Climbing out the shower and wrapping a towel around my waist, I rub the fog off the bathroom mirror. There’s a small cut over my right eye that shouldn’t look too bad by morning. My face lights up in the glass as I picture Camilla’s reaction to the scrape if she were here.

She hates me fighting. It seems barbaric to her on some level. She can’t imagine someone being so down and out that they would willingly go into a brawl to get a payday. I tried to explain it to her the first time it came up in conversation, but that was the last time I wasted my effort. She won’t get it. How could she? She just swipes a card if she wants something or asks her brother for the money from her trust fund if it’s over a certain amount.

That’s what I can’t imagine—letting someone else control my shit. They control everything about her from where her money goes to who she dates to what she does with her afternoons. It’s wild.

It’s also one of the reasons why this little thing we have going on is temporary. It’s carried on a little longer than I expected it to, but that doesn’t mean an expiration date isn’t stamped on it somewhere. Her world isn’t just the other side of the tracks; it may as well be the other side of the fucking universe. My side? It’s no place for a girl like her, a girl that not only nails that fifty-one percent, but aces the other forty-nine. A girl that’s way outta my league.

My phone rings in the bedroom and I shut the light off behind me before heading across the hallway. It’s buzzing on my nightstand when I pick it up.

A little drop of disappointment hits me when I realize it’s not Cam. “Hey, Nate,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What’s up?”

“Just got Ryder to bed. Chrissy let him have way too much sugar tonight and he wouldn’t settle down. It was rough, man. I pulled out all the stops, even singing that twinkle star song.” He laughs. “Hell, before it was over, I was singing the old Oscar Meyer hot dog commercial theme.”

“What a way to spend a night,” I laugh.

“Yeah, but fuck it, Dom. I mean, what else is there, really? I had three chicks on the bar tonight, basically doing a strip show by the time we closed. Juicy asses, big titties, lips carved to wrap around a cock. There was a time in my life when that was the end to a great day. Now, I just wanted to get home before Ryder went to sleep.”

“I get that. He’s your boy.”

“Yeah,” he sighs through the phone. “I don’t know. It’s more than that. It’s … Remember Dad not being home? Hell, half the time Mom wasn’t either? We’d let ourselves in after school and pour some shredded cheese on some stale tortilla chips and watch television? I want to give him something more, something better than what we had growing up.”

“You’re doing that,” I say, running a hand over my damp hair. “He never has to worry about where his next meal is coming from. That’s more than we had a lot of the time.”

“I was thinking … maybe when the loan goes through, and I get everything caught up, maybe I can start thinking about changing the atmosphere in The Gold Room.”

“To what?”

“Something more respectable, I guess.”

“You’re going yuppie on me, aren’t you?”

He barks a fit of laughter through the phone. “Fuck, no. I just mean clean the place up some. Change our reputation a little. Maybe pull in a different group of customers, ones that have more money than Joe and Copper.”

“So you mean ones that have any money?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Joe ever paid his tab?”

“Nope.”

“Did you stop letting him charge?”

“Nope.” Before I can respond, he keeps going. “Sometimes that ham sandwich is all he eats all day. How do I cut him off, Dom? He doesn’t ask for much. A drink and a sandwich sometimes. And he pays when he can.”

My heart tugs at the predicament. The hollowness in my stomach -- from being hungry and scared and not seeing a clear way out after Mom’s death came a year after Dad’s -- is never too far away. “I feel ya. Maybe think it through some between now and the loan going through and get a plan in place.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. This is either going to have to be a long-term, successful thing or a really expensive headache.”

His words spark something in my brain that I’ve been toying with for the past few months. Maybe it’s time to start looking at the HVAC job as a career, that I might be at the point in life where things just are the way they are. Go in all the way because … this is it.

I’ve always felt like something was going to change, that if I peddled along, busted my ass, kept going for long enough, eventually there would be a turning point. That things would get easier. That I’d get the stability and straightforward life I’d always craved.

Maybe that’s not true.

Maybe it’s always a struggle. Realization is starting to set in that maybe this life is my life. Whatever hopes I had of rising above my current situation, of starting my own business, of making something out of myself, isn’t really going to happen. Maybe the stars were just stacked against me from the night my inebriated father fucked my mother.

I’ve been considering I need to accept all this and move forward accordingly, being real with myself about what’s what. Before that can work its way into my psyche, my brother groans.

