Better When He's Brave Read online

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to everyone’s inner bad girl. That bitch gets to have all the fun! And you better watch out if you dare to cross her.

  INTRODUCTION

  SOME OF THE THINGS that happen in the Point are outlandish and larger than life, and I love it that way! It’s one of the reasons this series is so much fun to write. So as you read, keep in mind that this is fiction. Any liberties I take with police procedure are for the sake of the story, and not because I haven’t done the research. So play along with me and allow yourself to get lost in the mayhem, romance, life, and chaos that run rampant in these stories.

  When I’m talking about Titus’s police station and his office, you might notice it seems outdated. It definitely doesn’t have the bells and whistles that most modern cop shops come equipped with. The reason for this is that I am obsessed with Homicide Hunter on Investigation Discovery . . . OMG, it is the greatest thing in the world. The show takes place in the seventies and eighties here in Colorado Springs, and all I could see when I was writing was that police station and Joe Kenda’s office. So the vision is old and battered, which fits with the overall dreary and ugly feel to the Point. And if you watch the show, you will so be able to recognize the inspiration!

  Again thanks to everyone who is giving this series a shot. We all need new blood, a creative outlet, an escape . . . and the Point is mine. I love that I get to write these men and woman with no rules and stretch the bounds of what we see in New Adult and even what we see from me. It’s incredibly fulfilling, so I appreciate everyone coming along for the ride . . . and what a ride it’s turning out to be! Every single time I think I’ve gone too far or reached the edge, I always find another corner to turn or another twist to tangle with. Half the time I’m as surprised as you guys are to see where it all ends up. There is nothing more exciting and thrilling for a writer than that. These books are full of dirty fun and I really am kind of like a kid in a candy store when I write them.

  We all know a man is so much Better When He’s Brave, so I can’t wait for you to meet Titus!

  EPIGRAPH

  Bravery is being the only one who knows that you are afraid.

  —Franklin P. Jones

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Reeve

  Chapter 2: Titus

  Chapter 3: Reeve

  Chapter 4: Titus

  Chapter 5: Reeve

  Chapter 6: Titus

  Chapter 7: Reeve

  Chapter 8: Titus

  Chapter 9: Reeve

  Chapter 10: Titus

  Chapter 11: Reeve

  Chapter 12: Titus

  Chapter 13: Reeve

  Chapter 14: Titus

  Chapter 15: Reeve

  Chapter 16: Titus

  Chapter 17: Reeve

  Chapter 18: Titus

  Chapter 19: Reeve

  Acknowledgments

  Built

  About the Author

  By Jay Crownover

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  AT THE BEGINNING OF the end.

  Drip, drip . . .

  Splat, splat . . .

  Rattle, rattle . . .

  Clank, clank . . .

  Whoosh, whoosh . . .

  Thud, thud . . .

  “FUCK . . .”

  Groan . . .

  I tried to lift my head up after the second time the metal pipe smashed into the back of it, but it was too much. My ears were ringing, and blood dripped down over every inch of my face and splattered on the cold cement floor across my booted feet. I didn’t want to think about how deep that puddle was or how wide it was spreading. That was a lot of blood. Too much blood. All of it mine. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, so I couldn’t see the scattering of men around me as they took turns with fists and whatever else they could find to work me over where I was chained up to the exposed pipe above my head. I rattled the handcuffs—handcuffs that I used every day to try and keep this city in line—against the pipe, but knew I wasn’t getting free anytime soon.

  The sound of a metal pipe dragging on the floor as one of my assailants moved closer to me had the last little bit of air that survived the last blow whooshing out of my lungs. The simple act of breathing made me feel like I was going to turn my insides out, so I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could to keep these brutal bastards from seeing just how effectively they were breaking me with fists and metal. My body was slowly crumbling under the torturous onslaught, but my will, my drive to never let a guy like him win, would never break. I would die in this shithole at the hands of these murderers and miscreants, and no matter how much they threw at me, how much they tried to destroy the vessel it was housed in, my bravery, my calling to keep the world safe from people like this, would never be extinguished. I would never cave, never bow down, and never let a guy like Connor Roark win.

  I spit out a mouthful of blood, the copper tang filling and coating every raw surface of the inside of my mouth. I managed to crank my neck up just enough to see impenetrable black eyes looking at me. There was no joy in that dark gaze, no victory that he had me exactly where he wanted me. There was no satisfaction. There was nothing but emptiness, a complete void in the place where any kind of humanity should live. I had seen that expression before. My little brother’s father had worn it every day for years while he turned this city into a rotting cesspool of lawlessness, debauchery, and mayhem. It was the worst city anyone could choose to try and serve and protect, yet that’s what I did with every single breath I took. It was a crumbling ghetto ruled by dangerous men and hard women, but it was my beat and its citizens were my dangerous men and hard women to protect. Many of them were my family and my heart. It wasn’t just my job—it was my calling. It was who I was. The Point had no room for heroes, but I was as close as this place was ever going to get to having one. Not that I felt very heroic currently chained up and beaten down, knowing this was the end for me.

