Avenging Angel (Pounding Hearts 5)

’t you listen to our messages?” he asks, and the pain in his voice squeezes my heart.

Squeezes it with all the fucking guilt and shame I’m feeling.

“I tried to at first, but I couldn’t get myself to call anyone back. I was hurting so much that I couldn’t… deal with life outside my own little hell,” I answer. “I want to say I would have eventually, but it’s a lie. Bear, Chase, and Dale forced me to come today.”

“Why?”

“Because they gave me two options, grow up or be forced to,” I say.

He’s quiet for a moment before he points to where the scuffle was. “What’s that?”

“It looks like a phone,” I say, and I’m hoping it belongs to that fuckhead that ran away.

If it’s his, I can use it to get a little payback and get past all these fucking emotions. Because right now these fucking emotions are killing me. Guilt, shame, despair, and fucking blinding rage that some fucking douche canoe touched my girl are overwhelming me.

“I don’t know, Little Man, go grab it for me,” I say, giving him a small shove on the shoulder.

“Don’t,” is all that Casey says to me, and instantly I know I’ve fucked up again.

That was his nickname from Tommy and me. We called him Little Man all the time.

Fuck, I miss Tommy so fucking much right now because this was his bag, his part of our team. He knew how to handle people and shit.

We’d been teased more often than I can count about being practically married.

When Casey came around and his shit of a mother ran off on a never-ending bender, I helped raise the little guy. I bought fucking diapers. I bought him clothes and toys. Fuck, I was the one who went with Tommy to the fire department so they could show us how to properly adjust the car seats.

Casey slides off the bumper and heads for the phone to pick it up. His walk is so fucking similar to Tommy’s it makes my soul die a little in remorse.

I’m a fucking shit just like his mother. His dad dies and I leave him like his mom did when he was just a baby. This kid’s got more fucking balls than I do.

I fell into a bottle and he’s been trying to cope.

Fuck it. New steps forward from today. I don’t have time to fucking drink myself into a damn stupor if I want to help Casey, make Bree mine, and beat the shit out of that fucker that ran from me.

While Casey is walking back to me, I make a quick checklist of the things I need to do. Take care of Casey, knock Bree up, beat the shit out of the douchebag, and maybe murder the fucker who started me on this fucking downward spiral.

“Sup, Little Beast?” I ask Casey when he sits back down on the bumper.

“Little Beast?” he asks with a tilt of his head.

“Yup, only Beast would take down a dude twice his size and stand up for a chick in the face of certain death,” I say with a grin.

He’s deathly silent for a long time, just looking at me with those eyes of Tommy’s. So fucking quiet and intense that it freaks me out a little.

“I’m good with that,” he finally says then hands me his phone. “It’s hers.”

“How do you know?”

He snickers at me. “Press the button and you’ll see.”

Pushing the button, I look down at the screen and laugh. “Yeah, my dear Holmes, your sleuthing seems to be correct. Somehow I highly doubt that dickhead would have My Little Pony as his home screen.”

“Who’s Holmes?” Casey asks.

Fuck.

“I’ll have to explain it some other time. I think right now we need to take this into her and rescue her from Chase,” I say as I try to unlock the phone.