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bullet for and I’d like it to stay that way.
    “Good for her. She’s too young to settle down.”
    We turn onto the street his building is on. “She’s the same age as Kacey.”
    “Ace is different.” He pauses. “Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with Reilly. Kacey is constant, settled. There are no surprises with her.”
    I wonder if we’re talking about the same person but hold my tongue. We have another beer once we’re back at his place.
    There’s a question I asked him earlier that I want to push him on but don’t.
    Why Kacey?
    Why now?
    Why wasn’t there any other girl he could have asked?
    Consciously not asking those questions kept me quiet as we drank. Since he has work tomorrow, and I plan to meet with my realtor as early as possible, we stick to one beer.
    Normally, my first night off the rig is always a hard one. The noises are different. While Ferncliff is no major city, the sound of the traffic is nothing like the ocean. Also, by the time I go to sleep on the rig, I’ve just pulled a twelve-hour day and I’m bone tired. Exhaustion is my cure to insomnia. On the rig, I eat, I sleep, and I work my ass off. All thoughts of the outside world don’t exist until I’m a part of it again. My paychecks get swept automatically. While Reilly was still in school, they went to two places, her school tuition and Gram and Gramps debt. Now that her tuition is paid off, ninety percent of my pay goes to their debt.
    It’s taken years paying off all the medical bills and the loans they took out to try and stay afloat. Now I’m down to only owing on the house.
    Considering they lived in this house my entire life, it should have been paid off by now. Too bad they mortgaged it to the hilt. Whoever approved those loans for an elderly couple with a pension and social security as their only income should be fired.
    The overall housing market hasn’t helped. For too long I’ve owed more on the house than what it’s worth.
    Thoughts plague my falling asleep. Once I sell this house, if I can, will there even be a reason for me to leave the rig again? There’s always Reilly, not that she needs her big brother anymore.
    It’s strange knowing that in a little under two years she’ll be thirty. Our mother was twenty-five when she had me, our father twenty-nine.
    If things were different, Reilly or Kacey could be a mother by now.
    Kacey, a mother.
    She’d make a good one, my little Killer; she’d take on the whole world to protect her loved ones.
    I can still picture it clear as a bell, Kacey taking on three boys all twice her size. They were hurting a stray dog, burning it with a lighter but I didn’t know that part until after the fact.
    By the time I came upon them, it was Kacey they were hurting. She fought like hell, though, screaming and kicking at them. I didn’t know why she wasn’t running away, not until I saw the dog she protected, shielding him with her body.
    Her screams caught my attention. Pedaling my bike in the direction of them, concerned curiosity brought me to her rescue.
    When I saw them, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. She was on her knees, her back to the boys, her body curved over something. Her head was turned and she was screaming at the boys, telling them to go away and kicking out with her leg when one of them stepped nearer.
    She was small, her kicks pathetic from a distance. What was she covering? Then I watched one of the boys return her kick with one of his own. The shock of it froze me.
    Her small body lurched and he lifted his leg to kick her again. Red filtered across my vision and I flew at them. What happened next was all a blur of fists.
    In the end, I broke the nose of one, gave another a black eye, and knocked the third out cold. Old Man Graham from across the way was driving past and pulled over, stopping me from hurting them any more than I already had.
    He loaded Kacey, the dog, and me into his beat up Buick and drove us home. It wasn’t until we were