to the car and tell everyone it isn’t Leo inside. “Get the hell away from there!”

I’m almost at the car when flames start to spread inside.

“No!” I yell, the wind buffeting any noise that might have come out of my mouth, literally making me choke on my own words as cold air slams into my lungs. I cough, water streaming from my eyes, tiny icicles already forming on my eyelashes.

I’m thirty feet from the car when I see the blue football jersey being devoured by flames.

And I know, without a doubt, that the boy I’ve wanted to marry since I was twelve years old, is trapped, upside down, bleeding and unconscious, in a car that is on fire.

“Cassie!” I hear a voice to my left, barely audible over the wind. The voice sounds familiar. Damon King is the town sheriff. He’s also my mother’s new husband. He’s a nice guy. They’ve been married for a couple months, now. He’ll help, I think, my teeth chattering so hard I think they’ll smash. He’ll get Leo out.

He doesn’t. He runs down the embankment on the other side of the road and disappears.

What the hell?

“Leo!” I scream, my words lost on the wind. It’s cold and my throat hurts and I don’t know what to do. Instinct tells me to run away from the car, but love is stronger. Love is foolish, as it pulls me to the car like a moth to a flame – ha, a flame, a fucking bonfire now, strangely comforting as it’s worth takes the edge off my frozen state. Something about the flames snaps me out of my dream-like fog. I look around and see nobody. Nobody wants to risk coming too close to the flames in case the car blows up, and I can’t say I blame them. But me? They’d have to drag me away from here, because I’ll burn sooner than leave Leo to perish.

I survey the car. I have one small thing going for me – the fire is raging much harder on the passenger side of the car. I can see Leo’s arm being licked by the flames, but so far his body and face are out of their path.

I go around to Leo’s side of the car and get on my belly, gasping at the icy water on the road as it seeps through my clothes. The car is upside down, and I have to crawl through the window and across Leo to undo his belt. It means I have to put my hand in the flames. I start coughing almost as soon as my head’s in the car window. I can’t bear to look too closely at Leo, not yet. If he dies…. I can’t even think like that.

I’m operating on adrenaline, high on smoke fumes and about to pass out when a hand locks around my ankle and pulls. “Cassie!” Damon yells. “Get back!”

I kick my mother’s husband square in the face, as hard as I can, and resume my rescue operation.

LeoLeoLeo. Please don’t die. Don’t fucking die on me, not here, not like this. I need you. I don’t work without you. Leo!

I have no idea how, but somehow, I manage to pull a two-hundred-pound linebacker out of a burning car and away from the wreckage before the fuel tank explodes and showers the road in pieces of burning metal. I pull Leo into my lap, surveying the damage, slapping his unburnt cheek. “Hey,” I say, quietly at first, then a louder, more insistent yell. “Hey!”

He doesn’t wake up. The ambulance arrives. Then another. Damon is back, his face ashen, a streak of blood painting his left nostril down to his lip, probably from me kicking him.

“I don’t need an ambulance,” I say to him, as the paramedics prise my fingers away from Leo and get him on a stretcher.

He says somethingI don’t quite catch, something like “Other”, pointing down the embankment where a second team of paramedics is taking a stretcher, and thats when I understand. My vision narrows to two pinprick tunnels, and all I can see is my stepfather’s bright blue eyes and the fire as I decipher his words. He wasn’t saying “Other”.

He was saying mother.

My mother was in the other car. The one that nobody saw slide off the embankment and into the muddy ditch that flanks the road.

I watch in horror as they rush her past me. She looks dead. Her lips are blue and the paramedics are yelling at each other. One of her legs is hanging off the stretcher at a strange right-angle and there’s blood coming out of her mouth and nose.

People are talking to me. I guess they’re asking which ambulance I want to travel in. As if in slow-motion, I look between the two vehicles with their flashing lights and bright red sides. The two people I love most in the world.

