I felt jitters in my feet. This always happened when shit hit the fan. I wanted to take action. Bust some heads. Knock shit over. Or, fuck, the opposite. Go build something. Throw up walls and nail shit together, bolt stuff down. But none of that would make a fucking difference. My trial date was barreling toward me and I was chained to the train tracks.

All I could do was wait.

Samantha clutched my shirt in her little fists and sobbed. “Oh, Christos…”

Fuck, I couldn’t do shit to help her.

I tried to calm myself. If I didn’t, I was going to missile through the ceiling. This was killing me. I needed to think this through. I needed to help Samantha somehow.

What were my real options?

On the plus side, I had my grandpa. I even had my dad. No, fuck that. I wasn’t calling my dad. But my grandpa would make sure Samantha got moved into the house no matter what. He would make sure Samantha had a roof and ate three squares every day. At least the basics were covered. Samantha was safe physically.

That took a huge load off.

But what about mentally?

That’s what was worrying me, big time. I knew my grandpa would be supportive, but I couldn’t expect him to be Samantha’s personal grief counselor, not when her parents were trying to shove their bullshit down her throat. I imagined my grandpa wouldn’t want to butt his nose into their family business, especially without my input.

Problem was, Samantha desperately needed someone to butt in and tell her parents they were fucking lunatics. That’s where I came in.

I wanted to help her fight the inevitable battles that were coming just down the road on her journey to becoming an artist, the ones every artist faced, and the ones she faced against her parents.

How was I going to do that from a jail cell?

And what was Samantha going to do when her tuition bills came due? Throw it in and do what her parents wanted? I wouldn’t blame her if she did. Cast adrift like she was, who wouldn’t be scared shitless? Most people would grab the life preserver her parents were throwing out, no matter what strings were attached.

The idea of Samantha sinking her dreams while saving her skin like that broke my heart.

Worse, I was on the verge of bailing out right after her parents had kicked her heart to the curb.

What kind of a fucking prick did that make me? I tensed as revulsion broiled in my stomach. I suddenly realized I was becoming my mom. Running out when shit got hard, just like she’d done to my dad.

Fuck me.

I vaulted from the couch, tumbling Samantha into the cushions.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I growled through clenched teeth.

“What is it, Christos?” Samantha pleaded, tears streaming down her face.

“My life is fucked,” I said hoarsely, pulling on my hair with both fists, like if I ripped the top of my head off, all my frustration would blow out, releasing the pressure in my head. Too bad it didn’t work. My skull was still capped and I was ready to blow. “It’s always been fucked.”

She blinked at me, panic setting in. “I don’t understand?! What’s wrong?!” She stood up slowly and walked over to me tentatively, almost like I was dangerous.

I ground my jaw. I’m sure she was completely freaked. We’d gone from her parents losing their shit to me losing mine two minutes later. But she had no idea why. I had a brief moment to laugh at myself. I was going insane. How could I tell her the truth now? It would only make things worse.

“Please tell me, Christos,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

I could tell she was desperate and confused.

She didn’t want to lose me and I didn’t want to abandon her. But chances were good that’s how it would play out. I would be walking down a concrete hallway in days to spend years behind bars. What good would I be to Samantha then? Every time she came to visit me, she’d be thinking about how her mom was right, how I was a fuck-up. Because, when you got right down to it, that’s who went to jail.

Two-bit toughs.

Fuck-ups.

Like me.

I stood in Samantha’s living room with my head hanging between my shoulders. It may as well have been hanging from a noose based on how good I felt about myself at that moment.

She wrapped her arms carefully around me and hugged me tightly. “Whatever it is,” she begged, “I’ll understand. I can’t help you unless you tell me. We can get through anything if we do it together.”

I grit my teeth, holding in a laugh. That was the problem, wasn’t it? How together can you be with phone calls and inmate visits? You can’t. It’s a ghost of a relationship. You could wish the person on the outside well, but you literally couldn’t be there to catch them when they fell.

“Please, Christos,” she said in a trembling voice.

My heart was about to snap in half.

I wanted to bolt. I wanted to stay.

Fuck!!

“Agápi mou,” she said, holding her hand to my cheek, gazing up at me. “Tell me. Please.”

