Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Tank himself was usually the one to wake me up from wherever he found me, and he’d pour me into a cab. The Goliath of a man always paid the cabbie up front since I never seemed to have cash by the end of the night, but he had never accepted my offer of repayment, not even in the form of letting him be the first one to fuck me the next time I walked through his club’s door, which was usually the very next night.
As the pain in my head increased, I unconsciously rubbed the scar that ran along the right side of my scalp. My hair hid the raised flesh well enough, but it wasn’t unusual for one of my anonymous fuck buddies to ask me about it when they had their fingers twisted in my hair as they used my body. If I was still sober enough, I’d come up with some ridiculous response like I’d fallen off a riding lawnmower as a kid and the blades had sheared off part of my skull or that some lady had caught her husband fucking me in their bed and she’d stabbed me with one of her knitting needles.
Telling them the truth wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun, and since fun had disappeared from my life a long time ago, their looks of pity or listening to their words of disbelief always put a smile on my face. Well, a metaphorical one.
I stood on shaky legs and reached for the two aspirin sitting on my nightstand along with a glass of cold water.
“Asshole,” I mumbled before swallowing the pills.
The bucket of ice water had been a new addition to the One hundred and one ways to wake my irresponsible prick of a brother list, but the rest of the morning would be the same.
A breakfast deliberately designed so I’d want to hurl all over again, two hours at the gym, target practice in the basement of my brother’s fledgling security company, sparring with one of the men who worked for him, and then dragging myself home to drown myself under a hot shower as the bruises began to form all over my body where my sparring partner had gotten in a few excessively forceful hits.
I was onto the game, though.
Sully’s plan.
My brother figured by working my ass off all day, I’d be too tired to go out. If I’d been a normal guy, I would have gone to some sports bar for a beer like I always told Sully I was, but I’d lost normal a long time ago. So even though Sully knew his plan wasn’t working, at least he didn’t know that the place I was frequenting was anything but an actual sports bar. The truth about where I did go and what I did at night was one of the few things I still had control over.
I managed to stumble to the bathroom and stepped into the shower even before the water was hot. It took a while to peel my now even tighter pants off, so by the time I had gotten myself and my bed cleaned up, it’d been nearly an hour since my brother had come upstairs to yell at me. A quick look at my watch showed it was well after lunchtime. Why the hell had Sully let me sleep so long? Was he finally figuring out that I wanted nothing to do with the daily routine that was supposed to “get me back on track”?
The harsh sound of dishes clattering told me I was in for a verbal reaming.
As I made my way to the kitchen, I couldn’t help but let my eyes stray to each room and hallway. The entire house was pretty much frozen in time. Our father had been gone for over a year, but everything remained the same, as if he would walk through the front door any minute or we’d hear his booming voice rattle through the entire house every Sunday morning as he ordered us to get out of bed so we could haul ass to church because it was “God’s Day.”
From the moment we’d learned of our father’s death, Sully and I hadn’t changed a thing in the house. My older brother had stood up and taken charge as he always had, and I’d done what I always did.
Nothing.
“Get your ass in here and eat your lunch!” Sully yelled.
God, the man had the hearing of a bat. I felt like a slug as I made my way into the kitchen.
My brother’s back was to me as he washed dishes. Despite the progression of technology since our father had been a kid, Dad had wholeheartedly been dead set against using any of it. Which meant no dishwasher. Hell, my dad had never even owned a cell phone.