Page 6 of Broken King

Standingin the velvet-roped-off section of the VIP area of the club where we’re celebrating Hudson Kingston’s KO tonight really brings home the fact that I’m getting fucking old.

The lights in the club are flashing. The music is too fucking loud, and there are way too many goddamn people in here for me to relax. This isn’t my scene anymore.

Who the fuck am I kidding?

This hasn’t been my scene in a long time.

Not in the three years since my daughter was born.

More accurately, since she was deposited on my doorstep by her waste-of-space mother, who thought, since I didn’t want a relationship with her, that she’d get back at me by keeping her pregnancy a secret. That worked for the duration of the pregnancy, but once Brynlee was born, her mother decided she was more work than she wanted to handle. She marched into Crucible one night and handed me the car seat with my baby girl inside and an envelope with her birth certificate, listing me as the father, tucked neatly up against a blanket.

The rest is history.

“Saint...” Becket Kingston calls out over the loud music as he makes his way to my side of the roped-off space and hands me another beer. “Good job, man. Hudson was a beast out there. What a fight.”

“That was all Hud.” I tap my beer to his. “He earned it.” I take a pull from my bottle as my eyes stray to watch Becks and Hud’s sisters out on the dance floor with Lenny’s friend.

Not sisters. More like one of their sisters.

I don’t care who she’s dancing with.

Scarlet fucking Kingston is all I can see.

Becks would kill me if he knew we’d dated in high school. She begged me to keep it quiet, so I never said a word. Her mother refused to let her date, so I agreed to keep us on the down-low. It’s not what I wanted. But it was what she needed, so I went along with it. Once I was out of school, I tried to convince her to let me tell her brother. I wanted her to wait for me to get out of the marines. But Scarlet wasn’t interested in doing the long-distance thing or outing us to her family.

I guess I wasn’t as important to her as she was to me.

I can’t blame her. We were too young.

By the time my enlistment was up, we’d both moved on.

I should know. I looked her up when I got home.

She was seeing some corporate douche from the stock exchange.

Life goes on.

“So where’s your woman tonight, Becks? I figured she’d be here with you.” Beckett turns around and leans against the railing behind us. His eyes track mine, and I hesitate momentarily.

“You eyeing up Jules, Saint? She’s got the soul of a hippie and the ambition of a president,” Becks says with a bit of awe in his voice.

Jules may be gorgeous, but she’s not the woman who’s caught my eye. No. It’s easier to let Becks think that though. But it’s hard to take my eyes off the beautiful woman dancing with her. Long, dark-brown hair with flecks of deep red cascades in waves down her back. Her tight, black dress dips low in the front and hugs every sinful curve.

Curves that weren’t there the last time my hands skimmed up her body.

“Nice dodge there, King. Your woman? Where is she?” Becks has been seeing a woman for over a year. Problem is, none of his family like her. I’ve met her a few times, and I don’t like her either. But she seems to make the dumb fuck happy, so we go along with it.

“She’s prepping for a big trial that starts Monday.”

Sawyer Kingston walks over to the two of us, having caught the tail end of our conversation. “Thank fuck for that. She sucks, Becks. Kendall sucks. She’s sucking the life out of you. She’s sucking the fun out of you. I think she may be a closeted vampire. Why are you still with her?”

No way am I getting involved in this fight. Instead, I walk away and check my phone.

My older sister, Rylie, and her wife, Jillian, are watching Brynlee for me for a few nights. She’s been sending me pictures. When I make my way out of the club and into the hall of the casino, the noise buzzing in my head begins to quiet as I stand there, scrolling through the images she sent tonight. Looks like they made homemade pizzas. Brynlee’s smile stretches across her cherubic face. Content with her aunts. Completely covered in red sauce.

Once I’ve seen them all, I contemplate calling it a night when a whiff of familiar perfume transports me back in time.

Vanilla and spice. I didn’t realize at the time the spice was bourbon.

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