“Well, I could try,” she said, staring at me intently. “I’ve never really been the fixer, but I’m up for it. Even with you sitting across from me guzzling down a bottle of high-priced liquor.”
Glancing down, I noticed the almost half-empty bottle in my tanned hands. I stared down at the bottle, mesmerized with the liquid sloshing around inside it when she moved in for the kill.
“Why don’t we start with you telling me about your parents?” She leaned forward and grasped my hand, her thumb rubbing small circles on mine.
Looking at a point over her shoulder, I said, “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Jake told me they died.”
That was when it was clear that I was nowhere near getting my shit together. I erupted like a volcano, jumping to my feet and yelling, “Jake did what? When did you see Jake?”
Red. All I saw was blood red.
“Jake came to me,” she said, her eyes wide as she gazed up at me. “Told me you weren’t doing great. He just knew somehow, and he gave me the courage to come. And he said your parents died.”
“Well, of course he did. After years of handing his sloppy seconds to me, he wanted to take a run at mine.”
Bess gasped. Leaning back into the couch, she looked like she’d been slapped. Essentially, she had, yet she didn’t move.
Furious with myself, I hung my head. “I’m sorry, that was rude.”
Jake, what a fucking traitor. After all I’ve done for him.
Dragging my poison in a bottle, I moved to the couch and sat down next to her, trying to pull her to me, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Bess, God, I fucked up. Let’s start over. You have my emotions doing backflips in my head.”
“No,” she said firmly, then stood up and moved toward the door. “Maybe this was a mistake. Here I am facing my own demons,” she said pointedly, giving my scotch the evil eye, “and all I want to do is help you stare down yours. And you won’t even talk to me. I’m such a fool.”
I rushed after her, grabbing her before her hand hit the doorknob. “Bess, don’t. It wasn’t. I’m tired. I haven’t slept since I left Ligonier. I’m so fucking tired, and now I’m sloppy drunk.” I whispered the last part as I sank to the floor in front of her, on my knees.
I needed absolution. For everything.
My head rested against her knees as she stood above me, and I repeated, “I’m so tired.”
A moment passed that seemed like years until she dropped to the floor next to me and wrapped her arms around me, soothing me like a little boy in my mother’s lap.
With my head buried in her stomach, her legs crossed Indian-style in front of me, I murmured, “The nightmares, they’re chasing me. Finding me down here, and they won’t stop.”
And then I fell asleep on the cool tile floor in the cocoon of Bess’s warmth. I hadn’t been so embarrassed since I prematurely ejaculated with Cindi Swanson in the attic at my grandparents’ house when I was a teen.
Needy was not becoming on me. I was a man, resolute and firm in my convictions.
Yet there I was nodding off in the lap of a woman I had wronged, allowing her to care for me.
Bess
Lane was asleep like a baby, his head in my lap. I didn’t know what to do, so I rubbed his back like Camper had done just a couple of weeks ago for me. I watched his even breaths puff out of his mouth, his back rising and falling. Taking in the death grip he had on my thigh, I felt something I’d never felt in my whole life.
Worry. This foreign emotion burned in my gut for someone else, another living and breathing human being, and it simultaneously terrified me and empowered me.
For the first time, I pushed all my ridiculous poor me fantasies down, forcing them to remain dormant in the bottom of my heart. The man in my lap, whose behavior mimicked a small child, was pained—tortured, really—and it was over more than just ditching me in Fizzle Fitness all those years ago. More than anything, I wanted to take all the pain and suffering from him, ball it up, stick it in my backpack, and carry it away.
He shifted a little in my lap, and I looked down to see Lane staring at me.
“Hey,” I said, running my hand through his damp hair.
“Hey,” he croaked out. “I’m sorry I drank myself silly, and crashed like that. Crap, I’m such a fucker.” He grabbed his forehead, nearly pulling the hair out of his head.
“Lane, what’s going on?” I asked, but didn’t expect an answer.