I open my mouth to speak. Close it again. I can’t hear anymore. Everything is a staccato hiss, everything is the sound of the rain as it hits the asphalt I’m standing on. The world tilts suddenly as my legs disappear beneath me, I hear a loud thwack as my head hits the ground, and then nothing.

*     *     *

LATER, IN THE sterile white of the hospital hallway, I start to hear things again. Two rooms, side by side, where teams of doctors work on the two people I love most in the world.

I start to hear things I do not want to hear.

My mother is in a coma.

She is almost certainly going to die.

My boyfriend is awake.

He has burns on his arm and a concussion.

My boyfriend is handcuffed to the stretcher he’s sitting up on.

Leo. The guy I was going to marry.

This is all his fault.

He spots me in the hallway. “I’m sorry,” he says, his eyes glassy and red.

I look at my own arm, bandaged from the burns, and wish I’d left him in his car while the flames took over.

“It should have been you,” I say, my hand burning with pain from where the flames licked at me. “It should have been fucking you.”

*     *     *

THAT DAY HAD been so normal, so boring in contrast to the horror of that night.

It’s my fault, I would say to myself, over and over. As I held my mom’s hand in the ICU, her face already starting to hollow with death. She was still hanging on, and they’d said any brain swelling needed to go down before an accurate prognosis could be given, but she was already gone. I know it now, picking that memory out of my own brain, folding it over, tearing off the waxy film of denial and hope that was marring my view at the time. I don’t have that now, and I can tell you that my mother, God rest her soul, exited her body at the moment Leo’s car ploughed into hers.

I fought with Leo before he drove off in his car. I don’t even remember what it was about now. It was something trivial, for sure. So trivial I can’t even remember.

So he drank a six-pack of Bud, climbed into his truck, and smashed that truck into my mother’s tiny little Honda Civic, the one my stepfather bought her to get to work at the hospital because it was more fuel-efficient than the old fuel-guzzler Volvo she’d been driving around in for years.

If she’d crashed in the Volvo, she probably would have walked away without a scratch.

The cost of convenience, I suppose.

So now the Volvo sits in the garage and rusts, and my mother lies in her hospital bed and does the very same thing. And somewhere, where I have no idea, I’m sure Leo is rusting away as well.

CHAPTER THREE

Thanksgiving Eve, 2015

NOW

IT’S SNOWING.

Thanksgiving Eve 2015; I open my eyes and cringe at the harsh white light that comes in through the window. People think snow equals cold, but when the sun reflects off white snow at the right angle, it can burn your skin to cinders.

There is something burning me. Not the bright reflection of snow.

A pair of blue eyes, a matching smirk.

Damon. My stepfather. Shit.

I suck in a breath and sit up with a start; my head spinning. I’m wearing an oversized tshirt that smells faintly like the guy who’s been fucking me in secrecy for almost a year; and in front of me, my stepfather’s eyebrows rise in disapproval.

“Oh,” he says, equal parts amusement and disdain. “You’re finally awake, party animal.”

I rub my eye with the heel of my palm. I feel smashed, worn, like I’ve been run over. My entire body feels achy and dull, my head stuffed full of wool, and somewhere at the edges of my memory I remember swallowing pills, the taste of their bitter residue still faint on my tongue. Jesus. My wrists ache, faint bruises ringing them. I hold my right hand in my left, counting the five fingertip-shaped bruises that punctuate my pale skin. Four on one side, one on the other. Four fingers and a thumb. I wonder how I’d explain them. If anyone will ask. Most likely, nobody except Damon would even notice the way my skin has been marked as large, hot hands held me tightly down.

Damon clears his throat pointedly. I forget my wrist and looked back to see he’s fully dressed for work, the gold star affixed to his sheriff’s uniform glinting in the light. He’s clean-shaven and smelling like pine needles and mint, his cologne drifting over to me from where he stands in my bedroom doorway.

“What time is it?” I ask. My voice comes out low, hoarse. Did I drink last night? The taste of stale whiskey lingers in my mouth, confirming my suspicions, and I have to stifle the overwhelming urge to scrape my tongue with a corner of the bed sheets. Just picturing the bottle of Jack makes my stomach twist. Don’t puke. Do-not-puke. If I threw up in front of Damon, he’d probably make me lick it up as punishment.

