On some level, I had to have known that Hunter was lying to me. He never let me in on the details for a reason. Everything disappeared in a gray cloud as I stared intensely at the ceiling of Theo’s flat.

“Made you breakfast, kid,” Theo said, urging a plate underneath my mouth.

“Not hungry,” I muttered.

Theo set the food on the coffee table and pointed at the bacon, still sizzling from the heat of the pan. “You’ve been moping all day. You need some protein.”

“What I need is some answers,” I muttered.

Theo pretended not to hear me. Lightly digging my fork into the buttery and salted potatoes, I kept thinking about Hunter’s odd reactions. I had never seen him act like that before.

Carefully balancing his plate, Theo sat next to me, groaning as his large butt hit the soft couch cushions. “Although we’ve faced a lot, it’s nice that we can take an hour off to eat together,” Theo said.

I leaned back and tossed a grape into my mouth. “I wish I had your positivity, Theo,” I said, shaking my head.

Theo draped his arm around me and patted my back. “Things are changing, but it’s going to be okay,” he said.

“I just want things to change faster,” I said.

Theo looked at me like a father might look at his son before he shot some life lessons his way. “Is change really the issue?” he asked.

I set my fork down, ready to spill my heart out to the world. In need of some guidance, I told him about my worries, about Hunter and his skirting of the truth. “I just want to know why he’s holding back. A week ago, we were so close,” I said.

Theo thought about what I told him for a moment. Finally, he put up a hand and said, “Okay, so you think he’s lying to you. You still haven’t told me what he’s lying about.”

“He promised me to care of me,” I said.

“Oh, kid,” Theo said, pulling me in for a giant hug.

I let out all of my fear into Theo’s chest, crying bullets when I didn’t even know I had it in me. There was so much on my mind—the bar, my court problems, Hunter…

I wiped my eyes clean and cleared my throat. “Sorry, Theo. I’m trying to work through all of this in my head. Sometimes, it feels like I don’t have enough time in the day,” I said.

“I hear you. But we’ll get through it. You trust me, right?” he asked.

I put a hand on Theo’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll always trust you, Theo. You’re nothing like the other guys. You’re selfless.”

“Maybe I am now,” he said. “But we all have our bad days.”

I quickly ate breakfast and tried not to think about the talk I had with Hunter the other day. When he got what he wanted, what would he do with me? Or would he stick around, holding the lie close to him for eternity?

Hugging Theo, I thanked him for listening to my woes, and I drove straight to the wholesale warehouse. I had a lot of work to do, and no amount of worrying was going to finish the job.

* * *

I found Jackie standing on the street corner, carefully eying each car that drove by. His chapped lips loosely held an unlit cigarette. When I saw him, I waved, but he didn’t react in his usual, careless fashion. He was nervous about something immediate.

Swiftly, he ran to the side of my car and tapped against the glass. I rolled down the window, but he pointed toward the corner end of the street. “Pull into the side of the building,” he muttered. “We need to talk.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Jackie shot a hurried glance toward the end of the street before replying. “Do me a favor and listen to what I say. It’s important.”

I pulled around the corner and waited for him to open the large, copper gate. With a stiffened posture, I parked the car and stepped out to greet him.

As I moved closer, I noticed the dark bruising on his face, purple and swelling. Someone did this to him, but I couldn’t imagine who.

“Oh my God, Jackie!” I stopped and clasped my hands around my mouth. Then, I ran forward, thrown by my adrenaline. “What the hell happened?”

Jackie spat on the ground and shook his head. “We did what you asked us to do. We stood up for the neighborhood. Went down to City Hall and everything.”

I tightened my fist and cursed. “Fuck,” I muttered with angst.

A group of workers joined us in the center of the warehouse. “Who did this to you?” I asked.

Jackie ran his fingers underneath his collar and kicked his heel against the cracked cement. “It wasn’t the fucking cops, Matthew. It wasn’t some mugger. It was some fucking strong arm scumbag.”

Jackie looked back with careless rage flooding his eyes. “Jackie, lay off him. Let him go,” one of the workers said.

“Just talk to your boyfriend,” Jackie said. “I’m sure he’d love to take care of your debt for you.”

Something inside of me snapped. Before I knew it, I was running toward Jackie, knuckles aimed. “Keep Hunter out of this!” I screamed.

I should have known what I was getting myself into. Jackie’s workers closed in on me, pinning me against the cement. Jackie’s fist clenched against my hair. I felt the punch knock my head back against the ground.

Jackie leaned down and held his lips close to my ears. “Your money-grubbing boyfriend is the guy behind the whole project.”

Jackie let go of my body, but I was so stunned that I couldn’t even bear to move. Jackie cleared the room and waited for me to say something.

