Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Then my gaze flicked to the trunk.
No.
Absolutely not.
I shouldn’t.
The bar door swung open. The bimbo from earlier leaned out, waving her phone like a drunk lighthouse keeper. “Call me!” she yelled, all fake giggles and audacity.
My jaw flexed. “Yeah,” I said under my breath. “Trunk it is.”
I popped the latch. The trunk opened with a satisfying click. I stepped aside and let gravity do its job. He slid right in, a deadweight tangle of limbs and regret. One solid thud. I didn’t even flinch.
“Stay,” I told him, like he was a misbehaving dog.
He made a noise—half protest, half snore. Good enough. I shut the trunk.
By the time the sky went from black to gray, I was sitting on my balcony with a mug of coffee. The world was quiet except for the sound of a far-off truck and the hum of my neighbor’s AC unit. From here, I could see Sally parked below. Pretty and patient as ever.
Headlights swung into the lot. Dalton’s truck. Right on time.
He climbed out, stretched, and started walking toward Sally. He slowed when he heard it. Thuds, muffled curses, a very familiar voice shouting something that sounded a lot like my name. Dalton froze. Looked up. I met his eyes over the balcony rail.
I didn’t say a word. Just picked up the keys from the table beside my coffee and pressed the button. The trunk popped open.
Jackson sat up like a devil resurrected, wild-eyed and furious. “What the hell—”
He stopped when he saw Dalton. When it dawned on him where he was and why. The fight drained out of him in one slow exhale.
Dalton blinked, rubbed a hand over his face. His voice carried up to me. “Dude, you’ve fucked up bad this time.” I didn’t hear Jackson’s muttered response but they both glanced up at me.
“Take him back to the clubhouse,” I said, standing and speaking loudly enough they could both hear me. “Keep him there until he sobers up. I don’t want to see him tonight.”
Dalton didn’t argue. He just nodded, grabbed Jackson by the shoulder, and steered him toward the truck. Jackson glanced back at me. I held my chin high, pretending he wasn’t wrecking me as I watched him walk away. I raised my mug in a mock toast and went inside before I could second-guess it.
The next time I walked into that bar, the air tasted like damp wood and bad decisions. The bartender recognized me by my posture, standing up too straight to look small. He opened his mouth to say whatever they said to women who come looking for their men. I set my palms on the bar and leaned in.
“If he comes in here again,” I said, “don’t serve him.”
“We can’t—”
“You can,” I said, and the calm in my voice surprised both of us. “You will. Tell your boss the same thing. Tell your night shift the Saints asked nicely.”
He stared at my face long enough to realize I wasn’t bluffing. The nod he gave me was quick.
I went to two more bars. Three. I learned the smell each one left on my clothes. I sat in my car with my forehead on the steering wheel and let one sob out like a cough so I could be done with it. Then I wiped my face with the back of my hand and went home like a person who wasn’t actively losing.
The next morning, I left when the sun was barely up. I didn’t tell Jackson where I was going. If he asked, I would’ve lied.
The bell above Momma Laverne’s door chimed like it always had. Grease, coffee, sugar—comfort in scent form. I slid into the booth across from Dad without a word. He took one look at me and reached for my hand. My lip trembled and I bit the inside of it so hard, I tasted iron.
Momma Laverne made her way over and poured coffee I didn’t touch then set a plate of biscuits in front of me. “Well,” she said mildly, “you look like you’re about to punch somebody.”
“I already did,” I muttered. “Just not with my fists.”
Dad’s brow twitched. “What happened?”
“I went to the bars last night,” I said. “All of them. Told them if they serve him, they answer to me. And the Saints.”
Momma Laverne let out a slow breath through her nose. Not impressed. Not shocked either. “Honey,” she said carefully, “that’s a bold move.”
“I don’t do subtle.”
Dad leaned back, arms folding across his chest. “And how did Jackson take it?”
“He hasn’t found out yet.”
That silence? That one had weight.
I stared at the cracked vinyl table instead of either of them.
“I buried him,” I said flatly. “I stood there while they handed his mother a flag. I clawed my way out of a bottle of pills because I couldn’t survive losing him.”
My voice sharpened, heat creeping up my spine.
“I did rehab. I did the shaking and the sweating and the ‘share your feelings’ bullshit. I’ve got a sobriety pin in my jewelry box that I fought like hell to earn.”
Dad’s jaw tightened at that.
“And now he’s standing in our kitchen every night pouring whiskey like it’s medicine.”
