What He Explores (What He Wants, Book Twenty-One) by Hannah Ford Page A

nothing but trouble, and yet still I’d done it. I’d told my friends to leave the restaurant without me…
    Friends. Ha. That was a good one. Those guys knew almost nothing about me, they just liked to hang around because I told funny stories and had a way with the ladies. Calling them friends was a stretch.
    I didn’t have friends anymore.
    Now, driving home after that scuffle in the parking lot of the burger joint, I replayed the incident and shook my head. That had been really stupid and I was lucky not to have ended up behind bars.
    My hands started shaking.
    I felt like I could hardly breathe. On the road in front of me, I no longer saw the normal city streets of the good ol’ US of A. Instead, I felt like I was looking out at the streets of Kabul.
    I pulled the car over and stopped.
    Shit. This can’t be happening to me. Not now, not here.
    My mind was flashing back to images, sounds and even smells that I’d been trying to forget.
    Chase’s voice, his laughter, echoes in my ears as if he’s right next to me.
    “When I get back, the first thing I’m going to do, bro—“
    And then the sounds of explosive gunfire and the screams. The fucking screams I’ll never forget, and how Chase looks as I press my hand over the gaping bullet wound in his throat.
    Telling him everything’s fine, it’s not that bad—as he bleeds out right in front of me and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, and I’m sure we’re all going to die out here.
    I came back to myself as if I’d somehow been power-slammed back inside my own body. As if I literally went outside myself and then came back in again, snapped back to the present.
    I glanced in the rearview mirror and my eyes looked positively insane.
    “Get a hold of yourself, Zack,” I whispered, rubbing a hand over my face. That’s when I glanced at my knuckles, swollen and bloody from where I’d smashed those jerks who had been messing with that waitress.
    Her name, she’d said—her name was Caeli. Caeli Powers.
    Just remembering her name slowed my breathing and my heart rate a little, calmed me somehow.
    “Caeli.” I spoke the name and felt more like myself, as if speaking her name aloud and recalling the image of her face could do that for me—could give me something I hadn’t had in a long time.
    Something in her eyes had woken up something in me that I’d been sure was dead.
    But she was just some waitress who I’d never see again. Unless I was crazy enough to try and track her down.
    I wondered what she thought of me after everything that had happened. We hadn’t exactly gotten off on the best foot back there, what with me giving her shit when she spilled that milkshake on herself…
    I smiled a little, laughing as I thought about the look on her face and how she’d stared me down, glared at me like I was the devil himself.
    And maybe, just maybe, I was. But if I was the devil then I had a right to whatever pleasures I could find on this crummy earth.
    I pictured her face again, the way she’d swung that ass when she’d turned and walked with attitude back to her post behind the counter at the burger joint.
    She was cute, funny, sexy.
    Caeli had that something special that made me want to take her clothes off, throw her buck-naked on the bed and do unspeakable things to her, while at the same time she made me want to…
    What?
    I blinked, took a deep breath and let it out.
    She’s just another girl. No different then the rest, Zack. She’s some random who works at a burger joint and you beat up her co-workers and now she probably thinks you’re nuts on top of everything else.
    And she might be right, too.
    As I was about to finally pull back on the road and start driving, I got a phone call. The number was blocked, so I should’ve known better, but for some reason I decided to answer.
    “Hello,” I said, gruffer than necessary.
    “Zack, it’s Caden. We need to talk.”
    I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “I already fucking