Break Me Read Free

but when silence finally broke through, we all breathed a sigh of relief. This morning was no different.
    It had been a long night. The work load was heavier, the hours longer, the labor harder. I wasn’t complaining. It paid good money. Physical, backbreaking work.
    And third shift paid better money on top of good money.
    It was a job. Not a career. Not what I had planned to do with my life. I’d planned to stay in the Marines another fifteen to twenty years, but taking that one bullet near my heart and the steel rods in both my legs had done me in. I hadn’t suffered the way many of my brothers had, but it was enough.
    I’d wanted to play baseball before joining the Corp, but hadn’t been good enough coming out of high school. No one was interested in drafting me and no one was lining up to give me scholarship money for college. I got out and went to work once I could walk on my own again. Experience in the world was the best thing that could have happened to me though. It allowed me to work through my pity party at life not working out the way I wanted. It forced me to grow up and take charge of my shit.
    Moving to Texas permanently hadn’t been part of my plan either, but it’s the way things had worked out. The Corp dropped me off in Texas for discharge and I’d gone back home to work in the one thriving business outside Blacksburg. Building cars. When the company opened a new plant outside Karim and offered me the manager’s position, I jumped. I regretted leaving the Virginia mountains almost immediately, but I’ve since made peace with the choices I’d made.
    I finally know who I am and what I want. I know who I want, too.
    When I saw her picture in The Club , I was stunned. I stared so long, security got concerned and called down one of the owners, Jet Mak. That was the first and only time I asked about her. I learned her name was Claire and that she was no longer with the man who’d been holding her by the ring in the collar at her throat. If I wanted to know more, I was told I needed to ask her.
    When I asked how I could find her, the son of a bitch had laughed and shook his head. I knew it was policy that no one talked, that no one shared, and I had a healthy respect for that. But it ate at me just the same.
    Three nights later, I was staring at her photograph again. I was mesmerized by the look of total devotion on her face. The day after that, I’d walked into the bookstore and headed straight to the café for coffee. There she was; all dark hair, dark eyes, and so many lush curves. She took one look at me, and if there was such a thing as a woman closing down and opening up all at the same time, that’s exactly what she did.
    I’d been showing up at the café ever since. I hadn’t been able to get her off my mind before, I met her. I couldn’t after I met her either and now that she knew my name, had said it…
    Calling me Sir had been a slip, an unconscious, but deliberate slip, and she’d caught herself immediately. The deer in headlights look had quickly taken over.
    Calling me by name had been forced, yes, but God, it had been beautiful hearing it from her lips. Beautiful and more arousing than if she’d been on her knees.
    She hadn’t wanted to say it. She hadn’t wanted me to leave after.
    She didn’t want the discomfort I brought to her life, but she needed it. Whatever hell she’d been trapped in for so long, it was time to get her out of it.
    Selfish of me? Without a doubt. I wanted her free of the invisible chains that held her back because I wanted her bound in other chains. Mine. My very real, very heavy chains.
    “… comin’ with us?”
    The bump to my shoulder jolted me out of my thoughts enough to realize one of my crew had been talking to me. “Sorry, man. Walkin’ dead on my feet. What were you sayin’?”
    “I hear ya. Wanted to know if you were comin’ out to breakfast with us.”
    “Sure thing. I’m starvin’.”
    The diner just a quarter of a mile down the