Whatever this was, it was so deeply buried in his mind, it wasn’t going to be easy to extract. I’d seen this in rehab and AA meetings, people with such deep-seated secrets. It took time, patience, and often a military-grade deconditioning to get that shit out.
He shook his head, not meeting my eyes. “Not now.”
“Lane, we all have pain, misunderstandings we’re harboring. I was there during one of your nightmares, remember? You’ve got to let it go. I can absorb it.” As I spoke, my hands smoothed figure eights on his back. I had no idea where this compassion was coming from, but I was going with it.
“No. It’s nothing,” he said into my lap.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind if you say it out loud. It definitely is something if it has you so twisted up. Like me, the minute the drugs were out of my system, the shakes were gone and I was left alone in my sterile hospital bed. I cried like a baby for my past losses, for seeing my mom leave and mentally begging her to stay. I’d carried that with me for years, and when it was out, I was relieved. I felt okay with moving forward.”
Lane looked up at me, the blue of his eyes swirling with affection and fear.
I brushed his hair away from his forehead. “Look, I didn’t make the best choices after that. I insulated myself in a lonely life where I could never be left again. And I led AJ on because I believed he was the best chance I’d ever have. But you changed all that. You, Lane. You made me want to forgive and forget what’s been long done and gone, and when I did that, I could see a future for myself. Something different, something better.”
He sat up and pulled me in close, his arms trapping my chest to his. We sat on the cool floor with only heat traveling between the two of us, unknown feelings burning my body up, and then Lane kissed me.
I knew this response was an escape for him, but I couldn’t deny him. For him it was another defense mechanism, something he used instead of talking. I’d done that for years—pushed emotions back for sex, substances, waitressing.
His tongue sought entrance and I was a goner. I didn’t care. If Lane needed someone to seek refuge in, it would be me. When he was ready, he would find redemption inside me. Me.
On the way to Florida this time, somewhere while flying over the Carolinas, I realized I was ready to care. The path my life was heading down was self-destructive in its loneliness, barren of all emotion. And I didn’t want that.
When I felt him bite down on my lower lip, hunger and desire raged through my veins. Lane wrapped an arm around my back and started to lay me down on the Persian rug in the hallway.
We were falling. Together. Running first and jumping into the deep end.
Our legs twined, Lane used his knee to push my legs wide open. Settling between them, he rubbed himself against my core, his hard length finding the right spot immediately. I moaned, almost begged, despite knowing there was nothing romantic or sweet about this encounter.
As our mouths refused to come apart, our hands explored, pulling and tugging sweaters and dress shirts off. And then, with my chest and my heart exposed in the middle of Lane’s palatial foyer, we fucked. This time I was the drug, and Lane had so many open veins, he was filling them all with me.
The hollow look in his eyes, the urgency to get me naked, and the rush that came over him when he finally sank deep inside me were pretty much dead giveaways. Even to someone like me who was new at this relationship stuff.
Bess
We spent two days like this, hidden away in Lane’s house, the only serious conversation being over the money I spent to
get to Florida.
“Tell me how much it was for the ticket, Bess,” Lane demanded over coffee.
“Nope.” I shook my head with a smile.
“Bess,” he growled.
We were half-naked, lounging on the couch with big mugs and pretend smiles. The housekeepers had been shooed out, the gardeners sent home, and the pool unattended. Lane was hiding and I was aiding and abetting.
I texted May to make sure my shifts were covered at the hotel. Her no-nonsense attitude was a welcome mental break from all the charades here in Florida.
My supervisor, Maddie, thought I took some personal time to see my dad. I learned from May that Robbie was filling in for me in the mornings. Brooks was fine. And of course, May couldn’t resist asking about the man of the hour.
MAY: How’s Lane?
ME: Fine.
MAY: Toast is fine.
ME: Well, he’s toast.
And that he was—toast. Lane was burned. Third-degree burns covered his entire heart.
