by Jessie Cooke
“Ivan’s serving time at a penitentiary in Massachusetts now, did you know that? I had to do some research to find him. I only looked there because it was pretty obvious what a shit he was his whole life. When he was arrested, he was in charge of a pretty lucrative prostitution ring; problem was he was using underage girls, and boys. An MC that goes by the Southside Skulls was pretty instrumental in shutting them down. Your friend Dax is the president of that club, isn’t he?” Garrett still stayed silent. “Seems like a lot of people in Ivan’s organization went missing before the police caught up with them. Ivan might have gone missing himself if he hadn’t rolled himself into the police station and turned himself in.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Garrett’s head was pounding again. He felt like he was in an alternate universe, some weird version of This Is Your Life.
Saint ignored that question too and went on, “I say ‘rolled’ because Ivan is a paraplegic. He has been since he was nineteen and shot in the back in a drive-by in front of his house. That case was never solved, but you might not know that, since it was almost exactly at the same time that you left Connecticut and came out west.”
“Leave it alone, Saint.”
“You talked about a kid named Beau in the letter to Ivan. You had some pretty nice things to say about him. You talked about Beau in my letter too...and in your stepmother’s...”
“Enough!”
“You said a lot of nice things about him. He had a good heart, an innocent soul, he was special needs, but that only made him want to work harder to be ‘normal’ like you...”
“Stop!”
“I know you feel bad for not saying those nice things to him when he was alive, Bear, but you were just a kid too. The beauty of it is, you can learn from it and do things differently now. You don’t just get one chance, Garrett...you can change any time you want to. You can’t go back and change what happened to Beau...”
Garrett stood up and dropped the phone. He glared down at Saint through the glass while it dangled in front of him. Saint stayed where he was, and his demeanor didn’t change at all. Garrett was primed to storm out, but morbid curiosity got the best of him. He picked the phone back up and sat down.
“Tell me what the point of all of this is, or I walk out of here and straight to the lead detective on Ewell’s case.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Saint said, still cool and calm. “You have an alibi, I don’t. My fingerprints were on your rifle, yours weren’t. That car you were driving that night is on three cameras in downtown Vegas. The driver is unrecognizable...all dressed in black. But I forgot to tell you that a few months back Monkey asked me to register a few of the cars; he had too many in his name. That one is in mine.”
“Why, Saint? Fucking please tell me why? What is your point here? What is the fucking endgame?”
He finally changed his expression, and it was one of pain. “My life was fucked up, right up until the day I met you. I spent years writing you letters and pouring out my heart and soul into them. You knew everything about me...well, almost everything. The only thing I never told you was that I took my first drink at ten years old. It was the only way, man...it was the only thing back then that got me through the day. I made a career out of figuring out who to steal it from and how. You’d be surprised at how trusting people were when they knew you were the preacher’s son. You know how that goes, though—after a while, I couldn’t live without it.”
“Shit, man, why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Saint raised an eyebrow and smiled. “It was the only thing you didn’t know, Bear. The only thing I never told you. I told you things that to this day no one else knows, except for those monsters that masqueraded as my parents. You were the only other one that ever heard about the closet where my old man would pour the rice and make me kneel on it in my shorts and pray for hours. You were the only one who knew how my mother scrubbed me until I bled the day she caught me masturbating in my room...you were the only person on this earth who truly knew me, and you accepted me without question. You may not have known that I needed the alcohol to keep from having withdrawals that would kill me, but you knew I drank it daily, and in copious amounts.”
“Is that why you did this?” Garrett asked, confused. He wasn’t sure why they were talking about Saint’s alcoholism now...
He smiled again and said, “The thing is, despite the fact that you took me in, so to speak, I honestly never knew how you felt about me until I read that letter. I mean, I knew you had my back and I knew you liked me better than a lot of the guys. But after I read that letter, I was pretty devastated to think I might have died without ever knowing about Beau, and the fact that I reminded you so much of him. I never knew that you felt closer to me than you would have if we were blood. I was so touched to read it, right up until I got to the part where you were going to kill yourself. Then, honestly, I was a little pissed. You finally say all that to me and you weren’t going to give me a chance to tell you how it made me feel, or how much I appreciated you.”
“That’s not what the letters were for.”
“No, I know. The letters were to say all the things that you should have said to the people you cared about, but were afraid to. You were afraid that if you said those things out loud, you’d lose them. You lost your mother at nine, your little brother at twelve, along with your chance to have another mother love you. Then you lost your dad at fifteen. You’re so used to losing people that you don’t know how to keep them. You don’t know how to nurture a relationship. Losing people was all you knew about life by the time you were an adult.”
“Saint, we’re wasting time here...”
“Wasting time? No, Bear. Going through life not making connections, the way you and I both have, that’s wasting time. People like me have an inkling that you care about them. But if you never hear the words and you never have a chance to say them back because you know it makes that person uncomfortable...then it’s hard to believe them. It pisses me off, brother, that you expected us all to know these things just as we stood over your coffin. What the fuck were we supposed to do with our feelings at that point? Did you think about that?”