“Ryder is moving around. Shit.”

“So I have that to look forward to,” I say, half-kidding.

“You still want us? Look, Dom, if not it’s no big deal. We’ll figure—”

“Damn it. If I didn’t want you to come, I wouldn’t have offered.”

“You know I appreciate it, right?” he says. The relief is evident, lingering on the last note. “I’ll help out with the rent. With groceries. Whatever you want.”

“We’ll figure it out.” I look across the hall into the dark bathroom. “There’s a bed in the guest room. If you want to bring his kid bed with you, you can fit it in there. Or one of you can take the couch.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it all sorted.” He heaves another breath. “Did you mention it to Cam?”

Her face pops up in my mind and I fall back on my sheets, wishing she was lying a few inches over and waiting on me to end the call and curl up next to her to listen to her lecture me about the cut above my eye. “Yeah, I told her.”

“She okay with it?”

“It’s not her decision.”

“So that’s a no?”

“It’s a ‘I didn’t ask her opinion,’” I tell him. “Why would I? I fuck her sometimes. That’s it.”

“Oh, that’s it, huh?” His laugh makes me cringe. “I think not, little brother.”

“Okay. I fuck her often. Better?”

“Sure. If that makes you happy, I don’t give a shit. But I think it’s a little deeper than that.”

He waits for me to respond, but I don’t. Not immediately. I think about his question and how I can navigate these waters. Was my assessment of my relationship with Camilla accurate? Fuck no. But should it be? Definitely.

It’s my fault I see her so damn much. I can’t help myself. And as much as I’d like it to be just for the sex, even I know it’s not. That’s what fucks me—the non-fucking. That’s where I’m going to get so burned I’m afraid I’ll be unrecognizable.

“You know, it’s okay to actually feel something for someone, Dominic.”

“You’re using my whole name now. Is that some kind of hint that you mean business?”

“That’s my way of telling you to listen to me before you go messing up a lot of shit,” he sighs.

My abs strain as I sit back up, my eye starting to pulse like it’s swelling. “Look at me,” I laugh, “and look at her. I’m sitting here with the taste of blood in my mouth from the cut inside my lip, and she’s lying on some thread-count bullshit I don’t even understand. You don’t think this isn’t already messed up?”

“No. I don’t.”

“And you claim to be the smart one,” I joke. “Look, I’m okay with this as-is. I see it for what it is. But don’t go telling me, ‘It’s okay to have feelings for someone, Dominic,’” I mock, “because it ain’t real. You don’t have feelings for something that’s gonna be busted in the days to come.”

“You’ve been with her almost a year,” he tosses out like he’s some kind of genius.

“Okay. Fine. You wanna go with me to meet her family? I mean, let’s just do the family-to-family thing. You’ve already made friends with her brothers, yeah?”

“Fuck them,” he growls.

“My point. That’s before they even know our uncle is the guy that almost tanked Barrett’s campaign. How’s that gonna look in their press release in the next election cycle?” I point out. “Look, I hate Nolan too. But that doesn’t matter. It’s all about appearances with these people, Nate. This would be a PR nightmare, and they’re all about avoiding the problem.”

“Again, fuck them.”

I shrug, even though he can’t see me. “And then the shit about—”

“Don’t tell me you’re going there. Our piece-of-shit father has nothing to do with anything.”

“But he does.”

“But he doesn’t,” he hisses. “Use whatever reasoning you want for not locking that girl down, but don’t let that motherfucker play a part. That’s not fair to her or you.”

“Fair or not, it’s life,” I say, feeling defeated.

He yawns through the line, saying something I can’t make out.

“I’m guessing you said you’ll see me tomorrow,” I say, glancing at the clock. “I gotta try to get some sleep.”

“Me too. I’ll start moving our stuff in tomorrow?”

“Sounds good. I’ll be working up north, but you have a key, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks again, Dom.”

“No problem. See ya tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

Dropping the phone to the blankets, I lie back again. My head feels foggy like it usually does after a sparring session.

Closing my eyes, I see Camilla’s face. The fact that I’m beginning to associate her with my life—that she’s what I envision when I have six seconds of quiet or how I automatically hope to see her in my bed—worries me a little. No, it worries me a lot.

I get why. She’s the full one-hundred percent. The problem? I’m not.