Owen kept his hands on his knees and his gaze on the windshield as Kieran Love drove him to yet another physical therapy session. The car’s interior was silent, and Owen didn’t care. He was exhausted in mind, body, and spirit after a solid month of endless therapies, medication withdrawals, and the bizarre realities that now inhabited his formerly familiar, small-town life.

For one thing, Kieran Love even being here, driving him anywhere. The guy had been a member of a Division One basketball team that won the NCAA tourney, not once but twice. After graduating, he’d played overseas a year and then landed a contract with the Miami Heat. But he’d shattered his knee in a sickening, freak accident on the court on live television in his rookie season. So, here he was, back home, flopping around, getting PT alongside Owen and feeling about as sorry for himself.

Owen glanced over Kieran’s profile. He’d inherited the coloring of his mother’s family—the Halloran Irish red hair, freckles, green eyes. But he was the tallest of the four brothers, and the most naturally talented athlete, although all of them played sports in high school and most of them met on Sundays for a pick-up basketball game after church and lunch.

“So,” Owen said, feeling a need to make something resembling conversation, “Cara gonna be there today?”

Kieran shot him a patented ‘fuck you and the horse you rode in on’ Love-family glare.

Owen grinned at him. The fact that Kieran’s high school sweetie had ended up back in Lucasville as a physical therapist after dumping him in college and moving for a while up to Michigan was a sore spot for him—to put it mildly. Unable to resist, since it distracted him from his own misery pit, Owen poked at it a bit more. “She looks good. Especially with that big fat rock of a diamond.”

Kieran slammed on the brakes, nearly pitching Owen into the dash headfirst. “You know what?” he said, his voice soft, which was a clear indication of his anger. Kieran didn’t fly off the handle like Antony or the wild-ass Dominic, but when he was pissed, you’d best cover your nuts. “You can shut the fuck up right about now.” He sat, white-knuckling the wheel. “And you can stop being so goddamned righteously outraged about Antony and Rosie too. It’s gettin’ old.”

Owen sucked in a breath and gathered the tattered remnants of his self-righteousness regarding Antony’s apparent relationship with their dead friend’s widow around him.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, sinking down into the seat, his still-unfamiliar metal leg-like thing smacking against the glove box.

“No, I mean it, Owen. You sit around and glare at them as if they were doing something wrong. They’re not. They leaned on each other, relied on each other to get through the last four and a half years, and you need to get the fuck over yourself. I mean, if you wanted Rosie, signing on for a double tour then turning yourself into some kind of a fucked up, rogue soldier dumbass was a funny way of showing it.”

“I wasn’t a soldier. I was a Marine,” he huffed, hating the sound of his own voice. “I wanted…I needed to do something for Paul. So, I started killing the enemy as opposed to sitting around and waving at them across demarcation lines. So what?”

“Yeah, so what? And look where it got you.” Kieran stared down at the crazy device that passed for Owen’s lower left leg these days. “Mama told me you haven’t been going to your other therapies.”

Owen snorted. “I don’t need any head shrinker to make me talk about my shitty childhood. The only reason I didn’t die of starvation or worse was your own parents, and you know it. Why should I want to dig all that shit up? Fuck psychology. I’m fine.” He rapped on the metal where his tibia had once been. “Fine and fucking dandy.”

“Right,” Kieran said, pulling back into traffic. “Well, I will tell you this. If you bring up Cara Cooper and that big rock on her finger again, I’m shoving you out into the road and driving away. Got me?”

“No problem. I’m leaving soon anyway.”

“What? Why? Where are you going?” Kieran turned into the parking lot at the strip mall that housed their physical therapy location.

“Got a job,” Owen said, happy to get it out in the open. He simply couldn’t stand it here anymore. Lindsay and Janice’s hovering was making him insane. Dominic’s insistence that he come and ‘hang out’ at the brewery, where he’d been so happy once, made him want to punch holes in the wall. And the whole thing with Antony and Rosie made him physically ill—even though he couldn’t give a single logical reason why.

He had to leave all of it behind, once and for all.

“Oh,” Kieran said, putting the car in park and turning off the engine. “Probably for the best, then.” He stared at Owen. Owen stared back. Kieran was the peace-making brother in the family of rowdies and bold personalities. But his back was up over this Cara thing. Owen sighed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rub in the thing about Ca—”

“Stop,” Kieran said, his large hand raised between them. “Don’t say her name right now, all right? So, when are you telling Mama you’re leaving? And who hired you anyway?”

