Grudge (Virtue & Vice Book 5)

by Cait Forester

  “Yes,” Martin groaned. “You’re going to make a terrible therapist.”

  “I’m planning to go into research,” Colton said mildly. “So what’s the problem?”

  Martin swirled the last of his drink in its melting ice. He wasn’t sure he was buzzed enough to open up entirely, but he had to drive to Willow’s End later so he’d cut himself off after two. Still, Colton was the only person he could talk to who was disconnected from pretty much everything else.

  “I feel like I should be angry at him, still,” Martin said. “I mean, he apologized —”

  “And made you come,” Colton pointed out, unhelpfully.

  “— and he does seem different, sort of,” Martin went on. “But I haven’t really forgiven him. And I know that I should because I mean, what’s a guy gotta do, right? I know what he lost and what happened to him doesn’t, like, absolve him of everything else but I look at him now and I just feel bad for him, you know?”

  Colton pursed his lips, which gave him an even younger, more cherubic appearance than he already had. He was three years older than Martin, which wasn’t old, but he looked eighteen and used his powers exclusively for evil. It made what came out of his mouth seem too wise for him to say.

  “Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. A person can do something terrible to you, and you can be angry about it, and then see something bad happen to them and feel bad for them. It’s not like you have to choose which feeling is right.” He shrugged. “Your problem is that you’re a good person, Martin. Like . . . way too good, in my opinion. You should try going to the dark side once in a while.”

  “I’m not,” Martin muttered. “You know why it happened? Part of it, anyway? Jesus, I feel like this makes me —I don’t know — insane or something.”

  “We’re all a little crazy,” Colton said. He leaned his elbows on the table. “So? Why’d you do it?”

  “There was a part of me, I think, that kind of felt like it was revenge,” Martin said quietly.

  “Oh,” Colton said flatly. “Well, I could probably prescribe some slightly better ideas than revenge fucking those that wrong you, but, you know, I guess we all do it a little differently.”

  “I know how it sounds,” Martin groaned. “It’s crazy. But he was always so hard on me in school. Always called me a faggot, made me afraid every single day and almost got me fucking arrested for helping him sell his weed. There was something satisfying about fucking him. Like I was somehow proving that he was just as much of a fag as me.”

  “Oh, so you drugged him?” Colton asked.

  “What? Of course not!” Martin downed the last of his drink. It was a few hours before he had to drive. He could probably handle another. He let Colton flag the bartender down.

  “You compelled him in some way? Put a gun to his head?” Colton raised an eyebrow. “Held his family hostage?”

  “No,” Martin sighed, “but if you had crushing self-worth issues over having lost a leg and hadn’t been with anyone in god-knows-how-long, and someone felt you up would you just turn them down even if you didn’t really want to have sex with them?”

  “It’s hard for me to answer that,” Colton admitted. “Because basically anyone can just feel me up and I’ll have sex with them if they do it right and don’t smell bad.”

  Martin laughed. “Yeah, okay. Well, imagine if.”

  Colton gave a heavy sigh, and fixed Martin with a pitying look. “You are reading way too far into all of this. I don’t think this has anything to do with your past with Taggart, though.”

  “Ah, so the doctor is in suddenly?” Martin asked.

  Colton shrugged. “Do you want to hear my theory or not?”

  Martin nodded, and they took their drinks from the bartender.

  “I think,” Colton said, “based on my vast knowledge of psychology and Martin Warner-ology, that you freaked out because you suddenly realized that Taggart Coulson, who is broken just like all the other people in your life that you love, might represent a safe place. And that if you had a safe place, you might run away to it in order to get away from all the other fucked up shit in your life. No offense to your Aunt Janey — I adore that woman. But that’s a huge responsibility for you to hold. If you got distracted from it, you’re worried you would let her down.” Colton pointed a finger at him. “You are worried, Martin, that you would abandon all these problems in favor of one big, but safer, problem —and it doesn’t get much safer than a guy with one leg who has mental issues and will almost certainly become codependent like, overnight.”

  “Taggart is my safe place,” Martin said skeptically. “Seriously?”

  Colton shrugged. “The relationship between the aggressor and the victim is one of intimacy. It’s just a fucked up, one-sided vulnerability. But all intimacy makes us feel secure. Why do you think abuse victims stay with their partners for so long?”

  “That has nothing to do with this,” Martin muttered.

  “No?” Colton mused. “What was the most constant thing about your life in high school? Your aunt worked full time, your father was in and out, your mother had just passed away, and your brother deployed when you were, what, a freshman?”

  “Sophomore,” Martin said.

  “Look, I’m not your therapist,” Colton sighed. “I don’t have to sugar coat it for you. Taggart Coulson, your bully, was probably the most consistent thing in your life back then.”

  Martin started to argue, but — “Jesus,” he breathed. “That’s fucked up.”

  Colton raised his glass. “We’re all fucked up, Martin. The question is, are you gonna stay that way, or figure your shit out and find a way to be happy with it?”

  Martin raised his glass as well, unenthusiastically. Somehow, he thought talking it out with Colton would have made him feel more certain about something, at least.

