by Jessie Cooke
Garrett again sat silently for a long time, at last saying, “I’ve known him for over ten years and I’ve seen him put away more alcohol in one sitting that I could put away all night. Do you know that it never occurred to me that he was an alcoholic? How could I be so stupid? Selfishness, I guess. I’ve spent my life feeling sorry for me and because of that, I missed what was going on right under my nose.”
Paige was confused. “Was he drunk when he made his confession? Because if so, that shouldn’t hold up in court.”
“See, that’s the thing about Saint. If I’ve ever seen him drunk, I didn’t know it. You think that might have been a clue, huh?”
“I’m sorry, Garrett. But, I’m not sure what this has to do with him confessing to killing Ewell...” Paige had been trying to avoid the news, but in Vegas it was everywhere. A “respected” member of Vegas society was dead and a “lowlife” biker had been arrested for killing him. The elite crowd in Sin City wanted his head. It made her sick. None of them would even entertain the idea that Ewell was a pig...a monster, a rabid dog that needed to be put down so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
“Apparently, Saint does get drunk...every day, since he was ten years old,” he said. Paige felt her stomach roll. Ten years old? Jesus, if that’s true, it’s awful. But still...what does that have to do with this? Maybe he just needed to talk about it. She wasn’t going to interrupt. “He drank himself to death,” he said.
What the hell? Saint was dead? No way. She’d just heard them talking about the case on the radio on her way home. They didn’t say anything about that. “He drank himself to death?” she repeated, confused again.
“He’s not dead yet, but he’s dying,” Garrett said, almost in a whisper. “He says he’s only got a few months. By doing this, taking responsibility for Ewell, he thinks he’s showing me how much our friendship means. Ewell has a pretty strong backing in the community. Saint thinks that if someone didn’t confess, they wouldn’t have rested until I was caught, eventually. He’s insane. He’s giving up the last three months of his life on a ‘just in case.’”
“Oh my God. Garrett.” She put her hand back on him and she could feel him shaking. “I’m so sorry.”
He covered her hand with his again and this time she left it there. “That day at the dam, I was planning on killing myself.” He blurted out the words quickly, like he had to force himself to say them. “I knew it was the coward’s way out, but I was so tired. I get so tired of battling demons, Paige.”
She moved her hand from his chest to his face and cupped the side of it. He laid his head into her hand and they sat there like that for a minute before she said, “Believe me, I understand. It’s exhausting and sometimes you just don’t know what to do anymore.”
He nodded and closed his eyes. “I tried to explain that to Saint, in the letter I wrote to him. He was one of the people on my list of most important people that I tried to explain it to. He didn’t go easy on me. He was angry that I waited until I thought I was going to die to tell him how I felt.” Paige didn’t respond even when he paused, and he finally opened his eyes and said, “That’s why I’m talking to you now, Paige. I don’t want you to go through life never knowing the kind of impact you had on me...even if nothing ever comes of...us.”
She had tears in her eyes now. He was doing something that was practically impossible for him...doing it for her, and she was touched by that. But she knew he needed to talk about his friend just then, so she said, “Thank you, for that...for this. Tell me more about Saint, and the letter.”
“I hadn’t ever mailed them. I guess it was my way of chickening out. I left them in my saddlebags and just left it to chance whether someone would find them after I died, or not. But Saint found them, and after he read the one addressed to him, he didn’t stop there. He read them all, and then he mailed them out.”
“Oh...”
Garrett took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “Yeah. Jessie’s mother laid into me over it. Saint unleashed on me and I’m sure I still have a few ass chewings to go. I just never realized, until Saint told me how it made him feel, just how selfish I was being. He’s never been much of a talker himself, but I think he was saving it all up for today. I guess dying men have different priorities than the rest of us.”
Paige shivered when he said, “dying men.” She pictured Saint. He was so young and so handsome, and she’d really enjoyed talking to him. She’d gotten a good feeling about him, like he was a good person at heart. “So, he decided then, after he read your letter, that he was going to confess to killing Ewell?”
“Yeah. He thinks he’s doing it for me. Fuck, Paige, imagine how uncomfortable he’s going to be in there, sick...” His voice cracked again and he stopped. Paige opened her arms and Garrett moved into them, laying his head on her chest. Paige wished she had some magic words to make it better, but she couldn’t even imagine what he was feeling. “I still don’t know what I should do,” he said. “How can I just leave him there?”
Before Paige spoke, she had to analyze her own feelings. Was what she wanted to say out of her own need for Garrett to be free and there with her, or did she just really agree with Saint? Ewell’s murder had the city up in arms. With Saint in prison for it, the ruckus would die down and Garrett would be able to go on living. Saint was going to die either way and while that sounded callous, she also wanted to believe that maybe it was what he felt he needed to do in order to save his own soul. “I’m not sure,” she began cautiously, “that anything you do at this point would get him released in time for him to die. So, I guess you have to ask yourself if you’d be doing this for him, or to ease your own guilty conscience.”