  I squinted at him through the blood covering my face, twisted my swollen lips into something that had to resemble a gruesome grin, and told him flatly, “Fuck you. You’ll kill me before I break.”

  My harshly spoken words trembled out on the last little bit of air that was wheezing in and out from my obviously injured lung and then I didn’t think anymore because another round of beating started, and now someone had found a baseball bat and the way it connected with the outside of my knee made me groan and collapse, so that the only thing keeping me upright while the thugs tore me apart was my swollen and bruised wrists where they were clamped in the cuffs that were strung up over my head.

  In a bloody and misty haze I thought I saw Roark shake his head, and when he spoke, the faint Irish lilt that colored his tone scraped across my broken and bleeding skin like a million shards of glass. He was a murderer, a liar, a criminal tsunami of zero regret and no remorse. He shouldn’t have a voice that sounded like rolling green hills and jaunty folk songs. He should come with a tail and horns and his words should smell like smoke and brimstone with every sound he uttered. Connor Roark was as close to the devil incarnate as I had ever come and that was saying a lot considering that I made a living chasing down demons and all other sorts of fallen beings that called my city, my streets, and my own personal version of hell home. I had taken on more than my fair share of villainous masterminds in my role as a homicide detective in one of the most dangerous, corrupt cities in the world. It was a place that was so bad, so dark, so lost in crime and violence it didn’t have a name . . . we simply called it the Point. It was the ending point, the break
ing point, the point of no return . . . it was simply a place where only the strong survived and anyone else was bound to die trying.

  The metal pipe cracked painfully along my already fucked-up ribs and everything went black on the outside of my wavy vision.

  I groaned even though I was fighting to keep every reaction they were eliciting from me to a minimum.

  “All of this over a girl, over a city that will never repay your blood and sacrifice. Really, Detective King, I thought you would prove to be much more of a challenge. She made you soft. She made you weak. All of the men in this city got distracted by their dicks twitching and forgot there was a war going on. No girl is worth dying for.”

  I coughed and spit up another mouthful of blood and let my head fall forward as I gasped out a wheezing laugh.

  “You can kill me. You can burn this fucking city to the ground. You can do your worst to anyone and everyone that dares to call this place home, but even after you lay waste you still won’t have what you want . . . a girl that is worth dying for. She’ll kill you first.”

  I gritted my teeth and wrapped my hands around the links on the cuffs so that I could look my captor in the eye as I bit out the stark and brutal truth that I knew would shove him over the edge.

  I told him about the girl, who was now my girl, and how she was going to bring the world Roark was trying to destroy down around him and bury him under it when she found out that I was gone. I got in a few more pointed digs that would drive home the point that I knew what he was up to, understood his real motivation even if it seemed chaotic and unclear to everyone else.

  A tick started in Roark’s cheek and he took a few steps closer to where I was limply hanging, slowly bleeding to death from inside and out. He stopped when the toes of his boots were touching the blood-covered toes of my own. I felt him put a finger under my chin as he tilted my head back so that we were looking at each other. He had a gaze that was familiar in both its darkness and its madness. Roark came by his insanity and ruthless disregard for human life naturally. There was no getting around twisted genetics.

  “Your girl?” The accented voice was hard, furious, and I knew I had hit a raw nerve.

  I barked out a laugh that sounded more like a dying wheeze, and felt a fleeting moment of satisfaction when some of my blood landed squarely on his face. We were almost the same height, and if I hadn’t been hanging limp and broken, we would’ve been eye to eye. I had a solid fifty pounds on Roark and I knew how to fight just as dirty as the next guy, but what I would never be able to overcome, what would always give men like him the upper hand over guys like me, was the fact that I still had a heart. I still cared. No matter how hard this city continued to kick me in the junk, no matter how many times I had to choose between my family and what was right, no matter how many times I was reminded that I lived in a place absent of justice and light . . . I still cared. I still had hope. I still wanted to be a force that fought for righteousness and the small amount of good that could be found hidden in the cracks and darkness, and I still loved. My heart was protected by a monster that lived deep inside of me, but that beast had kept the thing safe while we scraped by in this awful place.

  I loved my brother even though he was a criminally minded hard-ass. I loved my job. I loved my small circle of friends that more often than not were on the other side of the law from me. I loved my mother even though she was a lifelong drunk with no interest in ever trying to dry out . . . and I loved my girl.

  The girl. The one I would die for. The one I would fight this war Roark had started for, and if this was the way I was meant to go out, then so be it. I would die for having a heart but at least I knew I was going out for a fucking valiant and important reason.

