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  “Nope, not at all. Leslie is outside. I’ll just go see what’s up with her for a little bit. You can come and get me when you’re done.”

  Leslie was a year behind us in school, but since she was my neighbor, we hung out with her from time to time. I didn’t see her outside, and I was pretty sure Sophie made the whole thing up to force Jet and me into being alone. I didn’t know whether to strangle her or give her a hug.

  Before I could open my mouth to protest, Sophie was already cutting across the yard to get to the neighbor’s house.

  “Um… I just have to go inside and get it. I’ll be right back.”

  I headed up to my room as fast as I could, grabbing my guitar before returning. Stepping through the door, I let it slam behind me. My heart sank when I realized Jet was nowhere to be found. He’d left just like that. Tears instantly stung my eyes and my lip trembled. I felt like such a baby right then, but the shock of him being gone so quickly had punched me right in the gut. Why had he even bothered to show up if he was just going to leave without a word like that? What a jerk.

  A moment later, movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention.

  “There’s some shade over here. Might be the best place to chill,” he said and disappeared around the side of the house.

  I exhaled and almost began to laugh at my stupidity, but then, that’d just draw attention to the fact I’d been ready to bawl my eyes out seconds before. I truly did think he ditched me in that little bit of time, and it had crushed me. Luckily, I recovered quickly.

  It was funny to look back at that incident. As an adult if I thought someone ditched me like I thought he had, I’d say, “Well, fuck you, too,” and be on my merry way. Just another way Jet’s influence had ultimately changed me and the person I became.

  We sat down on the ground, and he asked to see my guitar, so I handed it over without hesitation. The body of the cherry-red instrument looked good against his dark shirt. His fingers worked over the strings of the neck as he strummed something that sounded vaguely familiar. I couldn’t recognize it, though, due to my haze-filled, love-struck mind, but I’m fairly certain it was a song by one of the bands that made regular appearances in our conversations. Jet playing was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my entire life, but I suspected anything he did would be perfect to me. What could I say? I had it bad.

  He handed it back to me a few minutes later and said, “You picked a good one.”

  “Thanks, but my grandparents actually picked it out. I had nothing to do with it.”

  He nodded and sat there without saying a word for what seemed like hours, but it wasn’t awkward like it had been before. I tried to look at him without him noticing, but I didn’t want to stare either. I had to be content with glances here and there. His hair was mostly what I got an eye-full of, but that was good enough. It just made me want to run my fingers through it that much more than I already thought about a hundred times a day.

  “Should we get started?” I finally asked.

  “Yeah, but, um…” he stammered and leaned forward, his brow furrowing for a second.

  Was it possible that I made him just as nervous as he made me? Surely not.

  “It’s just… I didn’t really come here for that today.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, putting the guitar on the ground beside me. “I just thought—”

  “I know. I should’ve remembered I told you I’d show you how to play, but, honestly, I forgot.”

  “No worries,” I said.

  “I just wanted to get away from my house for a little bit. My old man can be a real dick sometimes.”

  “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You have no control over what he does,” he said, pulling a piece of grass from the ground and tossing it aside.

  “This was the first place you thought to go?” My heart pounded so loudly I feared he could hear every beat it made. He hadn’t said much, but even at that age, I understood he’d come to me for a reason. Whether it was because he thought of me as a good friend or because he wanted more from me, I didn’t know.

  “Yeah… I mean, you’re cool, so why not?” he asked. “It’s not like I have all that many friends, especially since Big moved up to Oakton.”

  He leaned into me a little as he settled his back against the house, but it wasn’t an obvious or deliberate motion. It was subtle, for sure, but when he did, his arm brushed against mine.

  If when he looked at me felt like tiny little sparks peppering my skin, his touch was like fireworks popping and sizzling all over my body. Glancing down at my arm, I half expected it to be smoking.

  “Do you get to see him anymore?”

