Page 10 of EverGreene
“I hope so.”
“Don’t worry. If we can’t find him, I’m sure he won’t be showing his face again somewhere else.”
“Very funny.”
“Do you need me to come over?”
“No. I think I’ll be okay.”
“Wonderful. I’m going to get back to Damon now. Keep your chin up. If the three of us put our heads together, we’ll figure this out.”
“I hope so.”
“Just remember that if he has a brother, you’d better hook a girl up.”
I stood up from the table after ending the call and walked over to the aquarium housing Vincent van Slow, the painted turtle I rescued as a baby from the middle of a roadway when I pulled over to take a picture of a rainbow that had formed over a field of gladiolus. I’d meant to find a nice pond to release him, but after two hours of venting to my adopted son, I came to the conclusion he knew too much. Besides, given that he had just been chilling in the middle of the roadway, I figured his decision-making skills were lacking.
Vincent peered up at me from his shell, scooting himself off his rock into the water and swimming over to the side of the aquarium to greet me. I don’t care what anyone else said, turtles were just as good as any dog, except when it came to defending a house from intruders. They kind of sucked at that.
A shelf underneath the stand, which held up the aquarium, housed a container of pellets. I grabbed the container and held it up, causing Vincent to paddle his little reptile heart out.
“Here you go, Vinny boy,” I said, shaking a handful of pellets into the water and closing the lid as he went to town.
I walked over to the picture window in the living room,overlooking the roadway, almost expecting to see the man I’d met at Katy’s party staring back at me from the road, his red eyes beckoning me toward him. Even after everything I’d been through, after everything I’d run away from to rebuild my life, I would run to the man without hesitation. Because as much as I was unsettled, I’d also never been more turned on.
Chapter 4
Loche
“Loche! Jesus, man. This is only practice!” Nix, my sparring partner and roommate, publicly known as Pain, exclaimed as I landed a right hook straight into his glove, barely missing his jaw. If it had been anyone else on our team but him taking that hit, they would have been knocked flat on their ass. But not Nix. Nix was built to withstand nuclear war. I often joked that his alter ego should be called Timex instead of Pain because of the beatings he could withstand, immediately feeling like an asshole when he had no idea what that name was in reference to.
I shook my head, coming back down to the present as the demons from my past retreated back to the shadows that provided them asylum.
My name is Loche Greene.
I’m twenty-eight years old.
My father, Bradford Greene, is dead.
My mom is safe.
He can’t hurt us anymore.
“Welcome back, man.” Nix stared into my eyes. At somepoint, he’d removed his gloves and perched his hands on my bare shoulders.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know where I went there for a minute.”
“Yeah, you do. But you’re back now. And you came back a lot sooner than you used to.”
I nodded, and Nix let go of my shoulders. “Nice block,” I complimented him as I stripped off my own gloves and moved to leave the ring while the other two members of Fallen Soldiers, Cole and Malachi, otherwise known as Justice and Sacrifice, emerged from the locker room, ready to do battle with each other in anticipation of our upcoming match.
“Yeah, well, I had no choice but to block that Mack truck you had barreling toward me. It was either that or you were going to splatter me like a bug against the windshield.” He lowered his voice so as not to attract the attention of Malachi and Cole, who hadn’t seen my slip-up. “Look, if you need to talk to someone, you know you can talk to me, right? I’m not great with mushy shit, so don’t expect me to hug you or anything, but I can listen if you need to vent. Sometimes venting to someone is all the therapy you need. You know, outside of actual therapy, that is. Which it would seem you also desperately need.”
“I am in therapy. Since the age of fifteen, actually,” I answered him, lifting up the rope to exit the mat as Cole and Malachi entered the ring, each sizing up the other on the canvas.
“Jerking it to old episodes of the Dr. Ruth podcast doesn’t count as therapy.”
“Keep running your mouth, and I just may finish what I started back there.”
