Chapter 25 #3
“And get shit-faced.” Marcus frowned with disapproval at the row of empty whiskey glasses setting in front of him.
“Either join me or fuck right the hell off,” Abe warned, not in the mood to hear any of Marcus’ paternal advice.
Marcus lifted both hands in surrender.
He was being unfair. He kind of knew that. Marcus wasn’t responsible for his sour mood, nor did he deserve his anger, but Aberlour—Aberlour had knocked back quite a few shots in rapid succession, so the lines of justice were blurring into circles of hell.
He waited silently, patiently, for Marcus to spit out whatever it was that had sent him chasing after Aberlour. It wouldn’t take long. It never did.
Marcus didn’t act like Oliver. In the same way that Aberlour wasn’t like Oliver or Marcus.
They all had their roles, and Aberlour didn’t like it at all when their roles changed.
Marcus had always been the steady guy he went to when he needed to be told no.
Oliver never said no. Marcus was more reasonable that way.
This past year, however, Marcus had become the guy Aberlour went to, or was forced to rely upon when Oliver was the problem.
He didn’t like how the role had changed.
Didn’t like how little control he had over the situation.
Didn’t like feeling like he was the child, and Marcus the father.
And yet, he sat, petulant, drowning his sorrows like an idiot, and waiting for Marcus to break the silence.
“The Major General is pissed. You’re going to get an earful sooner rather than later. You should have reported to—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the Major General. Either give me a report, or get the hell out,” he snarled, having lost all patience.
Marcus sighed like he knew all of that before he spoke.
Aberlour dared a quick look at his teammate.
There were dark circles under his eyes, and while his skin was dark, he looked almost grey in the dim lighting.
Marcus looked so tired, no—exhausted. A fresh wave of guilt swept over Aberlour.
In his anger and fear, he’d forgotten that Oli meant something to all of them.
He wasn’t the only one who’d nearly lost a piece of himself today.
They’d all felt it. Then Marcus had taken one for the team and stepped away from Oliver to do what should have been Aberlour’s job.
He was a fucker. He knew that. He just—he was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“The mark isn’t dead. They were able to transport him back to their own hellhole. I got the confirmation this morning. The higherups are not pleased,” Marcus explained with a sigh. “There’s an active investigation into what went wrong, but for now, it’s looking like we’re off the hook.”
Aberlour growled and tossed back the rest of his whiskey.
Off the hook. They’d done nothing to be on the hook. The intel had been wrong. Someone had sold them out. They hadn’t fucked up. This wasn’t on them.
And yet—he couldn’t help but feel responsible for Oli’s condition. What if—what if Marcus had been right and he’d fucked the team up. What if all of this was his fault in a way. Team Specter wasn’t thriving. It was splitting at the seams, which Carlos had made abundantly clear earlier that day.
“Nothing we could have done,” Marcus assured him.
“Not having a leak would have been a good start,” Abe replied, hating how well his brain was still working, even after all those shots of whiskey.
He needed to disappear. He needed his mind to quit, just tap out—whatever it wanted to do, just so long as he didn’t have to endure the onslaught of depressing thoughts and regrets anymore.
“We don’t know—” Marcus began, but Abe quickly cut him off.
“How the fuck else?” he growled, to which Marcus had no answer. “But he won’t hear any of it, I suppose,” Aberlour said, turning slightly to Marcus. “Major General Baron wants results, not excuses.”
It was a statement he’d heard Baron make much too often in their briefings.
He was a demanding leader who achieved results, but every Special Forces team that he’d commanded had all said that he was incredibly reckless with the lives of his men.
He played them like one plays at chess, sacrificing pawns without a second thought.
“He isn’t convinced, no,” Marcus admitted with a sigh.
Aberlour pushed the rest of his shot towards Marcus and signaled for the bartender to pour another. As he waited for him to do so, he could feel Marcus’ gaze on the side of his face. Clearly, there was something else he wanted to say. Aberlour could practically hear his mental gears turning.
Once the shot poured, he toasted Marcus silently, tipping his head back and drinking every precious, burning drop.
Marcus didn’t drink the shot. He just kept looking at Aberlour, something like disappointment shining in his eyes. As if Aberlour had failed him in some way.
Aberlour thought he might have cared once upon a time. He might have faced that disappointment head on and then whipped himself back into shape. Not now. Now, he merely acknowledged Marcus’ censure and held back the urge to stick his tongue out at him.
Who the fuck was he to look at Aberlour with such smugness and superiority? Aberlour knew it wasn’t Marcus he was angry with, but it felt good to direct his rage at someone else for a while.
