18. Colson
EIGHTEEN
COLSON
The thwacking of fists against leather helps me zone out until I put in my headphones and hit play on my usual playlist. My gloves are next. I tug them tight over my knuckles as I prepare to let all my fury out on the bag in front of me.
After the ordeal with Sebastian, and Violet inevitably settling on calling me her friend , I need to get my frustrations out. I have no right to be upset about the lines she’s drawn after I tried forging my own—and said the things I have—but I fucking detest them.
It’s so much different being the one who’s lacking control. I have no say in the thick rope she’s laid between us. No jurisdiction over it vanishing or thickening. Over if it moves or stays there forever.
I don’t want it to be there that long.
It’s hard as hell getting her pretty smile out of my head. Harder forgetting what she tastes like when I fall into bed at night. She’s the only one out there for me, but it has to be this way.
I drive my fist into the boxing bag.
I’ve never despised my life more than I do now. How I didn’t have a mother to teach me how to work through my emotions. How I don’t have a father who I can trust and turn to for girl advice when I’ve fucked up. Being branded the name “prick” wouldn’t do me justice. Bastard is more like it. Not just because I've acted like an idiot but because it’s a fact. I am one.
That’s the other reason I’m at Gulliver’s. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around Mom being married to Clyde. I’ve been trying to look back at my life, the timeline of my childhood, but none of it makes sense, and I only get so far before my memory cuts off. I don’t recall if he was around when I was young. Did he show up at the house when I was a toddler? Did he sneak around with Mom, coming in through the back door past my bedtime?
I have no answers, and it only tests my patience and the theories I’ve been fed, making that pit deep in my stomach that thinks Clyde could be my father even more assuming.
I used to wonder how Mom got caught up with the Lincolns so easily. It makes sense now. She was doing business with them because she knew Clyde. Their relationship gave her a shoe in the door despite them not playing house. It was easier for her to seek him out versus finding someone else on the streets. And she was so caught up that she never once questioned his motives or why he continued to keep their marriage going while he was off living with Finn’s mother.
If they didn’t want to be together and no one knew about it, then why didn’t they get a divorce? Clyde went on to have a son with another woman. I don’t know what Finn’s mom’s name is, but I recall seeing her a time or two when we were still young enough for parents to show their faces at school.
My fist hits the leather again before I lay down a killer of a combo.
Clyde had, single-handedly, poured fuel on Mom’s fire by giving her drugs to sell then forced me to helicopter in the gallons of water, chiseling away at my exterior bit by bit until my entire focus was on paying her debts and not on what truly mattered; her addiction and need for help.
How could he do that?
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t help but to be. Not when he’s Clyde and the Lincolns have the reputation they do.
My gloved fist drives into the leather harder. I go with a simple jabbing pattern and welcome the way it pulls at my muscles. It’s been a minute since I’ve gotten to beat the shit out of something. It doesn’t help that I’ve been drinking and haven’t been sleeping well. It takes me a little longer than normal to warm up, but once I do I put my entire focus on my movements.
My mind, however, doesn’t get the hint that it’s break time. It goes right back to considering everything that’s been going on and settles on Clyde again. Could he really be my father?
It doesn’t fucking matter.
Music thumps in my ears, and my heartbeat plays along to the drums. Thump, thump, thumping in a way that brings me back to life. I haven’t felt like this since before the fundraiser, when I spent most of my days outside of work with Violet.
A reprieve curls up over my shoulders and trickles down my arms and into my hands. A sizzling current makes way, and by the time I’m done with my set, sweat drips off my forehead and temples. I’m a disgusting mess, so much that I have to pull my clinging shirt away from my sticky skin. I peel my gloves off and sit on the bench near my bag and electrolyte drink.
I should’ve gotten out of the house sooner.
A hand clamps over my shoulder, and I look up to see Llewellyn. He’s wearing a gym polo and is clean-shaven, which is nothing new. I’ve never seen the man with facial hair. What gets me most are his watchful eyes and the questions conveyed in them.
