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“Holy shit, I cannot wait to fuck Christy when I get home.”

I looked up from stuffing a shirt into my backpack to glance at Greg Dumass—affectionately, albeit obviously, nicknamed Dumbass by the guys in our troop—as he held his head in his hands and groaned.

For ten weeks, we’d had to listen to him talk about his girlfriend, Christy. They’d been together for four years, since their first year in high school, and I was pretty sure he had all intentions of marrying her as soon as he was able to.

He had quickly become my friend when I arrived at the basic training facility ten weeks ago.

He was my first friend, followed by Justin “Rids” Ridley and Matt Tomlinson.

We had formed a solid group of buddies, cheering each other on during the grueling weeks of combat training and the infuriating, motivating needling from our supervisors.

We held each other up and pushed each other along when we felt like failing.

If it hadn’t been for the support we’d found in our little group, I wasn’t entirely sure we would’ve gotten through those long hours of what had, in the moment, felt like torture, and now we were getting ready to say goodbye.

I was looking forward to seeing Ricky, and I was really looking forward to seeing my sisters. But I was going to miss these guys.

However, I wasn’t going to miss everyone.

“Christy,” a mocking voice said from two bunks over. “Your girlfriend must really like limp, micro-dicked pansy boys to be with a little bitch like you, huh, Dumbass?”

Sid Sprague sat up to toss a wad of paper—a used tissue maybe—at Greg, his cackling laugh rising above the chatter from the rest of the guys.

“At least I have a dick,” Greg fired back, grabbing the first thing he could reach—a pillow—and chucking it at Sid’s face. “Still don’t know how you got in here with that hairy fuckin’ pussy of yours.”

Matt giggled from the bunk over Greg’s. “Oh, so that’s what’s been stinking up the fuckin’ place. Gotta wash that thing once in a while, Sprague. You smell like my uncle’s fish market.”

Sid snorted. “I guess you’d know what rotten puss smells like, huh? I mean, sharing a bed with your mom and all.”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” Matt yelled back, instantly on the attack.

Sid’s face split in a shit-eating grin. “Ooh, touchy subject, huh? Did Mommy take little Matty’s virginity? She’s been lonely, hasn’t— "

Matt jumped off his bunk and reached for the collar of Sid’s white undershirt. He pulled him down, and the two of them fought on the cold beige tiled floor, punching and kicking and grunting through a slew of incoherent obscenities.

Sid knew Matt was sensitive about his mother.

She’d raised him and his three sisters on her own ever since his dad had passed away in a car accident six years ago.

But Sid knew a lot of things. He had found what made each of us weak over the last ten weeks, and he used it against us, laughing all the way.

Well, all of us except me.

Sid couldn’t find my weak spot, and maybe that was because I didn’t have one—my father had made sure of that. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried.

No, I wasn’t going to miss Sid Sprague. Not one bit.

“All right, guys, come on,” Justin groaned, sighing as he walked across the aisle from his bed. “Break this shit up.”

He leaned against my bunk’s metal frame and nonchalantly looked at his nails.

“You excited to go home, Tailor?” he asked over the sound of Matt’s and Sid’s grunts on the floor one bunk over.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug, grabbing the last shirt from off my bed and stuffing it into the backpack.

My nonchalance was forced. The guys didn’t know about my home life.

They didn’t know about my parents or the hell I’d been living in since before I could remember.

At first, I’d chalked it up to it being none of their business, but after ten weeks of them sharing every insignificant detail of their lives with me, it had turned into a shamed secret, just as it’d been with my friends at home. Something to hide.

Justin breathed a low chuckle, still looking for invisible dirt under his nails. “Yeah,” he huffed, almost sardonically, “me too.”

I glanced up from securing the backpack closed.

Come to think of it, I didn’t think I knew all that much about Justin’s family.

He had a girlfriend, a few friends. I thought he might’ve mentioned a grandmother—or was it a grandfather?

But as far as parents or siblings were concerned, I couldn’t recall him ever mentioning them.

Now, I was questioning, and I wondered if he understood my situation without knowing what it even was.

A tiny flicker of something warm and desperate began to burn in my gut.

Hope maybe. The need for camaraderie, for someone to understand.

“You’re from Massachusetts, right?” he asked, meeting my eye.

I nodded, holding his gaze for a single beat before getting back to my minimal packing. “Yeah.”

“What town?”

