Page 68 of Junkyard Dog

All ties had been severed.

He was ready.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alex groaned andopened one eye, lifting his phone close to his face as he hit the replay button. Satisfied with his song choice, he sank back into the sofa, ignoring his brothers as they stood over him in the small trailer.

“And how long has he been like this?” Ryan finally asked, lifting up the empty bottle of rye tucked under Alex’s arm and setting it on the kitchen table.

“Two nights.” Bo’s gravelly voice was clipped. “Change the fucking song already.”

He grunted, pushing himself upright and reaching beside him for the bottle of vodka he had stashed. He held it up, squinting to get a good view of his audience. “It’s not red. And it’s not wine. But it’s doing the same thing.” He twisted the cap off and tossed it across the trailer. “Won’t be needing that.”

As he brought the bottle to his lips, Ryan snatched it from his hand, sending half the vodka onto his chest. He jumped up, stumbling against Bo for a moment until he braced himself on the table. “What the hell?” he snarled, swaying on his feet before he slumped onto the bench.

Ryan turned his back, dumping the remaining vodka down the sink. “Bo, you can head back to the motel. Call a cab and take forty from my wallet.” He rifled around the sofa until he found another bottle with a few ounces left, pouring it down the drain and setting it neatly beside the others. “I’ll be spending the night here.”

Alex’s head snapped back as he fought to keep himself conscious, glaring at the bills Bo was slipping into his back pocket. “He took sixty,” he slurred, flinging one arm in Bo’s direction and bouncing it off the small storage cabinet. “Goddammit.”

Ryan’s arm slipped behind him, hefting him to his feet. “I’ll take the couch. One foot in front of the other, Lex.”

“Don’t call me that.” He closed one eye and zeroed in on his bed, tripping forward and gripping Ryan’s shoulder. “A mistake. Huge fucking mistake.” He fell onto his bed and rolled onto his back. “Home sounds so awesome right now.”

He flung his arm over his head and closed his eyes, shutting out the light and the quiet discussion Bo and Ryan were having steps away from him.

Huge fucking mistake.

*

Alex gripped hiscoffee mug, grunting in protest when Ryan attempted to open the kitchen curtains. “Not ready for that,” he muttered, turning his head from the searing rays of the sun until Ryan fixed the blinds.

Topping up his own cup, Ryan sat at the small table, his expression unreadable. “I’ve been speaking with Bo about your condition. He’ll be here shortly.”

“Bender.”

Ryan lifted a brow. “Excuse me?”

Downing the last of his coffee, he pushed his mug across the table and sat back, arms crossed. “Bo has a condition. I was on a bender.” He looked over at the neat row of bottles on the counter and his stomach lurched. “A good one, too.”

Glancing down at his watch, Ryan adjusted his position in the small dinette. “Bo suggested this was the result of an attachment to a local woman.” He reached across to the coffeepot and topped up both mugs. “Is it out of your system now?”

“Treated with a strong dose of booze and self-loathing,” he muttered, slouching down. “Yeah, she’s out of my system.”

Ryan continued to appraise him in the stoic way that drove Bo nuts, his brown and amber eyes unblinking as he waited for his victim to give something away. “So Bo embellished the seriousness of your attachment?”

Attachment.

The word sounded so clinical and impersonal, at odds with the intense craving that had coursed through him whenever she was near, the heated anticipation he had experienced when she would lick her lips and trail her fingers along his jaw, tangling them in his hair every time they kissed. It was a term that brought up images of favorite shirts and albums, not warm brown eyes that lit up when he made her laugh or slender fingers that tugged at shirts when she was nervous. It didn’t come anywhere close to describing the staggering fear that had pulsed through him when she’d called from the station a lifetime ago, or the flood of relief he’d experienced every time she texted him after a shift.

He wasn’t attached, and fuck anyone who thought he was.

Running his hand over his face, he shook his head in a futile attempt to clear his mind of the woman who tormented him day and night, drunk and sober. “Nope. Definitely no attachment. All ties are cut, and I’m totally ready for the hunt.”

“You aren’t in love with this woman then.”

The L-word hung in the air for a moment, Alex staring at his coffee while images of the woman in question flew through his head. “Almost. Dammit, Ryan. We need to go home.”

*

---