He gave me time off from working, and here I am, in his gym, anyway.
I tug my earbuds out and pocket them. “Hey.”
“How you doing, kid?”
“Alright.” I motion to the gym. “This helps.”
“I sure as hell hope so.” He sits next to me and crosses his arms over his chest, legs spread out and heels propped on the cement below him. We look out at the expanse of the gym. There’s a new girl working the front counter. A redhead who offers timid smiles to everyone that comes and goes. I overheard a dude in the locker room say her name is Kelsie and how she’s Llewellyn’s niece from an estranged sister he doesn’t ever talk about.
Old me would have greeted her properly when I arrived earlier instead of ignoring her, but no one needs me as a friend right now, so I ducked my head and ignored her altogether.
The last time I let a girl in she got in my head and heart, and I haven’t been able to get her out ever since. And now everything with her is one giant fucked up mess.
Llewellyn takes my silence as something being wrong.
“Can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you need.”
I glance over, momentarily stunned by what he says but then also not. Ever since I’ve known the guy, he’s gone above and beyond to help those around him. It’s his purpose in life. The thing that gets him out of bed to open the doors to this place every morning. It’s wild how he can take one look at a person and know how much they’re suffering.
I’m not there yet.
I’m not ready to talk about it in depth.
To get down to the nitty gritty of how goddamn broken I am. For a multitude of reasons.
I shake my head and look down at my feet. “I don’t know, Llewellyn.”
He purses his lips, but it turns up looking more like a frown than anything else. “When Gulliver died, it was like he stole my heart from my chest and took it with him. Sure, my body was still here, but the rest of me?” He wags a hand in the air. “I was gone. Didn’t give a single shit about anyone or anything. For a long time, I was fine living in the outrage that consumed me from it. Used to ask myself, how? How could it be that we both went over there, and I came back but he didn’t? Didn’t seem right. Still doesn’t some days.”
Jesus .
I can’t imagine what it was like for him and his brother all those years ago. From the way I’ve always heard it from Llewellyn, they were thick as thieves. Did everything together, including signing up to fight for their country. One came back and the other did, too, but in a flag-draped casket.
“Gulliver was older than me by two years. Had more knowledge and life behind him, but it didn’t matter. He was still taken in combat, and for a long time I goddamn hated him for it. Myself, too. Years went by before I could look my ugly mug in the mirror. All I saw was him. In every little thing.”
I’m not sure what to say so I settle on, “Wish I could’ve gotten to meet him.”
“So do I, kid. But that doesn’t change what you’re facing. I know the struggle when I see the struggle because I’ve been through the struggle. Ya get me?”
“I get you.”
“Good, so tell me, you at rock bottom yet?”
I swallow at the tarantula-sized lump in my throat.
Rock bottom.
I guess that depends on who you ask and how they define it. Then again, when I look back on time since Mom passed, all I see is me losing it on the people closest to me. Going from having some semblance of love around me to none at all. Maybe I have hit the rubble of bedrock and stone beneath the surface of the earth.
“I stared at a bottle of Jack Daniel’s for days,” I utter, knowing he won’t judge me for it. Llewellyn has been through too much to cast a single stone. “Trying to decide if I wanted to run from my problems and risk the same kind of life she had or deal with my cards head-on.”
“Yeah? Which way did the ball roll?”
Addiction is no joke in the Moore family. My body’s tolerance is higher because of it. The absolute last thing I want is to end up like Mom or her dad. I don’t want to have to answer to something that’s embedded in my flesh and blood and lose out on the richness of life.
The richness of Violet.
In the end, I wasn’t strong enough.
I sniff, pushing away the shame that tries to replace the sweat all over my body. “I drank the Jack.”
“For what it’s worth,” he nudges me with an elbow, “I drank the Jack, too.”
I glance around, noting the people filling the gym and getting their workouts in while chatting with one another. Eli is over by the ring with the same dude that’s always training him. I linger on the last conversation I had with him, wondering for the first time what it would be like to take him up on his offer to get in the ring with him. How would it feel to push my pain onto someone else? Would it help me forget? Would it make this all a little more bearable?