He was so quiet for so long that she was afraid she’d said the wrong thing. When he spoke at last he said, “It would be about me, as usual. I’ve always had a hard time thinking about other people first...”
“No,” she said, “you’re wrong.”
He sat up and looked at her face. “No, baby. I’m a self-absorbed SOB.”
“I don’t believe that. Saint told me about how he met you. You saved him, and you saved me. A man that didn’t care about anyone but himself wouldn’t reach out to strangers like that.”
“I didn’t save Saint, I just couldn’t walk away from him. There was something about him that reminded me so much of someone else...someone I lost when I was a kid...someone that died thinking I didn’t care about him at all. So it was about my own guilty feelings. I transferred them onto Saint and hoped he was my second chance. I’m not sure if that makes sense or not.”
“I get it. But don’t you think we’re all attracted to certain people for our own selfish reasons? It doesn’t change the fact that you made a lonely little boy feel like someone cared and that you were his friend for over a decade. You touched him so deeply, Garrett, that he’s willing to trade the last three months of his life for you.”
“I don’t want him to do that,” he said, in a raspy voice.
Paige cradled his head again and said, “I know you don’t, and Saint knows you don’t. But it’s all he has to give you and as hard as it is to think about him dying in there, it’s also such a beautiful gesture.”
27
A “beautiful gesture.” Was it? Or was Saint just as fucked up in the head as Garrett was? He didn’t know, but if this was how it was going to be, he wanted to try to look at it Paige’s way. He wanted to carry a “beautiful gesture” in his heart instead of the torment in his soul of knowing his friend died in a cage because of him. Did that make him selfish, again?
It felt good to sit there with his head on her chest, listening to her breathing and neither of them trying to fill the space with unwanted or unneeded words. Garrett never had that, someone to lean on, not since his mother died. He’d spent his life thinking he couldn’t find it and never would, because he didn’t deserve good people in his life that cared about him. Now Saint had him thinking. Maybe he was right and God wasn’t the one that had been punishing him all these ye
ars. Maybe he’d been punishing himself.
“Do you think people can change?” he said, suddenly.
“Sure,” Paige said, absently stroking her fingers through his hair. “I believe people can change if they want to badly enough and are willing to put in the work.”
“Do you think if someone does that, and turns their life around, that they can make up for some of the bad things they’ve done?”
“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “Your past is your past and you can’t change that. But moving forward, it’s all up to you.”
“I don’t want to hate myself anymore,” he whispered.
“Oh, Garrett.” She bent her head down and kissed his, then she said, “I wish I had a list of things to rattle off, to prove to you that you’re a good person and you don’t deserve anyone’s hate, especially your own. But I don’t know you well enough for that yet. What I do know is this...the man who read a story to his little girl to chase away the nightmares, and the man who made such an impact on his friend’s life that Saint would be willing to sacrifice himself for you...and the man who put his own needs on hold to save my life...that guy can’t be the bad man that you seem to think he is.”
“There’s just so much you don’t know.”
“Then tell me,” she said. “At this point, what do you really have to fear?”
Garrett’s stomach clenched. His fear was that he’d talk her into believing he was a monster. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what Saint had said: the people in his life deserved to know the truth...and he wanted Paige in his life, badly.
“When I was twelve, my stepbrother was killed in front of me.”
“Oh my God.”
“I wasn’t nice to him. I twisted things up in my head after my mother died and turned my anger out on anyone who tried to get close to me. When he was killed, I thought it was because of me. I thought it was because I was so horrible to him, that was my punishment for it.”
“Oh, Garrett, you were just a little boy.”
“I guess, but to this day I can’t help but wonder if I’d been nicer to him...”
“You think that would have saved his life?”
“No...maybe. I mean, if he died because I ruined everything I touched, then yes.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“That’s what Saint said. Anyways, I guess I’ve let it fester all these years, and not just that. His mother, my stepmother, was devastated. Because she needed him so badly, my father spent very little time with me and then when I was fifteen, he died too. Again, I thought it was my punishment for being so angry with him for choosing her.”
She stroked his cheek, and he swallowed the lump in his throat and went on. “I moved out here because my mom’s dad was here, and I had to get away. I couldn’t stand the way my stepmother looked at me, even though she had a right to. When I was eighteen I was already hanging around with the Flames. My Pops was an old Army guy. He had a trunk full of medals and commendations. He was also religious, and he never tried to force that on me, but I knew he worried for my soul. I was going nowhere. One day he came to me and told me if I wanted to go to college, he’d cash in some of his retirement and pay for it. I didn’t want to go to college. Fitting in at school had always been hard for me. I didn’t know how to relate to people. I didn’t want to go to college, but I wanted him to be proud of me, so I mentioned the service. I never saw the old man’s eyes light up like that.
“I joined the Navy and became a SEAL. Most of what I did I couldn’t talk about, and again, it just festered inside of me. When I would come home in between missions, that anger began to get focused on my Pops. I blamed him for where I was...for me being a killer. I was horrible to him. Five years ago, he was diagnosed with dementia. Some days he’s fine and other days he doesn’t even know who I am. I hate myself for that too.”
