Chapter 1
Jaxon
Present day
Fuck. There it is again, that creeping certainty that someone is watching me, settling in the same way a storm announces itself before the first drop ever falls.
It’s in the air, in the subtle shift of it, like something unseen brushing the back of my neck and sinking deeper, until it’s no longer outside me but moving under my skin.
I keep my head down, my gaze fixed on the concrete between my boots, but my body betrays me anyway. Every muscle in my body is tightening as if it already knows there’s something there, someone still watching, still waiting for me to look up.
I haven’t figured out who it is. Maybe there’s no one at all.
Maybe this is just my mind turning on me again, pulling me back into something I barely clawed my way out of.
The thought settles heavy in my chest, cold and familiar in a way that makes it worse, because I know this feeling.
I remember what it’s like when reality starts to slip at the edges, when shadows don’t sit right, and every passing glance feels like it means more than it should.
So who’s to say this isn’t happening again?
Who’s to say I’m not already halfway gone, just lucid enough to notice it this time?
Are my nightmares seeping into my reality?
I give an involuntary shudder thinking about my nightmare last night.
I woke to a scream, only to figure out that it was me—sweat-drenched and tangled in my sheets.
At least I managed four hours of sleep this time.
I force myself to focus on the job in front of me, because that’s easier than letting my thoughts wander anywhere they don’t need to go.
After the Marines discharged me, I ended up in construction, which made sense at the time. Grunt work traded for a different kind of grind, the same long hours, the same strain on my body, just without the uniform to make it feel like it meant something.
I haul lumber, pour concrete, carry more than anyone else on the site.
Because one look at me is enough for people to decide what I’m built for, as if size alone means I don’t get tired, don’t want more, don’t need anything beyond the next paycheck and a place to crash.
Men who look like me aren’t supposed to want soft things; we’re supposed to endure, to keep our mouths shut, to be useful in the simplest, most physical way possible.
And the worst part is how easily that idea settles in, how it stops feeling like something other people decided and starts sounding like the truth, until I catch myself moving through the day on autopilot, already knowing how it will end before it’s even begun.
I don’t want this, not for the rest of my life, not as the only version of it I get, but wanting something else doesn’t seem to matter much when everyone who looks at me has already decided this is where I belong, as if that’s all I’m worth.
I’d get laughed off the site if anyone knew what I actually wanted out of life, if they had even the slightest idea of the things I keep buried deep enough that they never make it past my lips.
None of them knows I’m gay. None of them knows that I want to be on my knees, surrendering to another man.
It’s a secret I carried through five years in the Marines, locked down so tight it became second nature, until it stopped feeling like a secret at all and started feeling like part of the structure holding me together.
Trent knew. But Trent’s not here, and that version of my life might as well belong to someone else.
Out here, no one knows, and I intend to keep it that way, because even if most of them wouldn’t say anything to my face, even if my size buys me a certain kind of silence, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t feel it in everything else.
The looks that linger a second too long, the conversations that shift the moment I walk up, the quiet recalibration people make when they think they’ve figured you out.
I already stand out enough without giving them another reason to stare, so I keep my head down and my mouth shut, same as always.
It’s not like I spend time with them outside of work anyway. I’ve gotten good at the routine—brushing off invitations with the same handful of excuses, too tired, got things to take care of, need to get home—until eventually they stop asking, and the distance settles into something expected.
It’s easier like this, keeping everyone just far enough away that they never get a clear look at me, never close enough to see anything I’m not ready to have taken apart.
I check my surroundings again, slowly and carefully, letting my eyes move over the scene.
Stacks of lumber. Half-finished framing. A couple of guys hauling drywall across the second floor. Nobody out of place, nobody watching. Still, the feeling doesn’t go away.
It started right after the first fight I did almost eight months ago.
At first, I thought I was imagining it. Too many sleepless nights, too much stress.
My military training is not jiving with my new civilian life.
But it keeps happening—that same prickling feeling between my shoulders, like eyes on me when there shouldn’t be.
The fights aren’t helping. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with those assholes in the first place. But here we are. It’s what I get for trying to be a nice guy. One bad decision. That’s all it takes for your whole life to get dragged somewhere ugly.
The one time I decide to go out and have a drink, maybe find someone to take home, I end up tangled up with the wrong people.
The club wasn’t anything special. Not fancy, not a dump.
Just dark lights, cheap whiskey, and music loud enough to rattle your ribs.
I was leaving the restroom when I heard it.
A cry of pain. The music almost swallowed it, but I heard it anyway.
I followed the sound toward the back hallway near the employee exit and found a man standing over a woman.
Her face was red and blotchy, tears streaking down her cheeks.
