Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2) (37 page)

At the mention of her name, Beck dropped the glass tumbler with a thud and flew down the steps. “Don’t you fucking bring her up! Never say her name again.”

Nolan didn’t back down. Reaching out to grab Beck’s shoulders in a defensive move, he dodged the erratic rib shots Beck gave him and shook his upper body as they went nose to nose. “You destroyed yourself! Then and now, Beck. You did it, nobody else! Don’t you know that? People love you. She loves you.”

“She doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

“And you do? Well, she’s gone now, isn’t she? So, she must know that you’re not good for her, that’s for fucking certain. Not when you’re three sheets to the wind all damn day long, like some hardcore user with no goddamn self-control or desire to live.”

Beck’s chest heaved, the alcohol weighting his movements. “This has nothing to do with living.”

“You know what? You’re actually right about that, you drunk asshole. This is all about dying, isn’t it? Like Josh did, right? Josh died and you didn’t, and you can’t fucking stand for it, can you? Well, how’s it feel then? To be a goner? Because you’ve been a dead man walking since the night that mission went south. Josh would spin in his grave if he knew you’d turned out this way, and he’d damn well be wishing that bullet had hit you, instead.” Nolan gripped his upper arms, shaking him. “He wanted to live. You just wanna die.”

Turning his head to the side, Beck spit, surprised to taste blood mixed with the whiskey. Nolan was up, one to nothing. “Death has called my number too many times to count. Hasn’t got me, yet.” It wasn’t a declaration. It was a taunt. A dare.

“Stand in your own truth, Beck. Face it head on and fight it.” Nolan grabbed him by the chin and shook him again, hard. Hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Don’t be this guy. You’re not this fucking guy. You don’t give up.”

Beck didn’t look at him. He couldn’t. His body went slack and he could only stare blindly toward the ground, unwilling to admit the truth in his friend’s words. The partial truth, anyway. He wanted to live, but in some semblance of peace. Only his conscience wouldn’t let him.

Nolan pushed him away in disgust and Beck stumbled backwards.

“Fuck you, then,” Nolan said, before turning toward Ash dejectedly, not bothering to hide the tears in his eyes. “I’m not gonna do it, Ash. I won’t make him go. If he wants to do his time like this, all fucked up and drunk and full of demons, then let him.” Love, laced with a clear note of despair, sounded in his voice. “I won’t fucking force him to go to rehab.”

“I will.” Ash said, no longer happy playing bystander.

He grabbed Beck by the shoulder and the stiff arm Beck gave him in return must have surprised him because he had the big man off center for a split second, long enough to put a few feet between them and clear the whiskey induced cobwebs from his mind.

“You wanna fight me now, too?” Ash growled, taking a step toward him with narrowed eyes. Eyes the same blue as Hope’s. “Because you’d do well to remember I’m your only fucking ally with her once you get your head out of your ass. So, you better tread carefully.”

No, he didn’t want to fight Ash. He didn’t want to fight Nolan, or himself, or Hope. And if Lieutenant Commander Joshua Jones were standing here right now, he would give Beck the ass kicking of a lifetime, then offer to change the oil and rotate the tires on his Mustang before grilling them steaks for dinner.

Breathing in huge gulps of fresh air, Beck put his hands on the top of his head and turned in a circle, gathering himself.

Any guy who ran herculean covert operations side by side with you, who flipped houses using hard earned money and sweat equity with you, who generously rotated car tires and changed engine oil with you, shouldn’t get their head blown off by a .50 caliber sniper rifle. But Josh Jones had. Some said that a round from a .50 caliber could open up a hole the size of a bowling ball in your chest or blow a person’s head clean off. Beck could testify that there was no fucking
clean
about it. And the memory of watching helplessly as it happened, only twenty yards from where he’d stood, had started to diminish.

He wasn’t sober by a long shot, but he was clear headed and smart minded enough to know that the fact of forgetting about Josh’s death, was far worse than the act of remembering it.

And the sin of forgetting, mixed with the guilt of living, was eating him alive.

“You have the same eyes as her,” Beck accused, shaking his head. His half-assed grin tempered the ludicrous recrimination. “You’re not nearly as pretty, but I feel the need to point out that Asher Coleson has the eyes of a girl.”

