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Angus’ fingers pressed harder at his neck. “I’m not going to stand by and watch you trash your life.”
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. He didn’t need his voice to fail him now, and with the pressure from Angus’ hand it just might. “Fuck off.” He cleared his throat again. “My life. My choice.”
Angus’ breath was hot on his face; they were chest to chest, but unevenly matched. Angus was sighted and sober, but he didn’t need to save someone from making a dreadful mistake. He didn’t love Georgia and need for her to give him up before he took her back to dark places she’d been brave enough to climb out of once and should never have to again.
Angus didn’t have what Damon did. Fear, such fear that in his need he’d become the very thing Georgia left behind, a man crushed by the weight of things gone wrong in his life.
“You mean that? If you mean that after everything we’ve been through together, I’m walking away. I’m done with you.”
He would become the thing that Georgia regretted; a nightmare of self-sacrifice and repeated mistakes, and for Angus, Taylor and Jamie he’d been a different kind of burden, one they’d carried since childhood. And when he’d been the one person in a position to change things for the three of them when times got tough, he’d let them down, been too blind to see what he should’ve known was in front of him.
He pushed against Angus’ hands and they disappeared.
Feet shuffled, someone laughed. Half sentences from conversations he was excluded from. Sam said, “That’s it?” making it a question.
“How did you get here?” Taylor with a genuine one.
“I’ll take you home,” said Jamie.
“Don’t, please don’t.” Sam, he’d be talking to Georgia.
And then they were gone and he was alone.
He sagged against the wall and breathed deep. Now when he checked out they wouldn’t try to find him. They’d be free of the worry of him. Taylor would stay at the house, Georgia could stay or go as she pleased and when she’d moved on, he’d come home and work out how to start again.
Georgia, Georgia on my mind. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting behind them. Nothing wrong with his tear ducts, odd they w
anted exercise now.
Someone grabbed his shirt. It’d be his luck if he ended the night beaten and rolled for his wallet, phone and watch.
“Fuck off, I’m blind.”
“And stupid.” Angus. Beer now on his breath. “What are you up to, you bastard, you’re up to something.”
It was impossible to shake free, impossible to avoid Angus’ grip on his shirt, on the back of his neck, on his life. He’d known these hands, this voice, since he was five years old. They’d pushed him forward, held him up, slapped him with laughter. They’d been mad and clever together, plotted and prayed together. Bled together. They’d stood up for each other and bullied each other, been each other’s backstop, driver, medic, bank, excuse. But Angus had found his place in the world, he had a business to run and Damon was in the way.
“I don’t want your help.”
“You fuckwit. How can you still not get it?”
“What’s there to get? I want to be left alone.”
“So you can go swimming again? So you can drink too much and walk in front of a bus? Is that the plan, or have you figured out how to top yourself without Jamie to pick up the pieces, or Taylor to stop the bullet?” Angus pressed his weight on Damon’s chest. “Or Georgia’s heart to break.”
Damon moved his knee, got it inside Angus’, got his hands to Angus’ shoulders and shoved, got shoved back, and they were scuffling like teenagers. Angus could’ve cold cocked him and it’d all be over, but the arsehole toyed with it and Damon gave it everything he had until their grips came apart and their heavy breathing filled his ears. He might’ve ended this with a lucky charge, a lucky punch, but his lucky was all used up and Angus got the last word.
He left without saying a thing.
Damon reached for the wall and slid down it till he was sitting. He didn’t know where in the club he was, but it must’ve been a service corridor because no one was using it, maybe a fire exit. If he followed it, he might find the street, or someone to point him in the right direction. He’d find a cab, a hotel room. In the morning he’d go home, pack a bag and clear out.
Something touched his foot. “You’re fucking it all up.” A hand to his knee, then Taylor was on the floor beside him, her head on his shoulder. “I’m the screw-up, not you.”
He should’ve brushed her off, gotten to his feet and found the street, but she wrapped herself around his arm and hung on. “I need to be alone, Tay. I need to work this out on my own.”
“Are you breaking up with us?”
In spite of the situation he laughed. “I’m no good for you right now. No good for anyone.”
