“Fuck this,” Corrado muttered.
Pushing up from the ground, he snatched up the gun to disassemble it the way he’d been taught. Nathan cocked his head, asking, “What in the fuck are you doing?”
“Not this. Not today.”
“That’s not your choice. Get back down there, and do it again.”
Corrado laughed bitterly. “No.”
“No?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Corrado, I don’t know what stick got stuck up your ass this past week, but—”
Fuck that noise.
Corrado tossed the gun to the ground, uncaring that it was unsafe and stupid. He looked Nathan right in the face, so there was no mistaking what he said next before he got off that roof, and said, “Sometimes, people just need a goddamn break.”
Right.
That’s what he was going to tell himself.
It wasn’t entirely a lie, either. From the point he came to this place, he had not gotten one chance to breathe. Not one day to do what he wanted. Hell, he still hadn’t even spoken to his three brothers back home, or his parents. He’d been in Nevada for months, but had yet to see the lights of Vegas.
He didn’t see anything but this place.
The League.
That was it.
And the fucking desert around it.
Screw that shit.
It was made slightly more bearable when Alessio was around because that took Corrado’s mind off other things. Or rather, he looked forward to when the day and training was done, and he could head to the privacy of Alessio’s rooms where no one bothered him. It was just him, and Les ... nothing else mattered.
Except Alessio wasn’t here.
He was fucking tired.
And today was not the day for this shit.
It just wasn’t.
“Where are you going?” Nathan shouted at his back.
Corrado didn’t even answer.
He just flipped his middle finger over his shoulder. There. Let the man make of that what he wanted because he was sure that he would. No doubt, he would quickly run it back to Cree or Dare, too, which meant Corrado would have to deal with that eventually.
He didn’t care.
Not right now.
This bad mood wouldn’t go away, accompanying him all week like a stink he couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard he tried. And he did try. The problem was, he knew exactly why he felt this way, and the fact that it all led back to Alessio being gone.
He didn’t like that.
None of it.
Corrado didn’t do emotional shit—he found it much easier to deal with life and other people when he kept a healthy distance from it all. Then, stupid things didn’t get brought in to play, too. You know, like someone’s feelings.
Climbing down from the roof, he could still hear Nathan bitching up above. Then, it turned to Nathan getting on the phone to shout at someone—probably Dare, but he didn’t care to listen and figure it out. It took him another twenty minutes before he was walking the corridor leading to his rooms.
Where he would be alone.
And irritated.
A great fucking combination.
The first thing he did once he was in his rooms was head straight for the connecting bathroom. It wasn’t big—hell, Alessio’s bathroom was bigger than his, and had a bathtub instead of a standing shower—but that’s all he needed. Stripping down to nothing, he stepped in under scalding hot water, letting it pink his skin as he attempted to scrub away his frustrations, and clear his mind.
It didn’t work.
Nothing worked anymore.
He needed quiet nights.
Conversations in darkness.
Fingertips keeping him awake when they glided over the ridges of his muscles because for some fucking reason, his body felt like a live wire whenever Alessio was near. A man who was nothing like him. And yet, he found familiarity in that same man, too.
He needed those things to get back to a good place, except he didn’t want to need those things at all. That was where he found his biggest frustration, and he didn’t know how to deal with it at all.
It was only once Corrado stepped out of the shower, dried off, redressed, and exited from the bathroom that he realized, no ... he wasn’t alone anymore.
Chris leaned in the doorway. He passed his twin a look, but when Chris didn’t say anything, Corrado chose not to offer an explanation for his silence or tenseness, either. It was just easier that way. Life was always easier when he kept his problems to himself.
Besides, Chris had his own shit he was trying to deal with, but Corrado couldn’t relate. He wanted to be here—even if he was struggling right now for reasons that he didn’t want to face—but Chris didn’t want to be there at all.
Not anymore.
You know, ignoring the fact Chris wasn’t really saying that. Corrado didn’t need his twin to say it for him to know it was true.
“You okay?” Chris finally asked.
Corrado let out an annoyed snarl under his breath. “What’s it fucking look like to you?”
“Like you got a bad attitude.”
“Yeah.”
“And nobody fucking likes it.”
Corrado turned around to offer his twin a sardonic smile. “Then, feel free to leave, Chris. The door is right there, and look ... it’s already opened for you.”
Chris raised a brow.
He didn’t change his stance, or attitude.
In fact, Corrado waved at the door and added, “Go on.”
“Les has been gone about a week, huh?”
Corrado’s jaw tensed. “What about it?”
“Don’t you find it funny how a couple months ago, you could barely stand to look at him ... and now lately, it seems like you become fucking impossible to deal with when he’s not around?”
“No, I don’t find that funny at all.”
Truly.
He didn’t.
Annoying.
Strange as fuck.
Not funny, though.
“Hmm.”
“Get out,” Corrado uttered.
Chris shrugged. “I’m just saying, you’re in a mood lately. You should probably get that figured out, Corrado.”
“Nobody asked you.”
“And yet, I still told you.”
Fuck that noise, too.
• • •
His bad mood didn’t go away.
In fact, it got worse.
Three weeks later, he felt like he could probably rip someone’s face off if they looked at him the wrong way, but Corrado had somehow managed to convince his delusional ass that if he ignored his mood, then it wouldn’t be a problem.
Wrong.
He wasn’t willing to admit it, though.
His pride was a bitch.
How many times had he said that?
A lot.
Corrado heard the footsteps—several pairs, not just one—approaching his rooms long before the figures shadowed his doorway. He refused to glance up over the weapons magazine he’d snatched from the communal kitchen to greet the newcomers. This was supposed to be his day to relax, and he was trying his fucking hardest to do that.
Not that it was working.
Nothing did.
“What is it you want, Corrado?”
Cree.
He glanced up over the edge of the magazine, but instead of looking at Cree, his gaze drifted to the people standing just behind him. The team, it looked like. The same team that dragged him into those fucking rooms months ago.