“You have no evidence against me, Sierra. There’s nothing you could use to incriminate me, so don’t even try. Keep your daddy on my side, and your boyfriend stays out of jail.”

Pushing him away, he finally relents and backs off, pulling me with him. “Come on, darling,” he says as he puts my arm around him again. A couple approaches down the boardwalk, and I quickly realize that I can’t make a scene so I let him hold me close as we continue walking.

“I have to get back to work,” he says finally, and I’m so relieved that he’s letting me go. “But I want to see you tomorrow. Just to make sure everything is still good with you. How about you go see that boyfriend of yours and remind him of how much he owes me. Then you can deliver it at sundown, by the bonfire.”

“What if he doesn’t have it?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“I think you know, baby.” He plants another kiss against my head, and again I push him away. Stepping away from him, he pats me on the butt. Quickly, he pulls me back before I can breathe in my freedom.

“I almost forgot.” He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and puts me in a chokehold, holding me close to his body. Then, he points the camera on us as he licks the side of my face while hitting the button and capturing the picture of my misery.

Finally, he lets me go. “See you tomorrow, beautiful. Oh, and, Sierra,” he barks at me. I turn toward him with my teeth gritted and my brow furrowed. “You and only you tomorrow, baby.”

Then, he winks.

Without another thought, I take off toward the shop.

Logan

The smiling faces of the people on the front of the pamphlet are staring up at me as if they know something I don’t. And maybe they do. The secret of sobriety isn’t much of a secret, I want to tell them. Everyone knows it’s a far better life. It’s not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of control.

And we’re living our lives without it.

Murph has been sneaking these pamphlets into my station for months. He doesn’t want to come right out and say it, but I can tell he’s trying to be as subtle about it as possible. He probably still feels guilty over how things went down with Theo—how none of us knew the truth. He hid his addiction so well, that the most any of us really knew was that he occasionally liked to let loose. After he died, we cleaned out the apartment to find evidence of it everywhere. Right under our noses all along.

I’m sitting in the back of the shop while Murph finishes up a tatt on a military guy here on R&R—for free, of course. Murph never charges active duty guys, not after his ten years in the service. He just wasn’t the same guy when he came back.