It was Friday morning, and Ryker and I sat in what was becoming our normal booth at the diner.

“So, you have a date with Grace tonight?” He leaned back and gave me a don’t-fuck-this-up look. “She’s Ana’s best friend, so don’t screw with her head, okay?”

I sipped my coffee. My date with Grace had been in the forefront of my mind all week. I’d avoided her since that day in the park because I had to wrap my head around the whole situation. She was fucking irresistible, but she was everything I had evaded my whole life.

When I was with her, my broken pieces were glued back together. I was still sharp and jagged and cracked, but somehow, she made me feel whole.

“I’m not planning on hurting her. It’s just dinner.”

Hannah arrived at the table with the coffee pot. She frowned at Ryker and turned to me. “Did he say date?” Her head tilted that way a girl’s does when she’s proving her point. The point being, she’d told me a few days ago that I wasn’t single. Did she see something I wasn’t aware of? Women were gifted with magical awareness, along with a bullshit detector and the ability to bust a set of balls with a word or two.

“No, just dinner with Grace and Blue.” I reached for the sugar packets and pulled two from the container. I didn’t usually like my coffee sweet, but ever since I’d drunk Grace’s doctored-up coffee that first night, I’d taken a liking to a splash of cream and a dose of sugar.

“Mmm hmm,” she hummed.

“What about you? How was the blind date?”

She shuddered from her shoulders to her toes. “He was a weirdo, and he got hands-on, if you know what I mean. I socked him in the face and then got out of there.”

“Right hook or left?”

She put the coffee pot on the table and lifted her right arm in a Rosie the Riveter pose. “I gave him the right. He deserved more than what my left could offer.”

“Thatta girl,” I answered. “A man shouldn’t take advantage of a woman.”

Ryker reached up and squeezed Hannah’s flexed muscle. “Or underestimate the power of her right hook.”

“You do any damage?” It would serve the asshole right if she blackened his eye.

“Uh, huh.” Her head bobbed like a yo-yo. “I bloodied his nose and bruised his pride.”

“Right on.” We slapped hands together in a high-five.

She topped off our coffee cups and walked away.

“Since when did you and Hannah become friends?” Ryker opened four packets of sugar and dumped them into his mug.

“It’s not like we’re friends, but I stopped to help her after Junior pulled me over that day I test-drove the Harley.” The memory of that day had yet to stop making me smile. The wind in my hair and Grace’s lips on mine had made that day one of the best since my return.

“Watch that one.” He turned to watch Hannah walk away. “She’s a handful.”

I could see that. She had an air about her that said she was three parts determination, and one part wit. “She’s not my handful. That’s all I care about.”

“Grace seems like a handful too. Not sure whether that’s good or bad.”

His slight against Grace rubbed me wrong. In my book, Grace was near perfect, but I said nothing because saying something would prove I liked the girl a little more than I was willing to admit.

“Grace isn’t my handful either.” There were a lot of handfuls of Grace that I’d like to make mine. A handful of her breasts. A handful of her curvy ass. Yep, I’d like Grace to be my handful, but that was another thing I wasn’t ’fessing up to.

“So, I called Henry and told him to continue.” Ryker waited, clearly curious to see my reaction. And who could blame him? I’d been all over the place with this subject, from we’ve got to find him to let him live his life. I was still mixed on the topic.

“What do you want me to say? Find him if that’s what you want. Just don’t be surprised if he’s let down when he meets us.”

“I don’t know where this whiplash behavior is coming from.” His jaw tightened and twitched. “You were insistent months ago, and now you’re not. What the hell, Silas?”

“My life is a jumbled mess right now. I’ve been kicked out of where I want to be and pushed back to a place I never wanted to go. Life is bending me over and asking me to spread my cheeks, so forgive me if I’m a bit twisted on the subject.”

“I get it. Life can be a bitch.” He sipped his coffee and looked outside like he was remembering all the times his life had turned to shit.

Talk about feeling like an asshole. My brother had done six years in prison for me. I’d do anything to give him back that time, and here I was busting his balls for wanting to find what was rightfully ours. He wanted to find our brother so we could be the family we were supposed to be.

“You know what?” I slapped my hands on the table in total resignation. “I’m sorry. I’m wallowing in my misery.”

People depended on me to be present, and I needed to snap out of it. My life was messy, but when hadn’t it been? Ryker may have given Ana the nickname Phoenix, but I too had risen from the ashes—at least a hundred times. All I knew was life always went on.

A change was coming. I wasn’t sure whether it was my departure from the Army, my move back to Fury, or finding Decker, but it was in the air around me. It crackled like a live wire inside me. That feeling of inevitability that something was happening, and all I could do was sit back and let it happen.

And to start that change, I smiled at Ryker and said, “I’m glad Henry is still on the job. He’s turned up more than we could have found ourselves. So, now I’ve got to go to Fort Carson to out-process. Right now I’m burning up leave, but if I go there soon, I can start my terminal leave and cash in my regular leave for pay. That could give us a sizable chunk to put away for future private-eye payments.”

Ryker leaned across the booth and punched me in the shoulder. “Yeah man, now you’re talking.” He sat back with a jokeresque smile. I’d never seen him so pleased.

“We better get that place in shape if he’s going to come and visit. He has no reference point for where we lived when he was little, and I’d like to make it nice in case he wants to come here and stay.”

Ryker nodded. “A little paint and elbow grease go a long way.” His whole demeanor had gone from dull to bright. Once we were on the same page, he lit up like a firecracker. “You should have seen Ana’s place when she moved in—awful.”

“She has a way with damaged goods.” My brother had been a prime example of how that woman could change a lump of coal to a diamond.

“Maybe she should work on the house above The Nest.”

Ryker tilted his head. “You know The Nest never referred to the garage, right? It was always the house. Mom named it because she wanted all of her chicks to have a nest to return to. People just assumed it was the garage because it’s where Dad did his work. And we were the War Birds.”

I thought on that for a moment. “You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”

“No, I remember one day coming home from school and asking her why Dad’s club had a sissy name like The Nest when the men had such awesome names like Raptor and Kite and Hawk like mine, and that’s what she told me.”

“You got the cool name. I got saddled with Rooster.”

“I don’t know, man—I’m the hawk, and you’re the cock. I don’t think you fared too poorly.”

He was right. Being called Rooster opened lots of opportunity for comedy and conversation. What guy didn’t want to talk about his cock, whether in the factual or figurative sense?

Ryker pulled a few bucks out of his wallet. “I’ve got to be back at the shop so Brick can pick up his bike.”

“Brick?” I couldn’t figure out what that was supposed to stand for. The guy was either as dense as the name implied or built like a wall. I was hoping the latter.

“Big motherfucker, but nice as can be.”

“I’m picking up Mexican food from Domingo’s over in Pine Creek. Ana says Grace loves it, and now that she’s not nursing, I thought I’d surprise her.”

It was obvious by the look on Ryker’s face that he knew I dug this girl, but to his credit, he didn’t bust my balls about it. “Keep it wrapped, bro, one in diapers at a time is enough.” He slid from the booth.

I gave him two thumbs up and said, “No glove, no love.”

I tossed a few more singles on the table for Hannah. She wasn’t my type, but she wasn’t looking for anything more than the rest of us. She just wanted to belong.