But I don’t stop to listen. I make my way up to my bedroom and lie down on the bed. I don’t pull back the covers or change clothes or shower, all of which are sorely needed. I just lie on top of the blankets and contemplate what my world looks like all alone with permanently clipped wings.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kyle
Go to bed
I drive around San Diego for an hour or maybe longer. I don’t know. I have nowhere to go. I’ve been living out of a suitcase in a hotel, waiting, hoping MacKenzie would want me and would let me come home.
But I guess it’s like they say—hope in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first. Hope has left me empty handed, and yet I still can’t seem to walk away. Even though I told the guys I was leaving and not coming back, I’ve done nothing but drive around La Jolla and then hop on the I-805 toward Miramar.
Like a ghost, I haunt the places where MacKenzie and I were together before she left. Before she was taken. Before everything went to shit.
Somehow, I end up at The Underdog, the bar where I met Mack and her friends. It feels like it was years ago Sean and I walked into the dive bar near Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and I saw the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. There was just something about her. I knew with one look that she was different, a game changer. I knew I would never meet another woman, as long as I live, who flips all my switches like she does.
I pull into the parking lot and let my head hang forward after I shut off the ignition. I don’t want to be here without her. But like everything else in life, I don’t have a choice. I pull my keys from the ignition and climb out of my truck.
The air is crisp. The sun had set, painting the sky in pastels before going dark while I was driving around the city I called home for several years. Now, I’m going to have to pack up the last of my life here and drag it back with me to Virginia Beach. Alone.
I walk through the parking lot of the bar and push open the door. It’s crowded, and I hate it instantly. All around, people are laughing and talking, drinking and having a great time. What’s that saying about misery loving company? Right now, I don’t want anyone to get to have the time of their lives; I want them to know the pain I’m feeling. It’s raw and visceral in a way that I know it’ll be never ending.
I pull in a deep breath and make my way through the crowd to the bar. I pull up a seat at the end and sit down. A woman turns toward me. She’s giving off all the right signals—if I were willing, but I’m not. I turn away from her and give off a serious “back the fuck up” vibe for anyone else who might try to join my pity party of one.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asks when he makes it to this end of the bar.
“Whiskey,” I reply. “Neat.”
He takes a glass from below the bar and flips it over on the scarred wood top that separates us. He takes a bottle from the shelf behind him and pours a heavy three fingers in the glass before pushing it toward me. I nod my thanks, lift the glass to my lips, and belt back a healthy swig. It burns. Like everything else in my life right now, it fucking stings.
And then comes the heat. The warmth that will surely warm my body when I feel so cold that I’m numb.
I keep to myself, sipping my whiskey. The bell over the door chimes, and my training kicks in. I’d like to keep to myself and shut out the world, but I can’t. I have to be hyperaware. It’s second nature—ingrained in us so that we don’t wind up dead.
Even though it might be better if someone got the drop on me and put me out of my fucking misery. I turn and look to see who else would join the merry revelry of those who still have hope that there’s anything decent left for them in the world.
My eyes clash with those of Hooter and then Cinco as they walk into a crowd of obviously familiar faces. Before I look away, I swear they both look… disappointed in me.
A woman wraps her arms around Hooter’s waist, and he looks down at her with a smile. He’s clearly familiar with her. I feel a frown pull at my face. If he’s in love with Mack, then why the fuck is he here with this woman? She doesn’t deserve this. And neither does the woman on his arm. What the fuck is going on here?
I turn back to the bar and throw back the rest of my whiskey as my phone rings. I set my empty glass on the scarred wood and slip my phone from the pocket of my jeans. I slide my thumb across the screen to unlock it and answer. “Garrett.”
“It’s Dempsey,” he replies when I answer.
“Look, man,” I tell him honestly. “I’m not really in the mood to catch up right now. There’s some heavy shit going down.”
“So I heard,” he says. “Look, I’m going to level with you. I never thought it would be sunshine and rainbows when we got her back stateside. Hell, I wasn’t even sure we’d find her alive.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I growl. I don’t want to hear this. I want to be left the fuck alone so that I can get fucking drunk. Why doesn’t anyone want me to get fucking drunk? This is bullshit. I need new friends.
“Because,” he replies with that same level tone of voice he always uses. “Everyone knew it was going to be rough. It was never going to be an easy path to forge, but it was always your path to take. Do you think I should have walked away from my wife when the going got tough?”
“No,” I answer because everyone knows the story of how Dreamboat and his wife got together. Their story was not an easy one, but it was theirs and everyone can tell by the way that they openly love each other that neither one regrets the heartache that they had to endure to bring them together.
“Of course not,” he replies. “It was fucking hard as hell, but it was worth every second of pain because now I have my family, I have her. Don’t be an idiot, Tarzan. Go get the girl.”
“I’ll think about it,” I tell him solemnly because truthfully, there’s nothing else I can do. I’m going to think about it all—about every minute with MacKenzie, good or bad—until I die because I’m helpless to do otherwise.
“You do that,” he says. “I’ll talk to you later.” And then he disconnects the call.
