56. Colson
FIFTY-SIX
COLSON
The left side of my body is fucked.
I’m bandaged from my shoulder, my arm stuck in a goddamn sling, down to my ankle. I haven’t had the chance to see what my face looks like, but I don’t need a mirror to know my eye is swollen shut and worse for wear. Christ, it hurts to even blink my good eye.
I can’t wiggle my toes without an ache popping up somewhere else in my body. And don’t get me started on how it feels like someone took coarse sandpaper to my throat and didn’t relent until it turned into a bloody mess. The cottonmouth has been steady, too, but the doctors assure me it’s a normal side effect from all the meds they gave me. Along with the nausea that comes in surges from the anesthesia wearing off.
I’m looking at weeks of recovery and then physical therapy afterward. The docs say I’ll make it back to a hundred percent as long as I take care of myself and follow their strict orders. For now, I’m supposed to rest, but I’m slowly starting to resent this room. Everywhere I look holds a reminder of my actions. A reminder that I pushed away people I loved, took up illegal fighting to soothe the war on grief, and the deal I made with Clyde. How I threw that fight. How I’m in a hospital bed, the damn room resembling the barrel of a shotgun I have no choice but to look down with shame.
The initial anger of Clyde backing out on our deal resurfaces, and I’m left stewing without having an outlet. I can’t get out of this bed. I can’t walk without someone close by to help. Hell, I haven’t even been able to stand to take a piss.
There’s no way around my dilemmas other than to think about them. And I hate thinking. It’s what drove me to drink that Jack all those weeks ago and what forced me to approach Eli.
The incoming and outgoing thoughts make me think about Tommy. I can’t help but wonder if he found out about me throwing the fight. Does it look suspicious that I lost and haven’t been back since? I mean, my accident only happened yesterday, but I don’t have a working phone. It got lost when the car rolled, and first responders couldn’t find it in the cleanup.
I have no way for anyone to contact me. No way for me to get a hold of anyone. If Tommy is pissed, I won’t know until I’m released, which only makes the anxiety worse.
I fucked him over, thinking it would get me what I wanted in the long run: Mom’s house. But see, I made a deal with the devil and lost. I should’ve known better. I should’ve realized that Clyde was never going to give me the house.
How didn’t I see that?
A soft knock sounds at the door before it swings open, and my nurse comes in. She checks my vitals, asks about my pain levels, and lets me know I have a visitor waiting. One she was waiting to send in until she finished checking in with me. I give her the go ahead to send them in when she leaves.
Sebastian has been in and out of my room since I’ve been here. Sometimes he sits in the corner and falls into silence with me. Much like he did back at Mom’s house. Other times we’ll shoot the shit about whatever is playing on the TV. This morning, he brought me cream-cheese filled bagels from one of the coffee shops close to Spring Meadows. I managed to get one down before the urge to throw up came over me, and I pushed it away, assuring him he could eat mine, too.
Minutes later, after I find a movie to watch on the mounted TV, I sense the door opening and say, “Grandma’s Boy is on. Been ages since we’ve seen this movie.”
When I don’t get Sebastian’s heartfelt chuckle along with his confirmation of how much he cracks up whenever Jonah Hill is on the screen, I glance over, and end up doing a double take.
Sebastian isn’t looking back at me.
My mouth pinches into a sour expression and the revulsion from this morning returns. “Who the fuck let you in?”
Finn shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Didn’t realize I needed a permission slip.”
I turn my gaze back to the TV.
He huffs out a sigh. “I’m not allowed to visit my brother?”
My entire body vibrates with annoyance. “Didn’t I tell you about that before? You know, how we’re not even fucking close to being brothers?” I turn and stare into his dark eyes. “That we never will be?”
“So you keep saying.” His eyes trail over my body, on the IV taped in place on my hand. On the oxygen tubes that dangle over one of my shoulders, because they force me to wear them when I sleep.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” I grit out. “Or, actually, do let it hit you if it means it’ll knock some sense into you and make you leave me alone.”
“What the hell do you want from me?”
“I’ve told you time and time again what I want. For you to leave me be, but you can’t seem to understand I want nothing to do with you, Finn.”
A moment of silence passes between us, and when I look back over, I swear I catch the tail end of his face falling. “I was here the night of your accident, waiting just like your aunt and your friends were.”
