Page 17 of Overkill

“VD, you two need to kiss and make up.”

I tensed hearing that name. VD.

Ol’ Greg “VD” Vedder. Aptly named for how I drunkenly tumbled from one bed to another, finding comfort and touch in the arms of faceless women who used me as I used them. I was good for something. I was appreciated for something. And I needed it like a drug.

Even now. Even after five fucking years of self-induced celibacy, I craved it. The look of gratitude in a woman’s eyes, the momentary adoration of a post-orgasmic bliss. I thought I was over it. I had been over it.

Then I saw Melody walking up the mile-long drive on a snowy Christmas day and everything slammed into me like the best kind of tsunami. Kissable lips, a face full of worry and pain that I wanted to hold, to soothe, and those damn phoenix eyes.

“Tell that to your husband.” I groaned, because my tone was a little too clipped, and much too defensive.

I took a puff of the cigarette, then used my little finger to clear the last of the nicotine from the filter. I opened the ash tray on the center console, and stuck this filter with the rest, wincing at how many there were.

“Vedder…” she said on a sigh.

I’d quit smoking for a while. Then took it back up when I moved into the barn, stress smoking more and more as I kept hearing that fucking nickname again and again. VD. VD. VD! The name I’d shed when I was medically discharged but now couldn’t fucking escape.

“Guerro…” I said, mocking her tone.

She was likely a Griffith now, but I wasn’t certain she’d changed her name.

“You can’t keep running from the team. You live here. Same as me. Same as Mack and Lottie. Goose and Griff…Well…”

It hurt her. We all knew it did. That he was still fighting over his ex-wife.

The ex-wife I’d blindly fucked when I was too drunk to know my own name. I was barely sober enough when I snuck out in the morning. But I saw it. His photo on the mantle. Their wedding photos.

“Griff has every right to hate me.” The words felt like stabbing myself in the chest.

“Does he?” Christ, she sounded hurt as hell.

“Taz.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. God love her, but she was as insecure as a wobbly teeter-totter. “It doesn’t mean he’s not happy with you, or that he wants Kristin back.”

Here I was, trying to stick up for a man who wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire.

“He loves you. He’s always loved you. This shit between us…it’s because he feels betrayed. You know that.” I knew that, too. I said it to myself over and over and over again. He was entitled to his feelings. He was allowed to feel hurt. He did not deserve of a punch to the throat every time he picked a fight with me—over a woman he didn’t even give two shits about—and ended up hurting the one woman that he did want.

“Do I? Do I know it?”

I hated how genuine her question was. The sound of inadequacy in her voice shot right through me because I knew that feeling all too well. The bone-deep constraint of being small. Of being not enough.

“I dunno if you do. But I do.” He loved her. She loved him. Happy ending. “It’s as certain as getting wet in rain, Taz.”

They were always meant for each other. I knew it back then, too. It just took them a while to come around.

“It’d make me feel better if the two of you talked it out.” And now she was making their marital discord my problem. Well played, Trinity “Taz” Guerro. Well fucking played. “This separation between you is like a crack in the foundation, you know? We all feel it, Greg.”

I sighed and slammed my head back against the headrest. She’d never called me Greg before. Vedder, VD, asshole…sure. But never by my name.

“I know.” The hollowness in my gut—the one I always felt when I thought about all the shit I’d done wrong, and all the things I’d never be able to fix—burned me from the inside out. “Listen, I’ll try. But no promises. And…maybe not tonight. Okay?”

I heard a car going down the loud driveway, the crunch of gravel the only thing on the otherwise abandoned hardball road.

“Alright,” she said, resigned. “You guys were good friends once.”

I straightened, reaching to turn the key in the ignition.

“Yeah. You and I were, too.”