“Oh, Garrett. Baby, none of that is your fault except for the way you treated them. I know you can’t make amends to your stepbrother, but have you thought about trying to make amends to the rest of them? Maybe that would ease your soul some?”
“It’s what I was trying to do...with the letters.”
“And that’s why Saint was so upset with you.”
“Yeah, he was pissed that I was going to do that and in turn I’d be dead and they couldn’t have their day in court, so to speak. I guess he’s right. It was just another cowardly move.”
“You know, all we know how to do is what we’re taught, Garrett. You never learned how to communicate your feelings because of everything that happened to you. I don’t think you’re a coward. I think you just need to learn how to talk about your feelings...at least a little bit.”
He pulled his head up and looked at her. “I shot a man in the back when I was fifteen.” He watched her face for a reaction. It was subtle, but he saw it there in her eyes. There was just no way she could feel anything for him if she knew all the facts, was there?
“Why?” she asked with a tremor in her voice.
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, because I know you killed a man a week ago too, and I know he deserved it. So why, Garrett? Tell me.”
“Because he killed Beau. He killed my little brother and I thought if I killed him, some of the pain inside of me would go away. But I was fifteen and I had no idea how to even use that gun I stole out of the stuff my dad left behind when he died. I stole a car, drove by his house, and just fired. It’s just lucky I hit him and not someone else.”
“He didn’t die?”
“No. He’s paralyzed from the waist down. The thing is, though, I didn’t feel better after I shot him. I don’t feel better after I shoot any of them. I learned a long time ago how to just feel nothing at all...and that’s what’s so hard, turning it on and off. Most of the time it just stays off so when I do feel something, I panic and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Is this helping?” she asked. “Is it making you feel any better to talk about it?”
“It’s scaring me,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I keep waiting for you to say ‘that’s enough.’ That you don’t want to be anywhere near someone that could do the things I’ve done and then just detach himself from them and walk away.”
“Do I know the worst of it?” she asked. He nodded. “Then no more worries. Unless you want me to, I’m not going away.”
Garrett and Paige talked for over an hour before he finally told her there was something he needed to do. She made him promise he’d come back as soon as he could, and he actually left there feeling lighter inside than he had in years. Maybe there was something to this sharing stuff after all. But before he could fully commit to trying to have any kind of relationship with Paige, there were some things he had to take care of. It was getting late and most of it he’d have to handle in the morning. So he went to the one place that he knew would be up all night and started there.
“Hey, Claudia,” Garrett said to Monkey’s old lady, who was the first person he saw when he walked into the clubhouse. “Is Monk around?”
“Yeah, hon, him and Speedy are out in the shop looking at his bike. You okay?” Claudia was perceptive, and she knew how important Saint was to him. Everyone seemed to, since they were all walking on eggshells around him.
“I will be,” he said. He wasn’t sure that was true, but he at least had hope. He left the clubhouse and walked out back to where the shop was. A few of the guys were working on bikes and a few more were standing around, smoking a joint and shooting the shit. There was a hush when Garrett walked in. He looked at one of the guys and said, “Is Monk out here?”
“Yeah, Bear, he’s in back with Speedy.” Garrett nodded a thanks and headed toward the supply room in back. He found his president and VP looking through the parts on one of the shelves.
“Hey,” Garrett said. “I talked to Saint.”
The two older men looked at each other and Monkey said, “Yeah, he told us. Why’d it take you so long?”
<
br /> “Just putting shit together in my head. Did he tell you why he’s doing this?”
The men looked at each other again and this time Speedy spoke. “We know he’s dying, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Garrett said. “He’s got a few months to live. How fucking horrible will it be to die in prison?”
“They won’t send him to prison,” Monkey said. “Look, Bear, I wish that Saint would’ve come to us before he made this decision that affects us all. But, as it turns out, I think it was a good decision. Those asshole rich people downtown wouldn’t have let this go until they had someone. Saint realized that, and he also realized that spending a few months behind bars wouldn’t be as bad as you spending your entire life there...and these assholes starting to look at old cases to pin on you.”
Garrett almost chuckled. Monkey was club first all the way and if the police looked at old cases and tied Garrett to them, the club would be pulled into it too. They were already getting bad PR because of Saint’s arrest, but it would tear them apart if the truth came out about how many people had been “eliminated” over the years...on Monkey’s orders and at the end of Garrett’s rifle. “Anyways, Darwin’s filing a medical something or other. He says Saint can plead guilty and then he can spend his last days in a hospital, just under guard.”
That was a little better than what Garrett had pictured, but not much. “So you want me to keep my mouth shut?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we want you to do.”
“Okay...but I need something from you in return, Monk. You know I rarely ask for things, but this is non-negotiable.”
Monkey raised an eyebrow but instead of telling Garrett he was fucked in the head for thinking he owed him anything like Garrett thought he might, the older man said, “What is it you want, Bear?”