“Almost eight.”

Almost eight? Shit! I lift the covers to get out of bed; my underwear’s gone. Double shit. I freeze, setting the blanket back over my thighs and trying to act casually. The very last thing I need is for Damon to see that I’m naked from the waist down. I see him glance at my lap, what looks like suspicion sparking in his blue eyes. He takes a step towards the bed, and for one horrific split second I imagine he is going to rip the blankets off me and see what I am – or rather, what I’m not – wearing.

Fate decides to intervene, though. Thank you, universe. I hear the crackle of a radio, and Deputy Chris McCallister’s voice sounds in the kitchen downstairs. Damon hears it too, freezing mid-step.

We continue to stare-off, his blue eyes pitted against mine, and the radio crackles to life again. The voice more urgent. Sheriff King, do you copy?

Saved by the proverbial. Thank you, Chris.

“Downstairs in five, Cass,” Damon says with an air of reluctance, giving my lap one final glance before he turns and leaves. A moment later, I’m out of bed and pulling fresh panties over my bare legs, my skin rising in gooseflesh to greet the frigid air. Gun Creek is the coldest place in Nevada, and it only gets colder after Thanksgiving. Soon, the pass forms ice and it’ll be dangerous to drive on, just like it does every year.

Just like it did last year.

Coffee. I need coffee.

I locate my pajama bottoms, stuffed down into the bottom of my blankets, as if they were kicked off in a hurry. Kicked or pulled, its all the same. I’m sore down there, and although I can’t remember the act itself, I’ve got a fairly good idea about what went down. It was quiet, but it definitely wasn’t gentle.

I traipse downstairs, the tight feeling in my chest expanding with every step. Running late is a cardinal sin, according to my stepfather. Everything must be perfect. Everything must be on time. All the time.

THE STAIRCASE STOPS at the entrance to our kitchen. We’ve got one of the bigger – and older – houses in Gun Creek, one of the original Gold mining ranchers. Every window is large, square, and framing a picture of mountains and empty tundra and snow.

It’s beautiful to look out there if you’re in a good mood. If you’re not, it’s utterly desolate, miles of blank space waiting to swallow up your soul.

I’m feeling pretty fucking salty right now. Huh. Salty. That’s not a Cassie word. That’s a word he would use.

I’m losing a little bit more of myself, every single day. Soon I’ll look like me, but I’ll be full of other people’s words and thoughts and desires.

“Hey, daydreamer,” Damon snaps, breaking my thoughts. He’s sipping coffee from an old Mickey Mouse mug my dad bought for me when I was eleven and we went to Disneyland. Something stabs me in the gut. I wish he wouldn’t touch that mug. That’s my fucking mug.

“I made you cereal. Eat it.” He pulls a chair and points to it. “We’ve got ten minutes. Sit.” I do as I’m told, acting every inch the sullen stepdaughter. He tells me all the time that I need to curb my attitude, but my attitude is just about the last piece of me that’s still hanging on. After the accident, after Leo went to jail and mom went to the nursing home, I had a lot more…. Salt. I was feisty. I threw tantrums. It only made things worse. So much worse. Those days, they were fiery. I think they were so harrowing because I couldn’t believe what was happening. I couldn’t accept the fact that when I woke up on Thanksgiving morning of two-thousand-and-fourteen, I had everything to live for, and by the time the doctors held me down and sedated me on Thanksgiving night, the only person I had left in the world was Damon.

The small portable television sits on the kitchen counter, switched on to the local news, filling the kitchen with static-edged chatter. I hear the words missing girl and my ears prick up, something to take my attention away from this kitchen and the uncomfortable tension that fills it. You should be nicer to Damon, more than one person has said to me. He’s doing the right thing, taking care of you while your mother is sick. Fuck those people and their well-meaning noise. My mother isn’t sick—she’s dying. I’m seventeen years old with a dying mother and a boyfriend in prison. I’ve got nothing. And I don’t give a fuck about being nice.

