Pretty Dogs (Dirty Strays, #2)

by Riley Nash

Sometimes I see a version of me whose name I will never say again, but who will always be there. She carried my soul for fifteen years, until I could set it free. On the hard days, I feel like that person is all anyone sees, like I’ll never be free of her. But today I’m just Dallas. The name I chose, the man I’ve always been.

During the first intervention meeting, before I snuck away, the leaders started talking about how they ended up in a gang. Their stories had a beginning, a before. A version of them that could be saved without losing their entire identity. I’ve never had a before. Even in my very first memory, I was a twisted up kid in a twisted up world. And it never got better.

Without a before, you can’t have an after. Scout, Rome, and Dallas all have a future out there in the big world. I want that for them, because I love them. The only thing I’ve ever expected from life is to have some fun before I die young and get burned up in some police morgue where people are numbers instead of names.

A gentle hand catches my jaw and tips my face up to look at him. “You have to believe in your friends, Beck. We don’t break that easily. And after twelve fucking years together, you don’t have the right to decide if he deserves the truth.”

There are thousands of boxes in my head. The guys I’ve fucked, the porn I’ve watched, it’s all carelessly dumped together into one messy, fun box I open when I’m bored or need to get off. Dallas is in every single box. He’s the world around the boxes, he’s the boxes, he’s everything. I love my best friend, with his hair and his smile and the body that fits against mine. But his soul could be inside anyone or anything and I’d still need him until the day I die.

He reaches up and squeezes my wrist tightly. I’ve heard of people building emotional walls to protect themselves, but this guy just erected an entire fucking maze between us out of sheer panic.

Scout sounds annoyed, but he rubs the back of Roman’s neck and gazes at him with that helpless adoration that always betrays him when he tries to say no to his boyfriend. Rome could announce that he wanted to set our house on fire and Scout would just nod along, all googly-eyed.

“Scout told me what happened. You were really fucking brave.” “Right,” I mumble when I realize he’s talking about the bar. “Freezing up and crying made me a hero.” He shakes his head firmly. “Crying doesn’t make you less brave.”

If it weren’t for me, maybe Scout could have ended up with someone better, who wasn’t missing parts. But every word out of his mouth and everything he’s ever done tells me I’m what he wants. And the fact that it doesn’t make sense, that it goes against logic? That’s his problem, not mine. My job is just to believe him.”

One message from The Pain In Your Ass, the contact name Beck gave himself a year ago. Now it feels like a double entendre.

“Okay.” She slaps a sheaf of papers on the desk and levels a glare at me. “I’m very busy. Do you people think I have time to remember two thousand made up genders?” “I think you had time to learn his pronouns, decide you didn’t like them, and choose to use different ones,” I say evenly. “So you must not be that busy.” My heart is thumping in my ears.

So…” I purse my lips, eyeing the back of his head. “You fell down while you were cleaning a convenience store.” “Yep.” I pull into the parking lot of the Black Bear Diner, but I don’t turn the car off. Theo can wait until I’m done. “You must be really clumsy.” “I’m not!” His small body bristles with indignation. “The wire on the fence was bent; you would have fallen too.” Flopping back in his seat, he glares at his sneakers. I can’t tell if he’s more pissed at me or himself. “I get it. I hate when they put a fence in the middle of the convenience store I’m trying to clean.”

Watching my reaction carefully in case I object, he butts the balls end of the dildo against my pubic bone, where it might sit if I had been born with the blessing of a magnum rainbow dong.