“I’m sorry, man,” Garrett said, wishing he could get Saint back on topic. “I was suicidal, so obviously not thinking so clearly.”
Saint chuckled. “Brother, suicidal is your lifestyle. I’m not judging you, it’s been mine too. I’m just trying to take some of that shit out of the bag you carry around, so life won’t be so heavy, and you might be able to learn how to enjoy it.”
Garrett’s head was beginning to ache again. He was so fucking confused. “I still don’t understand,” he said. “How is putting yourself in this situation helping either of us? I don’t fucking understand.”
“You think that you’ve lost everyone you cared about because you deserved it, because you’re a bad person and that if people knew the real you, they wouldn’t love you, and that God doesn’t love you. Man, if anyone knows God it’s me, and I’m here to tell you that he does not punish. He did not take those people from you because of something you did. Life is just fucked up sometimes. But what I learned way too late is that it just means you have to work harder to find the joy. I don’t want it to be too late for you. I know me being here doesn’t bring you any joy...at least not right now. But when you’re feeling down on yourself in the future and you start thinking you don’t deserve good things, I want you to remember me and remember that I loved you so much, brother, that doing this was the only way I could think of to prove that to you.”
He isn’t making sense. Maybe he got hold of some bad weed. “You’ve got nothing to prove to me, Saint.”
Saint kept talking like he didn’t hear him. “You don’t have a monster living in you, Bear. You’re a man with faults who has had too much shit happen to him too young. You were given to the Navy as a blank fucking slate and they made a killer out of you because that’s what they needed you to be. Monkey and the rest of this club have
nurtured that part of you because that’s what they needed you to be. This Ewell guy was no punk dealer that crossed the club. He wasn’t in a rival gang, or a street gang. He wasn’t a pimp, and he wasn’t trafficking little girls. Yes, he was a fucking rapist and he needed to die...but he was a rich motherfucker who was living a double life, and the people who didn’t know the other side of him are not going to rest until the police have someone in custody. That’s where I come in.”
“So that’s why you’re sitting in jail, waiting to go to prison? This is to prove to me that I’m such a great guy, you’ll do anything for me?”
Saint nodded, which only frustrated Garrett more. “If you want to sum it up, yes, that’s about right. I didn’t want you hunted down like a dog...on the run, or thinking you needed to kill yourself to keep them from putting you in prison.”
“That’s fucking noble of you, brother, but it was un-fucking-necessary! Do you hear me? You want me to know how you feel about me...you should have just fucking told me. Spending twenty fucking years in prison is just...extreme. Insane. No, Saint, I can’t let you do this.”
Calmly Saint said, “I won’t be there for twenty years, Bear.”
“Only on the off-chance Darwin gets you off. If you plead guilty, the mandatory sentence is twenty-five years...life if they prove intent...” Garrett researched things like that in every state he did a job in. It was morbid curiosity, but he had to know.
“I know,” he said, still calm and in a voice that said he was trying to calm Garrett down too. “But it doesn’t matter what they find me guilty of, Bear. My sentence has already been handed down. In about three months, maybe sooner, my liver is going to stop working completely, all of my organs are going to shut down, and I’m going to go home to Jesus. I’m going to stand at those pearly gates until they let me in and once I’m inside, I’m going to crack open a bottle of champagne and celebrate. I know I haven’t lived the best life. But no matter what has happened, I believe God still loves me. I hope that one day you’ll believe that about yourself too, because when it’s your time, I’d really like to see you again.”
Garrett could feel the blood drain out of his own face. He couldn’t find the words...any words. He was sitting there with his mouth open, staring at his best friend who had just told him with a smile that he was dying. He’d blocked out all of that stuff about God and heaven. His best friend was fucking dying, and in prison to boot. Garrett knew a guy in the Navy who died from cirrhosis. It was an ugly, painful death. Prison was only going to make that worse. Saint didn’t deserve to die that way. Garrett had to stop this. He had to get Saint out of there.
“Don’t do it, brother,” Saint said. “I can hear what you’re thinking and I’m begging you, don’t do it. Let me do this for you. Let me die with hope in my heart that you’re going to have a great life.”
The door opened to the right of Garrett and he heard a voice say, “Time’s up.” He was still grappling for something to say...some way to get through Saint’s hard head.
He turned his head toward the C.O. “Just another minute, please.”
“No, now.” the officer said. Garrett turned back toward Saint. He’d already put the phone down. He smiled at Garrett and flashed him a peace sign. Garrett put his hand on the glass and watched as his friend was shackled up and shuffled away. Even the monster inside of him felt like his heart was breaking.
