I'm fairly certain Kyle's avoiding me when he doesn't come inside after our awkward car ride home. Why I'm suddenly incapable of making conversation is beyond me. I've always chose not to talk to him, but I was always under the delusion that if I wanted to, I'd be capable. Apparently not.

Turns out, when I'm not be a dick to him, he makes me nervous. I don't know why it comes as a shock given how rich people in general make me feel, but it's not that.

I've always been attracted to him, and I've never struggled with admitting that to myself. So, I realize that when Is strip away the negative, misguided ideas I've had about the guy up to this point, I can recognize the only thing that remains. It's attraction, and it's more potent than anything I've felt for other people.

When I'm away from him, I feel like an idiot for being incapable of talking to him. I've never been shy. I've never struggled to talk to people. When I'm put in a situation where I should be able to make small talk with him, I fail. Time and time again this past week, I've been attempting to talk to him and falling flat on my face in the process.

I'm contemplating attempting to track him down in order to give conversation another shot when the doorbell rings. It's odd. This time of day, nobody comes by the house. Most of Hollands visitors pop in at night, and my mom travels a lot on Holland's dime, so she's rarely home before 7 herself. She almost never has anyone over.

I pull myself off of the couch, feeling slightly sore from practice, and I walk over to the door. Before I can get to it, the doorbell rings five more time.

"I'm coming," I shout at whoever's on the other side.

It doesn't make them stop ringing the bell. So, by the time I get to the door, I'm pissed. I rip it open, and my temper spikes when I see who's on the other side.

"You want another shiner to match the one you've already got cause I'm struggling to come up with another reason you'd show up at his house," I seethe, looking around, for Kyle, hoping I can get Jasper away before he sees.

Jasper holds up his arms in the universal gesture that signals he comes in peace.

"Peace offering, Caruthers. Take it or leave it, but given your sudden attachment to Richy Rich, I thought you'd like to know Hartley's guys just picked him up," he tells me.

Hartley's guys snags my interest. If asked before this moment, I'd have thought Jasper was one of Hartley's guys.

"What the fuck does that mean?" I snap at him, feeling a wave a fear flood my veins.

"It means what I said. It means I'm close enough to Hartley to have that information, and I don't want blood spilt any more than you do. Contrary to what you think you know, I'm not selling for him, but the two of us grew up together, and he does trust me. Well, until I told you this he did, so like I said, it's a peace offering. Take it or leave it," he says.

"Where are they?" I snap at him, not giving a shit if he's working with Hartley or not at this point.

When I heard they have Kyle, everything else stopped mattering.

"They're at his garage. You know where that is?" he asks me.

I nod, but his garage is clear on the other side of town, and Kyle likely has the keys to his Ferrari in his pocket or on his person.

"Give me your keys!" I shout at Jasper, fully prepared to pry them out of his unconscious hands if it comes to that.

Surprisingly, it doesn't. I take them, and I rush off towards his parked truck.

"Be careful, man. Ben's pissed about the cops being tipped off, and I tried like hell to reason with him before he told his guys to move in on Kyle. He'll hurt whoever gets in his way of revenge against Holland," Jasper says.

I barely even hear him as I run to his truck. I jump into the driver's seat, and I pull out of the drive way so fast the tires squeal. It's been two hours since we got home. Ben could have had Kyle for that long, and he could be doing who knows what to him.

Hartley's garage is at the end of a gravel road. I drive the backroads so quickly Jasper's truck slides all over the place. When I get close to the garage, I pull off to the side of the road. I need to surprise whoever is here. I have no way of knowing how many people are here, and I need to be careful in order to make sure I get Kyle out of here safely.

I run as fast as I physically can through the gravel parking lot out front of the guy's garage, and around to the side of the building. There's a window on the side of the building, and I quickly look inside. What I see when I do causes my blood to run cold.

Kyle is in the middle of the room tied to a chair. His face is bloody, and there are three men standing around him. I recognize all of them. They were all at the party when Ben gave me my black eye. They didn't participate in that fight, but I somehow imagine this is a different scenario. If I went in there, they'd all be participating in whatever fight happened. Ben himself is standing in front of Kyle. He's talking to him, but I'm not sure what he's saying. I watch as Ben rears back his hand, and he punches an already blood Kyle in the face. Fuck.

Three guys against one isn't great odds, but thankfully, I have a full view of the garage from the window, so I know there're only three of them. I look as closely as I can as quickly as I can for weapons on their person. I don't see any but going in there right now for him without any backup would probably be a bad idea. I don't know if I can risk it, so I pull out my cellphone, and I call the first person I think of.

