Chapter 23
Things took a sharp downturn after that.
Before there had been polite avoidance. Now there was obvious dissonance.
Oliver frequently tossed Aberlour expectant looks, like he wanted him to throw a punch or talk about how pissed he was.
Aberlour gave him impassive looks to demonstrate that he didn’t give a flying fuck.
Hell—he acted as if Oliver was now a stranger.
Team Specter walked on eggshells, watching their increasingly antagonistic interactions. No one openly broached the subject, but Abe would catch them whispering and sharing conspiratorial looks. Marcus was the first one to make a move to fix that shit.
Aberlour knew it was a trap even as he accepted Marcus’ invitation to come over and watch an NFL game.
Marcus had called just as Aberlour had finished his last cigarette.
The long evening of sitting alone in a desolate apartment, with no smoke to fill his hollowed-out shell of a soul had seemed far too daunting, so he’d accepted.
Military housing for non-commissioned officers was never going to be the epitome of style or elegance, but somehow Sabine had managed to elevate its normally bland interior to make it both beautiful and comfortable.
Aberlour was forced to admit she’d done a great job as he looked around the living room, waiting for Marcus to come back from the kitchen.
It wasn’t like Oli’s house. Far less bachelor than the last house on the street had looked, but it was quaint and peppered with personal touches that made the otherwise boring house shine with whimsy.
“Here,” Marcus said, as he dropped gracelessly onto the big fat leather couch and handed a long neck beer over to Aberlour.
He nodded gratefully and took a long pull. It was perfectly ice cold. There was nothing like that initial sensation of frigid bubbles on his tongue. He swallowed and then sighed with pleasure.
It wasn’t his first beer, and hopefully it wouldn’t be his last. If Aberlour had to go home tonight, he’d rather it be with a healthy buzz dragging his ass down into a deep sleep. It just didn’t get any better than that these days.
“JD has 50 bucks riding on this game,” Marcus said, as he settled into the seat cushions of the couch.
There were several football games on TV this Sunday. While Aberlour had never been big on football, he had no problem tossing back some cold ones when he was in good company. Even if it was a trap.
“Where’s he at?”
“His girl got tickets to the game. Anniversary present,” Marcus said. “Lucky dude! All I got were some lousy pairs of socks.” He looked crestfallen.
“Maybe get me something other than a blender, next year!” Sabine yelled from the kitchen. Marcus’ wife was six months pregnant and, apparently, her most recent obsession was cleaning the kitchen. They’d both offered to help, but she’d shooed them out with a stern look and a threat of bodily harm.
How she’d heard Marcus’ words over the havoc of her cleaning was anyone’s guess. Maybe she had bionic ears.
“Yes, ma’am,” Marcus replied automatically. Aberlour chuckled and mimicked cracking a whip just to piss off his friend.
“What about Carlos and Ghost? They usually crash at your house for football,” Abe said.
It hadn’t always been the case, of course.
Hanging out at Marcus’ house had become a thing ever since Abby had parked her skinny little privileged ass at Oliver’s house and completely taken over. Nobody enjoyed that shit.
He didn’t mind being alone with Marcus. Out of all of the team members, he was the most genial.
He kept the conversation flowing, never ran out of beer, and was just a genuinely good guy.
Aberlour just needed to keep steering the conversation clear of anything related to his and Oliver’s personal issues. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?
“Carlos went to Mexico to see his mom before we ship out, and Ghost and MJ were taking the kid to Disneyland,” Marcus said. “Don’t you read the group chat?”
“Sure, but none of that boring shit.”
Marcus snorted and idly saluted him with his beer bottle.
The quarterback threw a long pass, and the stadium came to life. Aberlour tried to focus on the screen but couldn’t quite manage it. He took a long pull from his beer and tried to keep his mind on the game.
“I got an offer yesterday,” Marcus said, a few minutes in.
“An offer?”
“Old high school buddy of mine. He’s putting together a security firm. He wants me to join the firm to be a security consultant.”
“The fuck does a security consultant do?” Aberlour asked, trying to avoid letting the conversation get serious. It was too late, of course. Marcus’ words tore a jagged, burning path through his system, rattling every bone in Aberlour’s body. He had to force himself to breathe normally.
“Hires people, gives advice on how to set up security systems, lots of things, I guess,” Marcus replied, sounding uncertain about the details.
