"You're making a mistake," I couldn’t stop myself from taunting as Hope ducked under my arm and backed up several feet, putting space between us. "And for all the wrong reasons."

"Wrong reasons?" she seethed.

"Damn straight," I shot back, not giving two shits that she was furious with me. Let her. If it stopped her from making the biggest mistake of her life, then she could spend the rest of her life angry with me. "Guilt isn’t exactly a lasting foundation to base a marriage on."

Hope's face paled. She visibly shook with fury as she spat the word, "Guilt?" like it was poison. "You know nothing about our relationship." Her blue eyes flashing with anger. "How dare you insinuate that!"

"Maybe I don’t," I forced out casually, striving to keep my cool. "But I know what he's put you through."

"That wasn't his fault." Her voice warbled. She tucked her hair behind her ear; a nervous trait I'd come to learn. "If you knew the whole story, you wouldn't be blaming Jordan for any of this…"

"I don't give two shits about what he's been through." My response stunned her and her mouth fell slightly open. "He was a dick to you, repeatedly, which, in my books, makes him not even close to deserving you," I added salt to the wound by saying. She might be used to being spoon-fed bullshit by everyone else in her life, but she would get nothing but honesty from me.

"He was raped, you ignorant ass!" Hope practically screamed, glaring at me. "He was sexual abused by his stepfather – repeatedly. Is that his fault, too?"

"No," I shot back heatedly. "Is it yours?"

She opened her mouth, no doubt to toss some cutting insult my way, but I got there first.

"Just close your mouth, open your mind for two damn minutes, and listen to me." I moved closer, probably a really bad fucking idea on my part, but I couldn't help myself. When she didn't take a step back from me, I reached out and cupped the back of her neck. "Life isn’t easy for any of us. Shit happens all the time. Bad shit. Shit that makes a person want to die. Makes a person want to run." Exhaling heavily, I lowered my face to hers, making sure she saw me, right into me. "What defines us is our reactions." My heart was racing as I spoke. "What makes us who we are is how we react when shit hits the fan."

"Hunter–" Hope began to say, but I interrupted her.

"Just hear me out," I said gruffly, still cupping her cheek in my hand, eyes locked on hers. When she nodded slightly, I continued. "I'm not saying I'm a better man for you." Hell, I was worse. Much fucking worse. "And hell, I'm not even saying this because I want to keep you for myself –" I paused for a moment before smirking. "Well, maybe I am. But I care about you." Did she get that? Hope Carter was the first woman I'd put myself out there for since Hayley, and she had the ability to crush me. I had a feeling she would, and still, I stood here and fought. "And I can't stand back and watch you make a horrible fucking mistake out of a misconceived notion of duty."

Closing her eyes, she leaned into my touch. "He needs me," she whispered.

"And what about you, Hope?" I asked, stroking her cheek with my thumb. "What do you need?"

She was quiet for the longest moment before finally opening her eyes and looking up at me. "Him." Her voice was cold this time, frigid even, as she yanked herself away from me and rushed towards the front door of the house.

"You running, HC?" I called out, stung from her rejection. "Thought you hated cardio?" I didn’t think it – I fucking knew it. I knew a lot about this woman. Like the fact that she hated anything that even closely resembled exercise, and that specific brand of shampoo she had to use to tame that wild head of curls – the strawberry scented one in the pink bottle that cost forty fucking dollars. Or the way she always had to erase every notification on her phone the minute it came through, and how she bit her damn nails off when she was anxious. I knew all about her weird ghost obsession and her addiction to trashy TV shows. I knew how she took her coffee – black with two sugars – and that her favorite candy was caramel. Unlike the man she was going home to, I had taken the time to figure her out.

I wasn’t stupid.

I knew there was a marriage on the line, but to me, it was bullshit. The girl was trying to save the unsalvageable. For fuck's sake, my shoulder was still damp from the tears she'd spilled over him.

Putting aside the fact that I was insanely attracted to her, it pissed me the hell off that his return had cost me my friend. Hope was the first woman in over a decade I'd felt something sincere for and she'd walked away from me.

