Prologue
Shane
I didn’t ask for much in life. All I wanted was stability, security, and peace. Fucking peace. But if there was one thing I’d learned throughout the years, it was that it was rare for anything to go my way. And this shitty hand I was being dealt was just further proof of that.
A car accident. Surgery needed on my spine. The end of my military career. All because some asshole decided to pass another car without checking to make sure there was no oncoming traffic. He just swerved over into my lane like he was the only mother fucker on the road. I yanked my wheel to the right in an attempt to avoid him, but he clipped the back end of my truck and sent me tumbling down the side of the road into the small creek. I’d been lucky to not have drowned.
The officer said if it’d been a head-on collision, I probably wouldn’t have survived. The driver had been going well over the speed limit. The impact would’ve been detrimental to my life.
But was this worth surviving? Was my new outcome somehow better? Because I sure as fuck didn’t think so.
I didn’t care much about living to begin with. Life had been difficult from the moment I was born. My dad walked out before I was born. My mom attempted to be a mother for the first two years of my life before her love for the bottle won against her love for me. My grandmother took me in, and then she passed away when I was five from choking on a porkchop, of all fucking things.
The state took me after that, and that had been pure fucking hell. Robbed me of a normal life. Took away my childhood. Destroyed the joy I found in most things.
The military had been my escape. My freedom. My security. My stability.
My fucking peace.
And now, I was losing that. Sure, I could go to San Antonio and plead my case to try to keep my career, but I already knew what the answer would be. I was fucked. I was getting booted. I’d survived wars. Special Ops missions. Had hidden my mental instability for years. And all of that boiled down to this. A fucking injury sustained from a civilian.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Vernon,” the military doctor said as he frowned at his computer screen, where images from my MRI were glaring back at us. “But there’s no way around it. You need surgery to repair your spine so your nerves are no longer being pinched. You’ll deal with pain there for the rest of your life though, I’m afraid, and more surgeries may be needed in the future.”
I gritted my teeth. What the fuck was I supposed to say to that? Was I supposed to beg for another outcome? For him to lie on my chart so I could continue to serve in the military? I couldn’t fake that my legs weren’t going numb and it hurt to stand for long periods of time. Couldn’t fake that my back hurt so goddamn much, I wanted to punch something.
There was no goddamn way out of this.
“My military career is over.” It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway, sympathy bleeding onto his expression. But I didn’t want his sympathy. What I wanted was a different fucking outcome. But I wasn’t getting that either. Good things didn’t happen to men like me.
Once again, I was getting the shit end of the fucking stick. I should’ve been used to it, but I wasn’t. Did anyone truly get used to the constant fuck-ups, bad news, and tragic endings?
“It’s over, Shane,” he said, using my first name this time. “I am very, very sorry.”
I shook my head and eased off the bed. “Will someone call me with a surgery date and time?”
He nodded. “Of course.” He handed me my check-out slip. “Don’t worry about setting up a follow-up appointment. One will be made after your surgery. Have a good day, Shane.”
A sarcastic retort rested on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it back, instead nodding my head. “You, too, doc,” I muttered, then headed out of the tiny room and into the hallway, where nurses were bustling about and patients’ voices drifted to me from the small waiting room just beyond the triage area.
Biting back a sigh, I headed for the front of the doctor’s office so I could get the fuck out of there. Every step was agony, but I didn’t let it show on my face. I would deal. I would survive. And when my career officially ended, I would just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope for the goddamn best.
Even if the best always fucking evaded me.
Chapter 1
Shane
FIVE YEARS LATER
I adjusted my seating position to ease the tension on my lower back, then leaned over my client once more so I could put the finishing touches on their back tattoo—a simple dove carrying a rose. Zeppelin, my boss and the owner of Ink Rage, made his way over, an energy drink in his hand. He pursed his lips as he looked at the dove, clearly not a fan of it. He said doves were cliché and something everyone got.
I could say the same about skulls, which was one of Zep’s favorite things to do, but I also valued my sanity. And once Zeppelin got fired up, it was hard to get him to stop. He had to have the last word. How his husbands put up with him, I’d never know. He was a great boss, probably a good friend—I’d never let him close enough to find that out—and he was laid back as fuck, but that mouth of his was trouble.
“Looks good,” he told me. “I’m always impressed with your line work.”
Zeppelin had found me about to end my life four years ago. I’d had two back surgeries by then, my military career was over, and I was just fucking tired of putting on a front. Tired of living. He’d pulled me off the literal edge, slapped the fuck out of me, and dragged me to his shop. He’d forced food down my throat, got me hydrated, then put a pencil and a piece of paper in front of me and told me to get it out of my system.
He gave me the room above his shop to live in, gave me a job drawing designs for customers, then hooked me up with his therapist so I could work through all my problems in a healthy way. For weeks, he camped outside my door so I wouldn’t do something stupid, as he called it. He never took it to heart that I hardly ever talked to him. He just… got it.