  “Sometimes. His old man brings him when he comes to buy some shit off mine.”

  “What does your dad sell?” I asked, curious to find out anything I could about his life.

  “Nothing,” he said before sitting straight up. The absence of his arm against mine left a cold spot that ached to be warm again.

  “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “You’re fine,” he said. “I really should get going, though. Let you and Sophie get back to whatever girly stuff you were doing.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you at school?”

  “See ya Monday.”

  I spent the rest of the weekend with Sophie, poring over every single detail imaginable about that short interaction. Why had he come to me to get away? Was his dad really a dick, and if so, why? What kind of things did he do to make Jet feel that way? And just why did his hair look so damn silky all the time?

  If only I knew then just how much time I would spend in my life trying to figure Jet out and why he did the things he did, I could’ve saved myself some trouble and backed away from it all before I let him change my future—before I fell so deeply in love with him that I nearly died of a broken heart when he left me. If I’d been able to pull myself away then, maybe my life wouldn’t have been turned upside down again when he came rolling back into it almost a decade after he’d gone away.

  CHAPTER 2 – JET FLANAGAN

  The muffled, rage-filled voice of my father boomed through the wall from the other room, startling me awake from a nightmare I’d had way too many times. I blinked as I thought about the way her eyes looked at me, pleading for me to save her as I stood by helplessly and unable to move. I’d found myself in some sort of dream quicksand, where I knew if I could just reach her, it’d all be over and we’d be free. She’d be safe, and he’d be dead. But the more I struggled to get to her, the harder it became to move at all.

  “Alright, I’m up,” I yelled.

  Scrubbing my face with my hands, I tried to erase the image from my mind, but I knew it would linger for a few days. It always did. And just like that, she’d be at the forefront of my thoughts, haunting me like she did every so often. I sighed the word fuck to myself because sometimes, that’s the only word that’ll do, and sat up, flipping the sheet away from my body.

  The brightness of the midday sun radiated throughout the room, causing me to squint. Its reflection in the mirror sent a spattering of tiny, rainbow-colored drops here and there on the off-white walls. Had I not been too deep into my own shit life, I might have stopped to appreciate the view. I couldn’t even escape into my dreams like normal people could. Sometimes, they were worse than reality.

  The door burst open, and my father, Niall Flanagan, barged into my bedroom. He wore his usual attire of a dark designer suit, like he was headed to some high-profile office as a big-time executive. Too bad he never held a real job in his entire life. He was a high-profile big shot and a businessman, but not in the traditional sense. He was the head of an empire that consisted of heroine, pussy, and blow, with an occasional investment in business developments so he could seem legit on the surface. He never got involved more than throwing some money at them and reaping whatever benefit he could, but they afforded him the ability to explain the money he had coming in without it b
eing so obvious that he was a criminal kingpin.

  He wore his dirty-blond hair slicked back; very rarely ever had a hair out of place. I sometimes had the urge to grab it and just mess the fuck out of it, but I’d learned early on in life not to piss him off. He looked at me with blue eyes that were cold and uncaring, just like they had always been. I didn’t look a thing like him, and since I’d never even seen a picture of my mother, I could only assume I resembled her.

  I had vague memories from when I was about four years old of her and someone I think must have been her boyfriend or husband, but the details of her disappearance were fuzzy to me, and he’d never bothered to answer me when I asked what happened to her.

  No, that wasn’t entirely true. He would answer me with a hard jab to the ribs or a swift kick in the ass, even when I was too small to know better than to question him. He would scream so loud it hurt my ears that she didn’t love me and had left me behind for him to raise. I was forced to learn to leave the subject alone. I wanted to be pissed at her for the abandonment and leaving me in the care of such a wretched human being, but then, maybe she had no choice. My father was the sort of man to make people disappear permanently, and I couldn’t completely rule that possibility out.

  “It’s about goddamn time,” he said with a hint of an Irish accent, slapping me on the back of the head. “Meet me in my office. We’ve got some planning to do, son.”

