Rush and Restraint

Prologue

Cobalt Bay, California

June 6, 1994

It was ironic.

The sun was high against the blue skies, streaming warm sunlight down the rolling meadows, making the bright green leaves glisten with the last of the morning dew. Even the tombstones and stone angels gleamed through the dirt and grit they'd acquired over the years.

It was ironic for sixteen-year-old Oliver Yates to feel as cold as the graves he was staring down at on such a fucking glorious spring day.

A fresh wave of anger surged through him and he clenched his fists.

A gentle hand on his back jolted him out of the pervading darkness and he glanced at his best friends. Stellan had clasped his shoulder, giving him a sympathetic but meaningful look.

Max was there as well. Next to him stood Sebastian who'd surprised Oliver by flying out out of his exile in England to join him here today.

Oliver gave them a grim nod, fighting to restrain the violence inside him that threatened to lash out.

The restlessness that had always stirred in him escalated into molten rage the moment his life had changed drastically. It now felt like he was a volcano about to erupt any second, oblivious to whatever he would obliterate in his path.

Life was so fucking unfair.

Why should he care that others lost everything too when it happened to him?

Sure, he still had his friends. Other than his Uncle Bertrand, they were all that he had left.

They were important to him but they did not replace the family he had lost forever.

Fisting the grief that had uncoiled in his belly back into the dark pit inside of him, Oliver forced himself to glare down at the three open graves where the caskets were being lowered to, wondering how life was going to go on for him now without his parents and younger brother.

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

One second they were driving home from Harry's taekwondo tournament and the next they were crushed under a ten-wheeler.

Oliver would've been pinned under all that rubble too if he'd been sober and remembered that he had to make his way back home from Tanya's bed. He'd stumbled into it during Friday's big, drunken party, promptly passing out on it after a feisty fuck with the blonde cheerleader.

He'd been too hung over and too comfortable to leave the bed that he completely forgot about Harry's tournament until his mother sent the still-groggy Max and Stellan out to track him down.

They dropped him off at home where he'd scrambled to shower and change, hoping to catch up with his family at dinner at least. He'd been hopping into his convertible when a police car pulled up into the driveway with the news.

Oliver remembered staggering to his knees but not much else afterwards.

His Uncle Bertrand had come, being his father's younger brother and executor of the estate, but he got trapped in lawyer meetings for hours and days on end. His best friends, all three of them, came over and stayed with him through the hellish week. They kept him company whether he was drinking himself into oblivion or picking a fight with anyone who would allow him to spend the volatile emotions that were clawing out of him.