Bast cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s a good word for it. That’s how I remember her.” He blinked hard, and I watched him dash at his eyes without any hint of embarrassment. “When I think of Mom, I think of sunlight, and…warmth. She was quiet, never raised her voice.”
“She was always humming,” Zane murmured. “I remember that.”
I laughed, nodding. “Yeah. She was. She’d find something to do, knitting or sewing or a crossword or whatever, and she would just hum. Not a melody I ever recognized, just…a constant musical hum.”
Bast tipped his head backward. “Yeah.”
I let out a harsh, fast breath. “So. It started to become obvious to me that she was choosing Liam. More of her time was with him. When the three of us were together, she would sit close to him. Address most of her comments to him. She still talked to me, we were still…friends. But that…magic, I guess, was gone. Whatever we had, it was gone. And I…”
I had to pause for a long time to summon the courage to tell the truth, out loud, for the first time in my life.
Absolute silence.
“I got bitter. Angry.” I clenched my fists, hid them under the bar—tried to hide the shaking. “I started resenting Liam. Even her. I was still in love. She’d chosen him, but my heart hadn’t gotten the message. Things kept going. I started seeing them holding hands, whispering. I got more and more angry, and bitter.”
I glanced at Liv, and her face was a mask of sadness and compassion. I couldn’t figure out why she’d look at me like that now, how she could feel anything for me.
“I, um. I figured I may as well try and move on, you know?” I shook my head. “Caitlin. God, that girl deserved a hell of a lot better than she got from me. I was usin’ her, plain and simple. Relief, you might say. Plus, either revenge, or an attempt to make Lena jealous. To this day I dunno why Caitlin put up with it—she was a smart, beautiful girl, a good person. She had to know what was going on. But she hung around with me for a couple months. Called it goin’ steady, back then, and I guess it sort of did help me stop pining over Lena in an obvious way.” I laughed bitterly, shook my head. “That’s a lie, though. At best, all it did was mask my hurt.”
“You guys ended up in Seattle,” Rome said. “The four of you.”
I nodded. “Yep. All four of us were born-and-bred Alaskans, never been south of Ketchikan, so we decided to take a trip down to Seattle. Just for the weekend, for fun.” I stretched my arms over my head, then dropped my hands onto the bar top. “We ended up staying a week. Had two little rooms in a motel, three doors down from each other. Liam and Lena, and me and Caitlin.”
“Was that hard?” Remington asked.
I nodded again, staring once more at a single spot on the bar, a whorl in the grain. “Fuckin’ agony. Thank god my room wasn’t next to theirs. I knew by then which way the wind was blowin’, what was happening with them behind closed doors. They weren’t crazy with public displays of affection, but it was still obvious they were a couple. I was tryin’ my damndest to pretend I was over her, but…” I rolled my shoulder. “I wanted her. I thought I was the better man for her. I thought…stupid romantic kid that I was; I thought we was meant to be together. That she’d see the error of her ways and be with me, at some point. That there was somethin’ I could do, somethin’ I could say that would make a difference. I knew deep down I was foolin’ myself, but at that age, when you’re that lovestruck, you don’t know jack shit.”
“There’s no convincing a lovesick nineteen-year-old of anything,” Liv said. “There’s no logic powerful enough, no argument convincing enough. The love, or obsession, or infatuation of a nineteen-year-old is an invincible, all-powerful force.”
I laughed bitterly. “Got that right, Liv.”
“I remember what I was like when I was nineteen and lovesick myself…and I’ve got five daughters who have all been through that.”
