Page 3 of The Break Down

The guy who controls the chaos. Me? I live for the fucking breakdown.

That’s what I do.

That’s who I am.

So no, I can’t afford to muck it up. Not now.

Not when we’ve finally got eyes on us. Not when we’re this close to building something that could actually last.

But Finley?

She’s loud, brilliant, impossible.

And every time she walks into a room, I forget my game plan.

Every time she looks at me with those emerald eyes and all that red hair floating around her shoulders, shining bright like flames, I forget my bloody name.

She’s the kind of woman who makes you want to throw it all away just to hear her laugh.

And that?

That’s dangerous.

Because I’m already hanging on by a thread.

And she’s got scissors in her smile.

What I want to know is how the hell am I supposed to build a legacy when she’s walking around here, completely unattached, so close yet untouchable, wrecking my will to live?

Go on and tell me that if you’re so fucking smart.

CHAPTER ONE-FINLEY

“Fin? You in here?”

Carolina’s voice cuts through the early morning fog of my half-conscious brain like a buzz saw dipped in honey.

I jolt awake and nearly smack my skull on the upper bunk I’ve been crashing in all week.

My home sweet tin-can hell.

“Yeah,” I croak, voice gravelly from sleep and possibly emotional exhaustion.

I sit up slowly, moving like I’m eighty-five and one sneeze away from a hip replacement.

She’s standing there in the narrow doorway of the RV like a literal angel, holding out a travel cup filled with what I can only assume is the sweet, life-giving nectar of the gods.

Coffee.

I take it like a drowning woman handed a lifeline.

“The guys have a training session in twenty. You said you’d film it,” she reminds me, all sunshine and casual efficiency while I still feel like a troll dragged out from under a bridge.

“Mmm. Yeah, yeah. Let me shower and I’ll be right there,” I mumble, taking a heroic gulp that immediately scalds every taste bud off my tongue.

Worth it.

“Geez, Fin, that’s hot! Be careful,” she laughs, stepping in to start making my bed with the kind of cheerful competence that makes me want to cry or punch a wall. Maybe both.

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