Chapter 29 Ledger #2
You could remove every trace of Ash Dunne from this apartment and it would take Marcus a week to notice.
That's the most damning evidence of all, more than the bed against the wall, more than the wire hangers, more than the mug shoved behind matching porcelain.
A man lived here for two years and his absence wouldn't register for seven days.
I pick up the last box, the one with the blue mug on top, and head down the stairs. Teague is closing the tailgate when the screech of tires cuts through the parking lot.
A black sedan swings into the space nearest the building, the bumper nearly clipping the curb. The door opens before the engine has fully stopped and Marcus gets out with his phone in his hand, the screen still glowing.
"I saw you on the fucking cameras." He crosses the lot toward us, his jaw set, his eyes locked on the box in my arms. "What are you doing? That's my apartment, those are—"
"Those are Ash's things." I open the tailgate and set the box on it. "We're done. We're leaving."
"You broke into my apartment!" He's close enough now that I can see the bruise on his jaw from where Cass hit him at the ranch, yellowing at the edges, still tender from the look of the way he's holding his mouth.
"You broke in, stole his stuff, and you think you can just walk away?
I'll call the cops. I'll have every one of you arrested for—"
"Ash gave us the key. His name is on the lease. His things are his things." I close the tailgate and turn to face him fully. "You should leave, Marcus."
"Fuck you." His voice cracks on the second word, the fury thin enough that I can hear what's underneath it, the panic of a man who's watching something slip through his fingers and doesn't know how to close his fist any tighter.
"Fuck all of you. Where is he? Is he in the truck?
" His eyes cut to the windshield and I see the moment he spots Ash in the back seat.
His face changes, softens, the anger giving way to something calculated and pleading.
"Ash! Ash, look at me. You don't have to do this.
Whatever they've told you, whatever they've promised, it's not real.
Come inside, we can talk about this, we can—"
"He doesn't want to talk to you."
"I wasn't talking to you." Marcus steps around me toward the truck and my hand catches his chest, stopping him. He looks down at my hand, then up at my face. Something in what he finds there makes him take a half step back. "Get your hands off me."
"You left him on the side of a road." My voice is level.
I keep it that way because raising it would mean losing the precision that makes it effective.
"You left him in the dark for six hours and went to a party.
You called our father for a lawyer. You never once called Ash.
When you found out where he was, you drove to our house and screamed at him.
You put him on the wall side of the bed, Marcus.
You gave him a quarter of the closet. You hid the mug he made because it didn't match your plates. "
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know exactly what I'm talking about. I've been inside that apartment for forty minutes and I know more about how you treated him than you figured out in two years."
"He wanted to be there! He chose to stay, nobody forced him—"
"Nobody forces a person to shrink, Marcus. You just make the space small enough that shrinking becomes the only option."
His face twists, the pleading mask cracking, the ugly thing underneath rising to the surface.
I've been watching this transformation in Marcus since he was a teenager, the moment the charm stops working and the cruelty takes over, the switch from honey to acid that happens so fast most people don't see the seam.
"You're all fucking delusional," he spits. "Playing house with my boyfriend, pretending this is some kind of rescue. You know what you are? You're a bunch of bored ranch hands who found a broken toy and decided to pass it around. That's all he is to you. That's all he's ever been to anyone."
I hit him.
One punch. Closed fist, full weight behind my shoulder, aimed at the hinge of his jaw.
His head snaps sideways, his feet tangle, and he goes down on the asphalt.
He lands on his hip with his hand going to his face, blood already running from his split lip, his eyes wide with the shock of a man who didn't expect me to be the first to swing.
I pick up the box from the tailgate, push it further into the truck bed, and slide it in beside the others. I close the tailgate, walk around to the passenger side, and climb in. Ash is staring at me from the back seat, his eyes huge, his hand pressed against the window.
"He's going to get up," Ash whispers.
"I know."
In the side mirror, Marcus is already pushing himself to his feet, one hand on his jaw, blood on his chin.
His eyes are on the truck, his mouth already forming the next round of words he thinks will hurt someone.
Teague and Cass are standing near the base of the stairs where they'd been watching the whole exchange with their arms crossed.
When Marcus gets upright, they push off the wall.
"You just punched him and walked away."
"I'm angry at him." I adjust the mirror so I can see clearly. "But Teague and Cass have a lot more anger to work through than I do. So I'll let them have this one."
Ash's gaze cuts to the mirror just as Teague reaches Marcus.
I can't hear the words from inside the truck but I can read the shift in Teague's posture, the way his shoulders square and his weight moves to the balls of his feet.
Marcus says something, the wrong thing, which seems to be the only kind of thing Marcus knows how to say when he's cornered.
Teague's fist connects with his stomach and Marcus folds in half.
Cass moves in from the other side, less wild this time, each hit placed with intention, one to the ribs that drops Marcus to a knee, and one to the jaw from the opposite side that puts him flat on the asphalt.
Teague steps back and says something down to Marcus that I can’t read on his lips, something short and final, the period at the end of a sentence that started on a dark road on Meridian twelve days ago.
Then the real fury starts as Cass plants a kick in Marcus’ side, Teague crouching down to punch Marcus in the face. I can’t believe I grew up with that little fucker.
"They need to stop." Ash's voice climbs, his hand gripping the back of my seat. His knuckles are white. "Ledger, they're going to kill him. I don't want him dead. I just want him to stop being part of my life. I just want to go home."
"I told them they have thirty seconds." I count the seconds down in my head. At thirty, I lean over and press the horn.
The sound cuts across the parking lot as Teague's head snaps toward the truck.
Cass takes one more look at Marcus on the ground, then turns and walks toward us.
Teague follows, rolling his shoulders, shaking out his hand.
Marcus stays on the asphalt, curled on his side, one arm wrapped around his ribs, blood on the pavement beneath his mouth.
Teague climbs into the driver's seat, his knuckles red, his breathing still heavy. I climb over the console to sit in the back with Ash, Cass dropping into the front seat and slamming the door.
Ash's hand finds mine on the seat between us, his fingers sliding through mine. His grip is tight, trembling slightly, the grip of a man holding onto something he's decided to keep. "Everything's in the truck," I tell him. "Six boxes."
"Six boxes." He says it quietly, turning the number over.
Two years compressed into six half-full cardboard boxes.
His entire life with Marcus, every piece of it that was actually his, fitting in the bed of a pickup truck with room to spare.
I watch him absorb that, the way his face moves through sadness into something else, something lighter, the expression of a man realizing that traveling light has its advantages when you're headed somewhere better than where you've been.
"Where to?" Teague asks from the driver's seat, his eyes on Ash in the rearview.
Ash looks at me and then through the windshield at the road that leads in two directions, one toward the apartment complex shrinking behind us, the other toward forty acres of land with a porch light that stays on.
"Home.”