“The lovesick me was a blind fool, and the king of all dumbasses,” I said. “Things all started boiling up toward the end of the week. Caitlin and I were flaunting things, I guess you could say. And so Liam and Lena started to do the same. I kept seein’ Lena look at me sometimes, sorta hurt. Confused. I don’t know. Just these weird looks when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You said you and Uncle Liam came to blows about it,” Ram said. “Over Lena.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I’ll get to that in a minute. The week was awful. I was with Caitlin and lovesick over Lena, watching her get cozier and cozier with my brother, watching her look at me like she didn’t know me, like seein’ me with Caitlin was somehow painful for her even though she didn’t want me. I was confused as hell. We went to this park, the four of us. Sat there watching the sun go down, smokin’ dope and sippin’ whiskey from a bottle. One of those rare beautiful sunny days in Seattle, where it’s just…magical. And Liam ended up sittin’ off by himself, and Caitlin went over and talked to him, so that left me and Lena. She sat down with me on this bench. Didn’t say nothin’ for a minute or two. Maybe longer? I don’t know. A long time, anyway. It was an uneasy, tense silence. Like, we both knew there was a fuckin’ world of shit we both needed to talk about, but neither of us wanted to start. Eventually, Lena turned and gave me this look…I knew it was goodbye.
“I remember what she said as clearly as if it was yesterday. ‘Lucas, I know you’re in love with me.’”
Silence.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “‘You’re my best friend, Lucas. And I love you, but…like a best friend. I don’t want to lose our friendship, but you need to understand that I love Liam in a way I’ll never be able to love you. I’m in love with Liam. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I wasn’t totally honest. I know this is going to hurt you, and I’m sorry. I wish I knew how to make it hurt less, but I just can’t. I understand if you can’t be my friend anymore, but this is just how things have to be.’”
“Wow.” This was Claire. “That’s some brutal honesty for you.”
I nodded. “Hit me like a fuckin’ knife to the gut.”
“What’d you say?” Ram asked.
“I didn’t say a damn thing. Didn’t know what to say. Didn’t have a single word in my head. Just…emptiness. Pain. Rage. Confusion. I don’t fuckin’ know, just…mainly it was just pain.” I hung my head. “So I did somethin’ then that set me on a course that would end up defining me as a person. I went out, bought a handle of Jack, and got obliterated. Alone. In the motel room. I just walked away from that park, went straight to the nearest liquor store, bought a handle, went to the room, locked it, chained it, put out a do not disturb sign, propped a chair in front of it, and sat and drank that whiskey outta the fuckin’ bottle until I couldn’t hear Lena’s voice in my head no more.”
Liv sniffed. “Oh, Lucas.”
I glanced at her. “What?”
Her smile was gentle. “That doesn’t define you.”
“Maybe it don’t no more, but it did. For forty years, that shit defined me. If I wasn’t drinkin’, I was thinkin’ about it. Every waking moment of my life I spent running from her, from those words—I love Liam in a way I’ll never be able to love you. I heard it on repeat, on a loop. Over and over. Getting blasted was the only way I could think of to make her voice stop.”
“It still hasn’t stopped, has it?” Liv asked.
I sighed, a long slow sad sound. “No, it hasn’t. Being sober, I’ve learned to ignore it, but I still hear her. I can move past it now, though. I’m workin’ on it. But yeah, you’re right.”
Liv rubbed my shoulder. “You’ll get rid of her voice, Lucas.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Hopefully.” I hesitated a while. “So, to finish the story, when I woke up I was in the back of the truck, in the bed of it. The truck was moving, and I just lay there in the back for a long, long time, staring up at the sky and listening to the wheels on the road, my head aching, heart cut to ribbons, what Lena had said running through my head, cutting deeper and deeper with every second. I
sat up, and Liam was driving, with the women in the cab with him. We were just outside of Seattle.”
Another long silence.
“He stopped the truck, got out, came around, and stood facing me. ‘I ain’t babysitting your ass no more, Lucas.’ That’s what he said. His first words to me. I told him I don’t need him to babysit me. We argued. Fought about me drinking, about all the shit we’d been stuffing down for years. About Dad, about living in Ketchikan. He wanted to open a bar of our own; I wanted to get the hell out of Alaska. Finally, after a fuckin’ hour of bickering like little bitches, he came out with it. ‘You’re just jealous,’ he said. ‘Jealous of me because Lena chose me instead of you.’”
“Ouch,” Bax said. “That had to hurt.”
