Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2)

by Jodi Watters

  And right now, Beck didn’t feel much like sharing.

  Clutching the blanket in one hand and the bottle in the other, he turned the light over the sink off, not needing to witness his own behavior. Snapping the shutters closed to the late afternoon sun, he sank down onto the sofa. Propping both items on the coffee table in front of him, he sat back and stared at them. He stared so long, the impending sunset made only the glossy gold label on the bottle visible, blocking out his entire surroundings, reducing his world to a yard of fabric and a glass bottle. The seal remained intact as his mind began to break, a cacophony of sights, sounds, smells.

  Color memories of his childhood invaded him. The terrible day his selfish father walked away without a backward glance, returning a month later with both a younger woman and the deed to the only home he and his brother had ever known. He’d quietly filled brown paper sacks from the local grocery store with their clothes, while Grant vowed to kill the man who’d sired them and their mother called local boarding houses looking for vacancies.

  Sepia toned visions of war infiltrated his mind. The endless, chaotic fighting, breathing purposeful life into his veins, while slyly blackening his soul. The tattoo of rapid, disorderly gunfire, mixed with the keening cries of the anguished. The grotesque sight of what had once been Josh, the smell of his blood and singed flesh, the weight of his body, far lighter than it should be.

  Vibrantly warm images chased the murkiness away as snippets of Hope filled his heart. His forever girl taming the furious, unsatisfied beat. The feel of her soft hands, rubbing comforting circles over his back when the dreams turned real. A lingering kiss on the blade his shoulder, letting him have his pride and leaving his nightmare where it belonged, locked deep inside.

  Afternoon eventually turned to evening. And evening into night.

  But the man sitting alone on a sofa, in a house built for a family, had no idea the world stilled turned around him. His reality was reduced to the bottle in his hands and the quickly depleting liquid inside it. The musical sound of neighborhood children playing outside until the street lights came on never penetrated his walls. The chirping crickets and hushed sounds of night didn’t register. The incessant ring of his cell phone didn’t stand a chance, only voice mail taking the calls. Beck didn’t notice it.

  He didn’t notice the torn whiskey seal, laying broken on the floor at his feet.

  He didn’t notice the blanket, alternately clutched in his fist and held tightly to his body.

  He didn’t notice the booze disappearing by the mind numbing sip and throat burning chug.

  He didn’t notice when he stumbled out to his car, grabbing the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d carelessly purchased on his way home from Be High, knowing instinctively he would need provisions when the shit got too deep. Nor did he notice when he cracked the seal on the third one.

  And he didn’t notice the clock turning a full forty-eight hours. Or blacking out only to wake up long enough to black out again. Or that he’d gone AWOL for the Karachi trip, effectively breaching a legal contract with Scorpio Securities, Inc., and sealing the end of his career.

  He heard the rumble of the Jeep as it pulled into his driveway, louder than the sound of fear and shame ringing in his ears. Peering through the wooden slat in the front window, he saw Ash whip open the car door, Nolan in the passenger seat. Sam’s sleek sports car pulled in right behind him, both vehicles blocking his Mustang from leaving the garage. Beck waited for Grady and Mendoza to roll in, but there was no sign of either.

  That meant it was one man on three and he calculated his odds. They would’ve been considerably better if it wasn’t for the three day drunk he was on. Or was it only two?

  “That piece of shit better not leak oil on my driveway, Coleson.” Slamming the front door open with a bang, Beck did his level best not to slur his words, ignoring the pinch in his chest when he said the man’s last name.

  Ash’s brows shot up as he exited the Jeep, his body language deceptively casual. “Or what?”

  Walking to the edge of the porch, he stood at the top of the wide steps and let the glass tumbler dangle in his fingers. Staring at the three men standing in his front yard, he knew they were silently judging him. And were they wobbling or was he? “What is this, an intervention? Or a fucking rumble?”

  “He’s always looking for a fight,” Ash said to Sam, shaking his head. “Maybe that’s why one always finds him.”

  “It’s seven in the morning, Beck.” Nolan said, hands on his hips. His words seemed too loud in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. “Why are you drunk at seven in the morning? You’re better than that.”