“I’ve had three Skype interviews with this outfit in Virginia. Something called GAPS. Stands for Guardian Angel Protective Service.” He shrugged, unwilling to admit how much this major move had him rattled.

“Guardian angel, huh,” Kieran said, his smile genuine.

“Yeah, it’s a bunch of SEALs, retired or resigned, who started it. They got tired of jumping through military hoops in order to actually do some damn good. I can get behind that.” Owen stared down at his hands, watching them clench into fists, then unclench, then clench again. “They needed an IT guy. Who is, apparently, about to be yours truly. Pay’s pretty good. They’ve only been in business eighteen months and already have several big corporate clients. Plus the military.”

“Hmmm . . . Halliburton, much?”

“Oh, spare me, you fucking bleeding heart. Who do you think actually gets shit done, anyway? The actual military? Hardly.”

“Well, I know Mama and Daddy will use it as an excuse to throw a good-bye party, so be ready for the parade of small town memories. They’ll invite God ’n everybody you know.”

Owen grunted and put his hand on the door handle. “We goin’ in there or what?” He nodded at the expanse of glass behind which he could see the redheaded Cara Cooper, pert and perky and cute as ever, putting some poor old lady through her hip-replacement paces. Kieran took a long, deep breath, opened and closed his eyes, then nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Owen clapped Kieran on the shoulder as they headed into the overly cool space. “I’m sorry. About her, I mean.” He jerked his chin to where Cara was holding onto a belt wrapped around the woman’s scrawny waist as the biddy limped around the room. Kieran’s eyes narrowed as he watched his former girlfriend.

“Yeah. Me too,” he muttered as the receptionist smiled a greeting at the two of them.

* * *

The party was, as promised, chock full of memories—mostly in the form of his old friends from high school and their parents. All of whom patted his shoulder or arm as if he were some kind of invalid. Sick of all the sympathy, he finally got up, jogged over to Dominic, and grabbed the football the guy had been tossing from hand to hand.

“Throw a few?”

Dom looked up him, one blond eyebrow raised. “Sure. I could use a break from the old girlfriend parade.”

Owen grinned at him and headed to the stretch of grass above the pool patio at the Love’s modest, quad-level house. They heaved the pigskin back and forth in comfortable silence for about ten minutes, which went a long way towards soothing Owen’s nerves.

Dom was the Love family black sheep. He had long blond hair tied back with a strip of leather, was tatted out on skin that had enough of his father’s family’s olive tone to appear a burnished bronze in the sun, and pierced in God knows how many places. He was an amazing brewer, too. He and his father worked together daily at the Love Brothers Brewing Company, and had knockdown fights almost as often.

“You ever get to that head shrinker?” Dom asked after a while, cradling the ball in his arms as he caught it.

“Nah,” Owen admitted, holding up his hands to receive it. “I don’t need that shit.”

“I wouldn’t be so hasty on that count,” Dom said, turning it around for a perfect spiraling pass.

“Yeah, well, I’d guess you know from crazy,” Owen said, frowning when he heard Jeff’s voice hollering for Antony to come and swim with him.

“Yep. I sure as hell would.”

The ball tossing continued a while, sans conversation. Dominic Love was a barely medically managed manic-depressive. Something he’d lived with his whole life. But a condition he’d only been treated for since a terrifying few weeks after high school graduation when he’d literally disappeared from town. Owen knew damn good and well that Dom hated the meds. They blunted his highs, he claimed. He was constantly going on and off the pills, something that drove his entire family nuts.

But like all the Love siblings, he was fiercely protected by, and protective of, his family. They had each other’s backs all the time. Owen had been jealous of that, even with his honorary membership in their tight-knit, volatile, Italian/Irish tribe. Even the littlest brother Aiden, currently at some writer’s school out west, and the single sister, Angelique, knew they could always fall back on each other, despite their proclivity towards in-fighting—which at times drew actual blood.

“You should go to the therapist at the VA in Virginia,” Dom said mildly. “You need to talk about what happened, and you probably need some kind of PTSD medication.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor Love.” Owen grinned. It was something Dominic used to like to call himself—Doctor Love. Always on the prowl for chicks to ‘examine.’

“Oh, boy,” Dom said, jerking his chin at something over Owen’s left shoulder. “Incoming. I’m outta here.” Owen tossed the ball one last time. Dom grabbed it and started running for the pool, hollering for everyone to move before he cannonballed right in the middle, sending up a spray of water that splattered the crowd.

Owen shook his head and chuckled. The smile froze on his lips when he turned and saw the reason for Dom’s hasty departure.

“Hey, Owen. Where ya been hiding yourself?”