  “I’m on it,” I said, running my hand through my hair that really had no rhyme or reason to it.

  He slammed the door behind him as he left, and I wished I could just get on my Harley and ride as far away as I could without ever looking back, but I couldn’t. There was no other way of life for me.

  I stood and slipped into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before heading to the bathroom for a quick piss. It would more than likely be the only time I’d have to myself all day, so I took a moment to enjoy the silence… Well, you know, as silent as it can be when one takes a morning piss.

  I glanced in the mirror after washing my hands a few minutes later and ran my wet fingers through my hair, trying to smooth it down, but it didn’t really help. It would have to do because that was all the effort I could muster. Why try when you know it’s probably just going to get all fucked up anyway?

  Who the miserable bastard was this time, I didn’t know. Didn’t really care either. It was better that way. If I kept them anonymous and only judged them based on their affiliation with my old man, then a little part of me could hold onto being a decent human being, even though deep down, I knew I wasn’t. Reality was no matter how much I tried to marginalize my actions, I wasn’t a good person and probably never would be. At some point in my life, if I couldn’t manage to get away, I was destined to take over Niall’s empire when he was ready to give it up or ended up dead, whether I liked it or not. In the meantime, I was his enforcer. Violence had been my occupation since I was eighteen, and as much as I wanted to convince myself that I would walk away if I could, I got a rush when I faced my opponents down at the warehouse. Maybe in a different life, I could’ve been a professional boxer or a mixed martial arts fighter, but in this one, I was a straight-up ass beater, and it suited me just fine.

  I made my way to the back of the house to the large mahogany double doors. Taking a deep breath, I opened one and stepped into Niall’s office. The room was lit with only two floor lamps, giving it a foreboding feel that was way too appropriate for the things that took place there. He sat like a king at the head of a large table with four chairs on both sides and a chair at the other end. A bleached-blonde woman sat beside him, practically wringing her hands as she looked down at the table. Her eyes rose to meet mine and brightened once she recognized me.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I did as I was told, but took a seat beside him instead of at my usual spot at the other end of the table. The sooner I could get out of there, the better.

  “This is Jerney.”

  I nodded at her like I’d never seen her before in my life. Truth was, I’d fucked her not three weeks before during a drunken one-night stand, but her name was Christina when I met her. The last time I’d seen her, she didn’t have bruises under her eyes or a split lip, and I had no idea what her chosen profession was then. Thank fuck I always used a condom.

  “She’s new, and some shithead roughed her up last night. Need you to pick him up,” he said, pushing a tablet toward me. A picture of Jerney and a man who looked vaguely familiar stared back at me from the page. I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen him before, but I’d definitely seen him somewhere along the way. I couldn’t tell much about his build from the picture, but I didn’t think he’d be much of a problem for me. They were rarely a threat since I’d been professionally trained to fight and most of them weren’t.

  “Tell me what he did to you, sweetheart.”

  “He’s just a monster. His name is—”

  “No names,” Niall snapped. “He doesn’t like names.”

  Her lip trembled for a quick second before she spoke again. “He cut my body up and then punched me in the face a couple times,” she said with a hitch in her voice. She tried to run her fingers through her tangled hair as she continued, “I passed out, and I don’t know what else he did to me.” A fat teardrop slid down her cheek. Her hand rose to wipe it away just before it dripped off her chin. “He kicked me out of his house this morning and didn’t even pay me.” Her voice cracked as the tears ran from her eyes.

  And this was why I was able to rationalize what I did for my old man. Yeah, she was a prostitute, but it didn’t mean she deserved to be beaten and more than likely raped. These were the type of men I faced when I fought. The kind of men who murdered in cold blood. The kind of men who treated women like they were punching bags or their own personal sex dolls to do with as they pleased with no regard to consent.

