86. Chapter 86
It was over.
He should’ve been relieved.
Seeing her crying over the loss of something she hadn’t truly wanted wasn’t a relief. It was sick. He’d held her hand while the doctors apologized and said there was nothing to be done. Some things just ended.
Like his chance of being a dad.
Jase waited at the hospital until Charlie showed up. The guy got an Uber from the airport and raced to Chloe’s hospital room within the hour. Charlie really did love her. She needed a good man in her life for once, especially now.
Jase was not a good man.
He was a drunk man. He’d grabbed a small bottle of something brown that fit in his jacket pocket and sucked half of it down in the liquor store parking lot.
Thank Christ no one was around to see him nearly tip off his bike in the driveway in front of his dad’s house.
Lindsey’s house. How did he keep forgetting?
At least she’d come away from this whole mess with something he’d never be able to give her on his own.
At the home he was hours from losing—just like everything else—Jase wandered over to Jay’s Garage.
Last week he’d gone through his dad’s tools and shelves full of spare parts, and given Lindsey the dime tour.
Running her fingers along a dusty workbench, she’d asked if he was a mechanic like his old man.
Jase grew up tinkering under the hood of old cars and on motorcycles with his dad, and learned the skills to keep his Electra Glide humming and help the occasional bartender change her oil or frayed belts, but he hadn’t worked in his dad’s shop since high school.
There was nothing specific in the will about what was supposed to happen to Jay’s Garage now. It might be the last time he ever set foot inside.
Jase went in through the small side door and pressed the button to open the garage bay. The giant door lifted with grinding metal and clouds of dust from the cement floor. Fucking shop was an aluminum tomb baking in the sun.
Behind a stack of auto parts books and car magazines on the front shop bench was the bottle of bourbon and a couple of dusty glasses he found last week. Jase twisted the cap and poured himself one drink, then a second. It was decent stuff, not meant for drinking as fast as he was putting it down.
Sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes that were already burning and blurry. He wasn’t crying. He never cried. But if he did, it happened at this house, and it was usually about his dad.
Fatherhood wasn’t something he ever considered for himself until the chance was taken away by fate or whatever had wreaked havoc on Chloe’s womb.
He poured another, hearing wheels on gravel. A few beats later, Lindsey stood in the doorway. He put the cap back on the bottle and swirled his cup.
“You’re back,” she said, sounding relieved. She’d eat her words soon enough.
“You’re back,” he said without looking at her.
She took a tentative step into the shop. “What are you doing?”
“Drinking.” He held up his glass. “I guess I’m not the father.”
“You found out already?”
“Sorry. I mean I’m not a father. The baby’s gone.”
He finally looked at her. The hazy sun was at her back, lighting her from behind with a halo.
“I’m—I’m so sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” He shrugged. “It’s Chloe who’s a mess. That’s what happens, Lindsey. Everything I touch I ruin.”
“Jase.”
“Everything.” He pointed a finger at her. “And you’re next.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“Doesn’t matter how many times you say that, it won’t make it true. This is my fault. If I hadn’t—”
Touched her. Fucked her. Fucked her so many times without a condom. Used her every which way to get through the night of his father’s death, then left her in the morning with a faulty bun in her unprepared oven.
Even his sperm were damaged goods. The doctor said it wasn’t anyone’s fault—he remembered that—but what did that dickhead know?
“If it was Charlie’s baby, this wouldn’t have happened,” Jase said. “She’d be okay, and they’d be happy, and I’d…” He shook his head and tipped the cup to his lips.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Now there’s a funny question.”
He picked up a thick auto parts guide off the bench and let it fall open in his hand. Lindsey was the kind of woman who appreciated a well-read man. She might get off on this image of him, since it would probably be her last.
“I didn’t think you’d be so upset.”
“Why?” Jase asked. “Because I’m a fucking monster?”
“No, because—” She inhaled sharply. “You wanted it.”
“Wanted what?” he asked without looking up from the tiny words bleeding together in long strings across the pages.
“You wanted the baby to be yours.”
He snapped the book shut and dropped it on the bench with a thud. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“It’s okay if you did,” she said, barely louder than a whisper. She inched closer to Jase. The woman never did figure out when to run.
“What would you know about it?”
“Nothing, that’s why I’m asking. I don’t understand what changed.”
“Everything’s changed,” he barked. “Everything. Now I’ll never know if…”
She took a step closer, fully into the shade of the garage. “If what?”
“If I could’ve been different.”
“You mean, if you were a father?”
“I don’t know. It might’ve made me a better person.” He laughed bitterly. “It might’ve changed things for me like it did for him.” Jase pulled open a drawer on one of the toolboxes lining the wall, then slammed it shut. “Kids sure slowed Dad down.”
“You don’t need a child to make that choice.”
“A kid would’ve forced my hand—given me an anchor, or something.
” He took a sip and relished the good burn down his throat.
He never considered that a kid anchoring him might’ve actually been a good thing—or, at least, not the worst thing—until it was gone and nothing, absolutely nothing in his wasted life had changed for the better.
“An anchor or a noose. Someplace to go.”
“Why do you have to go anywhere?”
“You don’t get it, Lindsey.”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here. But if you need an anchor, you can have this shop. The house. I’ll sign it over.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t belong here. And that’s not what I meant. I meant what are you doing here. With me.”