Dialing Holland's number causes more nausea to roll over me than it usually does with Kyle bloody and hurt inside the garage right now because of him, but I do it.

"What do you need?" he asks sounding as impatient with my phone call as he always does, fucking prick.

"I'm currently looking at your son, beaten and bloody in Hartley's garage. There're three guys in there at the moment, and—," I start, but Holland's voice cuts me off.

"Handle it," he says.

"What do you mean, fucking handle it? I can't take on three guys at once. Send someone over here to help me get him out!" I seethe, but I'm whisper shouting in order to avoid being overheard.

"You know as well as I do why that's not possible right now. I'm guessing, somehow, Hartley knows that too. What that means is, someone tipped him off to when we're picking up our shipment. So, that means I have to both make sure Hartley doesn't fuck with this shipment and try to figure out which one of you fuckers is giving information to Hartley. Both of those require that I be exactly where I am right now," he tells me.

"He's your fucking son!" I snap at him.

I knew he was a cold bastard, but I never would have thought he'd do something this low.

"I'm aware of that, Bryant, it's not my priority at the moment," he says.

"Your son's not your priority? They could kill him!" I snap at him.

"They won't. Hartley's weak. The most they're going to do is rough him up a little and send him home to me. He can take it," Holland says, and the confidence in his tone when he says it makes me queasy.

Of course, the man who beat him when he was a child would think he'd be okay taking a beating now that he's mostly grown. I hang up on Holland, feeling angrier than I ever have in my life. When I look inside the window again, Kyle's head is hanging against his chest, and my stomach drops. I can't tell if he's conscious, but if he is, he's too weak to hold his head up at this point. I realize one of the guys is missing from inside, so it's just Hartley and one other guy inside. At the same time, I smell cigarette smoke, and I recognize this for what it is.

This is the only opening I'm going to get, so I walk in the direction of the cigarette smoke.

Here's the thing, I was raised in a series of bad situations, and they taught me one thing—how to fight. So, it takes one punch to the asshole's face with the cigarette to lay him out. My hand may feel like it's broken afterwards, but that's one less person I'll have to fight once I get inside.

After I have him unconscious, I don't hesitate before walking inside. I say a silent prayer as I open the door to the garage that neither Ben nor the other guy have any weapons. I don't waste any time once I open the door. They're eyes immediately snap to me, and they move to fight me.

"Not a good idea, man. Walk away," Ben says.

He clearly doesn't expect me to win the fight. The black eye he gave me last time we fought gave him false confidence. I held back during that fight though. My job during that fight was to get our guy out with minimal repercussions. That meant not fighting with Ben, our number one competitor. Holland likes initiating moves, not responding to them. That's why I was instructed to deal with it without making him look like a little bitch. So, that's what I did.

Looking at Kyle right now, unmoving, I have no such reservations this time. I rush over to him, and I dodge his buddy's fist at the same time as I punch Ben in the face hard. Ben's a little bitch, and he always has been. I've never understood why Holland doesn't take more of stand against him. If I had to guess, it's because Holland sees that Hartley is a bitch just as clearly as I do. He knows he could put him out of business easily if he wanted to, but he's been humoring him up til this point. No way that continues after tonight. Messing with his son is clearly something he doesn't care about, but moving in on his son in order to disrupt a shipment pickup is something else entirely where Holland is concerned. The latter is unforgivable.

So, Ben Hartley is a little bitch, and it's no secret to the world. So, when he crumples to the ground in front of me after a single punch, I'm not surprised, and I'd feel some form of satisfaction over watching it if I weren't so busy dodging the punch his buddy throws at me as soon as I lay Hartley out.

This guy, in contrast to the other two guys actually puts up a hell of a fight. He's quick, so he dodges my first punch, and he delivers a nasty uppercut to my gut in retaliation. I swing again, and it connects with his face. He takes a couple of steps backwards, clearly feeling the impact of the hit, but he's a fighter. It's always easier to tell when someone's prone to fighting because they're smarter about the way they move.

This guy is smart, and it allows him to get in a quick jab at my face. It also allows him to dodge another one of my punches. I'm finally able to land a decent punch, and it sends him to his knees. If this were any other situation, I'd leave him conscious, but there's no way I'm taking any risks here, so I pull his head backwards, and ram my knee into it. He collapses onto the ground in front of me.