Ash smirked. “Ironic coming from a guy with a pink blanket.”

Following Ash’s gaze, he turned to see Hope’s bad news blanket laying on the porch, right where he’d dropped it when the booze brigade had shown up to crash his drunken pity party. The empty tumbler was overturned next to it, desecrating what it stood for. Ash recognized the pink fleece, reaching for it as he motioned Beck into the house, confident his command would be obeyed.

“This means a lot to my sister,” he said, his voice eerily soft as Beck brushed past him. “You treat her, or anything that means a lot to her, the way you did this past week and they’ll have to dredge the Pacific fucking Ocean to find your tortured body.”

Beck nodded, expecting the warning. Deserving it.

And since nothing more needed to be said, he sat in his own kitchen as the men around him took charge of his life like he was a goddamn toddler in need of daycare.

“Who will feed my fish?” Beck finally asked, his arms spread wide in half drunken frustration. “Cat and Dog gotta eat, you know.”

The last place he wanted to go was rehab, but he had a sneaky suspicion that’s what all alcoholics and drug addicts said on the tail end of their final bender. And as he watched Sam speaking in a grave voice on his cell phone as Nolan paced his kitchen like an expectant father and Ash watched him like he’d bolt at any moment, Beck knew it was happening whether he wanted it to or not.

And considering things were pretty fucking bleak, it was surprising to see them go from bad to worse when Grady walked in, looking as serious as a funeral director.

“What’s up, bud? Let’s get you a little help, okay. You can’t sit in a dark room and listen to grunge music your whole life, because if you could, let’s face it, I’d still be living in my parent’s basement wondering why I can’t get laid. Whaddya say?”

“Jesus Christ, Grady, not you, too?” He glared at Ash, daring him to bring anymore people into this fucked up mess he’d made. “Can’t you let me have an ounce of fucking dignity, here? If Caroline shows up with a casserole, I swear to God, I’m gonna burn this place down.”

Ash didn’t say a word, throwing Beck a bone with his silence, letting him think he might still be in charge of his own life.

“Grady.” Ash said suddenly, like it was the answer to everything. Snapping his fingers, he pointed to the bushy haired blonde. “You’re in charge of cat and dog.”

Grady held up his arms to object. “My condo has a strict no pets policy.”

“Perfect.” Ash nodded toward the fish tank. “Cat and Dog are staying with Uncle Grady while Daddy gets his fucking head on straight. Final answer.”

Grady looked at Beck with his mouth agape. “You have goldfish?”

“It shocked the shit out of me, too,” Beck finally said, shaking his head. “I have no fucking explanation for my behavior.”

“How emotionally attached are you?” Before Beck could respond, Grady turned toward Sam, his ally when it came to Ash assigning him unsavory tasks, and whispered, “Can’t you take them, Sammy? Ali’s the nurturing type. She can bond with them. Take them for a walk or some shit.” Sam made a slashing motion and returned to his phone conversation, and Grady relented. “Okay, well, you’re gonna need to give me, let’s say...” he tapped and scrolled quickly through his phone, “at least an hour’s notice before you pick them up. Wait, no...” he said, holding up the screen, “There isn’t a pet store within a five mile radius of my place. Make that two hours.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The glare of the late afternoon sun pouring through the bug spattered windshield of Ash’s beat up Jeep should be putting Beck to sleep. Instead, it had him sweating like a whore in church and only added to the horrible pounding at the base of his skull, despite the dark Oakley’s he wore. A half dozen aspirin and a gallon of water had dulled the throb in his temples, but the jarring rattle in the back of his brain might be there forever. The urge to puke was strong enough that he had one hand on the door handle, just in case.

Prepared to physically haul Beck into his big, black Jeep, Ash had relented only long enough to allow him three hours of supervised rack time to sleep off the worst of his drunk before watching him pack a duffel for his month long stay up the river. It wasn’t a prison he was being ushered off to, but it was damn close. The facility that had been booked and paid for by Scorpio Securities, Inc. was a couple hundred miles away, just north of San Francisco in scenic Marin County. Thinking of everything, Sam had booked him under a false name, knowing a mark of this magnitude on his distinguished service record or attached to his untarnished name in a government database could bring both him and Scorpio an undue amount of attention in the future. High level security clearances tended to expose the littlest of things and a stint in rehab was frowned upon. The inpatient treatment center catered to starlets and politicians, Sam told him, and those needing complete anonymity.