  Beck laughed without humor, lifting the tumbler to his mouth. “I was drunk at six in the morning, too. And five.” Stopping to think, and to take another drink, he added, “Hell, I think I’ve been drunk since seven o’clock yesterday morning. You just missed it.”

  “You know what you said to me that night, Beck? After Sam’s wedding?” Nolan’s voice was rough, strained with emotion, but his guard was up. Ready for the fight he knew he was about to get. “I had to come pick your sorry ass up that night and on the ride home, you looked me in the eye and said, ‘I met my future tonight, Nole. I found this beautiful thing called hope and I held it in my hands.’ And then you made a fist and said, ‘And like Kabul, I destroyed it before it could destroy me.’”

  At the mention of her name, Beck dropped the glass tumbler with a thud and flew down the steps. “Don’t you fucking bring her up! Never say her name again.”

  Nolan didn’t back down. Reaching out to grab Beck’s shoulders in a defensive move, he dodged the erratic rib shots Beck gave him and shook his upper body as they went nose to nose. “You destroyed yourself! Then and now, Beck. You did it, nobody else! Don’t you know that? People love you. She loves you.”

  “She doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

  “And you do? Well, she’s gone now, isn’t she? So, she must know that you’re not good for her, that’s for fucking certain. Not when you’re three sheets to the wind all damn day long, like some hardcore user with no goddamn self-control or desire to live.”

  Beck’s chest heaved, the alcohol weighting his movements. “This has nothing to do with living.”

  “You know what? You’re actually right about that, you drunk asshole. This is all about dying, isn’t it? Like Josh did, right? Josh died and you didn’t, and you can’t fucking stand for it, can you? Well, how’s it feel then? To be a goner? Because you’ve been a dead man walking since the night that mission went south. Josh would spin in his grave if he knew you’d turned out this way, and he’d damn well be wishing that bullet had hit you, instead.” Nolan gripped his upper arms, shaking him. “He wanted to live. You just wanna die.”

  Turning his head to the side, Beck spit, surprised to taste blood mixed with the whiskey. Nolan was up, one to nothing. “Death has called my number too many times to count. Hasn’t got me, yet.” It wasn’t a declaration. It was a taunt. A dare.

  “Stand in your own truth, Beck. Face it head on and fight it.” Nolan grabbed him by the chin and shook him again, hard. Hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Don’t be this guy. You’re not this fucking guy. You don’t give up.”

  Beck didn’t look at him. He couldn’t. His body went slack and he could only stare blindly toward the ground, unwilling to admit the truth in his friend’s words. The partial truth, anyway. He wanted to live, but in some semblance of peace. Only his conscience wouldn’t let him.

  Nolan pushed him away in disgust and Beck stumbled backwards.

  “Fuck you, then,” Nolan said, before turning toward Ash dejectedly, not bothering to hide the tears in his eyes. “I’m not gonna do it, Ash. I won’t make him go. If he wants to do his time like this, all fucked up and drunk and full of demons, then let him.” Love, laced with a clear note of despair, sounded in his voice. “I won’t fucking force him to go to rehab.”

  “I will.” Ash said, no longer happy playing bystander.
>
  He grabbed Beck by the shoulder and the stiff arm Beck gave him in return must have surprised him because he had the big man off center for a split second, long enough to put a few feet between them and clear the whiskey induced cobwebs from his mind.

  “You wanna fight me now, too?” Ash growled, taking a step toward him with narrowed eyes. Eyes the same blue as Hope’s. “Because you’d do well to remember I’m your only fucking ally with her once you get your head out of your ass. So, you better tread carefully.”

  No, he didn’t want to fight Ash. He didn’t want to fight Nolan, or himself, or Hope. And if Lieutenant Commander Joshua Jones were standing here right now, he would give Beck the ass kicking of a lifetime, then offer to change the oil and rotate the tires on his Mustang before grilling them steaks for dinner.

  Breathing in huge gulps of fresh air, Beck put his hands on the top of his head and turned in a circle, gathering himself.