“Right.”
He stared at the screen, doing his best to ignore the way Marcus was staring holes through him. He was doing his best to stay calm, to steady his breathing, to unclench his fists.
He’d been so na?ve, for so long. First Oli. Now the rest of his team. None of it had been built to last. He’d buried his damned head in the sand for years. Time for him to wake the fuck up.
“Oh, come on,” Marcus said, after a minute of awkward silence.
“What?” Aberlour asked, refusing to look at his friend. He’d known Marcus’ invitation to watch football at his house had been a damned trap from the get-go. He just—well, this wasn’t the trap he’d thought he’d fall into.
He just wasn’t sure it was any better. Pain was pain.
“You got a good job offer, your contract’s up at the end of the year, and your wife is pregnant,” he shrugged.
What more was there to say? Had he expected it?
No, but not because it wasn’t logical. Rather, Aberlour was a dumb fuck who liked to avoid things until they stabbed him in the gut, and the bleeding made it impossible to ignore.
Now he had two massive wounds to deal with. Oh, joy.
“You understand?” Marcus asked, worried, staring holes into the side of Aberlour’s face again.
Aberlour took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and turned to face Marcus. There was so much going on right now on his friend’s face. Guilt, excitement, worry. All of it right there for Aberlour to read. An open book, as always.
“Of course, I do,” he said, softly. He forced a smile he didn’t feel and said, “I’m happy for you.” That much was true at least. He was happy for Marcus. Happy for him and his wife, and for that child who’d get to have a father who stayed at home and didn’t ship out for six months at a time.
Marcus’ expression cleared miraculously, and his smile widened as he visibly relaxed.
“We gave a lot, you know? We paid our dues,” he added with a shrug. “I’d like to see my daughter grow up.” Leaning back, he propped his feet up on the coffee table.
“’Course,” Aberlour agreed. “That kid’s lucky to have you,” he added, holding out his beer for Marcus to tap it.
“Think maybe JD’s thinking about it too, and if JD goes, I think Ghost might go with him as well. I know MJ has been talking to him about it, but he wouldn’t leave on his own.”
In Aberlour’s mind, he saw the wind whip right through his castle made of cards.
This tall building—the permanent stronghold known as Team Specter—now appeared to be nothing more than a house of cards.
All along, he’d been thinking it was made of titanium.
Imagine his surprise as each level toppled to the ground.
Here was definitive proof that he’d truly mastered the art of self-deception.
His men were leaving. His team was dismantling.
They had lives. Fiancés and children. They’d go their separate ways.
They’d find other occupations and things to do with their time, so the castle that Aberlour had painstakingly constructed would very soon be a simple tent.
Two flimsy side walls, propped up with a few pieces of thin metal, waiting for the final blow to collapse the whole damned thing.
“I don’t know about Carlos, but I think that guy might never retire,” Marcus observed and then chuckled.
Aberlour wasn’t sure who he was talking to anymore. He heard the words, but nothing really sank in. Sitting there stunned into silence, staring blindly at the TV, Aberlour saw his whole world unravelling all at once. This was a goddamned nightmare.
“Oliver and you could—well, you could do anything, really.” Marcus appeared to be winding down a bit as he turned to Aberlour expectantly.
There was nothing Abe could say. Not really. If this was what they all wanted, he’d watch them go on to the next chapter in their lives. But he wouldn’t be following them. He wasn’t sure he could. He wasn’t sure he knew how.
“Oliver is going to marry her,” Aberlour said, the words escaping despite his best effort to contain them.
“Don’t—”
“He’ll marry her. They’ll have kids. If you guys leave, he’ll follow. Plenty of opportunities for him, and he always wanted to be a dad.”
Had he known this? Before right then? Had he known for sure, as he did now, that he would never belong to Oli again?
Maybe not, because in this moment he realized he was completely and irrevocably broken inside.
Cracked right smack down the middle. Right there, sitting on Marcus’ couch, he splintered and broke wide open like a rock that had been hammered hard enough that it shattered.
“Aberlour?”
The quarterback threw another great pass. His targeted wide receiver leaped into the air to catch it. He’d barely touched the ball before getting knocked sideways by one of the opposing team’s linebackers. The football fell to the grass.
Pass incomplete. So close, yet so far.