Page 2 of Creed (Rock Hard Mountain Men #3)

Brody sat at the head of the table like he was the father at a cliché thanksgiving dinner scene. Setting his cutlery aside, he sat in silence for a moment with a pensive look on his face before speaking up. “In case anyone hasn’t noticed... there’s a giant hole in the middle of our property.”

Magnus snorted as he held back an ugly laugh. “No kidding. I’m lucky to have any of my garden left, and my plans for a greenhouse are definitely fucked. What about it.”

“Well...” Lacing his fingers together, Brody propped his chin on top of his hands. “We’re going to need to fix it. Which is going to cost money. A lot more money than we had planned.”

As everyone else cringed and muttered under their breath, I quickly ran a few numbers through my head.

When we’d bought this property and made our construction plans, we’d obviously saved extra for contingencies, but we hadn’t planned for a literal cave-in.

I didn’t know exactly how much it would take to fix such a thing, but I could estimate a few numbers, and it didn’t look good.

We’d probably be able to fix that house-sized hole in the ground, but it wouldn’t leave us money for anything else.

“I’ve called my boss at the logging company,” Brody continued, his breakfast now completely forgotten. “He’s allowed me to pick up a few more shifts, but that’s not going to cut it. So, any ideas?”

Magnus leaned back in his chair until the wood creaked from the strain of his weight. “I could enter a few more cage fights. It’s good money, but it’s not reliable enough for us to count on.”

“What about offering training?” Trent suggested.

Magnus dropped back onto all four legs of his chair with a heavy thud. “What do you mean?”

For such a large man, Trent looked surprisingly boyish when he blushed.

“Well, when I was watching your last fight, I heard a lot of people talking about how skilled you were in the ring, and how they’d give anything to know your secret.

I bet there’d be plenty of people willing to pay you to train them.

I know firsthand how valuable a good trainer can be.

When I first started competitive weightlifting, I went through three different trainers before I found a decent one, and let me tell you, they weren’t cheap. ”

I knew about Magnus’s moonlighting work as a cage fighter, but I was surprised to hear that Trent had attended his fights. The man didn’t look like the type who would enjoy violence, even the recreational kind. It just went to show how much I didn’t know about Magnus or Brody’s partners.

Trent’s suggestion was a good idea. I could picture it. Out of the three of us, Magnus had always been the most personable, but he also didn’t take any bullshit. It could be a good job for him if he could get enough clientele, and from the sounds of it, he already had some interested people.

“Also, I’ve been thinking,” Trent continued, tapping his fork against his plate in a way that set my teeth on edge.

“For my antique business, I do most of my sales online these days. I’d still keep the store for posterity’s sake, maybe open it a couple days a week, but there’s no reason for me to keep the apartment above the shop.

I basically live here now, anyway, so I might as well rent it out to earn some more income. ”

So, he was an antique dealer and a competitive weightlifter.

Those seemed like an odd combination, and I wondered how he’d gotten involved with Magnus in the first place.

I hadn’t heard much about how they met. While I was still serving overseas, it hadn’t mattered.

Magnus’s blooming relationship had just been a story from a life that was happening on the other side of the world.

Now, it was going to be a part of my everyday life, and I was curious. Last I knew, Magnus still tripped over himself every time he tried to talk to someone that he found attractive, and I’d half expected him to stay single forever.

Magnus placed a hand on Trent’s leg, squeezing his thigh in a gesture that was so intimate I had to look away.

“Hey, Trent, we aren’t asking you for money. We bought this property. Taking care of it is our responsibility.”

Trent was already shaking his head, though he never tried to remove Magnus’s hand. “No. I basically live here already, and if I rent my apartment, then your home really will become mine as well. That means, I also need to take care of it.”

“I agree,” Ellis said suddenly. “He shrank in his seat a bit when all eyes turned toward him but kept talking anyway. “Brody, you... you said I could stay with you, but I can’t just be a freeloader. I’m not sure what I can offer, but now that I’ve got my identity back, I can at least start looking for a part-time job in town. ”

Got his identity back?

