Chapter 48 Bottom and Back
Bottom and Back
When the guys get back from their supply run, arms full of groceries and cases of beer, they spot a figure leaning against Jaxon’s truck. Familiar posture. Baseball cap. Tattooed forearms holding a coffee like he owns the damn morning.
“Chase?” Jaxon says, his voice caught somewhere between confusion and disbelief.
Chase pushes off the truck, grinning. “You really thought I wasn’t coming? Drove in from Wrightsville soon as Trev called. Let’s make this weekend count, yeah?”
Jaxon nods, lips twitching in a ghost of a smile. “Yeah. Appreciate it, man.”
As the crew starts unloading, Carter and Trevor carefully avoid mentioning Claire. Not her name. Not her flight. Not even the beach she used to walk. This weekend isn’t about grief or closure—it’s about breathing again. Even if it’s ragged. Even if it hurts.
“Everyone will start pulling up around 5:30,” Carter says as he stocks the fridge.
“Alright,” Jaxon replies, quiet. “Y’all staying the whole weekend?”
Trevor cracks a beer and hands it over. That’s his answer.
They sit at the outside dining table, the sun dipping lower behind the trees. Then the first car pulls up.
Beth hops out with a bottle of whiskey and a don’t-you-dare-pity-me smile. “If I’m here, who’s at the grill?” Jaxon asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t worry, Mike’s right behind me,” she says. “And you’re overdue for a weekend where you’re the one being taken care of.”
One by one, cars fill the drive. Locals, tourists, friends from Wilmington and Wrightsville. People Jaxon hasn’t seen in months. Some he barely knows. But they all heard.
He’s hurting. So they showed up.
“Apparently my house is the new party spot?” he mutters.
“Only for the weekend,” Mike calls back.
But something shifts in Jaxon that night. Something subtle. Dangerous.
Like a man who realizes that if you lean into the numbness just enough, it’ll carry you away.
And so it begins.
The weekdays? He’s polished. Professional. Unshakable.
But the weekends—those are a different story.
They're blurred in a haze of beer and bonfires, whiskey and women. He becomes the man strangers assume he’s always been. Careless. Untethered. Charming enough to fool everyone but himself. The guy people want to be around, but not the one they truly know.
He stops saying goodnight to the women who leave his bed. Stops remembering their names. The warmth he once gave away so freely now locked behind cold eyes and louder laughter.
A month full of Sundays passes like that.
Until one morning, Jaxon wakes up alone. The sheets are half off the bed. A headache that rivals the first. And the scent of perfume he can’t name.
The house is a wreck.
Empty bottles. Half-smoked cigarettes. Forgotten heels. And silence. So much damn silence.
He sits on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face, staring at the wreckage of who he used to be.
I’ve been to the bottom of every bottle in this house, he thinks, and the one thing that always remains is me. Alone. Unchanged. Unhealed.
It hits him, hard and sobering.
The bottles weren’t a way to escape. They were a way to feel something—anything. But now? Now he doesn’t even feel that.
Not once does he blame Claire. Not once does he pretend she’s the reason he burned it all down.
Every choice—every party, every woman, every excuse—was his.
That morning, something inside Jaxon finally snaps. Not in anger. Not in bitterness.
In resolve.
He stands. Showers. Doesn’t stall. Doesn’t wallow. Instead, he heads downstairs, grabs three trash bags, and gets to work.
He starts upstairs, tearing through the mess with surgical precision. Every bottle. Every reminder. Every mistake.
Then the first floor.
Then the porch.
Then the yard.
By the time he’s finished, he stands in the driveway staring at seven bags of trash—and a house that’s starting to look like home again.
Not hers.
Not theirs.
His.
He throws the bags into the bed of his truck and heads inside to rinse off.
Over the next few weeks, he starts to come back.
Slowly. Quietly. Relentlessly.
The drinking becomes a rarity, not a reflex. He reconnects with friends. Rebuilds trust. Reclaims his name in the community. He starts showing up again—for other people, and finally, for himself.
And yeah—he even goes on a couple of dates.
They don’t go anywhere. But he smiles. He listens. And he realizes something.
He can think of Claire now without falling apart.
The ache is still there. Probably always will be.
But it doesn’t break him anymore.
Because he's already been to the bottom.
Now—he’s clawing his way back up.