“Because a bet’s a bet. Why not finish it?”

“Hmm. Who said I wasn’t going to?” I say although my head is screaming over my dead body. Sharing Quinlan and the goddamn perfection she is between the sheets and the kind I’m finding out she is beyond the bed—patient, feisty, naughty, thoughtful—is out of the question.

So now of course I’m between a rock and a hard place when the only place I want to be back between is Quinlan’s thighs. Do I go back on my word for the first and only time in my life with Vince, balk on our bet? Or do I just follow through, stay true to the wager, and hate myself for doing it?

But what about being true to myself?

I swear to fucking God women are like alcohol. They smell great, they taste delicious, and right or wrong, they kill you slowly, one way or another. But shit, death by the slow burn Quinlan’s lit within me sounds like a pretty fucking perfect way to go.

“Well, let’s see, I don’t hear you inviting me into the mix to finish the bet off.” I groan as Vince’s words pull me from my thoughts, from the vision floating in my head of Quinlan lying on my bed, legs spread, eyes inviting, and her lips begging me to fuck her. Jesus if the image was any hotter it would be a goddamn porno.

“Could it be that Quin means more to you than a romp in bed? That for once you’re seeing the one thing I’ve been trying to get you to see for the past … umm … forever? Might you be falling for her, Hawke? Might she actually think you’re worth it?”

“No.” Yes. He’s fucking with my head in this conversation, and I’m not too thrilled about it. We’re in uncomfortable territory for me. That place I don’t delve except for in my own mind. The dark inadequacies I refuse to speak about must be rather transparent since Vince is calling me on the carpet over them.

My pride, my ego, everything I hold on to tightly to prove that I am not the weakling my dad was. I can’t fall for anyone, because the one thing I know … is that love makes you weak.

I hate the bullshit pile of emotions I feel right now. That contradiction between what I’ve always believed and that weird stirring wanting to see Quinlan again. Gauging my days on if she’s gonna come around. Fuck, this is fucked.

“What are you, Vince? My goddamn shrink?” I’m a little irritated and a lot annoyed. I don’t like having my hand forced, especially not in this arena … and he knows that so why is he trying to use a bulldozer to push home his point?

“Nope. Just looking forward to you getting that tat.”

“Not gonna happen. I keep my goddamn word—every fucking time—so don’t you go start questioning my integrity now.” Or what Q is beginning to mean to me. Fuck. Why did I agree to this bullshit bet?

“Oh so this thing with Quin is really all just about the bet then? Seems to me like things might have changed on your end.”

“No. Yes. Sure. You’ll get your proof at the party, then you can get the fuck out of my business, got it?” I shove up out of my chair, pissed and done with this conversation.

“Stubborn asshole, you’re missing the point!” he yells to my back as I walk out of the kitchen only to find Hunter sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. His presence stops me dead in my tracks, but it’s the smug look on his face, the twisting of his lips, and the amusement in his eyes that I need to worry about. They tell me that he heard way too much of our conversation. Fuck.

“So Quin was just a game, huh? One of your stupid band bets?” He doesn’t hide his thrill over the opportunity that just presented itself, and I hate myself for giving it to him. “I’m sure she’d love to hear about that.”

“Nah. Vince was just fucking with me,” I lie to my twin, knowing if I let on how much I don’t want that to happen, it’ll only spur him on to tell her. My mind starts rifling back over the rest of our conversation trying to figure out just how much Hunter heard. Goddamn it. The front door wasn’t Giz after all, it was Hunter and that means he might have heard everything.

“Yeah, right. Did you forget we have that twin thing going on?”

“Not very smart to bite the hand that feeds you, right, Hunt?” Vince says, stepping up behind me.

And fuck yes he says what I want to but sometimes it’s a helluva lot easier to just shut the hell up than to make Hunter go on one of his little tirades and fuck up my life some more. Sometimes it takes more of a man to turn the other cheek and appear to be a pussy than it does to plow my fist in his face and tell him I’m done.

But fuck if that time’s not coming sooner rather than later. A man can handle shit dealt to him over and over, swallow his pride and bite his tongue, but involve that man’s woman, and it’s on.

