Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2) (36 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Ask me to come back
.

Five simple words he didn’t have the balls to say. Or the brains.

Beck knew she was gone when he pulled up to the house. There was no God awful orange Toyota parked at the curb. No welcoming smile and flashing blue eyes when he walked through the kitchen and up the stairs to the master bedroom. No lingering scent of green apples and a dozen different shampoo bottles lined up in the shower when he stripped and stepped under the scalding spray. The sharp bite of burning water on his naked skin surprised him. He’d been sure all feeling had drained from his body permanently when he’d turned away from her for the final time and walked out the door.

Be High had been a blur. He completed the assignment by rote, on autopilot the entire time. In and out of Illinois in thirty-six hours, Nolan watched him like he was an escaped mental patient the entire time. Ash barely spoke to him, communicating only when necessary, using as few words as possible. But his body language said it all.

Beck was lucky he still had a job. And no broken bones. And functioning internal organs.

And the hell of it was, he didn’t give a single shit.

A hollowness filled him now, the echoes of his many mistakes bouncing off his tired bones like pinballs. Goddamn it, he was sick of fighting. Fighting the attraction. The connection. Fighting himself. The bottle. He thought he’d left it all behind him when he’d quit fighting the enemy on the battlefield. But his real life enemy had only morphed into a fiercer opponent. One that was fed with liquid.

He didn’t want it. He wanted Hope. Problem was, he stood in his own damn way. And as Nolan had said on many occasions, if a guy always got what he wanted, then he’d have a twelve inch dick and a harem of Victoria’s Secret models. Sure, he had the dick, Nolan would jokingly brag, but the models only showed up one at a time.

If all Beck wanted was a catalog model, his life would be a shit ton easier right now.

Instead, he wanted a blue-eyed bundle of positive energy who, through some miracle of twisted fate, apparently wanted him back. She wanted love and sex and loyalty. From him. Too bad he was an emotionally repressed son of a bitch who’d promptly fucked his opportunity up and sent her away, probably right into the arms of another man who would see her value for what it was. Fucking pure gold.

Dropping his head to his chin, he let the hot water run over the back of his head, cascading past his unshaven face. The sheets of water did little to block the vision of that cold harsh reality. Thoughts of her having sex with another man, just any ole’ dumb fuck that was willing and God knew there were many, had him seeing red. Thoughts of her holding another man, stroking him so firmly he had to sing the alphabet backwards so he didn’t come in her hand before the letter
K
, had him plotting the deaths of several, yet to be materialized men who dared to breathe the same air as his Hope. Only she wasn’t his.

Snapping the handle as he turned the water off, he grabbed a towel and padded into the bedroom, dropping down on the neatly made bed. She’d ruined it for him. She’d ruined his entire private space with her presence. She’d made this house into something he’d never intended it to be. A home. A place he felt safe, which defied all fucking reason considering his training and experience. He’d spent time in the Korengal Valley in Kunar Province Afghanistan, a known hot zone for terrorist activity, and felt safe. Stupid, yeah, but safe.

And now, this house without her, was back to being nothing more than wood and concrete. Solid and impenetrable. Untouchable and alone. Exactly what he wanted to be, himself.

That was safety. That was the place he wanted to reside. Where he was the only one who could hurt himself. Nobody else got that particular privilege. No unknown person with a warped religious agenda and a dusty scope locked on his location. No grooved dirt road with cleverly hidden trip wires leading to devastating IED’s. No magnetic woman with a quirky sense of humor and more guts than good sense.

No bottle of booze that could create more chaos than all three of those combined, innocently wrapped in a seductive package.

One hundred days sober. Triple digits. A milestone, she’d said proudly.

Reaching for the racquetball, he squeezed the hard rubber in his fist. Felt it flex, bending against his strength. And he whipped it as hard as he could against the wall.

One. Two. Three times.
The sharp ping echoed off the walls, bits of paint and texture floating down to the floor with the force of his throws, drywall dust dancing in the air. He had to be on a flight to Karachi in less than twelve hours and needed a decent four hours worth of sleep between now and then to be on his game. If he wasn’t, Ash would not only take notice, but likely replace him. It would be curtains on his career.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.

She deserved so much better than this. Than him. A man counting hits against a wall like he counted the minutes and hours between drinks. But he should have told her. He should have told her he loved the sound of her laughter in the middle of the night. The feel of her long, silky hair against his belly when she slid down his body. He should have told her that he never knew sex could mean so much, and that it certainly never had before.

He should have told her that he loved her. When, why, and how that happened, he had no fucking idea, but it was the God’s honest truth.

Instead, he’d told her where to leave the key.

Rolling the ball around the palm of his hand, he made his way through the darkness of impending dusk toward the kitchen. There it was, sitting on the island next to the fish bowl as instructed, the polished silver key glinting off the light she’d left burning above the sink. Left on intentionally, just for him. Cat and Dog darted around in their tank, mocking him with their silly presence. What the hell could have possessed him to buy goldfish? The sight of Hope’s smile, that’s what.

“Fucking asshole,” he hissed to himself, scrubbing a hand over his face repeatedly, the scratchy sound of his three day old beard abrasive in the too quiet house.

Turning, he stared at the closed pantry door where his unopened bottle sat patiently. Like it knew he would eventually do something so incredibly stupid to Hope that nothing could right his wrong. Nothing could make him feel better. Except that bottle. There was an oblivion to be found at the bottom of it, along with a promise to silence his troubles. Delay the inevitable pain that had to be felt, sooner or later.

Hell, he was feeling that pain right now. The churning in his stomach so intense, he felt like his entire being was slipping into a pit of blackness, never to see the light of day again. And he had nobody to blame but himself. He’d put his head above his heart. His pride above his head. No risk, no reward had been his motto. Riding the razor’s edge of death because it made life more exciting. And where had it gotten him? Standing in front of a goddamn door, sorely afraid he had a broken heart, debating whether he wanted to feel the pain or make it go away.

A war between the greater good of sobriety and the evil freedom of addiction raged inside him, but it was over all too soon when he touched the handle and turned. As it had on so many occasions, evil came out the victor.

Beck pushed the door open with authority, sickly relieved that a decision had been made. And the surprising sight in front of him nearly sent him to his knees. His clenched fists loosened, the forgotten racquetball hitting the travertine floor with a hollow dribble, rolling away unnoticed. His whiskey was there, covered in a thin, untouched layer of dust, the amber liquid shining like a reservoir of clear water in the middle of a parched desert.

And next to it, folded in a neat square of dingy pink fleece, was Hope’s bad news blanket.

The wetness that flooded his eyes came from somewhere deep inside him, embarrassing in their lengthy intensity, and Beck vowed to deny their existence to his dying day.

Which, given how quickly he had the whiskey in his hand, might come sooner than his chronological age would suggest.

Gripping the short neck of the bottle like a life preserver, he lifted the blanket to his face. It smelled like her. Like green apples and sunshine and hope. Like a little girl who’d suffered too much tragedy in the midst of a bountiful vineyard, because of other people’s greed and lust. And yet, she’d made her way out of that mess, smiling and determined. Willing to take a chance on what had burned her so much as a child. Love and sex and loyalty.

Ask me to come back
.

He was right to send her away. She deserved so much more than him. She deserved the whole fucking fairy tale, right down to the knight on a white horse. A happily ever after kind of life that some other man could give her. Because he sure as shit couldn’t. The only thing he had to offer her was this house and a sip of his whiskey.

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.’”