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Shane should have been shivering, but the boiling hot rage bubbling under his skin was generating its own heat and he couldn’t feel the chill. He wanted to claw his insides out. Just carve out his guts like a pumpkin.

The sound Laney had made when he walked out on her, this quiet, tiny, broken sound he’d never heard anyone make before, was ringing in his ears.

He doubled over behind the dumpster and vomited.

He was totally and completely at a loss. A very stupid part of his brain was screaming at him to go back, knock Cary’s dick in the dirt, and do things to Laney that he really shouldn’t have been thinking about doing.

The rest of him was torn between worry and the kind of rage he didn’t know could be contained by a human body.

He’d believed Laney when she’d talked about her mother’s boyfriends and said nothing had ever happened. But he had no idea what to think about her relationship with Cary.

There was a violent, predatory edge to the way Cary moved in her presence, pumping out pheromones that literally screamed to every guy in the vicinity that she was his. He’d expected some kind of social filter. Embarrassment, maybe, over the possessiveness, or even just a sense of self-preservation in a room full of men that seemed like the type to happily dispose of a pedophile for sport. But Cary clearly wasn’t the kind to hold himself back in any way. Whatever anybody thought about it, they kept it to themselves. It didn’t help that – despite her tiny size – Laney looked about twenty-five in that getup. Nobody was thinking about protecting a kid, everybody was thinking about –

He vomited again.

Like a bitch in heat had played on a loop in his brain the whole evening. To keep himself from walking into Cary’s room and caving in his skull with a brick, he’d gripped the edge of the air mattress so hard it had begun to deflate. It wasn’t until he’d heard the lusty, exaggerated cries of Salina or Satira or whatever her name was on the other side of the wall that he finally slipped downstairs to talk to Laney about it.

Everyone had left except for the blonde referee wrapped around the toilet and, oddly, Jerry, who had passed out in the brown armchair with his leather jacket draped over him like a blanket.

Being in an enclosed space with Laney was dangerous. The smell of her was intoxicating, the feel of her was everywhere… He had barely survived that room.

Jerry had woken up and was pouring a shot of whiskey into a steaming cup of coffee when Shane had stormed out, relieved Cary hadn’t done what he’d been thinking but horrified that he clearly harmed his siblings in other ways. Jerry took one look at Shane and let out a low whistle.

“You need a fight, or a fuck, boy,” he’d said. “But you won’ be doin’ neither in this house. You take yourself for a walk. You hear me?”

And that was how he’d ended up at the bakery, emptying his guts in their trash.

He knew he was in deep shit. But he looked at the back door of the shop where for twenty-four weeks Dustin had saved his ass. Where Laney had shown up and given him food, a shower, and a chance.

Dustin was a good kid and deserved better than he’d got. Shane didn’t deserve him, and he definitely didn’t deserve Laney. He wasn’t sure anybody deserved Laney.

Maybe that’s the price we have to pay. We get Laney, so everything else we get is shit, just to make it fair.

Shane wanted to kiss her. The need had been chasing every other rational thought and action out of his brain all night like a damned Terrier. Every time a guy looked at her – which was every thirty seconds – it had ratcheted up even higher until he thought his heart might fail from the abnormally high blood pressure he’d been sporting for hours.

And then they’d been alone in the driveway, and he knew he wasn’t going to stop himself.

Maybe he’d summoned Cary, the toll to pay for what he wanted to do to Laney.

“Well,” said a high-pitched male voice, interrupting Shane’s thoughts. “Look who it is.”

He whirled around, and those three blonde twats were standing in the alleyway.

“Beat it, Pork Rind,” he spat. “I’m not in the mood.”

“What did you just call me?” he squeaked, taking an unsteady step towards him. His eyes were unfocused, and he looked bombed.

The other brother cracked his neck.

But it was the third one, The Leader, with his burning stare and the lips so pink they almost look girlish and his stupid, smug, self-assured face that pushed Shane over the edge.

He walked toward them so swiftly that they didn’t even have time to react before he snapped his elbow back and hurled every ounce of rage in his body into The Leader’s face, who crumpled to the ground in a heap and didn’t move.

Pork Rind let out a warbly yell and launched at him in slow motion, but Shane easily ducked it, clipping him under the jaw with an upper cut and knee-ing him in the gut as he doubled over. He dropped beside his brother with a groan.

But the other brother – who Shane now realized was sober – had used the momentary distraction to move on Shane and caught him in the jaw with a nasty-sounding crunch. Shane stumbled backward, head ringing, and the kid clipped him again, jabbing him right in the chest and winding him.

Shane struggled to regain his balance and took another hit to the face, fireworks exploding behind his right eye, before he finally found his footing. His hand snapped up and caught the fourth punch in mid-air, hurling the kid’s arm back at him like a shotput, his own forearm catching him in the nose as he stumbled sideways.

Shane grabbed the back of the kid’s jacket with his throbbing right hand and unloaded three swift blows into his ribs with the left. The kid was panting, doubled over with his hands on his knees, but he didn’t go down. Shane took another step towards him –

“Nah, man,” the kid wheezed. He looked up at him and raised his palms in surrender.

Shane’s fingers twitched, eager to lay one more on his stupid blonde face, but he willed his body to listen to his brain and walked stiffly away.

“You’ll be leaving Dustin alone now, yeah?” he threw over his shoulder before turning the corner.

He didn’t wait for an answer.

When he stumbled back to the house, Jerry was still there, intently watching an early morning show on the living room TV. They were talking about someone named Ellen DeGeneres who had apparently just come out.

Jerry’s eyes locked onto Shane’s jaw, which was swelling, and he got up with a grunt to look at him in the light. Jerry turned Shane’s head to the left.

“You chose fightin’, huh?” he said, tutting his tongue. “Good lookin’ kid like you, you shouldda picked fuckin’. It woulda hurt less.”

No, Shane thought miserably. It wouldn’t.