Page 3 of Cruel Expectations

And enough to pay the bill for my hotel stay.

Quickly, she rushed through the lobby, sailing past the desk, headed to her room. There, she dumped her bags on the bed and began to rummage through them, picking out items to sell.

She had to get home…but the thought of yet another funeral for a beloved family member had her biting back tears.

* * * * *

Hunter Hart leaned back in his seat at the German pub and stretched out his long legs. His right thigh still twinged with pain when he moved. The injuries he sustained in that last op with his SEAL squadron really fucked up his body.

And his mind.

The latter he never admitted to the doctors or nurses who prodded him about his mental state…or even himself. But Operation Nicklaus had wiped out almost his entire squadron.

The blast that landed him in a German hospital almost ended his life too. Sometimes he thought it would have been better if it did.

The dark wood-paneled walls of the pub mirrored the constant thundercloud that was Hunter’s mood. The glass of whiskey in front of him provided his only haven for the even darker memories that bombarded him.

So many friends lost over the years. The last op was the worst, though.

Even if he didn’t damn near lose his leg, he didn’t have the heart for battle anymore.

He’d been granted honorable discharge. He was a free man, but that came with a steep price—it meant leaving the only family he really ever knew. His brothers-in-arms were the people he relied on. Turned to.

Now all that was lost.

He raised the whiskey glass to his lips. The burn of alcohol in his nostrils disgusted him. He set down the drink and pushed it away.

Maybe it was time to stop sinking into the bottom of a bottle. Time to get his life together.

What pieces were left of it.

Hunter reached into the inside pocket of his worn leather jacket and extracted his phone.

He could hardly bear to look at the photo on his lock screen. Why had he ever used that picture of him, Colton, Forest and a few other guys he fought with? Three of them were dead….

But Hunter had lost his soul. Even digging deep, he struggled to figure out what the hell purpose he had left.

A week earlier, Colton contacted him. Hunter skimmed the message but had been too drunk to really process the words. Since then, he’d read over his buddy’s message several more times.

It was time to make a move.

When he put the call through to Colton, he battled the urge to hang up. To reach for his glass of whiskey again.

He held his ground like the goddamn warrior he was trained to be.

“Hey, Nox.”

A beat of silence followed. “Jesus. Hart. I’m damn glad to hear from you.”

Hunter’s throat closed off. Any words he’d say were lost in the thick emotion he refused to release.

“You too, man. I’m calling because of your text.”

“My offer stands. I need you here. The ranch needs you.”

After Colton left the Navy SEALs, he took off for a ranch in Montana. It happened to be the place where their mutual brother-in-arms, Forest, had grown up. As his last request, he asked Colton to go to his home, to help his father and watch over his sister.

Colton hadn’t hesitated to fulfill that promise to Forest—he was a much better man than Hunter.

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