  Now, though, it seemed even more tangled than before.

  24

  Taggart stared at the television, watching the people on it move and talk but not really paying attention. His mind was elsewhere.

  Sometimes it was back with Martin, replaying that memory over and over again. He’d even jerked off to it twice, imagining Martin on top of him again or draped over his leg while he coaxed Taggart’s come out in that painfully gentle way he had the first time.

  Other times he was back in high school, a place he rarely went, listening to himself say awful things to Martin, and seeing himself at home, in his bedroom with the lights off, wasting tissues thinking about him. Funny how you could forget those kinds of things after a few years. Now that he’d lived that old fantasy, it came back with a bitter vengeance to taunt him.

  And, once in a while, he found himself back there.

  When that happened, he curled up onto the futon and cried. His leg ached — the part that was missing, as if he could feel it out there, somewhere, hurting. The concussion of the IED came back to him, that crushing force which swept through him, and the impossibly deep pain that had followed. The moment he looked down, half-conscious and fading fast, and realized what had happened.

  His phone rang when his therapy appointment came and went. It rang again when his PT appointment came and went. He knew, intellectually, that he needed to go; that he’d have to learn to walk on this leg if he was ever going to have even a carbon copy of a normal life. He knew that part of his continued recovery, if there was such a thing, meant that he’d have to keep letting Doctor Kate shrink him.

  Each time Taggart tried to muster the will to leave the house, though, something dark and heavy settled over him, pressing him back into the chair, or the futon, or the bed, and gripped him with damp fingers and whispered to him that there was no point.

  In all those poisonous thoughts, that was just one constant.

  If he could just go back, everything would make sense again.

  There was a comforting rigidness to the service. Depressed? It didn’t matter. There was a commanding officer to shout your lazy ass out of bed. You didn’t need emotion
al stability out there — you just needed to respond to orders. There was nothing at all complicated about the brotherhood between one Marine or the other. There was no expected or presumed future. There was just the uniting past of having survived this long.

  The civilian world was messy and soft. Things broke because they were made of weak metal. In the corps, everything was made of tempered steel, and the machine never broke down or needed greasing. Out here, everyone had a hundred different wants and needs, a dozen motivations that all fought for dominance. Did Taggart want the comfort of another body? Did he want Martin’s touch specifically? Did he want that moment when he was wide open, again?

  None of it made any goddamn sense.

  Taggart rolled onto his back on the futon, and stared at the ceiling. He sniffed, and realized that Grunt had shit inside.

  That smell brought him, momentarily, back to the present. He looked around, and saw the puppy near the television, lapping up whatever water was left in his bowl.

  Taggart’s throat clenched. Christ, how long had he been like this? Had he fed the dog that day? He should know a thing like that. Most of the day was a blur, though, shrouded in a thick, black fog.

  He sat up and retrieved his leg from the floor. He’d taken it off at some point, but not the cuff. The pressure of the thing sometimes managed to convince his phantom limb that it was just a ghost without nerves.

  He worked the fake into place, and stared at it. It didn’t even look like a real leg. Oh, all the parts were there; just without the muscle and sinew and skin. It was . . . skeletal, and he could only look at it for a moment before he tore his eyes away.

  Grunt. That was his job at the moment; that was his duty. Maybe he could go a couple of days without eating, wallowing in his own past, but Grunt couldn’t.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said softly as he retrieved food and brought it to Grunt’s bowl.

  As usual, Grunt didn’t hold it against him — he was just happy to chow down finally.

  “Guess we both got stuck with a raw deal, didn’t we?” He scratched Grunt’s hind quarters lightly, conscious of how easily the little guy could tip over. Grunt glanced up at him, tail wagging, and went back to his food. He looked like he was starving for it.

  “How do you fucking do it, buddy?” Taggart asked.

  If Grunt had a secret to coming to terms with his lot in life, he kept it to himself, along with the strange math he did to figure out where to defecate in the yard. Taggart probably wouldn’t have understood either, anyway.

  He struggled back up to his feet — well, foot, anyway — and hunted down the ‘accident’ by scent. There were two, it turned out. The process of cleaning it seemed to clear his mind a little, and when he was done, he took Grunt on a short walk. Not far, just down the road and back to make sure. He found himself jealous of how the dog managed to get around on three legs. It was enough to make Taggart consider what life would be like if he could just crawl around on all fours. Or all threes, at least.

  When he got back he picked up his phone and flipped through his missed calls.

  And he got about this close to listening to his voicemails, too, before the shadow came back.

  25

  Martin chewed his lip as he left Arnold’s session and headed toward the PT room where Taggart and Grunt were probably already waiting. He still hadn’t decided how to feel, but at least here at work there were clear lines to lean on. Taggart was his patient. They could interact here on more even footing.

  It was possible that made this the perfect place to actually hash out exactly what they were supposed to be to one another. Or, it was the worst place. Martin didn’t know. Probably that was why there were ethics laws in place making what he’d done an offense which could lose him his chance at ever being a fully vetted physical therapist.

