Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

had to wonder when exactly he had become the father-figure head for all of these young men. It made his palms twitchy and made him nervous to not steer them wrong. The only thing he could do was give Layne advice from his own experiences. “Who stays the same, Layne? We all grow, we all change, my brother.”
    “Like this?” He put his hands on his own chest. “Sometimes I feel like I want to rip the skin off my body—it’s so suffocating.”
    “Look,” Tyler shifted his legs and motioned for Layne to have a seat next to him on the mat, “the only thing I can tell you is from my experience, and I’m not going to pretend like I have any kind of experience with what you’re dealing with. While I have seen, done, and been a part of some crazy shit in my life, I’ve never been overseas with the Taliban chasing my ass. Please don’t think that I’m comparing myself to you.”
    “Even if you were, you’re a great big motherfucker, I think I’d let you get by with it.” Layne made a rare joke.
    Not able to help himself, Tyler chuckled. “You keep that attitude with me. Seriously though, like I was saying…we aren’t the same people any of us were a few years ago. Do you think that our life choices haven’t affected each of us? Personally, Meredith’s rape affected me in ways I’m still just beginning to come to grips with. I look at women differently; I look at my friends differently. It affected every part of my life. It’s not like tomorrow I’m going to wake up and feel like everything is a-fucking-okay with every part of it. I still get angry, and I still want to kill the bastard one more time. I have good days and bad days, just like she does.”
    The silence between the two of them really was deafening, Layne could hear it echoing in his ears as he flipped the words over and over in his brain. “I feel defective in some way.”
    “You aren’t,” Tyler told him again.
    Shutting off the part of his brain that wanted to share these feelings with another human being, Layne put his wall up. “You know what, just forget it. You’re never going to convince me that something’s not wrong with me. So just stop it.”
    The tone he used was that of a bratty teenager, and Tyler wanted to scream. Instead he did what he figured any father did that was worth his salt and brought out the disappointed shame. “I just told you not to ‘sir’ me, but you can damn well guarantee that if you take that flippant, know-it-all, smartass tone with me again, I’ll jerk a knot in your ass so fast that your head will spin. I’m trying to help you, and if you don’t want that help—then that’s fine, but don’t throw my goodwill back in my fucking face. You got that?”
    Layne was quiet for a few moments before he nodded his head. “Yeah, I got it.”

    Jessica walked into the main living area of the clubhouse. In the light of morning she felt awkward being in this place. As she made her way in, the two women who sat at the table stopped talking and smiled at her.
    “Hey, Jessica,” the blonde said and waved.
    “Bianca, right?”
    “That’s right. Can I get you anything to eat?” she asked as she went to stand up from the table.
    “Oh please, don’t get up on my account. If you just show me where everything is, I can make it myself.”
    The woman who sat there with her, this one with darker hair, shook her head. “No way, you’re a guest here. I’m Meredith by the way.”
    “She’s with Tyler, the tall Native American,” Bianca filled in.
    “I remember him, but really you don’t have to wait on me,” she argued again.
    “No, they really do, because if you touch a certain coffee mug, you’re bound to have some bad luck.”
    Bianca threw her head back and laughed. “Jagger’s had some bad luck with a coffee mug that Tyler uses that’s shaped like a pretty realistic-looking skull. Word has it that Tyler’s cursed it, but he’ll never tell.”
    “Just take my word for it,” Jagger told her as