I should have busted Irosnside’s lip. No one fucks with my head like that and expects me not to react. I may have learned how to calm my temper over the years, but that didn’t mean that I was always in control of myself, not when someone gets in my face. Not when that same someone manipulates me.

And Aly.

Shit.

I’d left that damn room and her lying ass only to run right into that bastard grinning at me like he had leverage.

“You wanna talk favors now?” he’d asked and I didn’t bother to answer him. At least, not until he started in with the threats. “Ransom, I’m sure the media would be interested in you getting a lap dance, especially if I have video.”

The hallway was quieter than the main club and I stopped my retreat out of that God-forsaken place the second that motherfucker finished his threat. He wanted a reaction and I gave it to him.

I’m big so most people expect me to be slow. I’m not, and when I turned and got right in Ironside’s face, it wasn’t the grip I had around his neck that had that jackass’s eyes round and scared. It was how quickly I’d managed to get his feet off the floor and his back up against the wall.

“You fuck with me about this girl and now you threaten me?” I shook him once and that asshole’s head smacked against the wall. “You think I give a fuck about some tape of me getting a lap dance? Motherfucker, I’ve had people talking about me since I was a kid. You think this shit bothers me?” I’d dropped him down when two of his overgrown bouncers started toward us. “Relax, I’m leaving,” I’d told them but not before I tilted my head, getting right into Ironside’s face. “You fuck with me, I will make shit messy for you.” My anger was sharp, pumping adrenaline so thick I had to breathe through my mouth to keep myself in check. I don’t know why I stopped, why I turned and made that douchebag another promise. “You fuck with her and shit will get messier.”

I shouldn’t have cared what Irosnide did to Aly. It wasn’t my business, but something still had me watching her back, even now.

The next few days, the damn voice in my head was so loud I missed two tackles at practice and my father had definitely noticed. He kept after me during practice, then followed me around the locker room like I’d grown three heads.

“What the hell is going on with you?”

I hadn’t answered him and turned my phone off when he kept bombarding me with texts.My head was so full of stupid noise I couldn’t concentrate on my classes or even keep my thoughts organized enough to remember to eat or shower or answer people when they spoke to me. So, I stayed in my room with the voice screaming at me, laughing, making me feel like a general nut job. Still, that was better than memory. It was better than having to admit to myself that I hadn’t been really disappointed that it was Aly dancing for me. I was pissed, sure, surprised, absolutely, but when I thought about it days later, I wasn’t really mad.

Hurt like a son of a bitch, though and that did piss me off.

People lie to me all the time. Always have. Mark and Johnny lied for years about being roommates, which, even as a kid, I thought was stupid. Them together, as a couple, had always seemed natural and normal. No idea why they’d thought they needed to lie to me about it.

Girls always manipulated to get what they wanted from me. Teammates always told me what they thought I wanted to hear because I was bigger than them. Because they thought that my dad being our coach made a difference when they wanted to play. I was used to being lied to. But Aly never telling me that she was the dancer at Summerland’s stung a hell of a lot more than assholes wanting to impress my father.

Days away from her felt like months and that, too, pissed me off. I didn’t want to miss her. I didn’t want to be bothered that she’d lied to me. I didn’t want to hear that grating voice laughing at me about her. But I didn’t have a choice. It was what it was.

And I honestly hadn’t expected her to check out completely. I found out about it when I heard the dorm phone ring, and then Ronnie thundered up to my room to bang on my door.

“Man, your mom is on the phone and she sounds pissed.”

My phone had been off for two days, but Mom still had a way to get to me. I should have known Dad would go tattling on me. Another bang against my door and Ronnie sounded irritated, himself. “You hear me in there? Come talk to your mom before she decides to show up here and we all get bitched at.”

“I’m coming,” I told Ronnie, crawling out of my bed, not caring that I probably smelled and looked like I’d been on a bender.

I fucking wished.

The house was pretty empty for a Monday, with no one other than Ronnie and Mike in the front room blasting through what I suspected was a Halo marathon. They didn’t bother to look at me as I walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

Man, she was gonna yell at me so loud.

“Hello?” I asked, waiting for my mother’s angry, clipped tone.

“Baby, what happened?” she said and I relaxed, knowing that if she was calling me baby she was more worried than mad.