He was? I had no idea. Not that it matters.
“What? You want a prize? You want a watermelon sucker to make you feel like a good boy for showing up?” I quip.
“I’ll take butterscotch if you got it.”
My eyes squint in irritation. “What?”
“Not a fan of watermelon, but I’ll take butterscotch.” He takes a step closer to the bed, his hands leaving his pockets for him to cross his arms over his chest. I don’t know what he’s doing, why he’s wasting time on a lost cause. “I know I’m not going to find forgiveness here, but…” He collects his hair in his hand and pulls at it. Pulls at the stainless-steel ring pierced into his lip, too.
“Just leave, Finn. We’ll both be better off if you actually start listening.”
“Thing is, I don’t want to fucking listen to that, Moore.”
A host of memories come when he refers to me by last name. So many times, that word has left his mouth only for me to have to endure his wrath over deals that had nothing to do with me.
“He didn’t tell me,” Finn says. “I had no idea who you were to me. And if I had known?—”
“If you had known, what? You stand there and act like it would’ve changed things, but it wouldn’t have. You run drugs, and who the fuck knows what else, with that piece of shit you call Dad. He would’ve forced your hand; we both know it. I can’t wrap my mind around you not realizing that on your own.”
“He’s your dad, too,” he interjects.
“No…he’s not. I’m nothing like that man, and I never will be but you…you’re a spitting image of him. You drain people of the little bit of life they have left in them. Then when you do, you toss their pruned bodies out like they never had a chance.” I lick my lips and continue. “I may have turned to shit I should’ve left alone after my mom died, but that’s not who I am. Isn’t that why you showed up and brought Violet into it? To get me to snap out of it and stop throwing my life away? That’s the difference between you and me. There’s still hope where I’m concerned even if I have to work double time for it now but you? You ran out of potential a long fucking time ago, Finn.”
“Watch what you’re saying,” he warns, his eyes flared with heat.
I laugh, swallowing down the raspiness that comes when I say, “Or what? You going to do what you did to me back then? In case you can’t fucking see, Finn, I’m already laid up in a hospital bed. Not much more you can do to make me suffer. Unless you’re willing to end me, and if that’s the case,” I hold my one good arm out, “then have at it. Put me out of my goddamn misery.”
For what feels like the first time ever, he rolls his eyes. “Jesus, fuck. That’s not what I want. You don’t fucking get it. You will never understand what it was like growing up in a house with a man like him and being forced to look up to him.”
My heart gallops in my chest. Fuck him for trying to make it sound like he suffered to the extent I did. At least he had two parents. Not only his father, even if he is a royal fucking prick, but a mother as well. No one fed her drugs until she wound up in jail then proceeded to sneak them in for her. He doesn’t get to do this to me, goddamnit.
“I don’t care what it was like for you, Finn. My free passes shriveled up a long time ago.”
“A free pass isn’t what I’m looking for. All I’m saying is…”
“Is what?” I press, because I’m getting fed up. Since he came into the room, my pain number has gone up no less than three digits.
The words must be hard for him to get out, because he mulls them over for a solid minute. He ducks his chin, his voice a decibel I can hardly hear. “I’m fucking sorry , okay?”
“You’re sorry?”
“Yeah, I am.” He raises his head, not backing down from the weight of the conversation. “We’re family, and we’re supposed to protect our own. I went against you every step of the way because I had to. I let him turn me into him, so he could get what he wanted. It was fucked up.”
“You’re just realizing this now?”
“Consider yourself the smarter one of the two of us,” he half-jokes but there’s not a smile in sight.
I look at him. Really look at him as he stands at the foot of my bed. For a fleeting moment, I see it. The scared little boy who would run around the playground during recess with a gigantic smile on his face until life caught up with him. The boy who went off on summer vacation and came back colder and meaner with two burly cousins who flanked his sides during our middle school years.
The playground games stopped, and the pocket picker and lunch money thief made his entrance. Back then, he thrived off the punishments and the cruelty he dished out. His older cousins would pat him on the back, and I’m sure that filled his eager little heart, knowing he’d get to go home to receive the affection he so desperately wanted from Clyde as well.
His expression flattens, the tiny smirk that was playing at his mouth vanishing. “I’m not him.”
“You’re a spitting image,” I remind him again.
