Chapter 26 #2
For a second neither of us said anything. Then she spoke, and her voice came out harder than it had been all night. “What if I say yes?”
I looked at her.
That wasn’t the yes I’d been driving here for.
In the truck, I’d had a different version of this conversation in my head.
I’d tell her what Glitch had found. I’d tell her I wanted her back.
She’d pull me down the hall to her bedroom and we’d fuck the last few months out of both of us until neither of us could remember being apart.
That was the yes I’d been driving here for. This yes had a knife in it.
“What if I say yes, Holden. What if I take you back. Right now. Tonight. And the next time something happens — the next time you lose someone, the next time something breaks you open — you reach for a bottle and a closed door instead of me. What then?”
Fuck me. I didn’t have an answer. I wanted to tell her that wouldn’t happen again but I couldn’t.
She closed her eyes. Slow breath in. Hold. Out. When her eyes opened she’d softened — a little. Not because she’d changed her mind. Because she’d told herself something I could guess at. That’s not fair. He’s already on the floor. Don’t kick him while he’s down.
“You need help, Holden. Real help. Not your brothers. Someone who knows what they’re doing.
With the drinking. With the shutting people out.
With the part of you that closes doors before anyone can get through them.
Those aren’t things you can will your way through alone.
And they’re not things your brothers can help you through, no matter how much they love you. ”
“I’ve booked an appointment.” It came out fast. “Next week. A therapist.”
She nodded, slow.
“That’s a good start. But you have to follow through, Holden.
Every appointment. Every week. Especially the times you want to skip it because it’s too hard.
You have to do this the way you’d road captain a run.
Map it. Plan it. Contingencies for when it goes sideways.
Backup plans for the days you can’t get out of bed.
Do the work the way you’d do a job for the club.
Like it’s the most important run you’ve ever planned. ”
She took a breath.
“And you have to do it for yourself. Not for me. If you do it for me, the second it gets hard, you’ll stop. I’ve watched that happen too many times in my office to pretend otherwise. I can’t be the thing you’re working toward. I have to be the thing that maybe — maybe — comes after.”
She let that sit.
“I need you to not be here, pushing, while you figure out who you are without me to fix things for. I need space. So do you, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to swear I was going to do all of it. Every appointment. Every week. The map, the contingencies, the whole run. I wanted to make her every promise she’d just told me not to make. And I wanted to do it all with her by my side.
But that was exactly what she was asking me not to do.
I looked at her. Her reading glasses were pushed up on her head — same place she always left them. You never put those away. The kind of small nothing-observation I’d made a hundred times when we were together. The kind of thing I’d say tonight if any of this had gone the way I’d planned.
I let it go. I made myself say the harder thing. “Yeah.” A breath. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
She waited.
“I hear you. I’ll do it for me. The work is mine. I’m not going to do it to win you back, because you’re right — the second I had you back I’d stop, and we’d be right back here. I’ll do it because I can’t stand who I am right now, and because I should have done it the morning after Danny died.”
She didn’t speak.
“But.” I held her eyes. “When I’m done — when I’ve actually done the work, when I’m somebody you can look at without thinking of all the doors I closed — I’m coming for you, Bea. For you . Not pushing. Not now. But that’s where I’m walking. You’re it for me. You always have been. End game.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to go,” I said. “Get some sleep, Bea.”
I stepped back toward the door. Hand on the knob. Then I stopped and looked at her one more time. “Lock this behind me. And for fuck’s sake, Bea — don’t open the door without looking next time. I don’t care who you think it is. You check first.”
She nodded.
I stepped out into the hall and pulled the door closed behind me. Then I stood there. Listened to the deadbolt turn. Listened to the chain slide into place. Then I walked down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the cold air to my truck.
I hadn’t cheated. That was gone now, cleared away clean. The cheating had been a story I’d been able to carry. This was harder. This was just the truth.
I pulled into the clubhouse lot and killed the engine. Sat in the dark.
Don’t carry this alone, Mrs. Curtis had said to me at her kitchen table, the morning after I’d finally made myself go to Danny’s grave. Danny wouldn’t want that.
I’d nodded. I’d thanked her. And then I’d gone right back to carrying it alone, because that was the only way I knew how to carry anything.
I’d thought I’d hit rock bottom already.
Three times. The first was waking up in that chair in my own room with no memory of the night before, certain I’d cheated on the only good woman I’d ever loved.
The second was the day they put Danny in the ground.
The third was the morning I’d dialed Larkin’s number after I finally realized I couldn’t drink my way out of this.
I’d been wrong all three times.
This. Sitting in this truck, in this lot, knowing how I’d hurt Bea. This was rock bottom.