And I just called her my woman. FUCK! Can anything be more of a mess right now than my head? I scrub my hands over my face as Hunter finally answers Vince.

“Not biting anything,” he muses, smirk still in place. “Just making an observation is all.”

We all stare at one another, the animosity vibrating between the three of us and just once I want to see my brother and be happy. Just once I don’t want to question his appearance and try to figure out what he wants from me, how he’s trying to stab the knife in my back while reaching his hand out with the other.

When I step closer, I can see red in the whites of his eyes, notice the delayed response of his tracking, and bite back the reprimand on my tongue. “You high?” He stares at me like he’s offended I asked. Is he fucking serious? “Answer me,” I demand through gritted teeth.

“So a party, huh?” he says, ignoring my question and ratcheting up the tension. “That ought to be fun.”

“You using, Hunter?” I ask again, the straw slowly breaking. My hands fist at my sides and I’m a millisecond from grabbing the front of his shirt and throwing him the fuck out of the house.

“Naw, man. Just drunk and wanting to party a bit myself, but I seem to be outta cash. Can you help a brother out?”

“Fucking unbelievable.” Vince snorts behind me.

“Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be right now, Vinny?” Hunter sneers at him.

“Nope. He lives here. You don’t,” I say to cut off his power play as well as his drunk tough-guy routine. “How’d you get here, Hunt?” I ask, emotion roiling inside me as I see his keys on the floor by his feet.

“Can’t a guy just visit his brother when he wants?” He laughs and it grates on every nerve I have right down to the very last one.

“You drove, didn’t you?” It seems we’re on the repeat-each-question-twice routine here and my patience is done.

He just throws his head back and laughs. “What’s so fucking funny, Hunter? A DUI?” Vince growls as my brother keeps laughing.

“It’s okay,” he says, holding a hand to his gut. “My brother will take the rap for me.”

And I snap. Every pent-up emotion I’ve had over the past few years, every ounce of hatred, resentment, guilt, balls up in my clenched fist and is the driving force behind it as it connects with my brother’s face in an unsatisfying crunch.

He goes down for the count with my first hit. His drunk ass is sprawled on the stairs and I’m so angry, so pumped full of hatred that I want him to wake the fuck back up so that I can keep going. My body is vibrating and my mind is a constant slide show of the years and all of the shit I’ve let him hold over me.

“It’s about fucking time,” Vince murmurs.

I rock back and forth on my heels before looking over my shoulder to find him wide-eyed and staring at me, asking me with the look if I’m all right with what I just did. And fuck yes, I am, and hell no, I’m not, all in the same damn breath. “I gotta get out of here,” I tell him, suddenly restless, unsettled that I’ve just gone against everything I’ve ever told myself I couldn’t do.

But fuck does it feel good.

“I’ll take care of him,” he says. And I know he will; it’s just that I feel guilty for making him. Fuck that, Hawke. Fuck the guilt. It’s not on you.

Well, shit. Guess there’s not going to be any calm before the next storm. I look at my brother and sigh.

I hit the road, drive for what feels like hours. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m looking to find, but as long as I keep moving, my past can’t catch up to me.

At least it’s a good idea in theory because I can’t outrun this shit. The stuff I want to and the stuff I don’t want to.

I end up the one place I used to go to be alone, to think, and as I stare at the Hollywood sign from my seat on the grass at the Griffith Park Observatory, I love the feeling that I’m this little person in this big world. The idea comforts me some. The notion that on the grand scale of things my problems are minute. Someone out there has it way worse.

And no one expects a rock star to be here so with my hat pulled low on my head, I’m able to disappear.

I stare down below to the city where as a little boy, scared and traumatized, I wondered how all of the dreams inside my head could ever see the light of day when I felt like I had the responsibility of the world on my small shoulders. But I did. And I made it.

So why do I feel like I’m still not enough? For my brother? To make my mother better? For Quinlan to even want me beyond the killer sex we have? For the fans who scream and sing my lyrics like they live them when they have no fucking clue the meaning behind those words and the damage within from them.

I scrub my hands over my face, needing a drink, craving an ice-cream cone, and wanting the feeling of Quinlan’s arms wrapped around me as she silently sits there and just is with me.