“I don’t want to be,” he admits sheepishly, which is fucking weird because I’ve never seen Finn wilt so easily. “I was born into that life, Colson. Same as you. Sure, I made some messed up choices along the way, but they weren’t for my own enjoyment.”
“Then walk away if you’re so bent out of shape about it. Or don’t. You’re still not hearing that I don’t fucking care.”
He shakes his head. “You say that like you weren’t at his beck and call a day ago trying to make a deal with the man.” I look at him. “Yeah, I know about that. What the fuck were you thinking, anyway? Screwing over Tommy is the last thing you need. I told you what he’d do. The kind of man he is. You better hope he doesn’t find out.”
My stomach swoops with that same feeling of wanting to fucking puke. “The only way he’d know would be if your dad told him.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You still don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“Clyde doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He wouldn’t blink before throwing you under the bus.”
“Is that what you’re saying happened?” I challenge. If anyone would know, it’d be him.
“I don’t know what he did. I don’t want in on any more shit with him than I have to be. The older he gets, the less he gives a fuck about discretion.”
If Clyde ran his mouth to Tommy after I threw that fight…
I’m fucked. Totally obliterated.
Like earlier, I sense the door opening, despite my full attention being on Finn. I’m not necessarily expecting company, but Aunt Bess and Sebastian have come and gone all throughout the day.
Violet was here once, too. The first time I woke up in this room, but I was still groggy as fuck from the surgery that I fell asleep after only being awake for a few minutes. She was gone by the time I woke up again. Understandable since I’m sure she has to keep up with her course schedule, but hell if I don’t want her at my bedside. When I close my eyes and think about it hard enough, I can sense her hand curl over mine.
I don’t get the chance to do that now, though, because three men I’ve never seen a day in my life waltz into my room like it’s nothing. They all look alike in dark pants and leather jackets, each of them rocking a buzz cut.
Finn spins, following my gaze. His shoulders immediately stiffen. It’s enough of an indicator for me to know they didn’t make a mistake and walk into the wrong room. This was intentional. Them showing up here.
“Who the fuck are you?” Finn demands, his hands now at his sides, the vulnerability in his tone long gone. He’s back to the stone-cold man Clyde Lincoln raised, puffing his chest out in a way that tells these guys how unafraid of them he is.
The last man to walk in the room dips his hand into his waistband hidden by his jacket and pulls out a 1911 pistol. With his large hand wrapped around the grip, he nudges it at Finn before one of the other men flanks his side with their own gun pressed to his temple.
“What the fuck is this?” Finn commands, insistent on wanting answers.
“You get boss’s message loud and clear,” the head man in charge says with a broken Russian accent.
My body sinks into the uncomfortable hospital mattress, my muscles rioting with enough trepidation to spike my pain yet again. The only way out of this is facing it head on, because it’s clear these guys aren’t fucking around.
“What boss?” I ask, keeping my voice even.
“Mr. Tommy. He sends us to make sure you understand.”
“Understand what?”
My conversation with Finn replays in my mind. We were just talking about the possibility of Tommy knowing about me taking a dive in my fight. Did we fucking summon these guys? The probability that he’s talking about anything else is low. I haven’t been up to no good. Not really, anyway. I may be fighting, but outside of my deal with Clyde, nothing else exists.
“It was Tommy,” Finn announces, the cool metal of a gun muzzle pressed into his skin. He acts as if he’s not bothered. Like he deals with this kind of shit every day, having weapons with live rounds pointed at him. “He fucking ordered a hit on you.”
The Russian chuckles. I feel his deep laugh in my own chest at the revelation.
That can’t be. Sure, Tommy is serious about his money, but paying someone to perform a hit and run at my expense?
He won’t spit you out, and if you’re one of the lucky few he doesn’t want, I promise you won’t be whole by the end of it.
“Wouldn’t exactly say hit,” the man says nonchalantly, his accent curling around every word. “But message, yes.”
I sink my teeth into my cheek before asking, “Message regarding what?”
“You give his hard-earned money to Harrison Heights sleazeball who likes to run mouth.”
Fucking Clyde .
We had a deal, damnit.
When my gaze darts to Finn, I find his nostrils flaring, his tongue rolling against his teeth like he can barely contain himself. I envision him twisting that pistol out of the guy’s hand behind him, lowering it to his gut, and emptying a round into it.
