Status Updates From Snowed In with the Bad Boy ...

He'd opened the door in bare feet, wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans all undone, a thin hoodie & a scowl that sent shivers down her spine that had nothing to do w/ the cold. Just like his pants, the hoodie was unzipped, revealing a serious set of abs, the faint edges of tattoos peeking out along both sides.
His muscular chest was slick with a light sheen of sweat.
I must've interrupted his workout.

CRASH!
Something clattered to the floor in the bedroom, and the damn dog shot back down the stairs like a bat out of hell, yanking Ronan right out of his fantasy at the worst f*cking time.
Strikeout.
"God damn it, Bella." He whipped his head around to see what the big deal was. She was in the kitchen, yelping and barking, her tail wagging as she pawed the glass.
Someone had to be out there.

"Bella! Come here, girl."
The eighty-pound German Shepherd tumbled down the stairs, tail wagging, tongue flapping as she leapt up next to him & shoved her snout straight into his armpit.
He set his whiskey on the end table & scratched behind her ears, nuzzling her face. "What kind of trouble are you getting into up there?"
She growled, then sighed, dropping her head onto his thigh.
Code word: guilty as f*ck.

Nothing had changed & nothing ever would. He was a f*cking cartoon nightmare, a used-up soldier sitting around w/ his dick in one hand & a bottle in the other, hiding out from the world that had chewed his ass up & spit him out hard.
He was utterly alone. Alone in his head. [...] in his pain[&]his beautiful but secluded cabin a million miles away from anything that had ever mattered.
And that's how he'd die.
F*ck it.

Since then, most of Ronan's happy memories had turned into ghosts, haunting his every step. And at some point, w/o his permission, while he'd faced off with assassins half his age & drank his own piss in the desert just to stay alive, Christmas had become nothing more than an industry designed to make you feel like you didn't have enough - presents, money, food, friends, family, love. All of it.
It pissed him off.

Awesome book so far