Finally, Marcus got around to the point of his visit.
“He’ll want to see you when he wakes up.”
Apparently Marcus was hell bent on ruining Abe’s hard-earned buzz. He’d best get the bartender to crack open another bottle of whiskey. One bottle was simply not enough.
“She’s here,” Aberlour replied coldly. “She can nurse him back to health.”
“Aberlour.” So much disappointment was packed into that one word. The bite of chastisement. Like Marcus was his father, and Aberlour had done something he should feel bad about. It wasn’t his fault she was listed as Oliver’s emergency contact, now was it?
“The fucker wants to play house, then let him,” Aberlour declared angrily. He turned towards Marcus then, and he got a hardened stare in return.
“He’s lost,” Marcus retorted, even though he knew, deep down, that he would be unable to convince Aberlour of it.
He would not change the outcome. Marcus wasn’t Oli, but he knew Aberlour well enough to know just how stubborn he was when angry and heartbroken.
He’d seen it first-hand. Had bailed him out of jail for that very reason.
He’s lost, he’d said, but what he meant was, you both are.
“You can’t expect everyone to be like you—” Marcus said gently, like he was trying to keep an explosion at bay. It was pointless.
Aberlour whirled on Marcus, all of his repressed anger surging up.
“The hell does that mean?!” he demanded furiously.
Marcus sighed, like Abe’s reaction was predictable and juvenile.
“You’d blow up the entire world for Oli—for any of us,” Marcus said, calmly. “You can’t expect everyone to do the same.”
The words sat heavier than the whiskey in his gut. He wanted to vomit them out. Wanted to pretend he’d never heard them.
That Marcus wasn’t right.
He spun his empty shot glass around and decided Marcus deserved an honest response.
“I never asked for a picket fence and a wedding,” Aberlour confessed with a sigh.
He turned to face his friend, trying to gauge his expression.
“I never wanted anything more than what we had.” He’d never spoken of this before with anyone.
It felt strange to acknowledge that there had been something.
Something real. True. Something that had spurred them to hold hands while walking along the beach, for fuck’s sake.
“I didn’t ask him to blow his world apart for me—I didn’t even ask him to pretend I was part of his—I just—I just asked him not to fuck anyone else.”
He looked up at Marcus then, aware that he couldn’t conceal the extent of his pain anymore. It was all so raw. The grief, the worry, the anger, it had scraped his skin like sandpaper, leaving it raw, exposed, and bloody.
“You saying I asked for too much?”
Marcus’ puzzled yet tragic expression was hard to look at. His mouth fell open, as if intending to answer, but he shut it and shook his head. He ran a hand over his head. He always kept his hair as short as possible, nearly shaved down to his scalp.
“No, of course not—” Marcus said, swallowing. He shook his head and bit at his bottom lip. “But—maybe—maybe Oli isn’t like that? Maybe—maybe you shouldn’t have gone down that road with him. He’s a good southern boy. He loved you, so he followed your lead but—this lifestyle, it isn’t for everyone.”
Aberlour turned to face Marcus, sitting up suddenly in shock. He scoffed, highly amused as he stared at his friend.
“What, you think it was my idea? My move? That I corrupted Oli?” he asked indignantly.
“I never said corrupt—” Marcus began, holding one hand up to calm Abe who stood up abruptly, having heard enough.
Aberlour could feel burning rage taking over.
“Why are you here, Marcus? What do you want me to say? You want me to go—crawling back to him because he got shot? How does that change anything?” he asked, voiced hushed so he wouldn’t scream the way he desperately wanted to.
“No.” Marcus shook his head. “I just—I want my boys back. I want the team to heal and—” he sighed.
Aberlour chuckled, unamused but needing an outlet for his simmering anger. He took a deep breath.
“Heal, huh? Is that why you keep harping at me? He’s the one who broke us up.
I’m just trying to fucking move on—forget it fucking happened, but I can’t even get shitfaced without you getting in my face about it!
” Aberlour snarled, at his wit’s end. How many times?
How much more could he possibly give to this—thing? This wreck that he’d once cherished.
Marcus opened his mouth to reply, taken aback a moment too long by his friend’s sudden vulnerability.
“Fuck this!” Abe growled, shaking his head. “I’m not having this conversation with you.” He reached for his wallet and pulled out more than enough Euros to pay the tab. He threw them on the bar and turned to leave before Marcus could convince him to stay.
Marcus took a step to stop him, and stood in his way for just a second, although Aberlour knew he wouldn’t try to keep him there.
“Then with who?”
Aberlour thought for just a second.
“My fucking grave.”