He took a step back, catching his prosthetic in a dip in the grass, which sent him down to his hands and knees like a total dork. The woman stepped up to him and held out her hands to help him up. “You all right?” She looked him up and down, and then actually licked her lips. Owen felt himself responding, slowly at first, to the sight of one of his girlfriends from high school, now all grown up, filled out and looking good enough to devour.

“I’m just fine. You?” He smiled down at her familiar face, the big brown eyes, and the full, pouty lips.

She looked down, then back up at him. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“I was,” he said, putting only slightly shaking hands on her bare arms and giving in to the glorious sensation of warm, female flesh under his palms. “But maybe I shouldn’t have?” He raised an eyebrow, cursing the fact of the stupid, fake leg but unable to repress the erection tenting his swim trunks. “It’s good to see you again, Hannah.”

She smiled, went up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and whispered, “Show me how good it is, Owen. I’ve missed you.”

He hesitated for a split second, aware of the vacuum suction of the prosthetic sucking against his stump of flesh all of a sudden. When her lips met his, he let her lead, let her probe and tease with the tip of her tongue. With a low moan, he met her halfway, grabbing her ass and grinding his aching dick into her stomach, relishing the press of her bikini-clad tits against his chest.

He broke the kiss abruptly and glared down at her. “I’m not about to be your mercy fuck.”

“Oh, honey, there is nothing about this that involves mercy, unless it’s for me.” She took his hand and glanced down at the partiers still poolside. They’d eaten massive quantities of burgers, dogs, potato salad, baked beans, chips, and Mrs. Love’s homemade brownies. Several people had already left. Antony was helping his father light the tiki torches against the oncoming twilight mosquito assault.

He threaded his fingers in hers, unable to stop staring at her exposed belly button, which had a small hoop pierced through it. His dick was so hard it actually hurt—which was reassuring. He’d not been convinced he’d ever be able to get it up again after the crushing pain he’d endured the past few months.

“Bottom basement,” she whispered, letting her left breast brush against his arm. He nodded. She was talking about the lowest of the Love’s quad level home where the siblings had at first a playroom, then a ‘play room’ disguised as a rec room, which had been the site of more sex than Owen cared to contemplate at the moment.

She started tugging him, and Owen followed her, his tongue tied, his pulse racing, his entire body an erogenous zone. He had to focus, or he’d blow before he got his damn shorts off.

They ducked inside once they’d determined that both Lindsay and Anton were still at the pool, sipping beer and chatting with their friends. A few steps down to the left and Owen was plunged back into his childhood and his adolescence in an instant. The room had hardly changed, with its butt-sprung couch, a giant box of a TV with DVD/VCR and other random outmoded video game paraphernalia surrounding it. It even smelled the same—dryer sheets, bleach, and starch mixed with old beer spills on the rug, and pot smoke embedded in the couch fabric.

“You’re okay to do this, right?” Hannah hesitated in the middle of the room, looking as much like an ingénue as a near thirty-year-old woman could. “I mean, I’m not gonna hurt . . .” She trailed off and looked right at the metal contraption that passed for his left lower leg.

Shoving down the urge to cuss her out and walk away, he reached in between the rolled up sleeping bags on a high shelf, grinning when his fingers closed around a box. When he pulled the condoms out, he squinted at the expiration date. “Shit,” he said, shoving the box back. Damn things were over six years old—which would make sense, he supposed, since that matched up with the time Angelique Love had been down here getting her rocks off with various boyfriends.

“No worries,” Hannah said, untying her bikini top and letting it slip to the rug, along with the skirt wrap thing she’d been wearing around her hips. “I’m clean, and I’m on the pill.”

Owen put his hands on his hips and had a brief discussion with himself. On the one hand, he was so horny he thought he might explode from it right here in the Love’s basement. On the other, Hannah had given him a pregnancy scare once in high school when she’d supposedly “been on the pill” too.

A soft, feminine hand lifted his shirt and slid up his sweaty torso while her other hand gave the string holding up his shorts a quick jerk. “You don’t believe me,” she said in a whisper, her firm nipples now pressed against his bare skin. Owen remained speechless, stupefied by the roaring in his ears and the raw, primal urge to toss the woman down on the couch and plow into her like a rutting bull. “I just want to know—you’re okay with this, right?”

“Hannah,” he whispered as he cupped her breasts and flicked his thumbs over her nipples. She sighed and went up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “It’s just my leg. My cock is fine and dandy and ready for action.” He sighed. “Hannah,” he repeated, pulling her to the couch, dropping onto his butt, and then pressing his lips to the cool metal hoop in her navel.

