006: Trashed

The room above the bar in Henderson was used once a month for club meetings – behind the double doors lay the chapel. He had enough respect not to go in there. The path of destruction had been contained to the living room area, to the couches and chairs and the coffee table that now lay in pieces. His cell phone sat in the middle of that wreckage; the glass screen was shattered but it was still lighting up every time a new text message came in. It was easier to ignore them.

The careful peace that he'd found here in Nevada after Leah had bailed on him had been shattered in the worst way. A part of him had expected she'd come back eventually – they were a sort of kindred spirits, after all. He hadn't expected her to come back with a dirty secret. Hadn't expected her to come back with napalm and a flamethrower and the destructive force of a vengeful god to tear it all apart.

He'd told Natalie he loved her.

He hadn't said those words to anyone in years. The last woman he'd said that to, the last time he could consciously recall it, was moments before the accident that had claimed his wife's life. Even now, there was a sort of superstition that hung on those words, that made him not want to say them. They were an omen, a dangerous and slippery slope, but he'd been high, had been firmly in the moment and she was so achingly beautiful, so perfect that he couldn't keep them to himself. It was his fault. He'd damned them. He hated himself so intensely that he could feel the burn of the anger crawling over his skin.

He let his head fall back against the wall, feeling the cool surface against his sweaty scalp. As he sat there, letting the cool air from the ceiling vent blow over him, watching the sun creep over the horizon, he felt like bottled nitroglycerin. One jolt in the wrong direction and he was bound to explode. Tearing the room apart hadn't helped and he knew he was going to have to clean it all up. He'd been sitting here for an hour since, hating himself for the weakness he'd shown with this little tantrum, even if nobody had been around to bear witness. It had been such a late night that he'd just crashed on the couch here rather than try to drive home when he was so exhausted that he could barely walk.

I'm pregnant.

Four months.

That's why I came back.

She hadn't even told him to his face. Instead she'd hit him with those messages when he'd refused to call her – of course he'd been running on three hours of sleep at the time. He used to be able to do that. Now that he was creeping up on sixty, he was starting to feel the toll all those sleepless nights were taking on his body. Blood trickled sluggishly from his torn knuckles as he raised the last stub of the cigarette to his lips, drawing the acrid smoke into his lungs as the burning paper scorched his lips. Glass glittered on his jeans where it had rained down, catching the sunlight as it crept with ghostly fingers across the floor, reaching towards him. He crushed out the cigarette on the shard that lay beside his foot, noticing the bottom of it was bloody. He hadn't felt that either. It was amazing how easily he could flip that switch, even with all those years of being "inactive". He was still a soldier, still a damned good one, too. He was more a tool, a weapon that could be pointed in the right direction and told to go off. He had so many times that the faces and places were a blur and the moment he'd become too broken to function, they'd called it a blessing. They'd given him walking papers and a bank account full of money that he refused to touch. They called it a discharge and a bonus for time well served. He'd called it punishment. What was he supposed to do? They'd taken everything from him. They'd made him a ghost. Even his grown children wanted nothing to do with him, hated him more than anything for the lie that had been forced on them.

Bruce McLeod had given him this job, had trusted him with running this business in his stead. The Scot had vouched for him with the club, had him brought back in from Nomad, had given him a family again and he'd repaid that gift with more wanton destruction.

"Fuck."

He closed his eyes. He didn't know what he was going to do about any of this shit. A part of him was still very fond of Leah, could remember just how good her body had felt under him. She made him laugh. She'd been carefree and wild in a way that made him feel twenty years younger and he'd let his guard down in front of her. He'd told her so much about the past and when she hadn't run away, when she'd asked him to go with her to Vegas, he'd felt like maybe his luck was changing.

A part of him resented her for leaving, even more for dropping the truth on him. Four months pregnant would mean that she was already knocked up when she'd disappeared on him – had it been fear that had sent her running? Had she balked at the thought of settling down with someone like him? And if that were the case, what the fuck was she doing back now?

He loved Natalie. Not Leah.

He could see a future with Natalie. He could see that relationship lasting beyond a seasonal fling. He could see that standing the test of time and could actually imagine settling down with her. Owning a house with a yard for her dog to run in.

He'd come to Nevada because of Leah, though. He owed it to her to at least hear her out. To at least let her explain where the hell she'd been since July.

It was all too much. Too complicated.

Head throbbing with exhaustion and the aftermath of that anger he'd let spill out, he felt sick. Sour saliva flooded his mouth and he staggered up and just barely made it to the broom closet-sized bathroom before he was on his knees in front of the toilet, tainted whiskey burning his throat and sinuses as it came up. The noise he made drowned out the sound of footsteps on the stairs even though they were light enough so that only the third from the bottom creaked like it always did. He closed his eyes again, resting his forehead against the wall as he reached up and grabbed the handle, wanting to flush away the mess before the smell got him started up all over again.

He froze at the sound of breathing that he knew wasn't his own and when he opened his eyes, he saw the wreckage in a new light. There were bloody footprints on the floor. There was glass and trash everywhere. The couch cushions were torn, stuffing leaking out where they'd been violated by being dragged across the broken glass.

"JD... what..?" He looked up and saw her in the doorway, a silhouette framed by the sunlight and for a moment, he wasn't sure who was standing there.

He flushed the toilet and got up. Cranking on the faucet, he leaned on the counter and waited for it to get cold. He was too exhausted to try and make conversation. If he'd had a gun, in that moment, he'd have surely tried to put a bullet in someone's head. His own. Hers. Either way would have been a perfect solution to a gigantic mess that he didn't relish the thought of trying to clean up. 

Splashing water on his face, he washed his hands and bit his lip to keep himself from saying something stupid. There was a bottle of beer on the counter and he picked it up, took a swig and rinsed his mouth out with it, spitting and watching the yellowish liquid swirl down the drain. He heard the floor creak, heard glass crunch underfoot and he kept his head bowed, the words slipping out past numbed lips as she drew closer, "I made a terrible mistake."