I chuckled. “You could say that. I decked him. Knocked him flat on his ass. Truth be told, it was kind of a sucker punch, but I was pissed off. ‘I ain’t jealous of you,’ I told him. ‘She belongs with me. She oughta be with me, she oughta be mine. She was mine, but you stole her.’”
“And she was in the truck listening to this?” Bast asked.
I nodded. “When I shouted that at Liam, she got out, told me that wasn’t fair—he hadn’t stolen her, they just fell in love.”
“Bet that helped,” Bast said, obviously sarcastic.
“Yeah, tons,” I responded, equally sarcastic. “Liam just looked at me with this pity in his eyes. I mean, I was a fuckin’ mess. I’d passed out and I don’t know what all I did after I blacked out, but I had a black eye and there was barf all over me and my clothes were ripped…never did find out what I’d done after blacking out, and don’t want to know. But man, that pity in his eyes?” I shook my head. “That was the thing that made me snap. I just…I dunno. I snapped. I attacked him, and it turned into a hell of a fight. Neither Caitlin or Lena could stop us. I was operating on pure rage born out of pain. He was just defending himself, for the most part, but it turned into its own thing. How long it went on, I don’t know. Till we were both bloody and bruised and couldn’t stand up.”
The sadness in Liv’s eyes was haunting.
“He got in the last hit. Socked me in the jaw, knocked me on my ass.” I swallowed hard. “Last thing I saw of my brother was him turning away. He tossed my bag onto the side of the road. Got in the truck and drove away. I never saw him again; never saw Lena, or Caitlin either. Never saw my dad again. I watched them drive off, my twin brother and the woman I loved. Once they was out of sight, I stood up, grabbed my bag, and started walking.”
“Where’d you go?” Rome asked.
I shrugged. “Nowhere, really. Just walked south, away from Seattle, away from Alaska. I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore, and then I hitched a ride with a trucker as far as Oregon. He dropped me off in some little one-light town, and I got a room. And a bottle. I’d taken all of my money with me when we left Ketchikan for Seattle. I think deep down I’d known I wouldn’t be back.” I traced a pattern on the bar top. “Six months of wandering, odd jobs for cash or food or a place to crash for the night…I ended up in a podunk town in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, middle of Oklahoma. Saw a sign on a factory looking for help, no experience required. I went in, got the job, started working right there and then. It was summer and I slept in a field behind the factory, under an old oak tree. A few weeks later, I got my first check, used it as a deposit on a trailer. Figured I was about as far from Alaska as I could get, and I was sick of walking. Might as well stay there. Which is what I did. I never left that town again, except for goin’ to Walmart two counties over. Forty years, I worked in that factory, drank myself stupid every night thinkin’ of Liam and Lena, and Dad.”
I shrugged, swallowed hard. “And that there is the story. First time I ever told it all to anyone, and probably it will be the last and only time.” I stood up, trying to remember how to breathe. “Ya’ll excuse me. I need to…I gotta go.”
I walked out of that bar, alone.
10
Liv
He walked out, and I let him go.
There was a long silence after he left.
“Damn,” I heard his son, Roman, whisper.
“Yeah,” another of his triplets said, “Damn.”
One of the women—the quiet, elegant one with auburn hair, involved with the enormously muscled man who was training Lucas—moved to stand near me. “What’s your relationship with him? Pardon my bluntness, but I’m curious.”
I let out a laughing sigh. “I’m not sure. We’re…friends, at the very least.”
Roman eyed me. “Friends, huh?”
I nodded, gazing at him steadily. “Yes, friends. Why?”
“He’s just starting to get his feet under him,” he said. “Last thing he needs is to fall off the wagon because he got his heart broken.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Roman, I…all I know is, he’s a good man. Or he’s trying to become one. I like spending time with him. Could there be more than that? I don’t know. Maybe. But I’m struggling to get my feet under me as well, following a life-changing tragedy of my own. So I don’t know, in answer to the question you’re almost but not quite asking—will we become romantically involved? The answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready for that, with anyone, least of all with someone with his…” I hunted for the right word.