When we first met—or the first time I actually remembered meeting Lane—his wounds were wrapped in gauze, but the dressing had unraveled somehow. And now he was trying desperately to find new bandages. Sex, midnight swims, showers, and shouting on the phone for work were all doing little to cover up his singed heart.
For forty-eight hours, we did everything but talk. Every time I tried to have a serious conversation, he shook his head. “Not now,” he would say. I would chatter on about the hotel and he would listen. I even mentioned AJ getting help, and Lane just nodded.
On the second night, standing beneath the seven—yes, seven—showerheads in Lane’s master shower, his hand drifted down my side. I was pushed into the tile wall, Lane leaning into me, his dick seeking entrance. His fingers brushed over my center, tickling and teasing before finally entering me. One, then two.
“Bess,” he whispered in my ear, his voice barely audible over the roar of the water. “You feel so good. You take it all away, make it all worth it.”
“Lane, you need to tell me what it is, what I make go away.”
He was full-on fucking me with his fingers now, flicking that spot, and I was on the precipice.
“Just feel this. Lose yourself in me, Bess.” He moved his hand a little faster, and the most sensational orgasm shot through me.
It had worked again. He tapped yet another vein and shot up with my orgasm, and I was a willing bystander. An enabler. I had to stop the madness.
Dried and satiated, before we collapsed in bed, Lane said, “I have something for you.” He pulled the necklace out of his drawer. The heart, with our different shapes and sizes and personalities masquerading as diamonds filling it.
“How did you get it?” I asked, reaching out to run my index finger over its decadence.
“All by myself. That fucker thought he could take you and my necklace from me.”
“What?” Shocked, I stepped back.
“I paid a visit to AJ and got what was mine. Did him a service, actually, because he called some older chick in a Buick to help him dry out.”
Shirl?
“I don’t know who or what happened after that,” he added. “I didn’t stay for the show.”
Frowning, I said, “Lane, he may have been awful, but I hope you didn’t hurt him.”
A cold chill ran through my body. Why did everyone treat me with kid gloves? Was I that fragile? How did I not know about this?
“Bess, he’s fine. You told me yourself, he’s in rehab. That’s a good thing, right?”
I nodded.
“Now, come here,” he said and pulled me into bed, tucking me in next to him. Shifting our bodies, he molded me to his form, barely giving me room to breathe.
I woke to shouting, kicking, screaming.
“No! Jake! Look what you did . . . Jake!”
Lane grabbed my wrists and shook me, hard. My head was banging against the mattress, my neck feeling like it was going to snap.
“Lane!” I yelled. When that didn’t bring him to his senses, I slammed my knee up into his abdomen. It was my only defense.
“Oh, you’re fighting back, Jake? This is all your fault! Take it.”
“Lane! It’s me! Bess,” I shouted, my voice hoarse from trying to be heard over his.
Another knee to his gut, more yelling of his name, and finally his eyes popped open and focused on me.
“Bess?”
Realization of what happened flooded him, his face growing pale in the faint moonlight streaming through the window. “Oh shit! No!” he said as he slumped back and moved all the way to the edge of the bed.
“It’s okay,” I said.
But I wasn’t. My wrists burned from his fingers, my heart ached from the stress, and I had a headache—either from the banging or the screaming.
Lane threw his arm over his face and said, “You have to go.”
“What?” When I turned to him, he rolled the other way, giving me his back.
“You have to go,” he said. “Now.” Then he felt along his nightstand until the glow of his phone filled the room.
He was on the phone, apparently with an assistant, and the details of the one-sided conversation washed over me.
I was leaving.
Now.
There was a car coming.
A flight was arranged.
So I packed my bags silently, determined not to argue with him. But when we made it down to the driveway, I wasn’t able to keep quiet anymore.
