Chapter 36
CHAPTER 36
BECKETT
“ W ell. When you fuck up, you fuck all the way up.”
Stretched out on Ice’s couch, Beckett opened his eyes just enough to glare at his smirking friend. “You don’t have to sound so damn happy about it.”
“I’m not happy. I am, however, wondering how you didn’t see this blowing up in your face.”
“What the hell was I supposed to do, Ice? She’s sick. And she’s mine . It’s my job to take care of her.” An old, familiar grief welled up inside him, threatening to choke him. “I already failed at it once. I can’t do it again.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Sitting up straighter in the armchair he’d been lazing in during their talk, Ice frowned. “Who said you failed at anything? Just because she got sick doesn’t mean you failed, dude.”
Shit. He’d been so mired in his own grief he hadn’t even realized he’d said that. But now that he had, he really didn’t have much of a choice but to come clean.
So he swallowed hard against the emotion that had wrapped itself around his throat and prepared to share his deepest, most painful secrets with the man he considered his best friend. “Not Ruby. Grace. My wife.”
In the year or so he’d known Elias ‘Ice’ Turner, he’d never actually seen him speechless.
Until now.
For several long seconds, Ice simply stared at him, his mouth hanging slightly open until he finally shook his head as if he was physically shaking off the shock. “I beg your finest fucking pardon. Did you just say you have a wife ? As in, ‘til death do we part, for richer or poorer, all that shit’ kind of wife?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“High school. Well, about two days after graduation, technically.”
Leaning back in his chair, Ice let out a long, low whistle. “You move fast.”
“Not really,” Beckett answered with a shrug. “We were childhood sweethearts. Met when we were about five, grew up next door to each other. I told my dad when I was seven I was going to marry her, and I meant it. You know what it’s like, when you see her and you just know she’s the one. It was like that with you and Silver.”
“Yeah but we were sixteen. It’s a little different.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, she was my whole fucking world from the word go, Ice. There was never anyone else, not even in school. Not for me, not for her. We just… clicked. She was my submissive, before we even had a word for what we were doing. Bratty as hell, because she loved it when I spanked her, since back then I was too nervous to punish her too harshly. Worried I’d push her away if I was too ‘mean’. So really her ‘punishments’ were more like foreplay, which was just how she liked it.”
“How the times have changed.”
“Yeah.” Swallowing past the lump in his throat, Beckett nodded. “There’s a reason for that. When we were just out of college, she took this job she hated, because it was supposed to fast track her career. I wanted her to quit, begged her to find something else, anything else. But she was determined that this was it. And so I backed off. Pretended I didn’t see how fucking exhausted she was, all the goddamn time.”
At some point during his confession, Ice had gotten up and retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge. Beckett glanced up as Ice pressed the cold glass into his hand. “Thanks.”
“Drink. Then tell me the rest.”
Twisting the cap off with a vicious yank, he downed half the icy-cold liquid before continuing. “One night, she had to work late. I had tried to put my foot down about her late nights a couple of times, but it always ended in a fight. So when she called to tell me she had no clue what time she’d be getting off, I just told her I loved her and I’d see her later. Hung up on her without giving her a chance to say goodbye. To tell me she loved me too.
I ate dinner alone, then waited up as late as I could. Went to bed around eleven, after texting her goodnight. Woke up a couple hours later to the police banging on my door.”
“Jesus, Beckett. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Something dripped onto the back of his hand, and he stared at the wayward teardrop. When had he started crying? “She was still alive when I got to the hospital. Hooked up to a bunch of machines so they could keep her that way long enough for me and her parents to say goodbye. She’d fallen asleep on the way home, crashed her car into a tree. All because I didn’t do my job as her husband. As her Dom. I failed her, and she died, and it was all my fucking fault.”
“Well that’s a mighty big opinion you have of yourself there, Mr. Big Shot.”
Jerking his head up, Beckett glared at his supposed best friend. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it, Elias.”
“I’m just saying. That’s a really awful thing that happened and I can’t imagine how much it hurt. I know how I felt when I just thought I’d lost Silver and honestly, man, I’m impressed as fuck that you even survived.”
“But?”
“ But , you’re not God, my friend. She didn’t die because you failed her. She died because we live in a broken fucking world and bad things happen to good people.”
“No.” An emotion he couldn’t quite name sat heavy on his chest, pressing in harder and harder with every breath. “No. It was my fault, Ice. I should have stepped in sooner, I should have made her take care of herself.”
Ice shook his head, sympathy Beckett knew he didn’t deserve shining in his eyes. “No. You want it to be your fault because you can’t accept that sometimes shit happens that’s just out of our control. Because if it’s your fault, if there was something you could have done differently, then you can tell yourself that next time, next time you just need to be harder, stricter, harsher. That if you just exert the exact right amount of control, you won’t ever have to feel that kind of pain again. And I hate to tell you this, man, but you’re wrong.”