“Baggage,” the bearded triplet filled in—Ramsey, I think it was. “You got yours, he’s got his. Problem is, his baggage can kill him. If he drinks again, he’s gonna die. That ain’t a question, that’s a fact.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said.
“And you’re still interested in him, in being his…friend?” This was Roman’s girlfriend, Kitty.
I shrugged a shoulder. “Yes, I suppose so. I’m not going to hold his past struggles against him. We have all done our share of making mistakes in this life, me included.”
Roman nodded, as did his brothers, and most of their cousins. “Just…don’t lead him on, okay?”
“I appreciate your concern for your father, and that you’re merely looking out for him, but—”
“You understand, that in a lot of ways, he’s still the nineteen-year-old kid on the side of the road, watching everyone he loved drive away from him, right?” This was Remington. “He never got over that. He aged, but he never grew out of that person, never stopped being that.”
I sighed. “I think I’m starting to understand that,” I said. “And unless he can find some healing and move beyond it, I think all we are capable of being is friends.”
Roman held out his hand, and I took it—he shook my hand gently but firmly. “Sounds like we’re on the same page, Olivia.”
“I think we are,” I said, offering him a smile. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go catch up to Lucas. He needs a friend right now.”
“He wants to be alone, I can tell you that much right now,” Roman said.
“I understand that,” I said. “But I said needs, not wants.”
“It was good to meet you,” Roman said.
“You as well.” I scanned the crowd of Lucas’s family. “All of you. It seems to me like you all have created something wonderful for yourselves, here. A gathering like this, every week? Amazing.”
Sebastian’s wife, the pregnant one…Dru, I think it was? I’d heard so many names so quickly, and it was hard to keep them straight all at once. She reached over and drew me in for a hug.
“You’re welcome here anytime, Olivia,” she said. “I mean that.”
“Thank you,” I answered, feeling a warmth in my stomach. “That means a lot.”
I gathered my purse and headed out the door, with one last backward wave—I heard conversation erupt behind me, the gathered clan discussing what had just happened. I glanced both ways down the road, at the docks across the street, looking for evidence of which way Lucas had gone. The answer was, not far. I spotted him down the wharf a ways, leaning on a post, watching the waves curl and ripple, the seagulls playing. He looked lost and morose.
I made my way over to him; stood beside him in silence, content to let him break it.
“So. That’s the story,” he said, not looking at me. “Now what?”
I glanced at him, puzzled. “What do you mean, now what?”
“You’ve heard all the dirty details.” His eyes lifted to mine, finally. “I expect you have some feelings on it.”
“I do.” I leaned closer, so our arms were brushing. “I think you’re still holding on to Lena. You’re scared to move on. Scared to let yourself heal.”
“I don’t think I know how.”
“You need a counselor, Lucas. A therapist. Someone who can help guide you past this.”
He growled. “A shrink? Hell, no.”
“You have the wrong impression of what a therapist does, I think.” I hesitated. “I saw one—I’m still seeing one, as a matter of fact. All that happens at therapy is you talk about things that cause you pain, past or present. And the therapist listens, asks questions, and suggests ways you can help yourself heal from those things. There’s no magic, no weirdness, no judgment.”
“I’d have to talk about it all over again.”
I nodded. “You would. A lot, I imagine. But that’s part of why it works. Talking about it removes the power of it. The more I was able to talk about Darren’s death, and my many and varied feelings on the subject, the easier it became to simply talk about it. When you refuse to talk about things, you unwittingly give them even greater power over you.”
He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “I dunno.”
“There is nothing unmanly or weak about asking for help, Lucas,” I said. “In fact, I would argue that asking for help when you need it is, rather, a sign of strength of character.”
“Strength of character.” Lucas laughed, a bitter bark of a sound. “That ain’t somethin’ I’ve ever been accused of having.”
“Then perhaps now is the time to develop it.”
He eyed me. “Why do you care, Liv? Honest answer.”
Badd Daddy (The Badd Brothers Book 12) Page 15