Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76695 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76695 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Playlist
(best listened to in this order to understand Finn’s journey)
“Re-Arranged” - Limp Bizkit
“Millstone” - Brand New
“Down in a Hole (unplugged)” - Alice in Chains
“Hate Myself” - NF
“The Search” - NF
“It’s Been a While” - Staind
“Black” - Pearl Jam
“This Night” - Black Lab
“Save Me” - Jelly Roll
“Coal” - Dylan Gossett
“No Complaints” - Noah Kahan
“You Can’t Rush Your Healing” - Trevor Hall
“Riser” - Dierks Bentley
“Positive Charge” - The Gaslight Anthem
“From Eden” - Hozier
“Connect the Dots” - The Spill Canvas
“I Think I Love You” - ERNEST
“Alive with the Glory of Love” - Say Anything
“As Good as You Think I Am” - Ryan Hurd
“Still Ain’t Sick of Fucking You” - Wheeler Walker Jr.
CHAPTER ONE
Finn
“The fuck is that?” I grumbled, shooting up in bed, disoriented, not sure what exactly had woken me up.
My heart hammered as I sat, some part of me expecting to hear gunshots or something similar that might explain why my heart was racing and wedged up into my throat.
There was nothing for a long moment before the sound echoed through the clubhouse and toward my room again.
A woman’s scream.
I shot off the bed, reaching into my nightstand for my gun before I ran across my room and down the long hallway toward the common area, but found it empty.
Pulse pounding, I rushed toward the back door, yanking it open, the humidity slapping me in the face instantly as I finally found the source of the screaming.
The fucking pool.
The in-ground pool that Sully had somehow managed to talk Fallon and Brooks into putting in last spring. If I recall correctly, it was something he’d only accomplished because of a campaign that involved increasingly messy and annoying party games that he claimed he had to do because of said lack of a pool to entertain club girls with.
It started innocently enough with a whipped cream and chocolate sauce Slip-n-Slide. But somehow it devolved into a large kiddie pool filled with Jello. Then, of course, the now notorious sprinkler that was somehow rigged up to be filled up and squirting fucking margaritas. But something had been off in the recipe, and one of the ingredients had stained all the partygoers—including the bikers—red for fucking days.
That was the thing about Sully.
He could get his way without ever having to put his foot down or argue. Hell, he could have fun every step along the way.
Had he appeared at the club ten years earlier, I was pretty sure he and I would have been fast friends. I would have had a fucking ball participating in his asinine party games. And I damn sure would have enjoyed being in close proximity to his charming ways that made every pretty woman in a ten-mile radius flock to him.
That shit just… hadn’t appealed to me in a while.
I couldn’t tell you where or when the shift happened.
All I knew was that the young, carefree kid I used to be was long gone.
These days, I had to fight the urge to avoid the club as a whole, to hole up in my place, and avoid the world.
I want you to talk to someone, my mom had insisted last weekend when she’d dropped in on me because I’d backed out of dinner at my parents’ place for the third week in a row.
I guess I’d been wrong in assuming my absence wouldn’t be felt when Fallon was there with his entire litter of kids.
I’ve been trying not to pry, but I think we are beyond that now. I’m worried about you. I think you’re depressed.
Depressed.
I wanted to immediately brush that aside, to say there was nothing to be depressed about, that I had a good life by most standards.
But there was a niggling itch in my mind after she left that had me on my phone, doing some research, and concluding that you didn’t necessarily need a reason to be depressed.
No, it wasn’t, as was commonly stated, just a “chemical imbalance” in the brain. In fact, as extensively as it has been studied, no one has truly found one singular cause of it. Which was what made it so sneaky, so hard to treat.
Hell, even the meds only work fifty percent of the time for most people.
What did seem to help was medication, therapy, exercise, social outreach, and finding some sort of purpose.
That was what really had me thinking.
Because it did seem like the people around me who were happiest were the ones who had something they were passionate about. And the ones who had strong bonds.
Meanwhile, the more I withdrew into myself, the bigger the black hole I’d been slipping into got.
Which was why I was at the damn clubhouse when what I really wanted was to be home.
I was trying.
Baby steps.
I started running with the religiously active Sutton.
I was staying at the clubhouse.
I figured if this shit didn’t start to help, I could consider seeing someone, trying the meds out.