Jack
The seas roiled,the massive waves crashing on the shore in welcome. Rain drummed down furiously on every surface, including me. A light mist obscured everything in a wet shroud, giving a sense of isolation.
It suited my dark mood perfectly.
“Jack! Have you lost your freakin’ mind?” Max roared from behind me.
Or damn near perfect, except for him.
“Those waves will suck you under in a heartbeat!”
Perhaps. But I didn’t care, I needed the liberation it offered. I glanced over my shoulder at my best friend, blinking away the rain as I shrugged. With babysitters on my ass, concessions had to be made. A decade ago, the three of us had taken a pledge that, when life sucked—and it did most times—we would call the other. Max and War turned up.
“I’ve done this before. I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t feed me that fucking line!” he yelled over the roar of the ocean. “I was there when we pulled you from the wipeout in Hawaii with near-fatal injuries! What the hell happened?”
Yeah, I remembered that. I’d been nineteen and fucked in the head. Still was.
“Nothing. All’s good.” I refocused my attention on the tumultuous ocean and zipped up my wetsuit, the slashing rain doing little to temper the anger churning within. I’d come to the beach to escape another nightmare. Thoughts of what had occurred earlier today still made me want to put my fist through something. I tugged on my flippers instead.
Max grabbed my arm, his wetsuit folded around his waist, revealing inked pecs and arms. His green eyes burned with ire. “What didshesay this time?”
Oh, he’d sympathize for sure once he heard. Unlike War, who stood a short distance from us, surfboard at his feet, wetsuit on, watching us with a smirk. When I’d given him a brief rundown of the explosion with my family this morning, the bastard had offered his condolences.
“Just tell him, man,” War drawled. “Maybe Max has a suggestion.”
“What? Find some woman to fuck?” I growled. “Been there, done that crap for a long time. Not interested.” I cut Max a flat look. “Seems I’m in the running for a merger.”
His brow creased. “But that’s good, right?”
“Not whenIam the merger.”
Max stared for a second, then he cursed. “Hell.”
“Exactly,” I muttered. “But I can deal with this…”
“Yeah. You refused, and she threw shit at you again,” Max said, his quiet words a detonation in the pummeling rain.
Bad blood will always show—
Christ. The words reverberated inside my churning head, dredging up a past I could never shut out. I shoved back my water-drenched hair. Max knew some of my clusterfuck, but not the one causing a deepening abyss inside me. A dark chasm I could never escape.
At times, I was sure it would swallow me whole. My stomach heaved, the numbness in my chest the only thing holding me together.
War walked up to us. “Guess the rich will never be rich enough.”
My jaw clenched. War had no idea of the ugly truth. He might be heading toward the category of the mega-wealthy, too, but it was through his own hard work, sweat, and broken bones, playing hockey. Yeah, he rammed his opponent to the ice, pounded them when in the game—the guy had a shit temper—but he didn’t destroy lives.
I was heir to the Griffin Blackstone Group—a mega-billion-dollar holding company—half of which had been built on the pain of others. And now, I had to deal with this latest fiasco.
“Let’s hit the damn waves.”
“Jack—” Max raked back his drenched blond hair, rivulets of water running down his concerned features. “Look, man, I’m the last one to tell you that things will be okay, and I ought to know, but you can’t ride the waves in this rain. Let’s wait it out—”
“This little shower?” I drawled as the deluge continued to batter us, causing Max to scowl. I picked up my board. “You coming, or you gonna hang here and nag like a girlfriend?”
“Asshole,” Max growled, eyes flashing in annoyance. He shoved his arms into his rubber suit and zipped up. “Hell, let’s go to a gym and pound the shit out of each other,” he said as if in a last-ditch attempt to save me. But no one could. Didn’t Max see that? My path had been set in stone the day I was born.