And then I’m back in my car, seeing the headlights flying toward me, wondering why the hell they aren’t slowing down. I’m there for the collision, floundering in my seat when the force of it is so powerful it lifts my car on its side. I’m dangling from my seat belt as it rolls multiple times and skids to a stop on its roof.
I’m in the ambulance again.
In the emergency room under the blinding lights.
In this bed when I open my eyes for the first time and find Violet.
Violet.
What I wouldn’t give to have her with me. To have her curled into my side with her beautiful eyes staring up at me.
I almost lost that. I wanted Mom’s house so badly that I turned to Clyde and trusted him even after he fed Mom all those drugs and continued to sneak them into the county jail for her. He killed my own mother, and I sought him out, made a deal with him, and trusted that he would follow through without putting a big red X on my back.
A sickness like I’ve never felt roils in my guts, traveling throughout my body until it’s everywhere. My lips flatten into a straight line. For the life of me, I can’t get words out. Everything slows down as this sense of dread filters through me and tunnel vision consumes me.
Finn must notice because he speaks for me. “What is it he wants?”
The Russian turns to look at him. “You speak for him now, yes?” he questions, the words rolling off his tongue.
Finn ignores the question. “What does Tommy want?”
The Russian breathes out. “Replace what your thieving hands took from him.”
“Okay, fine. He’ll pay it back,” Finn spits out, his chest rising and falling in quick succession. I imagine it isn’t so easy for the roles to be reversed. For him to be cornered like he used to do to me all the damn time.
“How much?” I eventually ask, my heart dropping three flights because here I am again, needing to pay someone money I don’t have. Only now it’s worse because I’m stuck in this goddamn bed and can’t do anything about it.
The Russian rattles off a number in the thousands. It’s money I don’t have, but then I remember all the fights I won and the stash of money I collected from them. Relief floods my veins, but that money is at Mom’s house and who the hell knows if Clyde took it over by now.
Once again, I’m strung out on a line to dry.
Clyde will never let me back in to get it if I tell him there’s something there I need, let alone it being money. Hell, I didn’t even get the chance to pack any belongings because I ended up here instead.
“Mr. Tommy promises worse shape if money is not paid back.” The man holding a gun to Finn’s head lowers it. “Tomorrow.”
“That’s not enough time. If you haven’t noticed, I’m strapped to this bed. I can’t fucking walk without help.”
“Your problem. Not Mr. Tommy’s.”
They tuck their guns back where they can’t be seen and file out of the room like they didn’t just come in and flip tables.
Finn moves to the door as soon as they’re gone. “These doors don’t have fucking locks?”
There’s no point in locking it. They’d find their way back in regardless. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this one. How I’m going to get them their money when all I have is under Clyde’s roof, a man who had no issue letting Tommy, his enemy, in on what I did just so he could brag and feel like the bigger man for all of a minute.
Did he not understand that his braggy nonsense would be at my expense? That he was lining a firing squad up in front of me when he clued Tommy in on our plan?
“I think they’re gone,” Finn says in an agitated tone when he opens the door to presumably check the hallway just to close it again. “I should cut that fuckers hand off for pressing that gun to my head and feed him his fucking fingers.”
I regard Finn with a look I can’t quite pinpoint. My head spins along with the rest of my body. The room swirls and twirls like one of those mind games that fuck with your eyes.
Violet’s face forms in the small space between all the movement, and I lock onto it. Onto her pretty features. Her curious brown eyes. Her full, sweet lips. The beauty mark on her cheek.
She’s a figment of my imagination, but I want the real thing. For her to teleport into my space. Mom was right in that dream when she said she calms and grounds me.
Beeping ensues around me, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. A weight rests on my chest I’ve felt one other time: when I was leaving Eli’s. It’s all-consuming, like what it would be like if the room filled with water, and I remained in this bed. Much like my dream. My lungs have the hardest time pulling in air, and fuck, I’m not sure if I even want them to. It doesn’t matter, though, because no matter how hard I try, my breaths don’t reach where they need to go.
The beeping comes quicker. Violet’s beautiful face gets farther away. I reach for it, but I’m too weak.
Is it always going to be like this?
A deep voice is at my side uncharacteristically fast. It takes me a minute to process that it’s Finn. That he’s next to me, reassuring me that I’m okay, that I need to breathe, as he grabs the oxygen tubes and holds them to my nose.