26
Paige had her first halfway decent day since she walked out on Garrett on Friday night. It was Tuesday now and she’d gotten through the entire day without picking up her phone to text and make sure he was okay. He was a big boy and he wasn’t her responsibility and she needed to get that through her head. Hell, he still hadn’t admitted he was out at the dam that morning to kill himself, after everything she’d shared with him. When she was angry she’d tell herself that she bared her soul and he’d barely given her anything in return. Then she’d remember what he did for her and she’d feel bad all over again. He saved her life and he took out her nightmares. She’d always be grateful to him for that. But she had to get it through her head that they could never be any more to each other than they were right at that moment. Garrett didn’t want her to know him...really know him, and that would make it impossible for them to ever go any further than the bedroom. She would never be satisfied with that, not when it came to him. Her feelings for him were already too strong. No, she had to stay away from him and she had to keep telling herself that every day that would get a little bit easier.
She took her bag and locked up her office and said goodbye to the girls out front. They’d all asked her about Garrett again on Monday morning, but her refusal to talk about him had finally convinced them to let it go. None of them mentioned him on Tuesday and that helped too. She drove home in a much better frame of mind than she’d been in for days and it lasted...right up until she saw him sitting in her front yard.
She saw him as soon as she turned onto her street, and she hit the brakes. She thought about turning around and hoping that he hadn’t seen her. His back was to her. He was sitting up against a tree and she almost laughed at how much smaller the tree looked than usual, compared to him. She wondered what her neighbors were thinking as they walked or drove by and saw him sitting there. She didn’t really care, but it was an older neighborhood, so she was slightly amused as she wondered what was going through their minds when they saw the giant just sitting there on her lawn. She sighed and rolled her eyes. She might as well get this over with...she just had to stay strong.
She put the car back in drive and finished making her way up the street. As she drove into the driveway, Garrett didn’t even move. He didn’t even look at her as she got out of the car. For a few seconds, she was afraid he was dead, and then she saw him blink. Thank God.
“You’re kinda big for a lawn ornament— all that shade will kill my grass.” She walked past him to the house and heard him chuckle.
“You could stick a green hat on me and tell people I’m a tree.”
“I like that...it could work. Although my neighbor’s dog does like to pee on my trees...” She had her back to him, but she heard him get to his feet. She had the door unlocked and opened and he still hadn’t said anything else. She could feel him still there looking at her, though. She finally turned around and said, “So what’s up, Garrett?”
“Can we talk?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I’m wondering if we might be better off to cut our losses now and move on. I mean, we haven’t known each other that long and haven’t had much time to get attached...”
“I’m attached to you, Paige.” The words were simple, but his tone was sincere, and they were the first ones like them that he had said. It was what she wanted from him the other night, and she wanted to kick her own ass for melting as soon as he said them. She sighed, knowing that now she wasn’t going to send him away.
“Come in, but keep your distance,” she told him. He laughed. “I’m not kidding.”
He laughed again. “I know you’re not.”
“So why are you laughing?”
“Because it makes me happy to know you don’t trust yourself too close to me.”
“Suddenly, you’re Mr. Honesty,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You coming in or what?” Garrett stepped in behind her, and there was no denying the energy that surrounded her when he was around. It crackled in the air that he tried to steal from the room.
“Have a seat. You want something to drink?” She was doing her best to make it casual, but she could hear the quiver in her own voice.
He looked uncomfortable as hell as he said, “I don’t need anything to drink.”
Paige sat down on the couch and said, “Okay. Sit then, talk to me.”
“Can I stand?”
She chuckled. “No. You make me nervous. Sit.”
He sighed, but he sat down a foot or so away from her on the couch. It wasn’t far enough. She could smell a hint o
f his cologne and again...that presence of his just called to her, it drew her in. She kept herself tightly against the other side of the couch and waited. At last he said, “I’m sorry...about the other day.”
“Okay, what are you sorry for?”
“I should have just talked to you, but I’m not sure...I just don’t think, it’s just fucking hard.”
“I get that. Want to tell me what you’re afraid of?”
“It’s not that I’m afraid...”
Paige folded her arms and smiled. “It doesn’t make you weak to admit you’re afraid.”
“I never talk about myself...my feelings. I guess I’m just...fuck, I guess I am afraid. I’m afraid you won’t want to be with me if you know what’s really going on in here.” He put his hand on his chest. Paige reached over without thinking about it and put hers there as well. He grabbed it in his other hand and instantly her whole body was alert and quivering all over. She pulled her hand away and said:
“Maybe we shouldn’t touch, until after you talk.”
He smiled, but he didn’t press her. He settled back into the couch and said, “I saw Saint.” Paige waited for him to go on, and then, realizing this might be like pulling teeth and being thankful for her dental background, she said:
“How is he?”
Garrett closed his eyes for a second and when he opened them they had tears swimming inside. “He’s...crazy. He thinks he has this all figured out. He even thinks they won’t believe me and drop the charges against him if I go to the police.”
“Did he say why? Did he think you were going to be arrested?” Paige’s chest tightened at the thought. She was going to struggle with forgiving herself for her part in Saint’s being locked up. If it were Garrett...she didn’t know what she would do.