Worse than walking away, she had settled.

I hated that for her.

"If you can't respect the fact that I am married, then you need to stay away from me, Hunter," she warned before disappearing into the house.

Respect the fact that she was married?

What fucking bullshit.

I remained outside when Hope stormed into the house, brawling with my conscience and every other piss poor decision I'd ever made. The cold, piercing air of the early February morning hit me hard, stinging my eyes and numbing everything else inside of me.

Silently, I dragged my pack of smokes out of my jeans pocket and sparked up. I always enjoyed the first cigarette of the day best. Standing outside in the fresh air, without four walls and caged bars surrounding me.

Well, I hadn't been to bed last night, but sleep deprivation seemed to give me the same buzz and the strain on my chest as I drew each puff into my protesting lungs, that tingling dizzy feeling that engulfed me for just a moment, was fucking lovely to me.

Exhaling a cloud of smoke, I flicked some ash onto the freshly fallen snow and thought back to the last time I stood on these steps.

It was the night Teagan tried to drown herself.

The night of the fire.

Noah felt responsible for what went down that night when he shouldn’t. Scoping out JD's lair had been my idea. Taking them out had also been my idea. It was all on me.

Did I feel remorse?

Not a fucking ounce.

But I didn’t like thinking about it too much.

About how dark I had become.

About how easily I could take life and not feel for it. I guess the course my life had taken me on had sculpted me into what I was now.

It was survival of the fittest in prison and in the eleven plus years I'd spent inside, I had transformed into a goddamn lion – I'd had no choice.

Her precious fucking Jordan wasn’t the only one on the planet who'd been through hell and had come out the other side. Did I feel bad for the guy now that I knew what he'd been through? Of course I did. I was human. But he wasn’t the only damn person on the planet who'd been thrown a shitty hand of cards.

Rape wasn’t a word that shocked me. I had survived eleven years in the state penitentiary filled with blood-thirsty bastards who wouldn’t think twice about tearing a guy a second asshole to get their load off. Stabbings, beatings, and rape were all too familiar to an inmate serving hard time – to an eighteen-year-old kid. The shit I'd seen, the sick bastards I'd met, fuck me, I was surprised I made it out of that place with my sanity intact.

Bad stuff happened all the damn time.

Look at Noah.

Christ, look at me.

I watched my girlfriend die. I took the life of the man who stole her from me. And in the years that had passed, I killed again – more men than I had fingers to count on. I'd done some bad shit in the twenty-nine years I'd been on this earth. Some real bad fucking shit. I had to live with that. Every day. Every night.

Noah was in the minority in there. There were maybe three or four dudes genuinely innocent on our block. I wasn’t one of them. No, I was guilty as hell. But the ones we cohabited alongside? Fuck me, those were some bad dudes...

Because of the fire, returning to The Hill hadn't been an option for me. The cops were still looking for the arsonist and my ass needed to stay the hell out of dodge until shit simmered down. I couldn’t take the risk. So, I spent the past god knows how many weeks holed up in a shitty motel in the city, laying low and staying out of trouble.

Until tonight.

Until she called me and I heard the fear in her voice. I was in my car and driving back to her quicker than my mind could comply all the reasons not to.

I hadn't even known about the alibi she had given us until Noah told me tonight.

Hope told the cops I was with her the night of the fire. In fact, she had done more than just say I was with her that night. She had invented a very detailed story to the detective that questioned her, comprising of her sleeping – or not sleeping – in my bed that night. She risked a hell of a lot for me and Noah that night, and hell if it didn’t make me want her more for it.

I knew I needed to take a step back. I scared her off earlier. She wasn’t ready for me. But she was settling. She was doing it because she felt bad for the guy. Shit, I felt bad for him.

Not bad enough to step down, though.

I just had to be patient. Forcing her hand would be a mistake. She was stubborn and loyal.

That didn’t mean I was giving up.

Not even close.

