Born Into Trouble (Occupy Yourself Book 1)

by MariaLisa deMora

  A flash of white teeth signaled a smile pointed his direction. Raising his hand, he pushed his fingers through her hair again. Pure silk.

  “I’ve heard you when you don’t think anyone’s listening. Might be my favorite thing to do. I lurk.” Her head tilted to one side. “Did you know?” He shook his head; a movement she must have been able to see because that flash of teeth came again. “I’ll sidle into the hallway by your apartment, drop to my butt, and sit there. Just listening because, when you think you’re alone, when you don’t realize there’s an audience, you let things go, and Jesucristo, Benny,” she took a breath, pressing deeper into him, “what you do then is amazing. If you give an audience half of what you have inside you, you’re going to win back every foot of progress you lost by getting sidetracked like this.” He watched her head dip, but even with that warning wasn’t prepared for what she did next.

  Lucia’s hair draped around her face as, lips to his chest, she brushed her way across side-to-side, then the tip of her tongue traced around his nipple, teeth nibbling gently. He was hard in an instant, imagining her lips on him in other places. Her heated breath rushed across his skin, and he opened his mouth, preparing to say something, but before he could find his voice, she had retreated, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder, curving into him again. “You’re amazing, Benny. Never doubt it.”

  Wordlessly, he stroked her shoulder, down her back. Soothing himself as much as her, he lay awake long after she finally found sleep. Turning her words over in his head, he felt the beginnings of a plan. He had to earn her belief in him. Marie’s.

  Sixteen

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Ben? What the fuck?” The frustrated shout woke him, and Benny lifted his head, looking with bleary eyes towards the stairs. Shit.

  The pounding in his head was sickeningly familiar. So was the sight greeting him. A disappointed face. Andy’s. “Shit.” He muttered this, but his voice was loud enough for Andy to catch it.

  “Yes, shit. Shit again. Mighta shit on yourself, from the smell of it.” Andy—Slate, he tried to remind himself to call his brother Slate. He likes that. “What the fuck did you do last night?”

  He’d played. Gotten onstage and played, pushing through the terror-driven shakes threatening to derail the performance even before they’d started. Bear and Chase took the stage with him—Bear’s presence promising to help make it easy, Chase’s making it better because Benny was able to focus on giving the kid his own brand of reassurances. Lucia in the audience, front and center, sitting at a table near the stage so he could see her every time he looked up from his hands. Belief and love so clear on her face he nearly froze at first, from the full knowledge of what she was giving him.

  While Bear had been recovering at home, they hadn’t been able to take much time for themselves. Quick lunches in the family kitchen instead of leisurely dinners out, stolen moments on the phone. With Luce out of the picture a lot of the time, he’d dialed in on Chase, working with the boy every day, bringing him along faster than he’d believed possible. Vic and Chase formed the other two legs of his musical tripod at the moment, and he let them balance him as often as they could all be in the same room. So they played, and the music flowed from his fingers, if not his head. Lyrics were still a scarce commodity, but when they did come, they were good. The kind of curl-your-toes, make-you-shiver, raise-the-hair good.

  Last night had been good, too. The last half of the set was rocking, the bar filled to capacity in a party for DeeDee’s man, Jase. A music lover, if not a musician, Jase had sat in with them one night at Bear’s place. Proving while he could carry a tune, he couldn’t be trusted with an instrument, he had broken four strings on one of Bear’s guitars before the guys could wrestle it away from him.

  The gig had been so good, Benny let it go to his head. Thinking to himself, If I can get back on stage, then I can handle anything. Right?

  Wrong. So fucking wrong.

  After they finished playing, he was only three swallows into the first beer and had already been thinking how he could get another without anyone seeing. Three beers and he was in the alley out behind the bar with a different gang of bikers passing a joint around, accepting the jug of moonshine when it made it to him, hooking a finger through the handle and lifting it to his lips as if he did it every day. Laughing men loaded him into a van with shouts of a party, and vaguely he remembered seeing Lucia standing on the walk in front of the bar as they drove past, looking side-to-side. Another bar, another back alley. Another drunken night ending in a blackout.

