Read Online Hold on Tight by Stephanie Tyler - Free Book Online Page A

a swim in the ocean.”
    He stood. “Come on inside.”
    “And what, you’ll be the perfect gentleman?”
    “Not likely.”
    “I’ll take my chances with the elements. I don’t even know your name.”
    He rubbed his palms together, looked up at the sky. “It’s Saint. And my best friend was killed five days ago. Normally, I wouldn’t take no for an answer, but I’m damned tired. Do whatever the hell you want.” He gave a single, definitive good-bye nod in her direction before he walked slowly up to the house.
    She turned back toward the ocean and wondered if she’d ever feel right again.
    Chris’s brothers were waiting up for him. Truth be told, Nick barely slept anyway and Jake only slightly more than that, but still, this pre-dawn powwow was all about him.
    And when he walked into the living room where both men were, he stopped cold. Looked around as if the three of them weren’t the only ones there, mainly because he’d know Jules’s perfume anywhere. The scent was faint, but she’d been there recently.
    “I told you he’d know,” Nick said without moving his lips.
    “I wasn’t the one who told her to get out of here,” Jake answered him in the same fashion.
    “I can hear everything the two of you are saying.” Chris sank into the leather chair in the den and rubbed his head, which still ached like a mother. “Where is she?”
    “At the Hilton. Penthouse suite. We told Jules to take herself and the reporters who are bound to follow her the hell out of here,” Jake said.
    “Only we said it nicer than that,” Nick added.
    “Not much,” Jake muttered, and Chris sighed.
    “What does she want?”
    “You,” Jake deadpanned.
    “Ah, fuck.”
    “Yeah, that too.”
    Chris went to throw something at his brother, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Because yeah, if he and Jules weren’t fighting, they were fucking, and that wasn’t the kind of relationship he wanted.
    He also didn’t throw anything because Jake was hurting. Nick too, but Jake had known Mark the longest. Mark had been the one to help his brother through BUD/S when Jake was only fifteen and still having nightmares about his stepfather.
    Neither brother asked where he’d been, why he’d come home so late, why he was on his own. Instead, Nick made him the coffee he liked and Jake had already filled the prescriptions he needed and he wondered if they’d continue to hover over him like two mother hens for much longer.
    He just wanted back to normal. Craved it. And yet, that wasn’t going to happen for a long time. “Saint said Mark’s memorial is planned for next week.”
    Jake nodded. “No body.”
    “No body. Saint said he’s going back—leaving in the morning,” Chris told them.
    Nick leaned against the back of Jake’s chair. “He can’t go back there on his own.”
    “You try telling him that.” Chris rubbed a hand over his side—it had started to ache on the ride to Jamie’s. On the way home, it had turned into full-blown pain.
    He popped, dry, two of the pills Jake handed him. “I told Saint to stay there—he insisted on escorting me home. If it’s too late to find Mark now …”
    He trailed off.
    “I’ll go with him.” Jake stared past Chris, toward the sliding glass doors behind him. Those doors led to the deck, and with the curtains open, dawn was starting to peek through.
    Wordlessly, the three men headed outside. Barefoot, they stood on the deck waiting for the sun to rise. Watching it come up over the horizon, peeking through the woods behind the house.
    It was a tradition that Jake had started himself when he was a young boy—now, seeing the dawn held significance for all three of them. It was something they rarely missed, whether or not they were together.
    A reminder that they were alive, no matter where the hell in the world they were. Survivors.
    This morning, with Mark’s death hanging over them, the silence stretched out long after the sun had risen.
    “He saved my life on our