  “I trust you’ll grab this one by the end of the day,” Niall said as he wrote down an address on a piece of paper and pushed it toward me. “Before he has time to forget what the fuck he did to my property. I’ll get Richie to set the warehouse for tomorrow night if you get him in time. Call Flint when you get an eye on him. He’ll bring the van.”

  “I’m on it,” I said, standing up. “Walk you out?” I asked Jerney as she wiped at her nose with a tissue my old man had tossed at her a few seconds before. I wasn’t sticking around long enough for her to let it slip in front of him that I already knew her.

  She instinctively looked over at Niall before moving an inch. Once he gave her the nod, she stood and made her way over to me. She wore a barely there black dress that had been torn up, exposing the cuts and scrapes that decorated her skin. She was waif thin, and if I had to guess, she was a user of one of Niall’s other products. If I hadn’t been drunk as fuck the night we’d hooked up, I doubt I would’ve looked twice at her. It wasn’t in my best interest to fuck with one of his girls or his product, and he’d never buy that I didn’t know who or what she was if he found out what I’d done.

  She followed me through the doors and down the hallway to the large, open living room where I abruptly stopped.

  “Hold up a sec,” I said. “Wait right here.”

  Taking two steps at a time, I headed upstairs and opened the door to my baby sister’s room. Georgia was the reason I couldn’t just up and leave like I’d thought about doing every time I woke up from one of those dreams. Niall had never laid a hand on her, but it was only because he knew I’d kill him if he did. And at the same time, he knew I’d do whatever he wanted me to do in order to keep her safe from his abuse even one time. I never tried to fool myself into believing he gave a shit about either one of us. If he had to hurt or kill her to prove a point to me, he would. No doubt in my mind.

  I didn’t want her to ever experience the things I went through during my life. Never wanted her to know exactly what it was I did for our father either. She was far too young to understand or comprehend why I did the things I did, and a part of me knew she’d be terrifi
ed if she found out some of the things I’d done. If I thought I could take her and just go, I would have done it in a heartbeat, but he’d have me arrested for kidnapping, or worse, kill me or her for turning on him. Either way, I couldn’t and wouldn’t risk being separated from her. I was the only true father figure she’d ever had.

  I still remember the day he brought her home. I was seventeen and had a bad reputation due to some unsavory rumors spread about me. I worshipped Satan. I was a huge drug addict. I’d killed someone at my old school. None of it true, but in any case, very few ever picked a fight with Jet Flanagan. Except that day some dipshit thought it was a good idea to prove himself to his little buddy by saying some shitty things to my then girlfriend, Evie Adams—the subject of my recurring nightmare. Too bad he didn’t realize I was within earshot, and well, let’s just say his mouth started something his ass couldn’t handle, and I never had another problem from the kid. Neither did she as far as I knew. I sometimes think my willingness to beat someone’s ass to resolve a problem was why Niall put me to work the way he did, why he came up with using me to punish those who went against him.

  I busted my hand up in that fight and was sitting at the kitchen table holding a bag of ice on my knuckles, angry at the world because I expected to see Evie smiling at me when I was finished. After all, I’d defended her and had only done what most guys would do to keep those they love safe. What I found instead was fear and confusion.

  Niall, holding the hand of a two-year-old little girl with dark curls, chubby cheeks, and the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen, came through the back door as I sat there stewing.

  He tipped his chin up and asked, “You come out on top?”

  “Yeah,” I said and took the ice off my hand to look at the damage I’d done. I’d won the fight, but maybe I’d lost the girl in the process, so did that really make me a winner? I didn’t think so.

  He said, “That’s my boy,” and sat down across from me at the table.

  I looked at the little girl like she was an alien. Who was she and why in the hell was she with him? Why was she in my house, and when was she leaving? I figured she was the kid of his latest fling, but it was rare for him to take on any kind of responsibility for a kid who didn’t belong to him. Hell, he didn’t even take much responsibility for me and I was his flesh and blood.