“Just to clear the air, I did tell her it was my fault, two years after I left Ryker. She obviously didn’t believe me.” He needed them to know he’d done that, fessed up to his crimes.

“You think?”

Dylan looked at Piper as she spoke, and then back to his old friend because she was sexy as hell, and he didn’t want to feel that little buzz he’d gotten earlier when he’d first seen her. Not now, with this other stuff going on and her wanting to turn him into a eunuch.

Perhaps “friend” wasn’t the right term for Joe Trainer; maybe destruction buddy was a better one. They’d both been trying to outrun demons in their youth.

Tired of not living up to his mother’s high standards for the perfect son, he and Joe, who had wanted to do anything to avoid his father’s abusive behavior, had made an unlikely alliance. They’d been dangerous for each other because neither of them had cared about what they got into, and it had simply escalated with each thing they did wrong. The more dangerous the better, as far as they were concerned. And if it upset Dylan’s parents he was even happier.

“You told your mother that Joe wasn’t at fault years ago, and still she’s treated him like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe? Him, and us.”

As it was Piper talking, he had to look at her again. If she’d been mildly annoyed at him earlier today, now that she realized he was Mary Howard’s son that stick up her sweet ass had lodged itself deeper. Not that he cared. Dylan was a lone wolf, he didn’t care about anyone. It made things simple.

“Pip, that’s enough.”

Like him, Joe had filled out, plus there was now a wife, and if that look he’d just intercepted between Joe and Mrs. Trainer was any indication, they were knee deep in love. Good for him; the boy he’d been deserved some happiness.

“So let me get this straight,” Dylan said. “My mother has made it her life’s work to insult you and yours?”

Joe looked cornered. “She missed you. Let it go now, Dylan.”

Dylan was surprised to feel the slow burn of anger inside him. He’d been an emotional child. Yelled, laughed, and cried often, but when he left military school, that changed. He’d gained control, and that had only strengthened as the years went by. Strong emotions were a weakness he had no time for, which was possibly why he’d never had a serious woman in his life.