I wake to the sound of my phone ringing—and a warm body snuggled up against my chest.

Gwen stretches and shoves her butt against my crotch. Even in sleep, she’s a temptress I can’t live without. More than that, she’s a woman I want by my side for the rest of my life. Everything about her calls to me in a way that I can’t necessarily dictate into words—and the thought alone brings to mind the studies I’ve seen online that circle the question: why do you love a person?

Always, the interviewee’s answer came back to attributes: she’s gorgeous, his smile, their laugh. Or maybe, even, he understands me or she makes me happy.

That’s how I feel about Gwen. It’s so much harder to give definition to the wonderment I feel when we grin at each other or the sense of completion that envelops me when she says my name like I’m the only one in the world who can give her what she needs.

Those studies had the right of it. Tonight, I knew with every fiber of my being that Gwen fits me in every way—but if I had to give bullet-point reasons why, I’d have only one answer. She just does.

I slip my hand over her curves and momentarily lose myself in the memories of this evening.

It’s pretty hard to believe that this moment is my reality. After years of hoping that she’d look at me as something more than the guy from her Accounting class, I finally got my taste of her. Hell, I got a lot more than I bargained for.

I think back to the moment when I realized I’d been balls deep in my slice of blueberry pie. With any other woman, no doubt I would have found myself getting the hell out of dodge as quickly as possible.

With Gwen, I couldn’t help but laugh.

And then promptly get her dirty, too.

I’d enjoyed the shower we’d taken together. The way she’d begged for me to take her against the shower wall, with her leg looped around my hips as I powered into her.

My phone starts up again, and with a heavy sigh, I roll over to snatch it off the bedside table. If it’s Beaumont or Harrison calling to ask how the “banging” went, they’re about to become dead men walking.

Voice rusty with sleep, I mutter, “Hunt.”

“Bro.”

Fuck me. Pushing the covers off, I cast a glance at Gwen sleeping peacefully in my bed. I’ve dreamt of this moment over and over again, and having Dave call me in the middle of the night is not how I envisioned it ending. Nope, I was totally hoping for another round before she left for work in the morning. Maybe some breakfast—pancakes, eggs, the whole nine yards.

With one hand, I grab my sweats off the floor and pull them up my legs. I don’t speak until I’ve shut the door behind me. “What do you want, Dave?”

“I’m in trouble, bro. Big fucking trouble.”

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Taking the stairs down to the kitchen, I flip the lights and sit my ass down on one of my stools. “How much money we talkin’?”

“More than I’ve got handy,” he mutters. “I need you here, man. I need my family.”

I won’t lie, not even to myself. I want to believe my brother. I want to believe that he actually needs me for something more than a Benjamin Franklin whenever it suits him. Call it the little brother syndrome; hell if I know.

“It’s late,” I say instead because even if I want to feel needed, I don’t trust Dave. I haven’t trusted him in years. “I’ve got practice in the morning and if I show up looking like shit, that’s my ass on the line.”

I don’t mention the fact that if I bomb on the ice that means Dave’s money supplier could end up traded or, worse, jobless. I figure he can read between the—

“You really going to put fucking hockey above your own blood, bro?” I hear him spit, literally, just before he adds, “I knew I couldn’t rely on you. My own fucking flesh and blood. What’d they do to you in foster care, bro? Did they teach you to turn your back on the only person who’s watched out for you all these years?”

My hands ball into fists. I know where he’s going with this—it’s where he always goes. It’s the one thing he’s got over my head and he knows it.

Feeling as though I might crack, I tip my face to the ceiling and count to five. Swallow down my helpless rage and then bite out, “Where are you?”

“Brockton.”

I let out a merciless laugh. Of course. Because where else would my brother be than at an illegal fighting ring?

“You want directions, bro?” Dave asks in a clear attempt to push me to the edge and watch me teeter to my death.

“Fuck you.”

I hear his chuckle just before I hang up the phone. It’s time like these when I wish we still used old telephone receivers. The kind you could hang up with a semblance of violence. If I do that shit now, I’ll be shattering my screen and be even more pissed than I already am.

I force myself to breathe, slowly allowing my curled fist to unfurl. The thought of driving to Brockton right now has me wanting to throw something. But as always, the guilt is there waiting, just waiting, for me to remember that without Dave I’m completely alone.

Are you, though?

My focus drifts to Gwen. She may have a fucked-up mother, from what she told me earlier and from what I recall from her dad, but the truth of my existence would horrify her. Tempting as it is to climb those stairs and tell her everything, Dave isn’t her problem—he’s exclusively mine, and there’s not a chance in hell that I want him tainting her with his negativity.

I tap my phone against my leg, then push off the stool to yank open one of the kitchen drawers.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m on the highway heading south to Brockton. I left a note on top of Gwen’s phone, letting her know I’d hit the gym for my regular, early morning workout, and that our night together meant everything to me.

I’m banking on the fact she won’t see it until later in the morning so the note will ring true. Mentioning an emergency of any kind would invite questions, and that’s just not what I need right now. Gwen’s a whole lot better off without getting on Dave’s radar. I can only imagine what sort of shit he’d pull, and just the thought alone has my blood boiling.