“Mom, I have a cold, that’s all. If Dad told you about the practice…”

“Ransom, I don’t care about practice or you missing sacks.” In the background of her call, I heard Koa crying, a loud, angry tantrum and someone’s voice who I didn’t recognize trying to sooth him. Mom closed a door and the crying was silenced. “What the hell is going on with Aly?”

The weird thing about anger is that it can shift so quickly, straight to fear, then it doesn’t really exist at all. You trump up the rage because you are hurt. I told myself that Aly wasn’t someone I cared about, but with my mother’s frantic tone, all the lies I’d convinced myself were true completely disintegrated.

“What do you mean? What happened?”

Mom’s breath was loud in the speaker and that sigh worried me more, had me fearing the worst. “Neither one of you show up for lunch yesterday and she was supposed to be here today at nine like normal, but then called me and said she couldn’t work here anymore. She quit, Ransom. No warning or anything, she just up and quit on us.”

That was impossible. She loved my family. She wouldn’t have just…but then how could I be sure? She’d lied to me, kept things from me, maybe that little admission of loving my family had been just something she said because she thought it would make me happy. Still, to just leave with no regard to what that would do to my little brother?

“That doesn’t…wait. She left you hanging?”

“Of course not. She had one of her friends from the diner come over. Nice girl, but I don’t know her.” Mom’s voice was hoarse and I could tell she was stopped up, as though the worry, possibly her upset had her weepy. “She had references, but that’s not the point. Koa is having a fit because Aly isn’t here.”

“Did you ask Leann if something was going on?”

“She doesn’t know either. She said Aly was running off this morning for an extra shift at the diner and wouldn’t answer Leann when she asked why she quit.” Mom paused and the slide of a deck chair against the patio stone echoed into the speaker. “You’re her friend. Did she say anything to you?”

Man, I didn’t want to get into this with my mother. Ever. She’d tell me I was being irresponsible. She’d tell me that I should have kept away from Aly. She was right, I should have stayed away, but then it wasn’t like I had a choice in who danced for me.

You shouldn’t have gone to that club.

For once, the voice was right. I shouldn’t have let Ironside get me alone in that room. Maybe if I’d just walked away then none of this would have happened.

“We aren’t friends, Mom, not that close, anyway.” I had to clear my throat, knowing my mother wouldn’t buy that lie. Aly was my friend. At least, that’s what I’d wanted at the beginning. Alone in my room, moping like a little punk, I’d realized that pretty quickly. She’d been my friend, just one that I couldn’t keep from touching. Still, my mom didn’t need to know that shit. “We don’t keep up with each other outside of the studio and the lake house.”

“But her audition is tomorrow.” She sounded worried, and that tone killed me. I hated when something stupid I did had her speaking to me with that upset bite in her voice. “You aren’t helping her?”

“Mom…”

“Ransom, what the hell is going on?”

“It’s not...” I couldn’t tell her about the dance at Summerland’s. It would get back to Leann and if it did, well, shit, I didn’t know what my cousin would do but I didn’t think she’d be happy that Aly was doing private dances for extra money. Then, I felt like an idiot, just realizing I might not have been the only person who saw her dance. Fuck, if anyone else…It shouldn’t matter to me. She was a liar. And no, she sure as hell wasn’t my friend. “Mom, it’s nothing. We just…there was a thing but it’s not…”

“Luka Ransom Riley-Hale I am nine months pregnant and your little brother is freaking out because Aly has disappeared.” She sounded winded, but so damn fierce I was glad not to be standing right in the path of her fury. “I don’t care what happened, but you need to fix it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“No, it’s very simple,” she said, her voice level again, but that calm only meant she’d moved beyond rage and right into livid. There would be no argument from me. I knew better. “If you did something, tell her you’re sorry. If she did something, tell her you forgive her. See? Simple.”

“Mom, what she did…”

“I don’t care what she did, son.” She’d opened the door and once again I heard my little brother crying. He had calmed, but hadn’t completely given up the fight. When she spoke again, Mom’s voice wasn’t angry, but still came out clipped. “Aly is a sweet girl and she loves Koa. She wouldn’t just leave for no damn reason at all. Whatever it is, please, just fix it and fix it soon.”

The line went dead and I held that phone in my hand, not knowing what I could do or why the hell it’d been left up to me to mend the fences broken by my stupidity. I did know one thing, for the first time in a long while, I didn’t blame myself.