“Please,” I sob. “Please, please, please.”
Don’t tell me I can win when you won’t fucking let me.
I cry. I cry so fucking hard, my sobs ragged and broken.
Tattered.
Like my heart.
31
JAMES
This is exactly why I don’t drink in fucking excess. My body won’t cooperate, and my mind? It’s unbearably clear. Not nearly as foggy as I need it to be. I focus hard on placing my hand on the polished gold rail and then one foot in front of the other as I climb the stairs, having a break for a swig every five steps or so. I don’t know how long it takes me to get to the top. Maybe half a bottle.
I hear the front door open and turn very slowly and carefully to look down the stairs. Fury and Tank enter, both suited. Danny comes from the kitchen and looks up the stairs to me. I’m sure I see his head shake in disapproval. He can go fuck himself.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, looking between them.
“Reporting for duty,” Tank says sardonically.
“No. You need time off and, with respect, I need men with their heads in the game.”
The twins cast looks at each other, both unsure. It’s Fury who speaks up. “Our heads are perfectly in the game, Danny, I assure you. And, with respect, now’s not the time for you to be down two men.”
My eyebrows rise, though slowly. Alcohol. Fury’s right, but I can’t seem to make my mouth work to tell Danny to listen to him. Good. The alcohol is finally going to my head.
Beau comes from the corridor that leads to Danny’s office, her eyes puffy, and spots the boys, and Fury is immediately on her, questioning. “I’m fine,” she assures him, offering comfort when she needs it herself, reaching over his huge shoulders and hugging him.
I turn and go to our room, swigging as I go. I can’t look at her. Can’t bear to hear her pathetic excuses, whatever they may be. It’s bad enough she disappeared for twenty-four hours straight because she needed space. To tell me she wants a baby and then do something that pretty much guarantees she won’t have one? I don’t get it. Waiting to see if she comes on her period was torturous. Was she going to leave me to go through that each month? The worry, the disappointment. Wondering how she’d take it. How she’d react? Bracing myself for the backlash. Feeling so fucking helpless. Worried.
I snort, disgusted, and push into our room, slamming the vodka down and dropping to the bed, peeling my wetsuit off and tossing it in the corner. I reclaim my alcohol and take myself outside, laying on a lounger and staring at the sky.
She doesn’t want a baby. Fine. She’s proven today she’s definitely not ready for it. Irresponsible. Reckless.
More vodka.
The clouds begin to travel faster through the sky. They circle, roll, tumble. “Fucking hell.” I grunt and struggle up, blinking back the spin as I stagger to the bathroom, my body telling me it’s had enough—to stop pouring alcohol into it at a stupid rate. My head, however, is still too lucid.
I sup back more liquid, feeling my way across the wall. My body will have to soak it up.
I feel so betrayed.
Really? Because I’m certain you had a fleeting thought to get her pregnant and trap her.
I stop in my tracks and look around, confused. “What?”
Yes. To make it impossible for her to go off around town playing Lara Croft with her ex-fiancé.
I recoil, stunned, turning on the spot, looking for the source of the voice. “I didn’t tell anyone that.”
You told me.
I lose my footing and fall into the nearby wall. I try in vain to save myself, but my drunken body isn’t responding to my slowing brain nearly fast enough, and I land with a thwack, smacking my head on the toilet. “Shit,” I mumble, my words slurring now too, as I fight my way back to standing, somehow managing to still have the bottle in my grasp. Chuffed with myself, I finish my vodka, tilting back on my heels, my face pointing at the ceiling to make sure I get every last drop. It’s now official. I’ve never been so drunk.
Finally. May the numbness commence.
I gasp, release the bottle, and raise my foot to break its fall, catching it on the bridge. I remain on one foot, and it’s a fucking miracle given the state of me. I see Beau. On a ladder under the spotlights of my office. I see her carrying endless equipment. Bumping into me. Dropping it all.
“You know, I’ll get this finished much faster if you give me some space.”
“Space,” I replied quietly. “I was just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
She never did finish decorating my office. Because Beau finally decided whether she hated me or wanted to fuck me.
She took the latter.
Is she regretting it?
I gasp and reach for the wall when I wobble, placing my foot down.
Do I regret it?
I look down my chest, my hand coming up, my fingertip moving in on the bruise on my pec from where the love of my life, my blood, my fucking heartbeat, fucking shot me. I miss it by a few inches and am forced to close one eye to turn ten bruises back into one. “Fuck me,” I breathe, letting my hand drop heavily. I go to the mirror, bracing my palms on the edge of the sink, leaning in, so close I’m practically kissing the glass. I take in my hair that’s fairer these days. Lighter.
From being in the sun.
From being in the light.
“But you’re not enough,” I slur, watching my mouth move slowly, my eyes blink slowly, my body sway slowly. Even in my drunken state, I can appreciate how impossible Beau and I were. How . . . toxic. Harmful to ourselves but more harmful to each other.
I’ve failed to keep us in the light.
I curl my lip at the letdown staring back at me, closing my eyes, unable to face him. I pull my head away, inhale, and send it crashing back into the mirror.
When I open my eyes again, what I see matches how I feel.
Shattered.
I shy away and turn, feeling my legs failing me completely now. I make it two staggered paces and fall into the tub on a grunt and a clatter. I roll to my back, close my eyes and sigh. The cool enamel on my disgusting skin feels good. Better than the reason for those scars. Trying to save a woman who didn’t want saving. Still doesn’t.
Failure.
“I bought an apartment for us.” I laugh out loud, thinking how ridiculous it was to ever believe we could be normal. So fucking absurd. Danny was right.
“If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t need to be doing this. But we can’t play dead. And we can’t live a normal life.”
“And we can’t be without them,” I’d answered. Like a fool, because I may not get that choice.
“So let’s get the fuck on with rising and make sure we never fall, because that, my friend, is the closest we’re ever getting to normal.”
Failure.
I settle and doze off, the bathroom spinning like an out-of-control merry-go-round, slowing every so often, not enough to get off, but just enough and for long enough to give me a complimentary memory. All Beau. She’s dominated my thoughts since I met her, and slowly over that time, my tortured past has been replaced with another kind of torture.
Loving Beau Hayley.
32