I shift back to Llewellyn. It’s like we’re in a bubble, watching and observing what’s around without anyone having the opportunity to do the same back.
“Grief is one of those things that appears out of the blue. It doesn’t give you a heads up. It’s like that genie in a bottle, except for granting one wish, it sets out to drag you down any way it can. All because of the love you have for the person who’s no longer here.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, but my thoughts stretch to Eli again, and I don’t know what to make of it. I was so quick to turn him down before but now…
“Most people don’t.”
“One second, I’m sad as hell and wish I could have more time with her despite everything she put me through. In the next minute, I’m angry. So fucking angry that I want to put my fist through something.” I sigh and let out a staggering breath. That shame from a minute ago grasps me, and I can’t believe what I admit next. “I almost strangled my cousin.”
Llewellyn clicks his tongue and slants his head, giving it a shake. “And now you’re here. Sounds like rock bottom after all.”
I scrub my hands over my face, pushing what’s left of my sweat back into my hairline. “I’ve fucked everything up, and I don’t know how to fix it. Not when it feels like it just keeps getting worse.”
I don’t mention Clyde’s name like I want to.
For some reason, I want to keep that information private. At least a little longer until I figure out what the hell to do about it, though I’m not sure there is anything I can do. How am I supposed to handle it? Walk up to the guy and demand that he should’ve never married my mom? That he should’ve kept his dick in his pants? That he’s not taking her house from me or the money?
Everything is irrevocably screwed.
“I broke up with my girlfriend,” I admit next.
“That pretty little brunette you showed me a picture of?”
I nod, guilt wracking my chest for the thousandth time. Back when things were good with Vi, I came in one night, high off my ass from her stunning smile and playful text messages. Llewellyn saw me grinning up a storm and asked what had me in such a good mood. I didn’t tell him but showed him a picture of Violet instead.
“How’d you manage that?”
“The night Mom overdosed, I was out of my mind with emotions, and thought it’d be better if she were nowhere near me while I figured out how to navigate it all. And shit has happened since then. She keeps showing up for me, and like the asshole I am, I make it worse every time I’m around her.”
“That’s how you know she’s a keeper, kid. Some of these women,” he blows out a breath. “They’re wavin’ goodbye at the first sign of hardship.”
“She wants every part of it. But I can’t…I can’t bring her into this shitshow. She’s already seen me at my worst. She was there when that happened with my cousin. I don’t want to drag her knee-deep into the quicksand.” I wouldn’t be able to save her when she needed it. Not when I’m stuck too. If I can’t protect myself against my inner demons, how the hell can I ever protect her?
“Sounds to me like she’s already in it.”
I consider that.
Fuck .
Maybe we’ve already passed the point of no return.
“Listen, Colson, I get all you must be feeling. Your mama didn’t make her life easy. Didn’t make it that way for you either, and now she’s gone. You can choose to handle this the way she would or in your own way, but if you want to stop hurting the people you care about, then you’re gonna have to work on yourself.” He thumps one fist over his heart and uses his other finger to tap his head. “You’re going to have to get in here and up top if you want to make it.”
I hear him loud and clear, I really do, but…
“What if I’m not ready for that? What if I have no clue what my first step is?”
What if I’m scared shitless over losing someone else, except this time there’s so much more love involved? What if I can't be the man I need to be? What if being stuck like this is my fate?
“You’ll know when you’re ready. It’ll click and you’ll just start moving in that direction because nothin’ else makes sense. And after that, you know your steps by trusting yourself. The process. Everything beyond what you already know.”
He makes it sound like it can be easy.
I know from experience that it never is.
My eyes slice back over to Eli, watching him as he sidesteps and ducks when his trainer throws a fake swing at him. I hear his voice like he’s standing in front of me again with the promise of having a remedy that works like no other.
It isn’t Jack or drugs but starts and ends with my fists.
For the first time ever, I wonder if he might know what he’s talking about.