  Now was now, and he was on his brother’s couch with no memory of getting there. Focusing on the floor, he found the remains of the night in the form of a single empty bottle on the floor next to the couch. If he doesn’t know how bad it was, maybe I can bullshit him.

  “What?” Quiet, so he didn’t wake the babies, he flipped over on the couch, pretending the movement didn’t set his stomach churning. “I’m up. Was there something you needed?”

  Standing close, so close Benny could see every detail of the seam stitching on his jeans, Slate glared down at him. For several long minutes, he bore the weight of that stare, and then Slate shook his head. His brother’s eyes slowly closed, and Benny watched as Slate made a visible effort to get himself under control. Voice vibrating with anger, Slate hissed, “You fucked up.”

  “I slipped.” No chance of lying now, not if his brother already knew. “That’s all. Just a slip.”

  “Fucked.” Slate leaned down, shoving his scowling face into Benny’s. “Up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Save it.” Slate whirled, hands to the air, fending off something Benny couldn’t see. “You.” His voice rose to a shout. “Fucked up.”

  On cue, the cry of a baby trailed down the stairs, and Slate turned to look that direction, the expression on his face so torn it twisted something sideways in Benny. For a moment, it felt like things were unbalanced, on the cusp of something huge, and then slowly Slate turned to look at him. Eyes bleak, he said, “I got kids, brother.”

  Benny nodded, shoving to a seated position on the couch. “I know you do.”

  “Want them to have an uncle they can love.” Benny knew Slate saw the flinch his words caused, watched as matching pain moved through his brother’s face. “Want them to have a family who loves them.”

  “I love them. You know I do.” How do I make this right?

  “Love the booze more.” Slate looked down, hand to the back of his neck, fingers kneading and rubbing. “You need more than I can give you, Benny.” His words came slowly, seeming forced out. “Time to go back to Phoenix.”

  “No, Andy.” Benny was near tears, hating the disappointment in his brother’s voice, wishing he could turn back the clock to before he got in that van, took the first drink, climbed the stairs to that goddamned fucking stage. “Please, God. I can do better. I will. I promise. It was just a slip.” In his head he heard Chase’s words from the darkness around a bonfire, “Right to the mother. Fuckin’. Curb. Muthafuckin’ curb.”

  “You slip then you use whatever you need in order to get your feet under you again so you can stand strong. Rehab is a tool. You need to work it.” One hand shoved deep into his pocket, Andy pulled out his phone and placed three calls.

  Two hours later, Benny was on a plane. Seated on the aisle next to him, boxing him in, his silent escort, was none other than Davis fucking Mason. Jesus.

  Seventeen

  “Ben, how does it feel to be back here?” New doc for group, but he’d seen this one around before.

  “Hey, Doc.” Benny waved one hand as he flopped into the thinly cushioned chair nearest the door. “Feels like shit. How you doin’?” No laughter from the group, but he didn’t expect any. There weren’t any faces he knew. All his rehab cohorts had gone on to graduate, moving on. They wouldn’t be back as failures. Not like me.

  “Well, let’s see what we can do to ensure this is the exception, shall we?”

  Cup
of coffee in hand, he lifted it to her in salute, letting the movement be his only response. Smoothly, she picked up the thread of the topic her group had been discussing before he walked in, and he listened as she covered strategies to recognize when a behavioral or environmental trigger was in play and how best to sidestep it, keeping to the sober side of the track no matter what. He found a way to contribute to the conversation when she asked for additional triggers they might think about. He snorted and raised a hand, waiting patiently as she worked her way around the semi-circle of occupied chairs. When she pointed to him, lifting her arched eyebrow in a question, he responded with one word. “Success.”

  ***

  “Hey, shrimp. How’s it hangin’?” There was noise in the background, and Benny heard Ruby’s voice, then the cooing of a baby.

  “I catch you at a bad time?” He had a favor to ask and didn’t want to rush to it if he didn’t have to. Ease into it as it were. Stealing attention from needy babies would not be the way to go.

  “Naw, Ruby just took Dani to lay her down. Allen’s already snoozin’.” Slate laughed softly, affection thick in his voice and Benny knew he was watching Ruby walk away. “It’s never a bad time to talk to my baby bro.”