The look of love in her eyes was breaking my fucking heart. I was a fucking piece of shit for holding back on her. She’d given me everything and I wasn’t giving her anything.

“I’m here, agápi mou,” she said.

Man, the tables sure had turned.

I hissed a hard sigh as my heart calmed.

I’d held out on her long enough. It was grinding us both down. She deserved better. At the very least, she deserved to know the truth.

I ran a frustrated hand through my hair and said, “Remember last year, before we starting going out, I told you my life was a shit storm waiting to happen?”

“Yeah? I never understood that,” she said skeptically, as if it couldn’t possibly be true. “You have a grandfather who loves you, you live in an awesome house, and you have all that new work from Brandon. Your life and career is what I dream of having twenty years from now, if I’m lucky.”

I stifled a laugh.

The grass was always greener, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to spoil the fantasy for her. I was pretty sure every job had aspects that drove people nuts, but that wasn’t the bitter truth I needed to reveal to the love of my life right now.

I took a deep breath.

It was one thing to tell someone that dream jobs had thorns, but another when you had to tell your beloved you were a bad person. “I never told you why my life was about to become a shit storm.”

She gazed up at me courageously, ready for anything. I was in awe of her strength. Maybe I was the idiot, and telling her really would somehow fix things.

“I’ve been awaiting trial for the last several months,” I said. “I’ve been out on bail since the day I met you. There’s a good chance I’m going to end up in jail. Or prison.” I winced, ready for her to tell me what a fuck-up I was.

“For what?” she asked with zero judgement.

It was then that I realized the person judging me most harshly had always been myself. Looking into Samantha’s eyes, I saw only her belief in me. It gave me the courage to continue. “For aggravated assault and battery,” I answered.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means I punched a guy out,” I said, expecting the worst.

“How come you never said anything?” Her brows cinched together and she looked heartbroken.

“Because of the look on your face right now,” I muttered, sensing her acceptance had gone up in smoke a second ago.

“All you did was punch a guy out?” she asked skeptically, holding both my hands in hers.

I nodded. “One punch.”

“Did he die or something?”

“No,” I smiled.

She hugged me tightly. “Christos, it doesn’t matter. It sounds like it was nothing. You should’ve told me. I still love you. You have no idea how much I love you.”

The thing was, there was way more to my story than punching out one guy one time. “That’s because you don’t know me, Samantha,” I said quietly. “You don’t know about my past.”

“What past?”

Up to this point had been the warm-up. Now it was time for her to hear the cold, hard truth. “All the times I’ve been locked up. There have been many. I’m a convict, Samantha.”

She scoffed. “What, like a drug dealer or gangs or something?”

“No, not like that. But I’m a guy who’s been in jail enough times that it’s normal. I’m on a first-name basis with more criminals and corrections officers than I can count.”

“What have you been in jail for?”

“For racing and doing crazy shit on my motorcycle, some of which has caused other people to get seriously injured and in one case, killed.”

“Oh my god,” Samantha gasped, holding a hand in front of her mouth. “Wuh—what happened?” she stammered. “Did…did you, I don’t know, run him off the road or something?”

“No. But I may as well have. Guy tried to keep up with me on a canyon road, but he didn’t have the skills to follow. High-sided his bike right over a guard rail at sixty miles an hour. Tumbled down a rocky hillside. He was probably dead by the time he hit the bottom two-hundred feet below.”

Her face knotted with horror as she backed up a step and hugged her elbows against her chest.

Who wouldn’t be horrified? I know I had been. I couldn’t sleep for three days after the guy died.

“Oh, no,” Samantha said. “That’s…that’s awful, Christos.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It is.”

“But you didn’t cause the accident, right?”

I clutched my fists in front of me, squeezing the air in frustration. “You’re missing the point, Samantha. The thing is, I was watching the guy in my rearview for three miles. He was lagging farther and farther behind after every turn. He started trying to make up lost ground by coming into the corners too hot. All I would’ve had to do was slow my bike down, let him catch up, keep a pace he could safely manage. If I’d done that, we would’ve been toasting beers at the end of the day. But I didn’t. I had an ego about the whole thing. I wasn’t gonna let some hothead beat my shit, no fucking way.”