I feel the shiver go through her. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Callahan.”
“Only because I love getting you naked, anyway, Mrs. Callahan.”
“And I just love you. Period.” She smiles up at me adoringly.
I’m not taking that as a no, and I know there are ways to convince her. Whatever happens, we’re in it together.
It might have taken us a long time to get here from my despair during her rehearsal dinner all those years ago, but I’d walk through that fire a million times over.
In the end, I’ve got my girls. And it’s the most rewarding steal I’ve ever attempted.
Acknowledgments
Due to the sensitive topic of this book, I reached out to my readers and beloved book community to help me with research in the early stages. The response I got was incredible, not only from women who have been working with domestic violence victims for years, but from women who have helped family members through that scary, uncertain time or gone through it themselves.
Thank you to R, S, C, A, M and M for providing me with insight, sharing your stories, and being both advocates and support systems for women going through domestic violence situations. You are all warriors, and this book would not have been possible without you.
And thank you to Charlene for that date idea, you made these characters come to life in their small town!
Read the rest of the Callahan Family series
Have you read the first book in the Callahan Family series? Find out how Hayes and Colleen fell in love in Warning Track! Or, pre-order the next book in the series, Check Swing.
Read on for a sneak peek of the next book in the series, Check Swing.
Check Swing
Sinclair
Prologue
It’s a gray evening, not one of those picturesque sunsets that paints the sky like some kind of expensive canvas.
The sky is a muted purple, leaning towards mauve, with not a cloud in the sky. No one would sit on their back porch and think just how grand life is on a night like tonight. These dusk hours are not ones that lovers would huddle closer together under, gazing on in wonder at how perfect their connection must be to garner a sky such as this.
It’s just as well, since this night symbolizes both pain and accomplishment for me. Because while the earth’s ceiling above me is clear, it’s not celebratory.
Between the fingers on my right hand, I juggle the chip back and forth. It’s a trick a magician in Vegas taught me years ago, and I used to use it on women to make bottle caps disappear right before I told them I was “skilled with my hands.” Cheesy fucking pickup line, but it worked about seven times out of ten.
The chip is small, just a piece of plastic that really means nothing at all. But it also means everything.
One year sober.
Who would have thought I could get here?
Certainly not I. There were so many times I almost broke, so many times I literally had a bottle in my hands, ready to chug. Ready to feel the flight of freedom, ready to do the one thing I was always good at; being the life of the party.
Then I’d get a glimpse of the scar on my skull, in the mirror and when I closed the screen on my cellphone and my reflection stared back in the blackness. The scar that goes from the base at the back of my neck all the way up and over to my right temple. The puckered line of skin where hair no longer grows.
And I stopped. If I ever took another drink of alcohol, I’d be digging my own grave. It was a miracle as it was that I was even alive. So many times, I should have died. That final time, I was basically on the steps of hell, because Lord knew heaven was not the place I was headed.
The chair beneath me is a plush patio number, picked out by some designer who’d come in and outfitted my mansion on the outskirts of Packton, Pennsylvania in a bachelor scheme that was both tasteful and functional. That’s what money did; took care of things you didn’t want to take care and put a nice pretty bow on the them to boot.
I’d taken advantage of that my entire life, and it had nearly put me in the ground. Speeding ticket? Money took care of it. A hotel suite destroyed? Money took care of it. Didn’t pass a class in school? Money took care of it.
The quintessential trust fund baby, I’m the black sheep of my family. Sure, they still love me, and they’ve been here for me throughout the test of this year. But I can feel they’re growing anxiety about my next steps. For years, they’ve pushed me into jobs, projects, anything to get me passionate about something.
As one of the heirs to the Packton fortune, money built up over generations of owning our family’s professional baseball team, the Pistons, there is a level of expectation. One I’ve skirted for years, while my brother, cousins and other relatives have taken up the cause. They all work for the machine, in some way or another. I’ve had my hand in just about every department possible, and none of them have stuck. That’s the other thing about growing up with bottomless pockets; it makes you lazy.
Plus, it’s easy to be slotted as the disappointment when your older brother is the goddamn savior. Walker is the first professional baseball player to play for a team his family owns, and he’s fucking good at it. I’ve always fallen to second fiddle, so why not embrace it?
But I can feel my time coming. Even I’m growing tired of my indecision and lack of drive.
That is no more evident than my father showing up in my backyard, his imposing presence announcing itself before his voice does.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Dad?” I say, and I hear his sharp intake of breath.
“You have the hearing of a bat.” He’s shaking his head in mild disbelief as I turn.
An animal sheathed in black who haunted through the night? Sounded like the very definition of me before I put down the bottle.
Dad sits down next to me, and eyes the chip I’m still flitting back and forth through my fingers.
“One year. I’m so proud of you, son.”
Before the accident, I’m not sure I ever heard him say the words. “Thanks.”
My response is short, but I truly mean it. My father and I have always had a strained relationship, mostly over my inability to focus or care about anything. As the owner of the Packton Pistons, serious is Dad’s middle name. Or maybe he has two, dedicated being the other.
But when you wake up, after two weeks in a coma, to your grown father crying at your bedside, it shifts things. I’ve never seen the man so scared in my life, and I knew then that I had to change. It wasn’t even so much for myself, but so I never had to watch my father break down like that.
We sit before my massive backyard, full of a bachelor’s wildest dreams. There is an in-ground infinity pool with a hot-tub attached. There are some nights I’ve fit ten people in that hot tub. A half-pipe sits on a dirt track a little farther back, and that is next to the regulation sized basketball and volleyball courts. The setup behind where Dad and I sit is even more impressive, with a built-in grill, wood fired pizza oven, full wet bar and
I used to throw epic parties every night of the week. But in the last year, I’ve barely had a single soul over to my place. It seems empty and enormous, and I’ve been thinking about selling it. I’m beginning to hear my own thoughts echoing off the wall, and it spooks me even more than having to go the rest of my life without a drop of alcohol.