I’m done with this shit, Beau. I don’t know what you want.
You’re clearly hell-bent on doing what the fuck you please, and I’m fucking exhausted trying to stop you.
Otto goes to his phone. Danny’s relaxed face turns tense. And it occurs to me . . . “His car.” I run to the window that looks out onto the front, not remembering seeing it. “It’s not there.” I face the room, my body starting to convulse with the strain I’m inflicting on myself just trying to force steady breaths rather than gasp. I realize I have no right to feel like this after what I’ve put James through in the past twenty-four hours. But . . . it’s unstoppable. The panic. The fear. The worry. He didn’t come home? “Where is he?” I yell, feeling my way to the closest drawer and yanking it open. “The paper bags. Where are the bags?” I slam it shut and yank open another, searching for them. “Dexter always kept the bags in the drawer.” I don’t understand. I haven’t had a flashback. I’m not in a busy, chaotic space. Why is this happening?
A burst of activity breaks out around me, and Rose is quickly in my sights. “Beau, calm down.” She tugs me across to a chair and pushes me down onto the seat, and Doc holds a glass of water at my lips. I sip it, never taking my eyes of my friend, willing this episode to fuck off.
“We’ll find him,” Lawrence says, with absolutely no conviction in his voice, looking at Danny for guidance.
He’s punishing me. This is how James felt when I was missing. My head bats back and forth between everyone around me, waiting for one of them to talk. Tell me where he is. Pull me free from the claws of panic. I’ve pushed him away.
“He’s in the office.”
Everyone looks toward the door as Brad walks in, his arm still in a sling. “What?” I breathe.
“The office. He left his car around the side of the house.”
I get up and hurry to the office, music coming from beyond, getting louder and louder the nearer I get. I burst in unannounced. The music is deafening.
Labrinth.
“Oh Jesus,” I whisper, my hand on the knob as Still Don’t Know Your Name blares. I take in the sight of him. My panic leaves me in an instant and guilt swoops on in and takes its place.
He’s drunk.
So drunk, he hasn’t even registered someone’s in the room. Staggering around, waving a drink in the air, tossing the liquid left and right before refilling and doing the exact same. Still in his wetsuit. It’s like . . . like he’s having an argument with someone who’s not here.
Me.
Except, I am here. I’ve never seen him like this. I close the door and look around for where and how to turn off the music, my ears ringing. I could scream and he wouldn’t hear me. I resort to covering my ears and going to him, trying to get his attention. I put myself in front of him. He stops, stills, looks down at me.
Sees straight through me.
I’m not here.
Pain slices me clean in half as my hands drop and he pushes past me, going to the couch and dropping heavily onto it, letting his head fall back, his eyes closing. He can’t look at me.
Danny appears in the doorway, his icy eyes taking in the scene. James plastered. Me standing like a useless fool in the middle of the room. He pulls his phone out, presses the screen, and the music dies. “Fix it,” he orders, throwing a disappointed look to James, pulling the door closed. But he was telling me. Not James.
Fix it. How? Anything I say won’t be remembered in the morning.
I go to him and lower to the couch beside him, reaching for the empty glass in his grasp. He doesn’t give it up, fighting with me. He wins. Of course he wins. His eyes open, revealing . . . nothing. The expressiveness they’ve gained since we met has gone and the soulless, cold pits are back. “I can’t be around you,” he says, fighting to get his big body up from the couch. “I’m supposed to be enough, Beau.”
I wince, not asking if I’m enough for him. I know I am. “Can’t I have justice for at least one of my dead parents?”
He spins so fast, his big body is a blur, and I back up, wary. “Not if it means I fucking lose you!” He throws his glass, and it hits the frame of the Picasso on the wall, shattering, making me flinch and cower. “Finding him isn’t about revenge for me anymore. It’s about me and you!” His words are clear. There’s no slurring. But his body continues to sway and stagger in between his bellows. It’s as if alcohol has hit his body but not yet his brain. He sounds lucid but looks trashed. “It’s about us having a life together. Happiness. Fucking health.” He smacks his temple with the ball of his hand, making it clear that health doesn’t just mean physically. “Do you want the same? Am I enough?” He walks on heavy legs to the drinks cabinet and takes a bottle of vodka, swigging more than a glass full, his naked, scared back glaring at me. “Or will this innate instinct in you always win?” He faces me, his eyes tortured. “I can’t take part in a fight I can’t win, Beau.”
“You can win,” I say, my vocal cords straining, my voice shaky, wanting to go to him, but I’m too scared. Not of his physical presence. But of rejection.
“Can I?” He comes to me, his eyes never leaving mine. I find it hard to maintain our eye contact. “Because everything tells me otherwise. You. Your actions.” He swallows, and it’s lumpy. “My gut.”
“No.” I step forward, my emotion choking me, and James steps back.
Rejection.
“And these.” He holds up something, and my watery eyes try to focus. My birth control pills. Oh God, no. “You wanted a baby,” he whispers
I feel all breath leave me, my eyes low, the cruel claws on panic creeping up my back again.
“You told me, Beau. In every way, you told me.”
“And you didn’t want it,” I say feebly, going to the couch and lowering, my eyes down, unable to face the mess I’ve made of him. He said I wasn’t ready for a baby.
He throws the pack of pills on the couch. “It had nothing to do with me not wanting it.” His voice is starting to rise again, his temper flaring. “I was worried about you! Fuck, Beau! What is it?” I look up at him, my mind not helping me. Not telling me how to explain. “You don’t want a baby anymore? You don’t want me? Do you want to be a cop again? Oliver Burrow’s fiancée again?” Another swig of vodka, his hand shaking violently as he takes it to his mouth.
“You can win,” I say over a sob. “You can.”
“It’s bullshit!” he roars. “Don’t tell me I can win when you won’t fucking let me.” This time, he throws the bottle, and I jump on a cry of shock as glass pours down like rain, the building tears starting to fall as James’s body vibrates, rolls, burns before my eyes.
“James,” I choke, getting up to go to him.
“No.” His hand comes up, halting my advance, and he looks at me. It’s a look I’ll never forget. One of contempt. Pain. Hopelessness. “I’m not okay,” he says on a whisper, swiping another bottle off the cabinet and leaving.
The door slams, and my eyes explode with tears, my ass hitting the couch, my face hiding in my hands.
Please don’t leave me. Please still love me. Want to keep me.