There was already a bruise forming along one side of her face, dark against her skin.
Then he raised his hand again. I didn’t think.
I moved. I had him on his knees in seconds, his face smashed against the wall, one arm twisted behind his back hard enough to make him scream. Mistake number one.
Mistake number two came when he pulled a knife on me. I broke his wrist before I even realized what I was doing. One second, the blade was in his hand, the next, there was a crack loud enough to hear over the music, and he was on the floor, choking on his own screams.
And mistake number three? Turns out the guy wasn’t just some drunk asshole.
He was connected. Not low-level connected either.
The kind of connected that makes people disappear.
He’s high up in one of the main crime families, which means I didn’t just embarrass him that night.
I humiliated him. And men like that don’t forgive things like that.
I probably should just be grateful I’m still alive.
That’s what anyone looking in from the outside would say.
But some days, I’m not sure death wouldn’t be easier than this.
I have to fight every week. I don’t want this life anymore.
I don’t want blood in my mouth or bruises on my ribs or strangers screaming for me to hurt someone.
But every week, I still show up. Because I don’t have a choice.
There’s a lot of money in these fights. More money than I’ve ever seen in my life, but none of it belongs to me.
Every dollar goes straight to Manny fucking Deluga.
And the worst part is, I don’t even know when it ends.
There’s no date circled on a calendar. No number to hit.
No final fight. I have no clue when they’ll let me go, maybe they never will.
Which means losing isn’t an option. If I stop winning, I stop making them money.
And if I stop being useful, I already know exactly what happens to men like me.
I finish my shift at the construction site with my body aching and sweat dried into my shirt. I have just enough time to get home, shower, eat something, and make the drive to the warehouse.
Home. What a fucking joke. When I was in the military, I met Trent.
Boot camp first. Then, our first deployment together.
The attraction hit me so hard it almost made me sick.
It was instant. The kind of thing that made every look feel dangerous, every accidental touch feel like too much. Especially over there.
I spent almost eighteen months pretending I didn’t want him.
I played the role I was supposed to play.
Brother in arms, best friend, the guy always at his side.
I listened when he talked about girls. Laughed when I was supposed to laugh.
Acted like it didn’t tear me apart every time he mentioned taking some woman home when we got back stateside.
He only ever talked about women, so I figured I never had a chance in hell. Then everything changed. It was December. Cold enough that the air burned going into your lungs. Three of our guys got taken out by a roadside IED.
One second, we were talking in the Hummer. Our tires bumping along the dirt road. Next, there was fire, smoke, and screaming. I got lucky. A few cuts, a couple bruised ribs. Nothing serious enough to pull me from active duty.
Trent went crazy with worry that day. He was a wreck that night. He wasn’t with us when it happened. It took over twelve hours for word to get back to him about my condition.
I found him sitting outside alone in the dark, hands shaking so hard he could barely hold his cigarette.
When he looked at me, there was something broken in his face.
Then he told me he had been in love with me since the day we met.
And after almost losing me that morning, after spending hours thinking I might be dead, he couldn’t keep it inside anymore.
The thought of me dying before he ever got the chance to say it was what finally pushed him over the edge.
We were supposed to finish our service, come home, and finally start our lives together. That was the plan. We talked about it for hours whenever we could steal a little privacy. Late nights. Long drives. Quiet moments when everyone else was asleep.
We planned everything. Where we’d live. What kind of house we wanted.
Whether we’d stay close to a city or buy a quieter place where no one would bother us.
He talked about getting a dog. I told him he’d end up spoiling the thing rotten.
We talked about kids. He knew that it was my dream to have kids. Create the family I never had.
Sometimes he’d talk about the future like it was already real, like it was something solid we could reach out and touch if we just held on long enough.
And I believed him. God, I believed every fucking word.
Every promise he made to me. Every time he touched me like I was the only thing in the world he wanted.
I built my whole future around him without even realizing it.
Like a dumbass, I thought loving someone that much meant they’d stay.
Like with everything else in my fucking life, he didn’t.
The only things that truly stay are the memories and the pain.
The hurt that never goes away and the nightmares that plague me every fucking night.
Just the thought of my night terrors has a shiver going down my spine.
I can’t remember a night that I got real sleep.
At this point in my life, I really don’t know what’s keeping me here anymore.
I picture how easy it would be to end it all.
To go the same way so many other soldiers had gone.
Sometimes I sit with my gun in my hand for hours.
No one would miss me, really. I’d just be one more statistic, one more ex-soldier who could not take the pressure of civilian life.
But for some reason, no matter how many times I think about doing it, I just can’t pull the fucking trigger.
Does it make me a coward? I keep hoping that tomorrow it will be different.