Standing in the muggy, bug-infested Florida night, I turned and faced the man I’d traveled to help. “You know what, Lane? I’ll leave. I’ll run like you want me to, so you can blame me or whoever else you want to blame. But you and I both know you need help.”
Throwing my hands out, I said tersely, “Get it! Not for me, but for your own peace of mind. You’re eating yourself alive, and that’s something I know all about. The end is never pretty, and I would hate to see you go out like that, but it’s happening. You’re going to end up empty and soulless.”
Lane didn’t say a word. He just stood there, expressionless, staring at me with his arms crossed over his chest, removed from any responsibility.
When the car pulled up, he said, “There’s no other way. You’re right. I’m not going down a pretty path, Bess. So just go. You don’t deserve this. Run, and do it fast.”
I saw a lone teardrop slide down his cheek before I got in the back of the car, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the headlights shining on his brooding figure as we pulled away. Alone in the back of the town car, I cried. For him, not for me.
Lane had two choices now. Find a better, stronger drug than me to wipe away the pain. Or face the truth.
I hoped he picked the second.
Lane
Six months later
I’d gone for a run in my neighborhood rather than driving down to the beach. I was learning to be at home without panic and nightmares, and sticking around my house was part of my therapy.
The house in Florida had never been a hot button for me until everything went to hell. Before Bess came into my life, my past remained in the Northeast. Now it was a frequent flyer, following me wherever I went.
It was fall, but the Florida heat didn’t get the memo. Although it was the end of the day, the air clung to the warmth from the sun earlier in the day, and I was sweating quicker than I’d expected.
Rounding the bend, I wondered if the leaves were changing back home. By home, I wondered if it was cold where Bess was—in Pennsylvania.
Of course it was.
A chill wormed its way through me despite the pace I was pushing in eighty-plus degrees. The street was clear and bright in Miami, but in Pennsylvania—and Ohio—they were slick and littered with leaves. An accident waiting to happen. Like my parents.
Except with them, it wasn’t the leaves.
I arrived at the end of my driveway at the same time a cab pulled up to the gate, not allowing me to dwell on that awful day so many years ago. Coming to a
quick stop, I brought my hand to my face, wiping the sweat out of my eyes, curious about who was going to step out. My beard bristled under my hand. Another change I’d made—I wore a beard and jeans now instead of my suit of armor.
Was it her? No, she wouldn’t come back here.
Then dispelling any hope that it was Bess, a large form similar to mine opened the back door of the cab.
“Jake, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, I decided two months of my brother being MIA was enough,” he said, wrapping his big arm around my sweaty body.
I shrugged his arm off. “I’m fine, and you know it. I told you I was getting better but needed space, and yet here the fuck you are.”
Jake shot me a quizzical look. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
I didn’t want to. The last time I invited someone in from the bottom of the driveway, it went catastrophically bad.
“Come on,” I said, punching the code in the gate.
After opening the front door, I showed Jake the kitchen and excused myself for a shower, more so I could gather myself than get clean.
Standing under the spray in the guest bath—I didn’t use my master one anymore—I closed my eyes and fought back the emotions of my past. Calling forward my newfound strength, I took deep breaths, allowing the water to wash the sweat away.
Rubbing shampoo through my new beard and the hair I’d kept long, I thought about that night like I did every time I showered.
I’d watched the town car with Bess tucked in the backseat pull away like I’d watched the ambulance drive away so many years ago. Except this time, I’d been the one who needed help, screaming inside for someone to rescue me. And Bess had been trying to be strong enough, sticking around, letting me use her, giving and not taking.
Unlike me, who had run away or literally pushed her out of my life. It made me hate myself even more for my past transgressions.
I’d stared into the night until the taillights became tiny pinpricks, hating myself more with each passing second. When they were gone, I didn’t go back inside. I’d laid down on the concrete driveway and looked at the sky, enamored with the universe, its largeness. It was all consuming and I was nothing but a small chess piece in its game of life.
The Crossroads Duet Page 20