Beck didn’t give a flying fuck who was there, or who knew he was there, for that matter, and he’d told Sam so in those same egotistically spoken words. But, that was the whiskey hangover talking.

He and Ash had been driving for hours in utter silence, stopping only once in Salinas for gas, a bathroom, and two bottles of Gatorade. Future breaks became unnecessary since they had a bathroom handy, Ash had happily pointed out, holding up the empty bottles. It was a good thing the fistful of Tylenol and a raging case of the sweats had dried Beck out, because he hadn’t pissed in a Gatorade bottle in years. Upchucking in one might be necessary, though, given the nauseating roil in his gut, so he was keeping his emergency bodily fluid elimination options wide fucking open.

The silence in the Jeep wasn’t awkward. It was normal for Ash to go hours at a time without saying a word. It had never bothered Beck before, but today, at this very moment, he felt the girlish need to chat it up. And really, what the fuck did it matter? His pride was back on his front lawn, where Nolan had so easily, and deservedly, torn it from him. Or maybe he’d shed it himself the moment his hands had touched that unopened bottle of Crown Royal.

“She’s really gone, isn’t she?” He stared out the passenger side window as he spoke, as if the tumbleweed heavy ditches along the interstate held the answers to the world’s toughest problems.

“Yep,” Ash said slowly.

Another minute of silence went by. “Do you know where she went?”

“Yep.”

Beck turned to look at him, wincing in pain at the movement. “If I asked you where, would you tell me?”

Ash tilted his head toward him, his thumb tapping the steering wheel. “Are you asking?”

Turning back to the wide, stretching interstate in front of them, Beck counted the speeding dashes in the broken, white-painted center line. Counted the number of times he’d held her in his arms. The number of times she’d made him smile. And feel whole. Human.

Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, the radiating pain that shot up through his skull nothing compared to the one in his chest.

“Good,” Ash replied. “Because then I don’t have to tell you it’s none of your fucking business. That you’re not fit to know. I don’t have to remind you that you’re a far goddamn cry from what she needs in a man.”

Beck gave a single nod of agreement, his empty stomach churning. The big man was right on all three counts, no matter how much it hurt to hear him say it out loud. And he knew where she was, anyway. Hope was an open book. Easy to read and hard to put down. And while Denver might be a big city, he could easily find her exact location, within a few hours and with or without Scorpio’s resources. Ash knew it, too, which was why Beck had asked him the question. Trust was of utmost importance in their line of work. It was critical to the success of the mission and their safety during it, and once lost, it was a difficult thing to rebuild. He wanted to mend that broken fence with Ash pronto. If he knew Beck wouldn’t reach out to her without his specific approval, then maybe that would be a good place for them to start.

And repairing himself first, mentally and physically, was his priority before he could even consider what the future might hold. Hell, at this point, Beck wasn’t sure he was going to live to see midnight. Dodging Ash and making a break for it at the next exit wasn’t above him. He’d eluded capture many times, and doing so in the civilized society of America would be a cake walk. He could do it in his sleep. Or under the influence.

Which brought him full circle.

Reaching down into his Navy issued olive green duffel, he avoided the carefully folded pink blanket and grabbed a bag of oranges instead, setting them on his lap. Tearing the mesh netting, he pulled one out and bit the skin, methodically peeling the fruit and laying each piece in a tidy stack on his jean covered thigh.

Drying out was next up on his
to do
list. Taking stock of his once purpose filled and meaningful life, which was now completely off its goddamn rails, would follow shortly thereafter. Mending his colossal fuck up’s with Nolan and the guys, and a girl named Hope fucking Coleson, would come soon enough. God knew, Beck had nothing but time on his hands now. If the lack of alcohol didn’t kill him, the boredom and inactivity surely would. Crossword puzzles and game shows might become his new habit.

Grabbing another piece of fruit, he let the sharp, acidic bite of citrus distract him. “Do you think they have a pool?” he asked, breaking the silence. If there was water, he might have a fighting chance.

“Yeah,” Ash said, eyeing his growing stack of orange peels. “They have three. One lap and two resort style. Sam made sure before he booked your stay.”