The way I saw it, we all had shit to deal with. I couldn’t comprehend what he had suffered as a teenager, but then again, I was damned sure he couldn’t put himself in my shoes, either. Goddamn, I was a fucking glutton for punishment, wasting my time on a woman who had no intention of leaving her husband.

The sound of the front door opening and quickly closing again behind me filled my ears, dragging me from the thoughts I had been absorbed in.

Moments later, a hand landed heavily on my shoulder. I didn’t have to look sideways to know who the hand belonged to. Instead, I slipped the cigarette box out of my pocket again and offered it to him.

Noah took a smoke from the box before joining me in leaning against the porch pillar. "You good, man?" he finally asked after lighting up and taking a deep drag.

Rolling the cigarette butt around between my fingers and thumb, I exhaled heavily and thought about how to answer that question. Finally, when no words came to me, I simply looked sideways at him and shrugged. "All good."

He nodded knowingly before taking another drag from his smoke. In this big motherfucking world, he was the closest thing I had to family. He knew me better than most. I knew he got my meaning. He didn’t need to thank me. What I'd done tonight, he would do for me in a heartbeat. It was how we rolled.

"Teagan's pregnant," he finally announced. "About six weeks along."

My brows shot up and I turned and gave him my full attention. "For real?"

Noah nodded. "She had a small bleed. Took her to St. Luke's while you were… taking care of business. Got it confirmed there."

"Shit." I shook my head, at a loss. "How'd you explain her face?"

"Didn’t have to." He took another drag of his smoke. "Nurse took one look at me and slipped Teagan a domestic violence shelter card." Grimacing, he added, "Don’t know whether to feel relieved the nurse didn’t ask any questions or disgusted she assumed I was beating on my wife."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

"You good with this?" I asked then. "The pregnancy?"

Noah exhaled a heavy sigh and nodded slowly. "Think so." He took one last drag from his cigarette before flicking it onto the snow. "You know, I've been fighting my entire life, man. Inside the ring. Out of it. Behind bars. My whole fucking life has revolved around fighting." He looked out onto the lawn as he spoke. "And I can honestly say that nothing has ever scared me like the thought of losing her does." He looked me dead in the eye then and I could see the fear there. "Can't watch her go through that again, Lucky."

"Jesus," I muttered before tossing my smoke and giving my friend my full attention. "Is that what you're worried about? That's she's going to lose it again?"

Noah looked at me like that was the stupidest fucking thing I had ever said, and maybe it was, but I was still going to go there. The guy needed to hear it.

"That baby didn’t die because of pregnancy problems, man," I told him. "Your daughter was murdered. Teagan can have more kids, man. This isn’t going to happen to you guys again. What happened to Einín? It's not repeating. I can promise you that."

"And whose fault was that?" he shot back, dark eyes locked on mine. "Fucking mine, Lucky. Me, man. I'm responsible for my dead daughter and almost dead wife. I came this fucking close to losing her twice. And now what? She's putting her faith in me again? Giving me a second chance? I have enemies, man. What the fuck happens if another bastard jumps out of the woodwork and decides to take another crack at us?"

It was one of the hardest things I ever had to say to him, but if he was worrying about Teagan miscarrying or something, then he needed to hear this. "JD's dead. Your enemy is dead. Your wife put a bullet through the back of his skull. For you! She joined the horrible fucking club of killers for you. She took a life for you. So, suck it the hell up and get booted and suited. Cause you're gonna give her a football team of babies if that's what she wants. She deserves nothing less."

"It's fast, man," Noah muttered gruffly. "The baby…" he paused and hissed out a heavy breath before saying. "It's been less than three months."

"And?"

"And what if it's too much on her body?" he shot back angrily. "She had a section, and I'm no doctor, Lucky, but don’t those kinds of things need time to heal?"

I didn’t know.

I had no fucking clue.

"All I know is that a baby's a blessing, Noah. And considering everything you two have been through this past year, I couldn’t think of any two people who deserve a shot at happiness more."