Years of pain and memories he’d been doing his damnedest to ignore welled up inside him. Choking him. Suffocating him from the inside out.
Shoving up from the couch, he made for the door to the back deck.
Air. He needed air.
Salt air greeted him as he shoved the door open and he dragged in a deep breath, letting it fill his lungs. Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back, tilting his face up toward the sun.
For years he’d carried the weight of Grace’s death on his shoulders. Every step he’d taken in work, at the club, everywhere, had been directed by the guilt he’d felt for so long.
To have someone look him in the eye and say it wasn’t his fault, that he wasn’t responsible…
It should have been freeing. But all he felt was grief, as fresh and raw as the day he’d put her in the ground.
Because if it wasn’t his fault, if he really couldn’t have done anything differently to change what happened, then everything he was, everything he’d become since he’d lost her, was built on a lie.
“You okay, man?”
“No.”
“That’s okay.” Stepping up beside Beckett, Ice looked out at the ocean with him, watching in silence as the waves broke against the shore.
And with each passing minute, the grief eased a little bit more. Until it no longer felt like it would shred him to pieces with every breath he took. “I don’t know what to do.”
“About?”
“Everything,” he said with a short, bitter laugh. “You basically just told me that the entire foundation of who I am is wrong. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”
“Gonna take someone a hell of a lot smarter than me with a lot more letters behind their name to tell you that. But if it were me? I’d start with an apology, and maybe a little forgiveness.”
“Ruby doesn’t need my forgiveness. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Turning, Ice placed his hands on Beckett’s shoulders, his dark eyes filled with so much love and understanding it made Beckett’s chest ache all over again. “Not for Ruby. For yourself.”
Beckett
Two days after pouring his heart out to Ice, Beckett found himself standing on the steps of a house he hadn’t visited in years. He should have, he realized with a pang of guilt as he reached for the doorbell. Should have called more, should have visited, should have done… something.
Anything.
But he’d been a coward then, and he was apparently still a fucking coward, because he couldn’t quite bring himself to press the button, alerting them to his presence.
He’d just about made up his mind to turn around and walk away when the front door opened, making him jump.
Okay, he could see why Ruby hated that so much.
“Beckett?” The woman behind the screen was older than he remembered, with more gray in her hair, more lines on her face. But still just as beautiful as her daughter had been. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, um…” There’d been a time he’d called her Mama just as easily as his own mother. But he doubted that would be welcome now. “Hi, Mrs. Davis. Sorry to drop by unannounced, I was just kind of in the neighborhood.”
A complete lie, considering their neighborhood was a solid hour from Ice’s house and the complete opposite direction of his own.
Julie’s brows drew together, whether in worry or annoyance, he wasn’t sure. “Well, don’t just stand out there in the freezing cold. Come in. Would you like some hot chocolate?”
And just like that, he was ten years old again, being fussed over by his second mom as she hurried him and Grace in out of the cold. “I’d love some. Thanks.”
“Scott!” she called up the stairs as Beckett followed her inside. “We have company!”
Walking through their house, he was surprised by how much had changed.
And even more by what hadn’t.
The mantle above the fireplace was still lined with Grace’s photos. All of her proudest moments.
Including, he realized as he slowed to a stop, a picture of their wedding day.
Abandoning his quest for hot chocolate, he slowly made his way over. As if in a trance, he picked up the picture in its pretty silver frame.
God, had he ever actually been that young? Some days it felt like he’d been born nearly forty. It was hard to believe he’d once been that gangly, freckle-faced kid with his hair a little too long and his arm wrapped around the girl he loved.
It was almost painful to see his smile now. If only he could go back in time, warn that younger, more na?ve version of the pain headed his way.
Would it have changed anything? If he’d known how things would end, would he have made the choice to stop loving Grace? To walk away from her before his heart was ripped from his chest?
Would he have been able to?
“Beckett?”
Jerking his head up from the photo, Beckett stared at Scott Davis, the man he’d once considered a father. Like his wife, Scott had aged since Beckett had last seen him. But Grace was still there, in the pale blue of his eyes. Grace’s eyes, filled with a grief time had done nothing to dull.
Fuck.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll just… go.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned back toward the front door, desperate to get out into the fresh air. Out of this house, filled with so many memories he wondered how they could stand it. How they could breathe .
But he was just a few steps from the front door when a hand gripped his arm, stopping him in his tracks.
He forced himself to turn his head, to look in the eyes of the man whose daughter he’d failed. Even though he knew he’d find the same accusations, the same condemnation he’d seen in the mirror every day since they’d lost her, he owed Scott that much, at least.
But there was none of that to be found in the other man’s eyes. No anger, no blame. None of the things he knew he deserved.
Just… love.
“We’ve missed you, son.”
Four words. That was all it took to tear down the walls he’d spent more than a decade building around his heart. And then he was in his father’s arms, weeping for the woman they’d both loved. And lost.