“Revere,” I replied, bristling with every personal bit of information sent out for everyone to hear. As if knowing my hometown would be enough for my friends to understand my father’s tyrannical control over my life.

“Ah, nice,” Justin said, like he knew what he was talking about, but I knew better.

Justin was from Oregon and had never been to this side of the States before arriving in South Carolina ten weeks ago .

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sid said, scrambling out of Matt’s grasp long enough to stand up, panting. “Maxine over here is from Revere?”

I eyed him warily as he came to stand beside Justin, his shadow taking up residence over my dull brown blanket.

I didn’t trust Sid. Didn’t trust the way he needed to pick on anyone he found smaller than him, didn’t trust the way he beat even the bigger guys down until they were smaller too.

He was a bully, no different from my father, and I had no room in my life for men like him.

“The hell does it matter to you?” Matt spit, straightening his shirt.

“What? I’m not allowed to make conversation with you pissants?” Sid asked with a roll of his eyes. He turned to me and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know Revere. Been through there a lot actually.”

“Great,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the bed.

“Yeah, my uncle lives in Beverly.”

“Cool,” I murmured.

“You ever been to Beverly?”

I sighed, busying myself by tightening the straps on my pack. “Uh … yeah, probably. I don’t know.”

“I’ve been going up to see him a few times a year ever since I was a kid. He used to take us to Salem for Halloween—you ever been to Salem?”

It was the first time in ten weeks the guy had spoken civilly to any of us, and it was pissing me off. He could’ve done this sooner, could’ve tried sooner, but he hadn’t. He waited until our last day to show any kind of interest and extend an olive branch.

What an asshole .

I rolled my eyes up to level him with my annoyed glare.

“No, I’ve never been to Salem ,” I ground out between clenched teeth, putting more emphasis on the words than necessary, just to drive home the fact that I didn’t want to act buddy-buddy with a guy who’d spent two and a half months ensuring none of us would ever want to be friends with him.

“Seriously? Oh, man, you gotta get over there. It’s wild!”

Justin blew out an agitated breath. “You know, Sid, I’m not sure anyone actually gives a fuck, so why don’t you—"

“Listen up, maggots!”

Our drill sergeant entered the barracks, and we stood at attention, as we’d been taught.

“Your transports have just pulled up. Grab your shit and get out of here.”

“Yes, sir,” we answered in unison.

“At ease.”

He left the room, and as if the intrusion of his presence had broken a spell, the conversation died between us.

We moved in robotic formation—a habit that’d been hammered into our brains until it became second nature—closing our packs and buttoning our shirts.

A silent hive mind. I hardly saw what was in front of me as I moved through the motions until I marched out of that room, down the hall, and outside to the van waiting to take me to the airport.

This was what I’d learned to love about the military. This was what I had grown to thrive on .

The ability to act without thought or emotion getting in the way.

***

“Max!”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard such exuberance in my parents’ house before as I did then, walking through the door. I wasn’t sure it had ever been allowed—or if it even was now.

South Carolina wasn’t too far from Massachusetts, but after two layovers, my travel time had stretched overnight and into the next morning. I’d barely slept, and I was exhausted. But seeing the smiles on my sisters’ faces was enough to give me the extra boost to smile back.

“Hey,” I said, closing the door behind me as the cab drove away.

They clambered to their feet and ran to throw their arms around me. I dropped my bags to the floor and held them against me, breathing them in and reminding myself that this—and this alone—was why I’d come back and not found somewhere else to go.

“Oh my God, you have muscles!” Lucy screeched, her voice giddy as she squeezed a hand around my biceps.

I chuckled, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks. “Yeah, well, I—"

“That’s enough of this noise,” Dad said, making his presence known as he wandered from the hallway and toward the stairwell.

He barely glanced in my direction as he muttered, “You’re back already. ”

Grace and Lucy wilted, their excitement fading with cleared throats and steps backward. I glowered at my father, instantly pissed that the man couldn’t allow them two minutes of happiness before squashing it beneath his shoe.

“Time flies when you’re having fun, huh?” I grumbled back.

“You never asked if you could come back here.”

“I wasn’t aware I had to.”

My father met my eyes then. “Do you own this house?”

I lowered my brows in response.

“Of course you had to ask, Maxwell,” he replied, his tone chilled.

“Daddy,” Grace protested weakly, her eyes on the floor.