  Any guy who ran herculean covert operations side by side with you, who flipped houses using hard earned money and sweat equity with you, who generously rotated car tires and changed engine oil with you, shouldn’t get their head blown off by a .50 caliber sniper rifle. But Josh Jones had. Some said that a round from a .50 caliber could open up a hole the size of a bowling ball in your chest or blow a person’s head clean off. Beck could testify that there was no fucking clean about it. And the memory of watching helplessly as it happened, only twenty yards from where he’d stood, had started to diminish.

  He wasn’t sober by a long shot, but he was clear headed and smart minded enough to know that the fact of forgetting about Josh’s death, was far worse than the act of remembering it.

  And the sin of forgetting, mixed with the guilt of living, was eating him alive.

  “You have the same eyes as her,” Beck accused, shaking his head. His half-assed grin tempered the ludicrous recrimination. “You’re not nearly as pretty, but I feel the need to point out that Asher Coleson has the eyes of a girl.”

  Ash smirked. “Ironic coming from a guy with a pink blanket.”

  Following Ash’s gaze, he turned to see Hope’s bad news blanket laying on the porch, right where he’d dropped it when the booze brigade had shown up to crash his drunken pity party. The empty tumbler was overturned next to it, desecrating what it stood for. Ash recognized the pink fleece, reaching for it as he motioned Beck into the house, confident his command would be obeyed.

  “This means a lot to my sister,” he said, his voice eerily soft as Beck brushed past him. “You treat her, or anything that means a lot to her, the way you did this past week and they’ll have to dredge the Pacific fucking Ocean to find your tortured body.”

  Beck nodded, expecting the warning. Deserving it.

  And since nothing more needed to be said, he sat in his own kitchen as the men around him took charge of his life like he was a goddamn toddler in need of daycare.

  “Who will feed my fish?” Beck finally asked, his arms spread wide in half drunken frustration. “Cat and Dog gotta eat, you know.”

  The last place he wanted to go was rehab, but he had a sneaky suspicion that’s what all alcoholics and drug addicts said on the tail end of their final bender. And as he watched Sam speaking in a grave voice on his cell phone as Nolan paced his kitchen like an expectant father and Ash watched him like he’d bolt at any moment, Beck knew it was happening whether he wanted it to or not.

  And considering things were pretty fucking bleak, it was surprising to see them go from bad to worse when Grady walked in, looking as serious as a funeral director.

  “What’s up, bud? Let’s get you a little help, okay. You can’t sit in a dark room and listen to grunge music your whole life, because if you could, let’s face it, I’d still be living in my parent’s basement wondering why I can’t get laid. Whaddya say?”

  “Jesus Christ, Grady, not you, too?” He glared at Ash, daring him to bring anymore people into this fucked up mess he’d made. “Can’t you let me have an ounce of fucking dignity, here? If Caroline shows up with a casserole, I swear to God, I’m gonna burn this place down.”

  Ash didn’t say a word, throwing Beck a bone with his silence, letting him think he might still be in charge of his own life.

  “Grady.” Ash said suddenly, like it was the answer to everything. Snapping his fingers, he pointed to the bushy haired blonde. “You’re in charge of cat and dog.”

  Grady held up his arms to object. “My condo has a strict no pets policy.”

  “Perfect.” Ash nodded toward the fish tank. “Cat and Dog are staying with Uncle Grady while Daddy gets his fucking head on straight. Final answer.”

  Grady looked at Beck with his mouth agape. “You have goldfish?”

  “It shocked the shit out of me, too,” Beck finally said, shaking his head. “I have no fucking explanation for my behavior.”

