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“She’s not—”

“Bullshit.” She winked, then walked out the door in search of her friend.

Shaking my head, I headed downstairs. Haizley was right. I needed to check on my brother.

I found Gunner hitting the bag. As I got closer, I noticed the red stains on his knuckles.

“Hey, man, think you’ve about had enough.”

He ignored me and continued to beat at the bag. I wondered how long he’d been at it. The tape he had wound around his hands was stained bright red. Pieces hanging off, torn from the impact of pummeling the bag over and over.

Sweat dripped down his face, and I wondered if he even saw the bag, or if he saw the man he killed when he was fifteen.

“Hey, man, you want to take a break?”

“No.”

“How long you been down here?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did you sleep at all last night?” I asked, knowing the answer.

There was one thing we all knew about Gunner. He let himself get consumed by guilt. Whenever anything went wrong, if he was involved or not, whether or not it was his fault, he took on the guilt.

It was what made him a great SAA, but it also took a toll. He always looked back on what went wrong, analyzing the mistakes and how to fix them moving forward to ensure it never happened again.

“Did you?” he asked, stepping back from the bag. “She sleep in your room last night?”

“Yea.”

“You fuck her?” he asked, removing the tape from his hands.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I didn’t,” I replied, crossing my arms and trying to rein in my temper as I wondered where this line of questioning was going.

“She’s broken. Don’t fuck with her.”

Counting to ten before I answered, I focused on my brother, one of my best friends, staring him in the eye. “She’s not fucking broken and fuck you for thinking that.”

“I fucking failed her!” he yelled.

“You didn’t fail her, man. You didn’t know. When you did, you fucking killed the guy. You can’t stop what you don’t know. You don’t have to be the fucking martyr in every goddamn situation.”

I walked closer, knowing the way he was feeling meant he was likely to lash out at me. But I reminded myself he was hurting.

“She wouldn’t have fucked you in a goddamn bar bathroom like a whore if I had protected her!”

I paused for the smallest second, letting his words penetrate my brain. This motherfucker.

When my fist connected with his chin, his head snapped back and he stumbled. He may be a fucking giant, but the bigger they are, the harder they fucking fall.

Before he could recover, I hit him again. And again. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard the door to the gym open. But my focus was on the big son of a bitch who just called my woman, his fucking sister, a whore.

He didn’t defend himself. If I hadn’t been out of my mind with rage at the way he spoke about Melissa, I might have noticed. It wasn’t until Jingles pulled me off him, I realized he was lying on the floor.

“What the fuck is goin’ on down here?” Jingles asked, pulling me back away from Gunner.

Gunner rolled over and sat up. His elbows landed on his knees and he held his head in his hands. But he didn’t open his mouth. He didn’t defend himself with his fists or his words.