Rafe (Inked Brotherhood 5)

How can I stop thinking about him? How can I even pretend to want someone else? Resigned, I pull my cell out of my pocket and text Greg, canceling our meeting, and head back home.

Chapter Four

Rafe

It’s been a rough couple of days. Rougher than usual, that is. Can’t fucking sleep. Which means I don’t wanna talk. Don’t wanna think. Don’t wanna eat. Can barely function.

Skipped college, skipped training at the gym. I can’t focus, much less try to appear sociable. I’m even seriously considering talking about it to Zane who’s been hounding me. Problem is, I’m afraid of what will come out of my mouth and how much I’ll regret it afterward.

So I’m sitting in the office of Damage Control, pretending to study the computer screen. I try to force my mind on the numbers scrolling in front of me, but it’s no use. I run my hands through my hair, tug on it.

Awesome. Here I am, rocking in my corner, muttering to myself. At least I keep my damn breakdowns private, but hell, life keeps fucking me over, and there is a breaking point in everyone. Feels like I’m nearing mine.

My thoughts keep returning to Megan, the one girl I want and can’t have. To the anniversary that’s coming up, sending an ache in my bones. To the shop I’m about to lose.

Dammit, the shop. This morning I got another call from my uncle. He’s desperate to sell it, and he wants me to look at some papers, but is being vague about them. What the hell does he want from me?

Uncle Armin, my mother’s brother, the executor of my parents’ will. He also administers what was left to me by my parents until the day I turn twenty-one.

After my family was killed, I was one hot mess. I was fifteen at the time. Armin and his wife took me in, but could barely handle me. Still, Aunt Marnie believed I could survive, something I wasn’t so sure of at the time. Still healing from the physical wounds, not to mention the mental ones, I’d withdrawn into myself and lived on pills, booze and occasionally hard drugs I got on the street.

She got me talking one day, and I said my dream was to open a tattoo shop and have Zane work there. It would be a place to bring in artists who had no families to help them.

My aunt made it happen. She bought for me a tattoo shop that had gone bankrupt, and Damage Control was born. Together with Zane, we built Damage, piece by piece. Doing that saved me from going completely off the edge, helped me lay off the drugs and alcohol. Kept me alive.

Now she’s dead, after a long battle with cancer. She left the shop to her husband, and he wants to sell it. Without my part of the inheritance left to me by my parents, money I won’t see until I turn twenty-one, I can’t buy it from him.

Sell Damage Control.

I bang my fist on the desk and push my chair back with a screech. The fuck he will. I pace the cramped space, resist the urge to punch more walls. I rub the crusted blood on my knuckles.

Motherfucking Armin. A drinker and gambler, he ran out of money to feed his addiction, so he wants to sell me out to pay his debts. If Damage Control is sold...

No, can’t stand thinking about it. This is where Zane and Tyler work, where the Damage Boyz have found a home. Where I found a family. This shop is the one good thing that’s come out of the tragedy. The one good thing I’ve given the world in exchange for my worthless life. Giving, to erase what was taken from me. To make up for surviving when I should be dead.

I definitely need to talk to Zane and Tyler about this—and the Damage Boyz. After all, their jobs are on the line. It’s not only about me.

No, not about me. I know that, even if I feel as if I’m sinking through the floor. Fuck. I have to do it, and do it now, before I lose my nerve.

Grabbing my jacket, I stride to the office door and throw it open. A deep breath, and I square my shoulders, then walk over to where Tyler is standing behind the reception desk and prepare to tell him everything. That the shop will be sold. That he’ll have to look for another job. Another place to hang out.

He’s grinning at something. When he notices me, he lifts his cell and shows me a pic of his four-year-old son, face and hands covered in chocolate. At least I hope it’s chocolate.

“Hey man, I was gonna invite you to Jax’s birthday party…” His eyes narrow. “You okay?”

Fuck me. “Yeah, fine. I just…” The bad news I’m about to deliver freezes on my damn tongue. Shit.

“Did you wanna talk to me?”

“No. No, it’s nothing.”

“Man, listen.” Tyler puts down his cell. “Once when I had no hope left, you told me I shouldn’t give up, that I should let my friends help me. So let us help you now, buddy.”

“I’m fine.” Dammit. I turn around. “Where’s Zane?”

“Outside.”

“Thanks.” Without a backward glance at Tyler, I hurry out into the cold, hoping to catch Z-man on his cigarette break.