"I think... I think I was so in love with the idea of saving myself that I didn't realize I was letting myself drown. "

"And now?"

"And now you're my lifeboat."


It was only meant to be a favour. Only meant to be for a few weeks. 

Yet when Stryker Odello finds himself a Daddy for a scarred little boy, he finds the darkness that swamped his life cracking and splits of light shining through.

High functioning alcoholic at best, meeting the needs of the little proved more challenging than he first anticipated. 

Broken and distrustful, getting through to Jamie Sinclair was a hard feat.

Both damaged from the past, hurt and cautious, could they learn to let go and figure out how to love again? 

Or was life's only joy to direct a tragedy?

His Little Boy

Kernal and Maddy were the only ones who had stuck by him. God only knew why; he couldn't even begin to count the amount of vileness he had forced Kernal to endure. He had been hurting and he had wanted to make everybody else hurt. It hadn't been personal. His friend had just been too stubborn and stupid to get out of his way while he self-destructed.

Even now, he refused to let Stryker suffer alone.

His heart had a miniature seizure in his chest. His lungs malfunctioned. Hell, he had no idea how his legs didn't buckle beneath him as pain exploded in his chest like shards of shrapnel.

/"I... I got this,/" he whispered to himself, his voice coming out a wheeze. As the door thumped again, Stryker forced himself to straighten. Forced himself to suck back on another breath before repeating, a little more firmly, /"I got this./"

He opened the door. The pain doubled by a tenfold.

Chapter13