  “How emotionally attached are you?” Before Beck could respond, Grady turned toward Sam, his ally when it came to Ash assigning him unsavory tasks, and whispered, “Can’t you take them, Sammy? Ali’s the nurturing type. She can bond with them. Take them for a walk or some shit.” Sam made a slashing motion and returned to his phone conversation, and Grady relented. “Okay, well, you’re gonna need to give me, let’s say...” he tapped and scrolled quickly through his phone, “at least an hour’s notice before you pick them up. Wait, no...” he said, holding up the screen, “There isn’t a pet store within a five mile radius of my place. Make that two hours.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The glare of the late afternoon sun pouring through the bug spattered windshield of Ash’s beat up Jeep should be putting Beck to sleep. Instead, it had him sweating like a whore in church and only added to the horrible pounding at the base of his skull, despite the dark Oakley’s he wore. A half dozen aspirin and a gallon of water had dulled the throb in his temples, but the jarring rattle in the back of his brain might be there forever. The urge to puke was strong enough that he had one hand on the door handle, just in case.

  Prepared to physically haul Beck into his big, black Jeep, Ash had relented only long enough to allow him three hours of supervised rack time to sleep off the worst of his drunk before watching him pack a duffel for his month long stay up the river. It wasn’t a prison he was being ushered off to, but it was damn close. The facility that had been booked and paid for by Scorpio Securities, Inc. was a couple hundred miles away, just north of San Francisco in scenic Marin County. Thinking of everything, Sam had booked him under a false name, knowing a mark of this magnitude on his distinguished service record or attached to his untarnished name in a government database could bring both him and Scorpio an undue amount of attention in the future. High level security clearances tended to expose the littlest of things and a stint in rehab was frowned upon. The inpatient treatment center catered to starlets and politicians, Sam told him, and those needing complete anonymity.

  Beck didn’t give a flying fuck who was there, or who knew he was there, for that matter, and he’d told Sam so in those same egotistically spoken words. But, that was the whiskey hangover talking.

  He and Ash had been driving for hours in utter silence, stopping only once in Salinas for gas, a bathroom, and two bottles of Gatorade. Future breaks became unnecessary since they had a bathroom handy, Ash had happily pointed out, holding up the empty bottles. It was a good thing the fistful of Tylenol and a raging case of the sweats had dried Beck out, because he hadn’t pissed in a Gatorade bottle in years. Upchucking in one might be necessary, though, given the nauseating roil in his gut, so he was keeping his emergency bodily fluid elimination options wide fucking open.

  The silence in the Jeep wasn’t awkward. It was normal for Ash to go hours at a time without saying a word. It had never bothered Beck before, but today, at this very moment, he felt the girlish need to chat it up. And really, what the fuck did it matter? His pride was back on his front lawn, where Nolan had so easily, and deservedly, torn it from him. Or maybe he’d shed it himself the moment his ha
nds had touched that unopened bottle of Crown Royal.

  “She’s really gone, isn’t she?” He stared out the passenger side window as he spoke, as if the tumbleweed heavy ditches along the interstate held the answers to the world’s toughest problems.

  “Yep,” Ash said slowly.

  Another minute of silence went by. “Do you know where she went?”

  “Yep.”

  Beck turned to look at him, wincing in pain at the movement. “If I asked you where, would you tell me?”

  Ash tilted his head toward him, his thumb tapping the steering wheel. “Are you asking?”

  Turning back to the wide, stretching interstate in front of them, Beck counted the speeding dashes in the broken, white-painted center line. Counted the number of times he’d held her in his arms. The number of times she’d made him smile. And feel whole. Human.

  Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, the radiating pain that shot up through his skull nothing compared to the one in his chest.

  “Good,” Ash replied. “Because then I don’t have to tell you it’s none of your fucking business. That you’re not fit to know. I don’t have to remind you that you’re a far goddamn cry from what she needs in a man.”

  Beck gave a single nod of agreement, his empty stomach churning. The big man was right on all three counts, no matter how much it hurt to hear him say it out loud. And he knew where she was, anyway. Hope was an open book. Easy to read and hard to put down. And while Denver might be a big city, he could easily find her exact location, within a few hours and with or without Scorpio’s resources. Ash knew it, too, which was why Beck had asked him the question. Trust was of utmost importance in their line of work. It was critical to the success of the mission and their safety during it, and once lost, it was a difficult thing to rebuild. He wanted to mend that broken fence with Ash pronto. If he knew Beck wouldn’t reach out to her without his specific approval, then maybe that would be a good place for them to start.