There was a story there that I wasn’t aware of. I remembered Brody saying something about Ellis suffering amnesia not long ago.

Maybe it had to do with that?

I’d have to ask later.

The conversation turned toward everyone’s plans for the day.

Trent was going to drive into town to check on his shop and start getting his apartment ready to rent, and Ellis asked to go along with him so he could start looking for work.

Meanwhile, Brody insisted that he and Magnus needed to work on the hole in the middle of the property.

We didn’t have the means to fix it, yet, but the collapsed ground at least needed to be shored up to ensure nothing else collapsed.

No one made any suggestions about what I should do. At first, I felt insulted, like I’d been purposely excluded from the conversation. Then, however, I realized I wouldn’t have known what to say if I was part of the conversation, and I felt relieved that I’d been left out of it.

I’d dumped all my savings into buying this property, just like Magnus and Brody had.

I was just as committed as them, but what else could I do?

Now that I’d retired from the military, what job could I do to earn money?

Infiltrating enemy territory wasn’t exactly a transferable skill to civilian life.

Brody and Magnus both had interests outside of their military career that they’d managed to take advantage of, but I wasn’t the same.

My priority had always been survival. I could ensure that every member of my unit got to their destination safely, but survival wasn’t a job.

There was no way to make money just by “surviving”.

After breakfast—which I’d barely touched—I offered to help Brody and Magnus.

I knew nothing of construction. That was Brody’s area of expertise.

Even Magnus, with his interest in plants, understood at least a little about how the soil worked.

I, on the other hand, was completely out of my depth, and had to rely on the others for instruction. I could, at least, follow instructions.

Brody directed Magnus and I to remove as much rubble as possible from the pit in the middle of the property while he inspected the old foundation holding up the tunnel. We would need to build new supports, eventually, but before that, we would first need to clear out a space to work.

With some old timber plants, Magnus and I cobbled together a makeshift ramp we could use to carry the broken earth and stone out of the pit. Many of the pieces were too big for one person to lift, so we had to work together.

I kept silent through most of it, mulling over my thoughts as my body worked on autopilot. Magnus and Brody were used to this and didn’t question my silence. In fact, Magnus looked more shocked when I finally spoke up.

“So, Mag,” I said suddenly after the third load of debris we carried up the ramp. “How did you and Trent meet? You never told me much about that.”

I may not have any idea what to do with myself, but if I was going to be living with these two new strangers, then I should at least learn more about them.

Magnus’s surprise over my unexpected question was quickly replaced by excitement as he gushed about his newfound partner.

Apparently, they’d met because of the body that Magnus discovered, which seemed like a morbid start to a relationship, but I just nodded along as he told me about their first meeting.

I knew nothing about healthy relationships.

The longest romantic relationship I’d ever maintained only lasted a few weeks.

So long as Magnus was happy, then I saw no reason to complain.

Magnus and Brody were happy here. That was probably the part I struggled with the most. The two of them had settled down easily, building their homes, and almost immediately finding luck in their love lives.

It was like happiness had just been handed to them on a silver platter, and I had no idea how they did it.

Could I be happy here as well?

When retiring and buying a property together had just been a dream, I thought I could be happy with such a life. Now that it was my reality, however, I wasn’t sure.

The day passed by in a whirlwind of hard work.

Trent and Ellis returned just before sundown, and we all piled around the dinner table for another shared meal.

Ignoring the fact that we were five burly men, it was like something straight out of a sitcom or a Hallmark movie, where the family all sits down together at the dinner table to discuss their day.

Everyone was smiling and joking. They asked Ellis if he’d had any luck applying for jobs and inquired about the process it would take for Trent to rent his apartment.

It should have been a happy scene.

So, why did it set my teeth on edge?

Maybe there was something wrong with me.

I barely said two words during dinner, thankful for my already stoic personality. No one questioned my silence, and other than a few sidelong glances from Brody and Magnus, I was mostly left alone as if I was nothing more than another part of the decoration.