4 - Bear
Bear
“I think that’s enough of that,” I said, switching the radio off just as we turned into Lane’s street. Silas made a sound of dismay.
“What, you don’t like Anastacia?” he asked.
“Sure I do, but you don’t have her pipes, man,” I pointed out. “The duet’s not really cutting it.”
“No need to be a jackass. Life’s too short to be worrying about what people think of you. Maybe if you started enjoying yourself you’d be less stressed all the time, Boss,” he shot back.
“I have things I do for fun that don’t involve catching a noise complaint,” I said.
“Can’t be that much fun then,” Silas replied.
I snorted, but before I could say anything else, our attention was redirected as Dax’s matte-black Streetfighter pulled up to the curb. I narrowed my eyes. “Didn’t know Miller was capable of showing up on time.”
“You still haven’t let him off the hook for Day One?” Silas asked.
I took a deep breath. I knew that Sy and Dax came a long way together, since they were kids and way before I met either of them.
But we had a reputation to uphold and I wasn’t in the business of taking unnecessary risks.
“I gave him a chance to prove himself. Maybe this is his way of turning over a new leaf.”
“He can be a real piece of work, but in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never gone back on his word,” Sy said.
I grunted, parking the company truck in the alleyway and cutting the engine. We filed out, meeting up with Dax on the walkway and I grimaced at the deep dull ache that echoed in my right leg, the feeling like a rusted iron rod clamped tight inside the bone. I hated winter.
Dax gave a quick nod, trying to duck into the house. I noticed that he had his hoodie and cap pulled right over his face, which wasn’t exactly usual.
“Running from the cops again, Miller?” I asked, half joking and hoping it really was only a joke. But Dax didn’t laugh, and when he tried walking past me to get to Lane’s door, I grabbed the back of his hood and yanked it down.
“Watch it,” he hissed, trying to turn his head away from me but I already saw it. Silas came to join us, looking confused for a moment until his eyes settled on Dax’s face.
“Oh come on, man,” he groaned, sounding like a disappointed older brother.
“It’s not what you think,” Dax insisted, his hand making half the journey to pull his hood back over until he gave up. “I swear.”
“Really? Because that split lip and blue eye tell me a different story,” I said, my voice frigid against the March wind. “Show me your knuckles.”
“What am I, a kid or something?” Dax seethed, defiantly putting his hands in his pockets.
“Yeah, well, if you’re gonna act like a damn child then I’ll treat you like one. Show me your hands, Miller,” I demanded.
Dax looked at Silas for backup, and he just held his palms out, shaking his head. I knew that he was too nice to say anything but he wouldn’t cosign any shitty behavior. And I certainly wasn’t going to stand for it on my crew.
“You have some balls showing up here looking like that. D’you think the hat was gonna cover it up the whole day?” I asked.
“Look, I swear, I wasn’t fighting. At least…
not the way I used to. I just got into it with some guy at a bar last night, alright?
Wrong time, wrong place, nothing major. We both took a couple of hits but I promise, that’s all it was.
” Miller held eye contact, like he was quietly begging me to believe him.
I wanted to. But then my eyes turned to look at the Graystone behind him.
“This isn’t just your own personal stakes anymore, Dax. If you fall in with your old crowd, you’re bringing that bullshit not only to this company but to our client’s doorstep. You said you were going to take accountability and change and I trusted you when you said it,” I told him.
He rolled his head back in frustration, throwing his arms out. “I don’t know what the hell you want me to say, Bear. I screwed up but I didn’t go back to the den. It feels like I’m talking to a brick wall.”
“I’m just trying to get you to take your responsibilities more—” I began.
“I had a PO and a dad, so I don’t really need you to take either role, okay?” he cut in. “I know that’s your thing and I know you did me a solid with this job, but that doesn’t mean you get to breathe down my neck.”
“I’m trying to look out for my crew and our client,” I said, trying hard to measure my words and not say anything I’d regret.
I could see Silas in my peripheral vision moving to stand between us.
He held a hand out to keep us both at bay, as though we’d actually start fighting right here in the walkway.
“Come on guys, we’re on site. Bear, he’s telling the truth. And Dax, lay off,” he said, playing peacekeeper. “There’s no need for this to escalate."