  Maybe Colton was right. If Martin stepped back and looked at the whole thing objectively, it certainly looked like he preferred the hopeless chaos of trying to manage everything himself to the possible comfort of having a real career that he could use to actually do things like pay someone to care for his Aunt in her home. Was he addicted to struggling?

  He pondered that right up until he came to PT15 and found the door open, the room empty.

  Martin was early, but Taggart normally was as well. Maybe his therapy session had run over.

  He waited until right at 3:30, when their appointment was supposed to start, and left to the nurses station.

  Maria smiled up at him. “Working hard?”

  Martin smiled back and nodded. “I’m trying too. Did Taggart Coulson check in?”

  She consulted her screen for a moment before she shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Martin frowned. “I know he normally has therapy before this. Is there some overlap today? A scheduling mistake?”

  She gave him a wary look — she wasn’t supposed to give out information like that — but she did look at the screen again, and clicked a few times. “There was no overlap. That’s all I can really say.”

  Martin could call, of course; he had Taggart’s number. But that would probably look bad. “You mind giving him a call, just to see? He’s on a pretty tight schedule; I don’t want to hand hold or anything but every appointment counts at this point.”

  Although it wasn’t technically her job, Maria sighed, and picked up the phone, dialing as she read Taggart’s number from the screen. After a few moments, she shook her head, and spoke. “Mister Coulson, this is Maria Quintel from the Columbia VA Hospital, calling to remind you of your physical therapy appointment with Martin Warner today at 15:30, which is now five minutes past. If you would call us back as soon as you get this or check in at the nurses station when you arrive, we’d appreciate it. Thank you.”

  She hung up. “No answer.”

  Martin schooled his face to something unconcerned. “Alright. Well, guess I have an extra break then, but I’ll hang out in PT15 just in case he’s only late. Just send him on if he shows up.”

  “Sure thing,” Maria said, and went back to whatever it was she did when no one was bothering her for things.

  He went back to the PT room, but the full session came and went while Martin paced around, and Taggart never showed.

  All the worst assumptions came first, skipping right over the other possibilities.

  There was a statistic for the number of vets who committed suicide, and it was much higher for those that suffered loss of limbs or other disabilities — and higher still for those that also suffered PTSD. That number was higher than Martin wanted to think about, but he couldn’t help it at that particular moment.

  And once he did, he couldn’t prevent himself from playing out a horrifying scenario in his head. He ran out on Taggart after giving him a moment’s relief from feeling disconnected from everything and maybe the hope that maybe Martin had forgiven him. Taggart slipped into a depression as a result. When it got so bad, so hopeless, that he couldn’t deal with it, he —

  Martin swallowed around the lump in his throat and clutched at the pain in his gut. If he hadn’t skipped lunch he might have thrown up. Jesus, did I fucking drive him to kill himself?

  Colton thought Martin was a good person, but in that moment Martin was absolutely certain that Colton was wrong.

  He had three more appointments today, and it was time for the next one. He considered going to Scott, or maybe Walter at this point, and telling them he had to leave.

  But, he’d taken all of his sick days. If he took any more time off, he’d lose this internship. It would take twice as long to get his full license if that happened, and Janey didn’t have that kind of time. Not unless Martin planned to go back to Willow’s End and somehow manage to take care of her with both of them unemployed. The bookstore brought in barely enough to stay afloat, much less pay any bills.

  It was a difficult thing to tell himself, but if Taggart had done the worst, then it was already too late. If he hadn’t, then, maybe he was just busy or angry or . . . anything el
se. Martin would just have to wait.

  He went through his last appointments mechanically, on autopilot, and with none of the usual conversation his patients were accustomed to. All of them asked if he was alright, and he put on a fake smile and said that he was. But he counted down every painful minute until the last session was over, and practically dragged Idina Martiz to the nurses station and abandoned her with little more than a wave.

  He still had his clipboard when he got to his car. With a disgusted sigh, he threw it into the back seat, breaking at least one law in the process, and peeled out of the hospital parking lot.

  26

  Taggart jumped halfway out of his skin when someone pounded on his door, reaching for his non-existent sidearm in a sudden panic. When it wasn’t there, he tried to jump to his feet and couldn’t.

  Grunt barked, and the sound focused Taggart’s mind for a moment, long enough for him to gather his thoughts and regain control. Right — someone was just knocking on his door.

  Except the next knock was louder, pounding, and then his phone started to ring.

  He picked up his cane and eased himself off the recliner. “I’m coming!” Who the fuck pounded on a person’s door like that? The police, he supposed, but he hadn’t done anything illegal since he was in high school.

  He thumped to the door, irritated, and unlocked everything, and jerked the door open.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Martin asked. He didn’t wait for Taggart to invite him in; he stormed past Taggart, looking around like he knew what he was looking for.

  Taggart blinked away his confusion and turned, closing the door. “I — what are you doing here?”

  “Christ, Tag. What the fuck do you think I’m doing here?” Martin asked. He looked around again. “You missed your appointments today, you can’t just skip them, you idiot — they’ll drop you in a second. Do you have any idea how many vets are waiting for treatment behind you? Or how important your PT is? Do you want to walk without that cane?”