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“Your weird relationship with him was always just over the phone before this,” I said. “He could keep you and not have to feel so alone all the time, but you were always a safe enough distance away that he didn’t have to worry about hurting you or scaring you away. Keeping me is what’s complicated for him. All I do is piss him off.”
I glared at Memphis when she chuckled at that.
“I think that’s probably what he likes best about you,” she said quickly.
“That he hates me? You’re going to sit here and tell me that’s what he likes best about me?”
Kyle fucking laughed that time.
“God, you do sound a lot like him,” he said.
“You challenge him,” Memphis said. “You are the reason for him to get it figured out. You’re why he would want to be better.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
jersey
I had no idea how much time I spent just driving around in the dark. There was an endless maze of roads that separated the cornfields in this part of the state, and something outside of my own brain was deciding when and where I turned. How I ended up sitting in a liquor store parking lot was beyond my memory. How the fuck I ended up at a liquor store that was still open at this time of night was even more baffling. I had no recollection of hurting the only woman left on the planet who’d decided I was worth a damn, so it shouldn’t have been surprising that something under the surface felt like it needed to numb that with alcohol before I really had to face it. I was in and out too much. My brain was trying to protect my conscious mind from experiencing what was really happening. I hadn’t figured out how to go on living knowing what I knew now about my family. And somehow, I suddenly had to own that I really was capable of hurting Trista in the worst ways without ever meaning to.
My brain could block out giant chunks of time to keep me from having to confront those things, because I couldn’t just plan out a healthy way to move past it. It could apparently guide me to a fucking liquor store, thinking that I would need to feel the familiar burn of alcohol to be able to survive the emotions that would be waiting for me right around the corner any minute now. But it couldn’t fucking figure out how to force my body to just behave like a regular human. It couldn’t figure out how to process what I thought about my wife in a way that would let me just fucking release her. It couldn’t figure out how to see beyond what was behind me, so it wanted me to drown those memories and realizations until I couldn’t feel anything at all.
The next thing I knew, I was staring down at a whiskey bottle while I stood next to Seph. It didn’t look like I’d opened it yet, but I sure as shit needed to get rid of it before that happened without me realizing I was doing it.
“Don’t do it, man,” a voice said from somewhere beside me.
Motherfucking Utah in that stupid truck.
He was parked just a few feet away, and I hadn’t even noticed that he was there until he spoke. I watched his arm drop down to reach for the handle inside the truck, so I launched myself in his direction to put a hand on that door and hold it closed.
“If you so much as set foot on this pavement, I will beat you to death right here and now, kid. You need to leave.”
“I can’t do that,” he said.
“You must not be very smart.”
He smirked. “The girls asked me to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid, New Jersey. Trust me, I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here.”
“If I didn’t kill myself six years ago, I won’t do it now either.”
“Yeah? You remember driving here? Remember buying that?” He asked and nodded toward my hand.
“Leave,” was all I could say before I allowed him to imply that I could kill myself without even knowing it. Although, I’d spent countless hours wondering why it hadn’t ever gone exactly that way. I turned back toward Seph and heard that truck door open a motherfucking second later anyway.
“Do you think I’m joking when I tell you that I can’t be around you right now either, slick? Or are you actually just that stupid that you don’t know how to hear a genuine warning when it’s being offered? I already want to kick the shit out of you on a regular day. If the fucking crazy me gets his hands on you, he won’t stop until you’re dead. And while I’ve got to tell you, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me, Liz would never forgive me for that.”
I only made it another step away from him before I stopped and tried to force myself to breathe.
“Triss,” I whispered, mostly to myself. “Triss would never forgive me.”
“Jersey,” Utah said quietly, and stepped directly in front of me. “You’ve got plenty of your own demons to fight right now, man. Don’t add me to that list just because you’re mad. I don’t want to hurt an old man.”
I chuckled at that.
And then I was pissed that I chuckled at that.
“Who are you mad at, man?” Utah asked.
“Right now? You.”
