~ 1 ~
Fleetwood Mac played from the dusty jukebox in the corner of Lincoln’s bar. Stevie Nicks’ soft crooning filtered over the top of the many voices surrounding me, soothing my fractured soul.
A rage burned deep inside of me, clawing at my insides and begging to be unleashed. I had to shut it out. I had to shut everything out. And the only way to do that was to fill my gut with as much alcohol as I could get before hopefully passing out. Deep enough to block out the nightmares, if I was lucky. But never deep enough to stop the screams that punctured my soul.
I took another sip of the amber fuel in my glass. It wasn’t doing anything to dampen my rage. Even Stevie’s beautiful voice wasn’t calming the animal within me that night.
I was young—only eighteen coming up to nineteen—but I’d done more and seen more than most twenty-five-year-olds. If only I knew then what I know now. Perhaps things would have worked out differently for everyone involved. Would have saved a lot of heartache for a lot of people too; I knew that much.
And I know for damn sure that it would have saved a lot of blood from being spilled.
I took another sip and stared at my reflection in the glass. Dark hair and even darker eyes, and a beard just growing through. I looked haunted—fuck, Iwashaunted. I needed to go home—well, back to the rundown motel that I’d been calling home for the past week. Home. That was a joke. It wasn’t exactly home, but a place to lay my head. To wash my sweaty body after a hard night’s drinking or a hard day’s laboring for a few measly bucks to get me by while I decided on a real plan.
I had no home.
I didn’t deserve one either.
Not after what I had done.
Someone nudged my arm and my elbow slipped off the sticky bar. I almost dropped my glass, and I snarled and turned to look at the guy next to me.
He was tall. Fuck that, he was Goliath and I was David—a mere mortal in the vicinity of him. Didn’t stop me from sliding off my bar stool, my heavy boots landing on the dirty bar floor with a thud as I squared up to the guy. He ignored me in favor of signaling the waitress to bring another tray of drinks to table five and to put the bill on the tab. He glanced over at me as he turned away from the bar, a small smirk on his face. I recognized the fire ignite in his eyes as he saw the fury burning bright in mine.
“Go the fuck home, kid,” he said, “while you still can.”
He was tall, with long dark hair hanging down his back. A thick beard hung from his chin, hanging almost to his chest, and he reached up and ran his fingers through it as he smirked again and continued walking away.
My nostrils flared, rage filling my veins like heroine. I should have let him go. I should have downed the remaining whiskey in my glass and gone back to my motel room like he’d said. Not drunk enough to pass out, but not sober enough to kill anyone either.
But I didn’t.
I was an asshole, and I was lusting for blood.
I glared after him, my drink forgotten. And then I followed him through the crowd, watching as people automatically moved out of his way, like he was surrounded by a forcefield that didn’t allow anyone to get too close. Their gazes were wary as they moved from him to me, and to the anger that was no doubt pouring from me in violent waves. Pretty sure a couple of people even made for the door. It was a good move.
He reached his table, unaware that I had followed him, and slid into the booth, his arm automatically draping along the top of the old leather-backed seating and snaking over the shoulders of a beautiful blonde. My gaze roved over the rest of the table, to the hard-faced men he was sitting with, and to the beautiful women pressed into the side of each man.
If I had any sense I would have left it, but I didn’t.
I hadn’t had any sense in a long damn time.
Each of the men were almost as big as he was: as wide as a car and as tall as a giant. Muscles upon muscles, and tattoos that sounded alarm bells in me.
I was a big guy, especially considering I was only eighteen, but I’d been fighting for at least ten of those years and had developed enough muscle to take down most men, so I wasn’t concerned.
I stopped in my tracks, my senses coming a little too slowly and a little too late as Goliath slowly looked up at me, one dark, pierced eyebrow quirking in question. He slid back out of the booth and stepped toward me.
“Can I do something for you, son?”
I bristled at the term. I wasn’t anyone’s son.
“You nudged me,” I growled out. “Back at the bar.”
His eyes were as dark as hell, and the smile on his face told me that he’d probably put enough bodies in the ground to make even the Devil weep. Yet my shoulders stayed back, my chin stayed up, and my hard gaze bored into his like I could kill him with it if I so chose.
“I nudged you?” he asked, his smile falling.
I wasn’t scared of anyone or anything. After the things I’d seen in my short life, there was nothing left to fear anymore. If anything, I welcomed death. Begged for it, almost. It was probably why I didn’t shut my damned mouth and get the hell out of there.