  “You…you talked to Mom, right? About before, back when she was in Enoch?” The words came tumbling out, and Benny was already off script, not having meant to dive in so deeply from the start. “About before you…went looking for work.” He choked out the words, the phrase “left me” so close to escaping, he had to clamp his lips shut for a moment.

  “Yeah, I did. She had it tougher than we knew, but we were kids, Benny. What the hell did we know?” Benny knew if he could see him, Slate would be standing with one hand wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling and massaging, trying to ease the decades’ worth of weight he carried for everyone around him. “She landed in Colorado. Found a program she could work, kicked her habits. Came out the other end stronger.”

  “Did she tell you what worked for her? Doc says different things work for different folks. We were talking and she said not to get discouraged, because different doesn’t mean bad.” Now the words were coming faster, and he didn’t think he could stop the flood if he tried. “Like group seems to click for me. Better than the confessional of a meeting podium.” Meetings left him frustrated. Most people didn’t appear to want to talk about what was working, only about where they were in the program, or what the response had been from their families. Which worked for a lot of people, but not him.

  “I feel like I need people to bounce things off, people who will give it to me straight, but all the time. Not only when I ask what they think. If I’m talking and what I’m sayin’ is shit, then I don’t want to spend time chasing a dung heap.” Mason’s face swam up from his memories, and Benny once again felt the weight of piercing grey eyes holding him in place as Mason made Benny’s situation clear. “I…you were talking once…about a…talking about…you know. A different thing.”

  The words dried up; he was left with an incomplete statement, and he didn’t know if he’d given Slate enough to figure out what he thought he needed. As ever, his brother surprised him. “Sober companion. I’m way out ahead of you, shrimp.”

  Air whooshed out of Benny, a breath he wasn’t even aware he had held in. “Yeah.” The single whispered word seemed to reassure his brother.

  Sounding confident, Slate said, “I’ve talked to folks who’ve done this. The person has to be a fit for you, but also not. Because they need to have enough of their own brand of tough to stand against you if you need it. Not a pushover, not a friend. A paid companion on your path to staying sober.” Now he sounded relieved, and Benny was glad he could hand this to Slate, at least. “I have a few applications that came in yesterday. I’ll sort through the mess, and we’ll interview when you get home. But, Benny?”

  Slate paused, and it seemed his name was a question because he didn’t continue until Benny said, “Yeah?”

  “They work for me, not you. They report to me, about you. And it’s just how it’s going to be.” Iron and steel didn’t have anything on the strength of purpose populating Slate’s voice. “You understand everything upfront, we won’t have any problems.”

  “I got it. I get it.” He swallowed. Words that once had come so easily now sticking in his throat. “Slate…Andy?” It was his turn to wait for his brother’s response, and he wasn’t left hanging long.

  “Yeah, shrimp?”

  His voice, strong in the beginning, trailed off to a barely heard whisper by the end. “I love you. You know that, right?”

  “I know you do.” He could hear the smile in Slate’s voice. “I love you, too, shrimp.”

  Eighteen

  Benny looked up to see Bear walking through the bar towards where he sat waiting, guitar in hand, up near the stage. Bear had called earlier and set up the meet, a call Slate didn’t screen, so he must have known about it ahead of time. From his tone on the phone, Benny hoped Bear wanted to jam, because he was ready to get back to it. Friendly, if brief, their conversation gave Benny hope things would be able to continue as they’d been before. Playing, jamming and collaborating on music. Right now, however, from the look on his friend’s face, he feared the purpose of this meeting might be very different from his expectations.

  As he reached Benny, Bear reached out and snagged a chair, flipping it so when he sat so he was straddling it, with the small barrier of the back between them.

  “Hey,” Benny said, plastering a sheepish smile on his face. “How are you doing?” He was expecting a lecture like Mason had given him as he dropped him off in Phoenix. A reminder he didn’t want to fuck Slate over. Everyone had their eye on him, watching and weighing his actions against his brother’s reactions.

