BEAU
It’s agony seeing him like this. Knowing I’m the cause. James told me once about the aftermath of his parents’ deaths. How he coped. Basically, he didn’t. He lost himself in drink and when Otto finally pulled James out of his self-destructive mode, all hell broke loose. Many people died and are still dying. I wonder now if that’s why he doesn’t drink himself into oblivion anymore. Because it takes him to places he wants to forget. Hopelessness.
I’ve taken him back to those times. Those feelings.
I approach him quietly, watching his face, lines still cutting his features in his sleep. His long, hard body spans the tub and then some, his shoulders slightly bunched to his ears, his face turned in. I lower to my knees and reach for his forehead, seeing a crisscross of tiny cuts in the center. “What did you do?” I ask, brushing his hair off to get a better look. It looks like someone’s pushed gravel into his flesh. And he has a tidy bump near his temple. “You are enough,” I whisper, scanning his exquisite, tormented, damaged face.
His eyes pop open, and my hand freezes on his forehead. And we stare. We stare for so long, I have stored every silver fleck in his blue eyes to memory. Every line on his face. Every bit of his stubbled jaw. I take comfort in the fact he appears to be doing the same, although his eyes are drowsy and travel more slowly across my face.
He reaches up to my wrist and circles it, then pulls me into the tub with him. He shuffles up, opens his thighs, and positions me in between, easing me back to his chest. A bath with no water. But endless fire.
“Can you hear me?” I ask quietly.
“I’m drunk, not deaf.”
I smile, though it’s small, as I find the courage I need to try and explain my logic. To explain my betrayal. “Waiting for my period is a pain I can mask,” I say, swallowing, digging deeper for the strength I need to do this. To make him understand. “Each time I bleed, I wonder if that part of me is broken too.” I swallow. “If I take the pills, I will never wait with bated breath to bleed. I know it will happen. I will never have a baby, but at least I am in control.”
James remains silent behind me, but as if wanting me to know he’s hearing me, he starts stroking my scarred arm.
“I do love you,” I say, spreading my palms on his thick thighs, stroking across the hair. “Don’t ever question that.”
“I follow your light, Beau,” he says, his voice husky with alcohol and sleepiness. “But you’re fading fast and I’m losing you.”
“And I’m terrified of losing yet another person in my life. Especially you. But also another baby.” I’m not equipped to cope with more loss.
“I can’t lose again either, baby,” he whispers.
Yes, the bath is empty.
But I could cry enough tears to fill it.
33
DANNY
There’s always one of us less stressed than the other. It’s usually because of the women. It’s easy for the other to pass judgment, throw out advice. Only James walks in his shoes, only I walk in mine. We face different challenges when it comes to our relationships, but in business, we’re both on the same page.
I smash out another twenty reps and lower the bar, using it to pull myself up on the bench. My face still creases with discomfort, though, despite relieving my stomach and chest of the strain. I look down at the mess of my torso on a sigh. Ironic that all my current injuries are a result of a woman, and not just my own. Pops would turn in his grave.
If he was in his fucking grave.
I quickly shake that maddening thought away before it distracts me from my day and get up, grabbing a towel to wipe my wet brow before laying it around my neck. I fill a cup and down the water, looking at the door when it opens. I lower the cup. “What are you doing in here?” I ask Brad, looking up and down his half naked body, shorts and a sling the only things he’s wearing.
“Working out.”
I follow his path to the Peloton. “You look like shit.” Probably still hungover from his marathon binge on everything forbidden.
He gets on the bike and sits up straight, keeping his hands off the handlebars. “You don’t exactly look as fresh as a daisy yourself.” Nodding at my torso, he starts pedaling and tapping at the screen.
I refill my cup and neck some more water. “My injuries, both physical and mental, are a result of a love interest.” Rose would slice my dick off if she heard me refer to her like that. “I know what caused your physical injury. Care to enlightened me on why you’re a tetchy fucker lately?” Something tells me it’s nothing to do with his overindulgences.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Pearl.” I get straight to the point. I’ve got things to do.
The fleeting recoil I catch before Brad manages to get his facial expression in check worries me. “Who’s Pearl?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I toss my cup in the bin and go to the bike, standing in front, hand on the bars, eyes on Brad. “How long have I known you?”
“Too fucking long.”
“Agreed.” I watch his shoulder jolt as he pedals. “Engage your core,” I order. “And sit up straight.” He does both with a scowl. “She’s twenty-one,” I point out. “You’re thirty-four.”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“Have you fucked her?”
His mouth falls open and his pedaling slows. His reaction alone tells me no. “No, I’ve not fucking fucked her.”
“Do you want to?”
Brad’s face. Fuming is putting it lightly. Honestly, I’m not sure how to interpret it. “No. She’s twenty-one, for fuck’s sake, Danny. Practically a child. Whatever fantastical idea she has about this world, I’m not interested in feeding it.”
“So why are you mean to her?”
“What?” he snaps, impatient.
“You’re mean to her. Impatient. You give her filthy looks.” I raise my brows as Brad visibly scrambles for a reason. “I’m not the only one who’s noticed. It’s causing an atmosphere.”
“I’m causing an atmosphere?”
“Yeah, by being grumpy. People aren’t used to it.”
“Then I’ll apologize.”
“Probably best you just stay out of her way. She thinks you’re a dick.”
He flinches. “Why?”
“Well, because you fuck hookers and own a strip club.”
“How does she know that?”
“Because I told her.” I’m certain I can hear his teeth grinding. “Rose thinks she finds you repulsive.”
“Is everyone talking about this?”
I shrug, amused, taking this light relief while I can get it.
“Good,” Brad snaps. “I’m glad she finds me repulsive.”
I nod, not convinced, “So why the fuck are you a miserable fuck lately?”
“Has everyone around here amid the drama their women are creating—which, I will add at this moment in the aftermath of your interrogation, is the very fucking reason I will never take myself a woman—missed the fact I’ve been fucking shot? And my fucking apartment was fucking blown the fuck up, Danny. I don’t have a home.” He starts pedaling again, his top half jerking all over the place.