“No kidding,” Tyler said quietly, keeping his words low enough for me and me only to hear. “What were you thinking, coming in here and starting trouble in my place? Trying to get the cops all over my ass?”

I shrugged as best I could. Tyler would have no clue why I’d come to Lilly’s rescue, and I wasn’t about to tell him in front of her. He was the only one who knew about Lilly, and how much I’d clung to her letters. How much I’d missed her. “That he had it coming.”

Preppy Prick hadn’t lost consciousness, but it would be a while until he had the energy to bully women in clubs, so I would have to be happy with that. Tyler unclipped my keys off my belt loop. “You can have these back tomorrow morning. Take a cab home, or call someone to pick you up.”

I had no one I wanted to call, and he knew it.

So I said nothing. Just grinned.

“Come on, man,” Tyler said in my ear. “Don’t make me ban you like every other bar on this street.”

I spit blood on Preppy Prick, who struggled to sit up at my feet. A bouncer finally got him upright, and he ushered him to the door. “Go ahead. See if I give a damn.”

Tyler pushed me toward the opposite door. “Look, I fought alongside you. Don’t make me push you away now, when we’re both trying to get back to living.”

I yanked free and walked to the door on my own, before the bouncer decided to kick my ass out. I was good at this part. The leaving. It was the staying that I sucked at.

That, and not being an asshole.

Pushing out into the stagnant night air, I sucked in a deep breath. It cleared my head a little bit, but not enough. I could still see the images of my time as a sniper, keeping my guys safe from ISIS while they ran toward us, screaming shit I couldn’t understand, with AK-47s in their hands. I didn’t have PTSD, or even panic attacks.

But when I got in fights, it triggered things.

Things better left forgotten.

My therapist said this was normal behavior for soldiers freshly back from the war zone. That it took time to get back to feeling like a civilian after years of fighting for your life. And for others’ lives, too. Sometimes I wondered if she lied to make guys like me feel better. Most people did.

The door opened behind me almost immediately, while a siren blared in the distance. I didn’t bother to turn around. It would be Tyler, checking to see if I’d hit the road yet. And making sure I was okay. He’d been friends with me for a while, so he knew when I drank this heavily, I wasn’t always making the best choices.

On my worst days, he stood by my side, and I was there for him on his. Which was why I knew he hadn’t really meant his dire warning. Dropping my hands, I muttered, “I’m fine. Go back inside. I’ll call a cab in a minute.”

“I wanted to thank you,” a soft, feminine voice said, sending shivers throughout my whole body, and I knew Lilly Hastings stood behind me. “For coming over like that. And I’m sorry if it got you in trouble.”

“It’s nothing. Anything to help a lady in need,” I muttered. It might have been seven years since she climbed into my lap and kissed me, but my body remembered how good it had felt. How right. She meant a lot to me at one time, but we weren’t meant to be. “Bye.”

“Jackson…”

Well, shit.

Mixed emotions broke out within me. Happiness that she remembered me. Pain, because nothing had changed, and I still wasn’t the man for her. And a little bit of fear, because if she told my mother I was home, I’d have to deal with her shit, and I had enough of my own to deal with right now.

Tensing at the way she made me feel—all shaky and hot and uneasy, even though she was my stepsister—I flexed my jaw. “So you knew?”

“Of course I knew.”

She stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell her soft floral scent. She smelled like that sweet escape I wanted her to give me earlier, and everything about that was wrong. She deserved better. Much better. I hadn’t rejected her for this long—suffered for this long—to swoop back into her life and fuck it all up again.

“Stay back. You don’t want to get too close to me right now. Trust me.”

The warring sensations she brought out in me jumbled my mind. Confused me. She made me feel things I didn’t want to feel. Things I shouldn’t feel.

Not for her.

She had unsettled me back when we were kids, too. But something about her had always shaken me off my axis. And when she kissed me by the pool…

She’d been right. I’d liked it a lot.

“I’m not scared.” She stepped closer. “You’re back?”

“For now.” I continued facing away from her. “Hey, it was nice seeing you. But don’t tell my mother, or more important, your father, that I’m home.”

She laughed. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

I heard her take another step. “Were you planning on telling us at all?”

“Nope. Last time I was at your place, your dad told me to leave and never come back.” I shrugged. “So I didn’t.”

“Yeah. I know. I remember that night very clearly,” she said softly.

I shoved my hands into my pockets, ignoring her comment, because I did, too. “Go back inside. You never saw me.”

“I won’t tell them.” She sighed. “Do you need a ride home?”

Hell, yes. “No. Run along. I’m not fit company for you right now, little girl.”

I used the old nickname I’d given her on purpose.

She’d hated it back then.

Chest heaving, I stayed still, not daring to turn around and look at her. Not daring to see how much prettier she appeared in the waning moonlight, because damn it, I bet she did. And the fact that I cared was wrong. I waited to hear the door shut behind her. Waited for her to take my advice and run along. Because if she didn’t…

God help us both.

Chapter 2

Lilly

The man standing in front of me, looking as if he was about to self-combust, screamed of danger. Hot, powerful, sexy danger. When I first saw him standing there, breathing heavily from anger and the ass-kicking he’d given Derek, I wanted nothing more than to go over to him, take his hand, and bring him home with me. I wanted him to be my first act of rebellion after a lifetime of doing everything right.

The timing had seemed perfect.

Just recently, I’d decided to take charge of my life. I never had a chance to do so before. Never had a chance to dissent, minus the one night where I had kissed Jackson. Now was my time to do what I wanted to do, for once in my life. Seeing the man you’d been all but ordered to marry getting it on with someone else, when he never so much as tried to kiss you, had that effect on a person.

Not that I actually planned on marrying Derek, or like I cared, but still. It made me realize I’d wasted my life away in a world of “Yes, Daddy” and “Right away, Daddy” for so long that I’d never really gotten to live. And it was time to change that.

Starting tonight.

So when some dude came rushing to my rescue, fists and sarcastic replies flying, I’d felt…alive. Like, really alive. And when I’d realized why the man caught my eye in the first place…the feeling hadn’t entirely gone away.

Even though he was Jackson Worthington.

My stepbrother.

I almost hadn’t recognized him, though. Seven years was a long time to go without seeing someone. Back then, I hated my father for moving on and remarrying so quickly after my mother’s death, and I hated that he chose Nancy, a woman I had never met before. But everything changed when I met him. Jackson.