“Yup. Going outside to work out. See you in a few.” He filled the cup again and strode across the room. His gaze seared the floor, the walls, the fucking front door that always stuck because he’d hung it crooked. Anything but Andra.

The air outside smothered him after the brief respite inside with the air-conditioning. He shot past his truck parked in the grass at the side of the house, then Andra’s big Dodge Ram. Anywhere else in the country, they’d have a driveway, maybe even a garage. But here, he couldn’t even afford a load of gravel to park on. He slugged back half the cup’s worth of water, and it did nothing to soothe the burn in his gut.

The streetlights cast only the barest glow into the backyard, and he spun the combination lock on the metal shed so hard he had to do it twice before he hit the numbers right. Heat slapped him in the face when the door rattled open. He reached down blind and swapped his cup of water for the roll of extension cord inside the front door.

How had he ended up back here? This was everything he’d been running from when he’d left for college, and again when he’d swapped his uncle’s ranch for a fresh chance in Montana. He didn’t want to be one more guy trading a strong back for barely enough money to keep the lights on. Pissed off at a world that didn’t think he had any more in him than that. And angrier every day because he couldn’t get far enough ahead to prove them wrong.

He could have, once. He had a business degree, and he could have gotten a cubicle with that and worked up to an office. It’d pay better than drywall, but it would itch just as much on his skin when what he wanted was open air and the smell of hay. But even in Montana, Bill had believed the worst and hadn’t been interested in giving him a chance to prove differently.

If nothing was ever going to change, why did he keep trying so hard? He should just become the criminal they all seemed to think he was. At least then he’d have some fucking money in his pocket.

“LJ?”

He stopped, squeezing the extension cord in his hands. If he stretched it out to the plug at the back of the house, Andra would see the utility light that was all the electricity he could afford for this shed. She’d see the foam spilling out of the weight bench he’d taken from underneath a “Free” sign on a Marigny sidewalk. Most of all, she’d see the rage roiling under every muscle in his body, and if she looked at him with fear in her eyes right now, he’d fall apart.