  For a long moment, Bear sat silently and looked at him. Benny’s smile faded as the pressure in the room seemed to double, then triple, increasing the longer the silence went on. Then Bear sighed and without preamble said, “Lucia likes you. She likes you a lot."

  Benny gave Bear a small shrug, feeling his lips twisting to the side with the flood of anxiety that swelled inside him at this start to their conversation. "I like her, too."

  The full weight of Bear’s glare landed on him, and Benny felt his stomach clench. Shit. Shit shit shit.

  "Don’t matter. Ain't happening. Not now. You seriously think I'm going to let you in there with her?" Bear shook his head. "Ain't happening."

  Not something he’d expected. His brain stuttered, making it so he had no response. Couldn’t think of anything but the look on Luce’s face when he kissed her. How she leaned into him whenever she was near. How it felt to sleep innocently next to her, waking early just to have time to drink his fill of looking at her relaxed, beautiful face, her arm still claiming him even in her sleep. The feel of her hand on his heart when she reassured him that the music was inside him. Stunned, Benny sat and stared at him, hearing his mouth stammering, “What? Wh…why?"

  "Do you not know where you spent the last four weeks? I do.” Bear leaned in. “She doesn't. And she won't. Because she likes you." Bear shook his head again. "But you aren’t the guy she likes. You’re an asshole who thinks his shit don’t stink. Who doesn’t know good when it’s standing right in front of him. You’re a user. I ain’t talkin’ drugs and you know it. And my Luce”—Bear flipped out a hand, pointing to Benny—“liked what she thought she saw. What she hoped was there. So I’ll allow her to keep the illusion. That nice guy. That sweet guy who takes her for ice cream, the guy who makes her laugh, the guy who plays fucking beautiful music. But, it's all you get of her. She keeps that, and you get shit-all because you fucked up one too many times. You’ll let her go. Let her go, take your goddamned hooks out of her, and let her find a decent man. One who can love her how she deserves."

  Benny sat for a minute, frozen. Hearing the seconds loudly tick past in his head, frantically considering and discarding what he could say that would change Bear’s mind. He had to. I can’t do
that. Can’t glimpse what might be and have it ripped away. Never have the promise of her love. He went with honesty. "I love her."

  His words were met with a quick, resolute headshake. "No, you don’t. You love booze. You love yourself. You even love the music. Got that whole rock star thing going for you. You do not love her. You take your hooks outta her, unlatch however you gotta do that, but you take care with my girl. Leave her with the memory of the man she thinks you are.”

  "But…"

  With a roar, Bear came off the chair, turning it over in his rush to get at Benny. And in his movements, Benny saw what his friend had been holding in check. Gone was the laughing and affable man. In his place, a dangerous, protective father, set to make the world better for his girl. In a silent, quiet corner of his brain, he was glad she had that, wanted to be the one to give it to her. To do better for her, to make things right. Bear pulled him back into the moment, wrapped his hand around Benny's throat and picked him up, pushed him against the wall. Held him there on tiptoes. Leaning close, Bear hissed, “You do not understand me. This. Is. Not. Happening." He shook Benny. "Not today. Not tomorrow. Not fucking ever.”

  ***

  “You are not my favorite person right now,” Ruby told him. “You need to go away. I'm tired. I'm grumpy. I'm a milk machine. And the babies are sleeping, so I’m taking advantage by napping. Go away, Benny.”

  Benny sat on the edge of her bed, looking down at an exhausted-looking Ruby, who lay there with resolutely closed eyes. She was his last hope, but seeing the look on her face, he felt a wash of despair and desperation move through him. “Ruby,” he said, “please. Please, God. Please, you gotta help me. Luce...” He paused for a moment and took a breath. “She means everything, Ruby.”

  Ruby abruptly sat up, pushing her hair away from her face, frustration and fatigue making her look a little crazed. “No. I won’t. I can’t. You can't do this, Benjamin. You can't. I know what happened, what Bear said. And honestly, I get where he’s coming from. What you gotta get is your brother and Bear are brothers. Bear doesn't want you for his girl. He doesn't. He’s seen the devastation you leave in your wake. He doesn't want you for his girl. He’s her dad now. He gets to make that call. Do what he has to do to keep her safe, sane, and healthy.”