Hunter had coerced me to fall in love with him, and I had been made to look like an absolute fool.

Money. Corruption. My broken heart. I would have given anything to be locked up in that cell again.

“I can see it in your eyes. You know it’s true. I can’t believe it,” Jackie said.

I rolled my body onto my feet and swiped the blood on my upper lip. “Fuck,” I whispered.

“We were paid a visit yesterday,” Jackie said.

“Hunter came here?” I asked.

I could see his jaw twitching and biting, tense and erratic. They worked too hard to be taken down like this, by me, a guy who was supposed to be one of their own. I desperately wanted to right those wrongs.

Jackie took hold of the corner of my shirt and pushed me forward. “It wasn’t him. Someone else came on his behalf.”

I was too shocked to react, so Jackie did it for me. He pushed me outside and shut the gate. “Never show your face around here again, McKinnon,” he told me.

I sat in the vehicle for at least thirty minutes, going over each event that led me to the present. I was boiling with rage, but a quick probe of nausea sent me lurching forward.

Upon opening the car window, I felt my sickness take hold of me. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be at the bar with my family, but I felt like an outcast there too. As a wave of cars passed me, I threw up onto the busy street and let out a shrill whimper.

I felt pathetic.

Driving straight to his penthouse seemed like the only reasonable thing to do, so I held my foot to the pedal and turned on my favorite Led Zeppelin song. The lyrics blared back at me as if speaking directly to my heart and soul.

I parked the car and ripped the choker off of my neck. At the end of my emotional crescendo, I threw it into the middle of the busy intersection, watching the tires roll over the chain.

That’s when I heard his voice speak out to me as if he knew I’d come back to him like a pathetic lap dog.

“I can explain.”

I turned around and saw him standing on the corner. His eyes were strongly rooted with dark, sagging bags. What happened to us was tragic. The perfect bond of our lives came and went during a season of constant struggle. And now, the culmination of Hunter’s actions had forced me to lose everything I loved in this life.

My feet carried me toward him with the intent of tearing his body to shreds. When I finally did reach him, I pushed him against the red brick wall. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

Hunter sagged forward. He looked at me and winced, squinting his eyes and clutching his stomach in pain. A dramatic display that somehow made me want to hold him and tell him I forgave him.

But I wouldn’t do that.

“I never meant to hurt anyone.”

Somehow, the pain in his eyes forced me to lower my guns and take a few steps back. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. “Narcissist. Egomaniac. Fucking… douchebag,” I said.

He grabbed my waist and looked up at me, tears streaming down his cheeks. Like a sniveling coward, he begged me to stay. “I’m telling you the truth when I say that I didn’t know about your bar,” he said.

I looked away from him. Hunter was persuasive, even if he said some stupid shit.

“I was just someone you wanted to buy off. That’s why you came to me that night. You knew about my family’s history. You knew we’d fight you on your bullshit, so you found a way that worked for your wallet and your dick,” I said.

Quickly, I looked up at the large windows of his penthouse. I remembered the nights we spent there, curled up together in his inviting bed. I could still smell the rich leather of the interior mixed with Hunter’s cologne.

He still smelled like home.

“Before you say anything more, I know it was your guys that fucked with our distributor,” I added.

Hunter finally stood up and stopped groveling. Taking my arms in his clammy palms, he made sure that I wouldn’t look away. “I swear on my life. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I bit my tongue to hold back from crying. The pain from the realization hit me in waves, but at least the frequency was starting to die down. I held out my hand and demanded one last thing from him.

“The money,” I said.

He knew what I was talking about. If he wanted to buy me off, this was his chance. “Matthew, I—”

My voice grew with intensity. “The. Money.”

Hunter didn’t want to test a heartbroken omega. Reaching into his suit pocket, he pulled out his checkbook and pen. “I’m writing you a check for fifty thousand,” he muttered. “Take it. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

I grabbed the thin piece of paper and folded it into my pocket. Still, I had no intention of cashing it. “You’re a walking cliché, Hunter Underwood.”

I turned around and walked back to my car, but the tears dropped my head down. I peered into the window’s reflection and saw Hunter’s body fold in on itself, bubbling up and down as the tears fell. I needed to escape this before I ended up back in his penthouse for another round of hot tea.

As I sped away from his block, I dialed my brother’s phone number. “Hey, Matthew. I heard what happened over at Jackie’s. You okay?”

I couldn’t hold back my grief any longer. All of it spilled into the receiver of the phone. “You were right, Sawyer,” I cried. “We need to talk.”

“I’ll meet you at the bar, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

I hung up the phone and smiled. At least I had my family.