True.
But I was getting real sick of Dax’s attitude and had been for some time now, even if I was trying to keep things cohesive on the professional front.
The disrespect he threw around was slowly starting to piss me off.
He didn’t have to consider his time with Cornerstone to be some life-altering change of purpose, but I did need him to at least give enough of a damn to get things done and to the standard we’d raised.
“That’s all good and well, Sy, but I’ve had it with being bossed around,” Dax spat.
I laughed. “Need a refresher on how employment works, buddy?”
That set him off. Which set me off.
Silas tried again, and this time in vain, to get us to calm down but neither of us were giving him so much as a gap to intervene.
“Hey! Pipe down, all of you!” Sandy Manning popped his head out of his window and began yelling down at us.
“This is private business!” I shouted back.
Dax’s response to the old man had far less decorum.
I watched as Sandy’s face turned bright red, blustering with anger. What had now started as an in-team row had turned into a three-way verbal brawl. We were so loud that I didn’t even hear the sound of the front door being wrenched open.
“Enough!” Lane’s voice pierced through the racket and all of us turned to face her, shocked to see her at all. She should’ve been at work, yet here she was, glaring at the three of us from her doorway.
Lane Whittaker wasn’t a big woman—at 5’5” and maybe 122lbs soaking wet, she shouldn’t have been intimidating at all.
But there was something about how she carried herself that actually sucked all the aggression and tension from the air.
No one, not even Dax, attempted to continue the clamor.
She crooked her finger to invite us inside.
We filed after her in a single line, without a word.
Sandy was still yelling his head off, but the second the last of us cleared the threshold, Lane shouted up a curt apology, then slammed the door shut with a deliberate, intentional force that actually silenced him.
“I’m sorry about that,” I muttered, immediately trying to regain control of the situation.
I was embarrassed that I’d let things get as far as they did.
It was my job to make sure everything to do with this project was handled, and that included any potential conflict.
Instead, I’d actually let myself get involved and I hated that she saw it happen.
But all Lane did was turn around with a sharp exhale, her usually bright green eyes tired.
“I wouldn’t normally care too much about whatever internal issues you guys have.
I just don’t want to give Sandy any more ammunition against me,” she said, wrapping her arms around her body.
She even sounded tired. Every day we’d seen her off to work, she’d worn some type of fancy skirt and blazer, with an expression on her face that seemed ready to tackle the world.
It was the first time that I’d really seen her this…
casual. She was wearing what looked comically like a pair of oversized overalls, not unlike something we would wear during a paint job.
But the exhaustion under her eyes and tugging at her mouth was the thing that caught me off guard. It was so unlike Lane.
“Nice onesie.” Dax chimed in and she glowered at him.
“It’s not a onesie,” she grumbled. “And it’s not like I was expecting to greet the outside world today.”
“It’s your day off?” asked Sy.
“Not quite,” she answered. I noticed that when she looked at Sy, her eyes softened.
Her arms tightened around her body, seemingly unsure.
“I’m taking a personal day. I haven’t done that for a while but I need to catch up on some paperwork.
While I’m here, I might as well make sure that Sandy doesn’t get in your guys’ way. ”
“Good to see you came armored,” Silas teased her, and her cheeks turned pink.
When did he get so bold? Regardless, it was nice to see Lane looking a little more like herself.
Between Dax’s teasing and Silas’s charm, she looked noticeably less stressed.
But I wanted to make sure that everything was truly fine, and I had a feeling that wasn’t information she was going to volunteer.
Which meant there was only one real way to get it out of her: manual labor.
“Right. You know, it’s actually great that you’re home today. We could use the extra hands around here with the heavy rainfall we’re expecting later,” I said, an idea forming in my mind.
I bit back the laughter that almost caught in my throat at the expression on her face.
“Uh…yeah, I’m not so sure about that,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I’m not even dressed to work right now.”
“Really? To me you look exactly like an off-duty member of the team,” I replied and Dax snorted. “Come on. You’d be surprised how good this kind of work can be for clearing your head.”
She looked at me and the collar of my jacket suddenly felt a stitch too tight. For a moment there, I expected her to reject the offer and retreat to her room. But then she nodded her head.