  “Mine.” I gave him another grotesque-looking smile as he let my head fall limply back down, my neck too battered to hold the weight up anymore. “She’s been mine since the second she flipped on Novak and his crew. She only fell in with you because she wanted me and didn’t know how to ask for it. She thought you could keep her safe like she knew I would. How does it feel to know you were nothing to her but a poor substitute for me? Every time you took her to bed it was me she was thinking of. You haven’t ever been anyone’s first choice, Roark.”

  I felt him tense up. I knew the girl was a sore spot, a loss that had really amped up his drive to take the Point down in a fireball of vengeance and hate. No way was Roark ever going to let that rejection and slight go, not on top of the others the Point had handed out to him

  His hand fisted in the hair on the top of my head and my face was yanked back up so we were once again eye to eye. Mine were starting to swell shut and I knew I was losing too much blood. I couldn’t feel much below my shoulders except for my throbbing knee and every part of my exposed skin that I could see was covered in bruises, welts, and open skin, leaking the last of my life force out onto the cracked concrete below where I was dangling. I tried to focus on his face, but it kept blurring and fading into one that looked like another I loved. The metallic burn against my split lips made me gag when the end of a wicked black pistol was sudden shoved between my puffy lips and stopped with the open end of the barrel resting against my teeth.

  I saw myself reflected in the absolute void of that black gaze watching me and I knew he was going to pull the trigger.

  “She chose wrong. I could have laid this city at her feet.”

  “If she wanted the city at her feet, she would have put it there herself. That’s why you never deserved her, you prick. You never understood she could run circles around you in the misplaced-rage and need-for-revenge department. Only she was smart enough to know that there had to be more to life than that. I’m her more. You were just a means to an end.” The words were garbled around the pistol but I had to get them out.

  I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t plead. I wouldn’t waver. I wouldn’t go out any other way than the way I’d lived my life . . . I was going to go out bravely and there was no fucking way this piece of shit would ever know how scared I was that not only was I leaving my brother behind in this tragic place, but I was leaving my girl . . . the girl. When I was gone she was going to unleash hell, and Conner Roark had no clue what a vengeful woman who was far more bad than good could do when she was suffering from a broken heart.

  BANG!

  EPIGRAPH

  Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

  —Tennessee Williams

  Chapter 1

  Reeve

  THERE WERE TWO PLACES in the world that I never thought I was going to step foot in again. One was the crumbling and rotting surface of the city simply known as the Point. The other was the police station that sat in the heart of that city and had just as much corruption and crime inside its walls as the town had on its streets. I hated everything about why I was here and yet I put one foot in front of the other, knowing if I ever wanted a shot at being the type of woman that could live with the person looking back at herself in the mirror every day, I had to do something guided by right decisions for once in my life. I had to do something not motivated by my own selfish desires and my own burning need for payback and revenge against the cruel injustices I knew this place was capable of doling out. Good or bad, we all had a target on our backs if we called the Point home. The city didn’t discriminate when causing pain and tearing apart lives.

  My hands shook as I reached for the handle on the door. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this city. Not at this building. Not in this life that wasn’t mine anymore.

  I was supposed to be hiding. I was supposed to be someone new, someone that had been handed a chance to start all over. I was supposed to be a girl that didn’t know what death and revenge felt like even though they lived so hot and angry under her skin. The new me was supposed to be safe, supposed to be insulated and so far removed from the crime and sleaze that was the lifeblood of the Point, that she wouldn’t last
five minutes in this terrible place.

  Only the new me had never stuck, and truthfully, I had never been a fan of that girl’s fragile and soft disguise. Hiding was for the weak, and I knew deep down to the core of who I was that I would never, ever actually be safe. I had harbored too many demons, made too many deals with devils along the way to ever think I was going to get away with walking out of the Point without doing some sort of bloody penance for my misdeeds.

  I was standing on unsteady legs, asking the young cop who was sheltered behind bars and bulletproof glass at the front desk of the station to go find the one man, the only good I had ever seen in the godforsaken place. If I was going to throw my new life away, jump feetfirst back into the fire, Detective Titus King was the only person I was going to trust to keep me safe from the flames.

  Some men wanted to watch the world burn. Titus was a man that wanted to put out all the flames single-handedly from inside the blaze. He was the only one I trusted with the information I was holding on to. He was the only one I trusted to help me find a safe place to land after I kicked the new me to the curb and dusted the old me off and put back on her damaged and tattered skin. Lord only knew how long I would last now that I was back, but I knew if I had Titus on my side I would stand a better chance of making it to the finale, to the end, to the place I needed to be in order to right one wrong. One of so many in this hellhole.

  The Point was going to war and I was about to become the advantage that the good guys were going to need if they wanted any chance of being able to hold their own.