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“Oh my God,” Colton mutters.

“They’re adorable,” Xavier argues.

“You’re impossible,” Colton says, grabbing his messenger bag.

Mortified, I bury my face against Conor’s shoulder. The laughter that follows only makes my embarrassment worse. Though judging by the way Conor’s arms tighten around me, he doesn’t seem to mind at all.

As the others leave, Conor leads me back to the couch. His hand stays at the small of my back. Guiding me. Grounding me. Yet the closer we get to the couch, the tighter the knot in my stomach becomes. His face is unreadable. It scares me a little. I’ve learned enough about Conor to know that when he’s deliberately hiding something, I’m probably not going to like what comes next. I sit down and look up at him.

“Just give it to me straight, Conor.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “Rip the bandage off.”

He studies me for a moment before taking the seat beside me. “You don’t have to worry about Henry anymore.” Relief hits first, fast and immediate. Followed almost instantly by dread. Because that’s not all he’s going to say. I can see it in his eyes.

“He can’t hurt you again,” Conor continues. I swallow hard but nod for him to go on. “Your debt to Manny was a hundred thousand.” My stomach drops. “But that fuckwad wasn’t paying all of your winnings toward it.”

Anger flashes through me. Somehow I’m not surprised.

“He gambled a lot of it away instead.”

Of course he did. Of fucking course he did.

Conor’s jaw tightens. “There’s still around thirty thousand on Manny’s books.”

My whole body tenses. Thirty thousand. The number echoes through my head. Thirty thousand dollars. My heart feels like it stops, then starts beating twice as hard.

I don’t have that kind of money. Not even close. My mind immediately starts running through numbers anyway. But it’s pointless. There isn’t enough.

All the money I should have had saved from my years in the military went into an account with Trent. An investment for our future, or at least that’s what he’d called it. Our future. I remember sitting beside him while he talked about houses and vacations and the life we were supposedly building together.

I trusted him completely. Like a fucking idiot. When he died, I lost access to everything. Every fucking cent. The account wasn’t in my name, just his.

At the time, I was too consumed by grief to even think about money. Then later, when I finally did it was too late. It was already gone, locked away behind legal walls I couldn’t break through. Just another mess Trent left me to deal with. Another way he managed to fuck me over, even after death.

My chest tightens. Thirty thousand dollars. The number feels suffocating. Because no matter how safe Conor and his family make me feel, debt like that doesn’t just disappear. Men like Manny Deluga don’t simply let things go.

“Hey, hey, Jaxon, calm your breathing down.” Conor’s arms wrap around me. “It’s going to be okay.”

I try. I really do. I focus on his voice. On the warmth of his body. On the hand rubbing slowly up and down my back. But I can’t catch my breath.

Everything presses in at once. It’s too much, too loud, too heavy. My chest burns. The room blurs around the edges. And suddenly I’m not here anymore.

I’m seven years old, locked in a dark closet. My stomach aches so badly from hunger that I don’t even have the energy to cry anymore. I can smell the mildew and dust. The stale air clings to my skin.

I’m twelve, standing in a destroyed kitchen while my foster parents scream at me for something I didn’t do because insurance money matters more than I do.

I’m sixteen, trapped in a locker room with nowhere to run while laughter echoes off the walls around me. Hands grabbing. Voices taunting. Humiliation burning through me.

I’m nineteen, standing in the middle of a battlefield, watching people die for the first time. The sound of gunfire is deafening. Blood. Smoke. Screaming. Terror.

Memory after memory crashes into me so fast I can’t separate them anymore. All the pain, fear, and helplessness, it all tangles together until I can’t tell what is past and what is present.

“Jaxon.” Conor’s voice cuts through the chaos. His hands tighten around me. Not enough to hurt. Enough to anchor. “Breathe for me, A Chroí.”

I try to listen. Try to focus on him instead of the memories dragging me under. But they’re too strong, too loud. They claw their way through me, pulling me deeper and deeper until I can’t tell where the past ends and the present begins.

I’m too hot. Sweat clings to the back of my neck and dampens my shirt. Yet my body won’t stop shaking. Violent tremors tear through me hard enough that my teeth chatter. My lungs burn, every breath feels too shallow. Like there’s not enough air in the room. Not enough space. Not enough anything.

The abyss of my life yawns open beneath me. It’s endless and so dark, filled with every horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. Every abandonment. Every betrayal. Every moment, I learned exactly how little I mattered to the people around me. And I’m falling straight into it.