“Grab a mop!” I shouted over my shoulder before circling the bar and heading straight for the wasted guy puking in the corner of my bar.

“Dammit.” Justin hated vomit. Like, really hated it. I definitely didn’t like it, but when you own one of the most popular bars in a town like Oak Grove, dealing with sick patrons comes with the territory. “I’ll bring it out, but I’m not cleaning it up.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cringe at his reaction, but when I pulled the guy back and realized he was also pissing in the corner of my bar, all humor died and I wanted to kill the bastard. “What the fuck, man!” I dragged him up by his arm and pulled him toward the front door. “Get the fuck out of here, and don’t come back.”

Allen, my closing bouncer, grabbed the guy out of my arms and got him to the street. Allen could figure out how to get him into a cab while I turned back to the mess I had to deal with. “Fuck!”

“Is it bad?” Justin had a handheld fan blowing across his face to keep the stench from hitting him. He’d always been a sympathy barfer, so I was just as motivated to get the mess cleaned up and out of sight as he was.

“If you consider a foot wide puddle of piss and puke bad, then yes.” I pulled the mop from the bucket and got to work. “But I’ve got it. Just make sure Allen’s okay out front.”

The few customers still left in the club closed out their tabs and took off before the stench overpowered the place, and by the time I had the mess cleaned up, my back hurt like hell and I was ready to find my bed.

“I’m in the back if you need me.” Justin had gone around the back of the building to avoiding crossing my path on his way back inside.

“It’s gone now, you can stop hiding.” I laughed as I rolled the bucket down the hall to the cleaning closet, where there was a trough I could dump everything in without making more of a mess. “And those chairs aren’t going to put themselves up.”

When Justin and I opened The Fallen Nut almost ten years ago, we were both still in college and searching for a way to cope with the loss of our baby brother. Michael was only eighteen when he was drugged at a bar in the city and sexually assaulted until he choked to death. The entire family took it hard, but Justin took it the worst. He and Michael were the only omegas in our family, and not only did the fear that it could have been him cause him to nearly flunk out of school, but the guilt that he wasn’t there to protect his baby brother weighed the heaviest on him because he was the oldest of us.

Even as an omega, Justin was always the big brother who took care of his little brothers. My alpha genes caused me to outweigh and tower over my big brother by the time I was twelve, but I never once doubted that he’d always have my back when I needed him.

So when Justin lost the ability to function after we lost Michael, I vowed to take care of my big brother when he needed me the most. I dropped out of college the day I turned twenty-one, and we opened this bar. The Fallen Nut was opened to be a safe haven for omegas and alphas to meet without fear of abuse going unnoticed.

If we even suspected someone was being taken advantage of, Allen or Saul were let loose.

And those fuckers were scary.

I’d never been on the wrong side of one of Allen’s death stares, but based on the way grownass alphas would cower below him, I knew I never wanted to be.

“Go home already,” Justin said from the doorway of the supply room. “We do have a cleaning service that will take care of it in the morning.”

I sighed then tossed the rubber gloves I was still wearing into the empty bucket. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Are you sure you’re okay, Mitch?” Justin placed his hand on my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “You’ve been working long hours lately, like you don’t want to go home or something.”

I chuckled and pat his hand before walking past him. “I’m fine, bro. It’s just too damn quiet at home.” I’d been single since college. I had a couple boyfriends back in the day, but since opening the bar, I’d been so focused on taking care of the business and making sure my one remaining brother crawled his way out of the funk he was in that dating wasn’t even a blip on my radar. But now that I was almost thirty-one, the reality that I had no one waiting for me at home hit me hard.

I’d never been the sentimental type, but I missed my family. The family I grew up with. I missed the times when my parents and my brothers would all pile into the living room and watch movies together on the weekends. Mom would mix a bag of M&Ms in the popcorn, and Michael and I would fight to find as many of them as possible before Justin got any. Of course, only as an adult did I realize he was letting us have them because he was the big brother.

Fuck, I didn’t know where those feelings were coming from, but I wanted that closeness again. I wanted a family to cuddle with on the couch and make memories with. I loved working at the bar and would never walk away from it, but as the years passed me by, the chances of ever having a family of my own seemed to be passing me by as well.

When I got home, I headed straight to the shower, dropping my clothes on the floor as I walked. Washing away the smoke and spilled beer from my skin usually helped clear my head, but even as the hot water sluiced down the lines of my muscled chest, the longing for more than what I had didn’t ease up.

If anything, I just wanted to find someone even more.

Someone to share my life with.

Someone to build a family with.

Someone to love until the day I died.