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“You’ve got perfect timing,” he growled at me. “I almost had to jump in to drag your ass out of there. I need you inside. Uncle Quinton is losing it, and I need you to help me talk him down. I think you and I are the only people who can successfully do it. Rain is giving it a good try though, but he’s failing, and when Uncle Quint snaps, we are all going to be fucked. He’s going to fucking destroy everything. Get your ass in the house. We’re up next.”

Fuck.

I picked up the towel and buried my face in it. I didn’t scream, even though I really, really wanted to.

I didn’t need more shit to take on right now. Maybe I didn’t need more shit to take on for roughly the next six to eight months. I was officially taking myself off duty right after I cleaned up this latest mess, because my head was now filled with visions of Rain and Quinton coming to blows.

I wasn’t sure if there’d be a winner, but I was positive the house would end up destroyed afterwards.

Homeless was never a good look, but now we had all these damn boys to think about. They needed safe places to sleep at night. Hell, they just needed safe places to simplybe.

That got me up off my ass and wrapping a towel around myself.

My fucking life.

There was never a dull moment.

20

Iheard them before I saw them, and it wasn’t pleasant, to say the least.

My heart hurt so badly I figured you’d see the blood from the invisible wound all the way through my towel.

I looked down just to make sure there was nothing there. There wasn’t. Finally, something to be thankful for.

“You need to be calm, boy.”

“Fuck calm. And fuck you calling me a boy. I am not a boy.”

“You’re right, you’re a man. You’re also wrong because you’re always going to be my boy. Don’t pretend you don’t already know it. Respect me enough not to stand there and bullshit me right to my fuckin’ face.”

I picked up my pace and immediately faltered at Quinton’s response. His words were guttural and sounded as if they had been ripped from his very soul.

“My brother, my baby brother, whose entire existence had been hidden and stolen from me, wasraped.You tell me what inthe fuckI’m supposed to do with that.”

Oh no.

No, no,no.

The agony in Quinton’s voice was so raw, so real, that I felt pain slice across my chest as if his words had been wielded like a knife.

Anguish scorched through me, leaving the bitter taste of ash in my mouth.

“Boy,” Rain rumbled in a gravelly voice, a voice that sent chills down my spine. “If you don’t think I don’t understand even a little bit about what you’re going through right now, then you’ve lost your fucking mind. You’re forgettin’ my baby girl was kidnapped by my own fucking sister and stolen right out from under my nose. I had to watch as my fucking wife and father died from broken hearts. Then I had to live years by myself searching for her—searching for her and all the while worrying about what she was going through while I couldn’t find her. Then to find her covered in scars because she had fucking years of abuse that I did nothing to stop, couldn’t do anything to stop because I wasn’t fuckingthere. You best open your goddamn eyes and pay attention to who the fuckyou’retalking to you.”

My chest seized.

Pushing out air just so I could suck in more was one of the most painful things I’d ever had to do, all the while keeping the tears at bay.

Tyson had been right in thinking I could calm Quinton down. I could in almost every scenario that probably even included this one, but that didn’t mean I should involve myself in this conversation. This was one I very much needed to stay far, far away from.

Neither Rain nor Quinton would appreciate my being around to so much as hear this conversation. If I actually stepped foot into Quinton’s office, they might both lose it.

They were men, strong men. They weren’t uncomfortable sharing their emotions with me on their own terms.

This, though, was different

I was smart enough to know when I wasn’t needed or wanted. This was very much one of those times.