By the time I pull off at the Brockton exit, I’m torn between wanting to nail Dave in the face at my first opportunity and worrying that this time he really screwed up. Sometimes, there’s only so much money can do.

I flick on my high beams as I pull onto a back road. Dave’s been on this track for a while—but he’s been coming to the same place for years now and I know exactly where to direct my truck. When he first started, I’d been in middle school and still filled with hope that my big brother wanted to watch out for me.

I squirreled away money for months, doing odd and end jobs until I could afford the cab ride down here from Southie. That night, I watched from the blacked-out bleachers as my brother pummeled opponent after opponent.

He’d been dead-ass drunk on his feet, and it’s a miracle no one popped him in such a way that his neck didn’t snap. I’d sat there idolizing Dave like an idiot, but it wasn’t until he’d stepped off the makeshift stage and traded in his winnings for a baggie of coke that I realized Dave only looked out for himself.

Jail or not, criminal or not, Dave Hunt was a bastard.

I pull in next to a Ford-150, my eyes already locked onto the warehouse before me. Without looking away, I pop open the center console for my checkbook—because I sure as hell don’t have plans to carry cash into a place like that. I don’t make a point of carrying thousands of dollars on me. When I left the house, I also brought my gun. I hesitate over it now.

The guys Dave fights aren’t exactly Boston’s classiest men. What they want is money. What Dave wants is money. And money I’ll give him.

I slam the center console shut and climb out of my truck.

As I close the distance to the warehouse’s side door—the one the fighters enter through—I decide no more. If Dave fucks up after this? He’s on his own. I refuse to be strung along by my dick of a brother for the rest of my life just because our mother gave birth to us both.

My teammates—guys like Beaumont and Harrison and Henri Bordeaux—those men are my brothers. Sometimes, blood literally means shit.

Since this is the side entrance, there’s no bouncer at the door collecting covers. I try the handle, half-expecting it to be locked, and then pull it wide. Duck my head as I enter the warehouse.

Come to a dead halt when I realize that there isn’t any music playing or announcers talking smack. I swing my gaze to the left and then to the right but come up blank. The warehouse is empty.

Fingers itching for the gun I left in my truck, I focus on keeping my body loose. Nothing Dave does is ever an accident, and if he called me here . . . well, the worst thing I can do is whirl around and beat feet back to the door.

Time to go for casual, laid-back Marshall Hunt.

Despite the tension tightening my muscles, I call out, “You guys jacking off back there or something?”

There’s no response, not that I expected there to be.

I stroll toward the corded-off fighting ring. “People always say that hockey is a gay-ass sport, but wrestling? Boxing? You guys are way worse. I bet you all get hard-ons the minute you nail someone’s ass to the ground.”

Growing up, I had no one to watch over me. Southie was brutal back then—brutal and deadly. I learned to watch my own six, just as I learned how to use a gun at the age of eleven. It was partly due to survival . . . and a little bit because I refused to be the only kid who didn’t know how to protect himself.

Mark James taught me differently. He convinced me that street hockey would get me nowhere, and each time I jammed up the sewers and cracked the fire hydrants open in the middle of winter, I was striking up another point toward landing my ass in jail.

“Take these, kid,” he’d muttered when I first met him, throwing me a pair of hockey gloves. “I’m running practice for the high schoolers today. Get your ass there and I might let you collect their towels afterward.”

No matter how many years it’s been since my Southie days, it’s hard to forget the need for survival. I pull it on now like a cloak, waiting for Dave to pop up, preparing for the worst.

Seconds bleed into the next, minutes seeping together, until I accept the fact that Dave ghosted.

At least my wallet won’t be going on a diet tonight.

I move back toward the side entrance, full-on ready to get back to Gwen, and yank on the door.

It doesn’t budge.

The fuckers locked it from the outside and there’s not even a deadbolt to flick open.

Dammit.

“Stay fucking calm,” I order myself, trying to pull on my memory for another exit. It’s been years since I took the cab here, and I don’t know the warehouse well enough to get myself out.

I twist around, searching the dark space for a red, blinking exit sign. It occurs to me that operators of an illegal fighting ring wouldn’t be concerned with proper safety precautions.

When I find Dave, I’m going to pummel his face in so hard, he’s not going to be able to eat right for months.

Adrenaline hammers at me as I slip away from the side door. Even if I have to break a window, I’m getting the hell out of here and heading home to Gwen.

One glance upward proves that plan is total crap—the warehouse does have windows. Problem is, they’re a good twenty feet up. I’m big, but not that big.

I turn the corner toward what I think might be the front of the building. My hands coast along the wall, keeping myself oriented in the pitch-black room.

I hear the running of footsteps before I see their shadowed silhouettes on the opposite wall.

It’s not enough time, no matter how skilled I am or fast.

One second I’m bringing my fists up, ready to glance off a blow, and in the next I’m on the ground thanks to an unseen trip wire.