The words cracked on the last syllable. I was shaking now, and tucked my hands under the table while they pretended to not notice.
“I know what that looks like,” I went on. “I know what that slope feels like under your feet. First it’s just to sleep. Then it’s to quiet your head. Then it’s because you don’t know how to exist without it.”
Momma Laverne slid into the booth across from me. “And you’re scared,” she said.
“I am pissed,” I shot back.
She held my gaze. “And scared.”
My shoulders sagged just a fraction. I focused on a broken chair shoved into the corner, my throat tightening as I blinked furiously before turning my attention back to them. “Yes,” I snapped. “I’m scared.”
Dad reached across the table, steady as ever, and held his hand out. Flat on the table, palm up. Not a demand. Just an offering. An anchor if I decided I wanted one. I hesitated before taking it.
“I cannot go back there,” I said, lower now. “I won’t.”
“Back where?” he asked gently.
“To being the girl who needed a pill to survive her own brain.” My voice didn’t waver. “I built Willow’s Harbor out of that wreckage. Women walk through those doors every week because I didn’t give up. I cannot drown because he doesn’t want to face his ghosts.”
Momma Laverne nodded slowly. “You love him,” she said.
“With everything I’ve got.”
“And you don’t want to leave.”
“There is nothing,” I said, leaning forward now, “nothing I want less than to walk away from him. I would fight God himself before I gave up on Jackson Morgan.”
Dad’s mouth twitched despite himself.
“But,” I continued, breath catching, “if staying means I start justifying one glass of wine…one bad night…one ‘it’s not a big deal’…then what?”
The question hung there. “What if I lose myself trying to save him?”
Dad squeezed my hand once. “Holly,” he said, voice like granite, “you can’t rescue a man who doesn’t want rescuing.”
“I know.”
“You can love him.”
“I do.”
“You can draw a line.”
I swallowed. “And if he crosses it?” I asked.
Momma Laverne’s eyes softened, but her voice didn’t. “Then you let him fall,” she said. “And you don’t fall with him.”
That hurt worse than anything else she could’ve said. I sat back hard against the booth. “I hate that answer.”
“I know,” Dad said.
A tear slid down my cheek, and I swiped angrily at it. “I am so tired of being strong,” I muttered.
Momma Laverne huffed, her own eyes watering now. Dad leaned forward again, eyes steady on mine.
“You don’t have to carry him,” he said. “You just have to stand steady. Let him see what staying sober looks like. Let him choose.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then you protect the life you built,” he said. “And you don’t apologize for it.”
The diner hummed around us. Plates clinked. Someone argued about pie at the counter. The world kept moving. I stared at that same broken chair. I didn’t want to leave Jackson.
But I would not disappear again.
Not for love.
Not for grief.
Not for anything.
“Okay,” I said finally.
Dad squeezed my hand.
Momma Laverne stood up and pointed at the biscuits.
“Eat,” she ordered. “You make better decisions when you’re not running on caffeine and rage.”
That almost made me smile. And for the first time since the bottle showed up between us, I felt something other than panic. Not peace. But clarity. And that was just going to have to be enough.
Over the next couple of weeks, it just got worse.
Some nights I thought I heard his key in the lock and it was only the neighbor on the floor above us.
Some nights he came home and was almost normal.
Tired, quiet, the edges of him sanded down.
Those nights I made eggs at midnight and watched him eat because chewing was proof he was still here.
I touched his shoulder, light, like static might jump between us.
He reached up and squeezed my fingers and I wanted to believe that squeeze contained everything I needed to know.
If I’d been a different woman, I would have prayed. Instead, I folded laundry. I wrote down groceries we didn’t need. I polished the faucet he’d tried to fix last month and hadn’t finished because the part was wrong. My hands needed something to do besides hold my head.
When the door opened, it was three in the morning.
I was half asleep on the couch, the bed having felt too empty.
Too cold. I startled awake because I hadn’t been expecting him home.
His shoulder bumped the jamb. Keys hit the wall and bounced.
He took two steps in and stopped like he’d lost the next instruction.
I could smell the alcohol from half way across the room.
“You drove,” I said. No hello. No where were you. “You drove like this.”
He looked at me. His eyes were glassy and old in the same moment. “It’s fine.”
“You could have killed someone. Could’ve killed yourself.”
“Tried that already. Devil gave me back.” He said it like a fact, like the weather or a broken light bulb.
“Don’t you dare,” I said, and my voice broke like a plate. “Don’t you dare make that the story.”