The news. It draws me in, greedy moth to overhead light. Missing Girl. Her name is Jennifer Thomas, and I go to school with her. At least, I did before she went missing. A picture of her flashes up, her smile dazzling, dressed in her cheerleading uniform. I have a matching one upstairs, though I haven’t worn it in a year. The reporter keeps talking about Jennifer, how she vanished after cheerleading practice on Friday evening, how there are no suspects. The police weren’t sure if it was a kidnapping, or a runaway teen. She’d been fighting with her parents.

“They used to put missing kids on milk cartons,” Damon says, gesturing at the television. “Now everybody’s got a TV and a cellphone.”

He’s right. I imagine everyone will be glued to their phones today, Facebook and Snapchat, sending frantic messages. Did you see Jennifer on Friday? She will be revered, her cheerleading photo plastered across town. I already know this—I’ve lived it once before, two years ago, when another girl went missing. She was a couple years older than me, and they found her body floating face-down in Gun Creek a week after she disappeared. I can’t remember her name now, in my hungover state. Karen? Carolyn?

There are so many people passing through our tiny town that her death was blamed on a passer-by; a trucker, probably. It made everyone in our town feel safer when all we had to do was watch out for the people we didn’t know. Nobody wanted to believe that one of us was capable of such a horrific crime. But now, two years later, it’s happening again.

Predictably, the reporter shifts to talking about Karen’s case—I was right, her name is Karen, Karen Brainard, seventeen years old, dead before she’d ever lived. She fucked anything that moved, including the entire football team, and she smoked meth more days than not, but in death, she is a hero, she is tragic, she is perfection.

People will be talking about Karen Brainard today.

The report switches back to Jennifer, urging the public to call a special hotline if anyone knows anything. 1800-JENNIFER. I feel sorry for the operators. I volunteered for Karen’s hotline two years ago. I was only fifteen, but there were so many calls that they let me take a couple shifts. My mom and I answered calls, side by side, and the weird fuckers who get off on things like missing girls astounded me back then.

“Are you looking for her?” I ask Damon. He scowls at me. “What do you think? I’m the Sheriff. Of course I’m looking for her. Whole town’s looking for her. Where have you been?”

He looks me up and down, as if reminded of my drinking. “Oh. Of course. You keep doing you, darlin’. The rest of us’ll look for your friend Jennifer.” He reaches across and snaps the dial on the TV to off, the screen going black as a familiar silence settles around us once more.

She’s not my friend, I want to say, but I don’t, biting down on the tip of my tongue instead.

I lick my chapped lips and drink more coffee.

“Do you think she’s dead?” I ask, my tone almost casual.

Damon sits across from me, eyeing my unbrushed hair and my bare cheeks.

“You look like shit,” he says, ignoring my question.

I dig my spoon into the bowl and suppress a gag. The last thing I want to eat is something full of milk and carbs. My churning stomach needs dry toast, or saltine crackers, or preferably nothing at all.

“You smell like a fucking pine forest,” I mutter around a mouthful of frosted flakes. Damon’s aftershave situation definitely isn’t helping my stomach.

“Don’t swear at me,” he says, his eyes narrowing to slits. “It’s very unladylike.”

Getting drunk-fucked in the middle of the night and not being able to remember is pretty unladylike, too, but I don’t mention that. My life wouldn’t be worth living if I started talking about that. I throw my spoon down after two mouthfuls and stand up, in search of coffee. The pot’s been brewed a while ago, and the treacle brown liquid inside is lukewarm at best, but it’s better than nothing. I take another mug out of the cupboard and set it down on the sink, watching a moose wander by outside as I pour my liquid crack and take a sip.

“You’re skin and bones,” Damon says, interrupting my daydreaming and moose-watching. “Finish your food.”

I sit back on my chair with great reluctance, washing cereal down with giant mouthfuls of coffee. I drink two cups of the stuff just to get through my tepid breakfast, all the while being watched carefully by Damon’s bright blue eyes.

“Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Damon says. “Did you get the turkey organised like I asked?”

I nod. I’m lying. I haven’t. I will. Damon’s a traditional guy, wants the roast turkey and all the trimmings. I’ve got no clue how to make it, but Google will help me, no doubt.

“Are we going to see mom?” I ask, probably a little too hopefully. But it’s a holiday tomorrow. School is out for the weekend. I haven’t seen my mom in over a week, and I miss her. Apart from Damon, I’m the only person who ever visits her at the hospice three counties away. I’m not allowed to go without him, and as the sheriff of Gun Creek, Damon barely has time to take off and visit a woman who probably doesn’t even know we’re there, each holding one of her hands as a machine breathes for her.

“Did you get the wood chopped?”

My heart sinks. Damn. All week I’ve been walking around in a state of semi-anxiety, knowing I’ve forgotten something. “I’m planning on doing it tonight,” I say quickly. “I was busy with the shopping.”

Damon’s face turns from dispassionate to angered.

“You know, Cass, you’re useless. Can’t even get out of bed in time to do your chores. Do you know how goddamn hard I work to keep this house paid up?”

I swallow cold coffee, unmoved by Damon’s martyr speech. For the first time this morning, I notice his face is puffed out on one side, and there’s a small cut above his right eye.

“What happened to your face?” I ask, taking another bite of toast.

Damon just glares at me with those eyes.

“Get dressed,” he says, making a face after he drains his last inch of coffee. “I have no idea how you make this sludge taste good, but damn.”

“Maybe I’ll be a barista when I grow up,” I say sarcastically. It’s an old joke from happier times. The closest Starbucks is a two hour drive from here, and besides, I really don’t want to get out of Gun Creek just to sling coffee.

Damon stares at me, unimpressed. “Hurry. Up. Or I’ll take you to school in your fucking pyjamas.”

“The boys would love that,” I reply, pushing my chair back and standing. I jump as a hand curls around my upper arm and yanks me back.

“That’s not funny,” Damon grinds out. “You want everyone thinking you’re the town whore like Jennifer?” Ouch. “No,” I say softly.

His hand squeezes tighter. “You know what happens to girls like Jennifer?”

“Yeah,” I say, meeting his steely gaze. “I’m thinking it’s pretty similar to what happens to girls like Karen.”

He doesn’t say anything for a beat. Then, apparently satisfied, Damon drops his grip and I hurry upstairs.

I drag jeans and a clean long-sleeved shirt on, scraping my long blonde waves up in a messy ponytail. Function takes place over form in winter, at least for me. I don’t have the energy for all that bullshit preening and careful wardrobe selection that other girls do. Girls like Jennifer. Girls like Karen Brainard. They put so much effort in, and look where it gets them. Taken. Dead. Floating in a creek.

In the bathroom, I don’t bother with makeup. Makeup draws attention, and the last thing I want is for anybody to look at me too closely. Some days I feel like I’m made of glass, my clothes and my hair and my downturned eyes the only things that stop the light from getting in, from showing the world what’s happening within me. Who’s touched me. Who’s been inside me.

Nobody can ever know the things I’ve done.

Want to read the rest? Visit Lili’s website for all the buy links:

www.lilisaintgermain.com/gun-shy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lili is a USA Today bestselling author who has sold over a million books since January 2014. After the success of her self-published Gypsy Brothers series, she was approached by HarperCollins Publishers, who signed her CARTEL series in a six-figure, three-book deal. The Gypsy Brothers series focuses on a morally bankrupt biker gang and the girl who seeks her vengeance upon them. The Cartel series is a prequel trilogy of full-length novels that explores the beginnings of the club.

Aside from writing, her other loves in life include her gorgeous husband and beautiful daughter, searching for good coffee in her home town of Fremantle, watching Tarantino movies and finding new wine to drink.

You can read more at www.lilisaintgermain.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Epilogue

Bonus Scene

About the Author

Sneak Preview from Gun Shy