She straddled his lap, taking him inside her with a quick, definitive shift of her hips. He groaned so loud, she slapped a hand over his mouth and suppressed her own giggle.

“I’ve missed you, Owen,” she said, in a familiar, sing-song way as she rolled her hips and clenched his dick with her inner muscles. He cupped her breasts and sucked her nipples one by one, until she moved faster, giving him the friction he needed.

“Fuck. Shit. Hell.” He grunted and dropped his head back as she ground down on him, rose up, then down again, slowly at first. Then faster. And still faster until her tits were bouncing in front of his eyes and he could smell her onrushing orgasm, even taste it on the back of his tongue.

She shivered and cried out, and he buried his face in her breasts to muffle his own, loud groan at release. He came and kept coming, as his vision went pitch black, then stark white, and his entire body was engulfed in shudders that made his teeth rattle.

“Mmmm,” Hannah said as she propped her hands on the couch back behind him and pressed her lips to his. “Nice.”

“Uh,” Owen managed as she lifted up and off, and stood naked in front of him.

“Hannah?” A female voice from the top of the steps made them both flinch.

“Yeah, Tricia, hang on a sec.”

He watched, frozen, mired in emotional and mental mud as she fumbled herself back into her bikini top and the wrap, under which, he noted now, she was completely bare.

“You came here to fuck me,” he said, his voice soft and non-accusing. Merely factual.

Her teeth glowed in the darkness when she smiled and came over to put her hand around his still exposed, still hard dick. “Sure did, hon.” She kissed him again, flicking his tongue with hers, then withdrew. “Wanted to see if you could still manage it. I’ve never fucked a gimp before.”

He blinked fast, processing this, and then decided that shoving her through the wall for simply being the ignorant bitch she was would be a waste of his energy. Instead, he smiled up at her and tucked his dick inside his shorts. “Mission accomplished. See ya on the flip side, Hannah.”

She hesitated as if she’d hoped to get a rise out of him with her flippant comment.

“What? Go on. You proved your theory. Beat it. I’m gettin’ on with my life, starting tomorrow. But that was a lovely pressure release. You always were good for that, if nothing else.”

She bit her lower lip. “Owen, I’m sorr—”

“No, you’re not,” he said, getting to his feet and towering over her, even as the vacuum suction pump that connected the prosthesis to what remained of his left leg made him wince. “Go on. We’re done here. Jesus.” He sidestepped her when she tried to reach for him. She always had been just this side of bitchy, hiding it under a layer of saccharine sweetness. But she’d always been game for a quick and dirty, here or in her basement. And she’d given him his first blowjob. That had to be worth something.

“Hannah!” the voice called down the steps again. “I’m leaving. If you’re coming with me, get your ass up here.”

Owen crossed his arms, pleased to note that his woody had softened in the face of Hannah’s bitchiness. He did feel better, less fraught, thanks to the monster orgasm.

“Go on,” he said again, jerking his chin at the steps behind her.

“I really am sorry,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. He grabbed her wrist, a little too hard, he’d admit, before he loosened his grip.

“You got your jollies, you lame bitch. Now get the fuck out of my life and stay that way.”

He let go of her. She glared at him a half second, then turned and ran up the steps. Owen flopped onto the couch, smelling his own spunk, hating his life so much at that moment he wished he had a bottle of his old pain pills and a handy fifth of bourbon.

“Owen,” Antony called down the steps. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, swiping a hand down his face, then standing, forgetting about how he had to overcompensate on his right side and nearly pitching himself face first onto the rug. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Okay. I, um, I want to talk to you before we go. We need to clear up a few things.”

“No, Antony, we don’t.” Owen leaned against one of the metal poles. “I’m sorry. I’m being a judgmental asshole, and you don’t deserve it. Neither does Rosie.”

“Get your ass up here. I don’t feel like having this conversation down the fucking steps.”

Owen dragged himself to the stairs and went up slowly, cursing his life, his fake leg, and his fate for the millionth time.

After some bourbon, and a lecture from Lindsay about getting to the VA psych department in Virginia, and then a heart-to-heart with Antony—during which he revealed that, although it might appear otherwise, he and Rosie had never had sex and theirs was a comfortable, step-up, always-available friendship more than anything—Owen fell face-first down on the bed he’d been occupying for the past month.

Sleep descended fast and, thankfully, sans a single remembered dream. His last thought was one of a fresh start with a crowd of people who knew nothing about him other than his rep as the ‘rogue Marine’ who could hack his way into and out of just about any computer system.