“I’ve been more intimate with her than I’ve ever been with another human being,” he admitted.
“So it hurts you that you hurt her.”
“Absolutely,” he cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how she’s ever going to trust me again to be completely honest with you. I’m not sure how I’m ever going to be able to trust myself with her. That’s always going to be in the back of my mind where she’s concerned.”
“Have you ever hurt another woman before?” Doc Jones asked.
“Just once,” he whispered. “I was forced to do something I didn’t want to do while overseas—something I never should have had to do.”
Doc Jones saw the faraway look on his face and made another note. Overseas and what he was forced to do seemed to be connected in some way with the Jessica he spoke of. They would have to sort through his feelings and his memories and what gave him anxiety. Glancing at her watch, she saw that they had been there for an hour. “We don’t want to wear you out on your first appointment, so I try to keep them short. You’ll come back here tomorrow, and we’ll talk some more, but I want you to do something for me tonight.”
“What’s that?” he asked, thankful that he was off the hook for the rest of the day.
“I want you to make it a point to apologize to Jessica. Explain to her that something happened and you’re not sure what. Make her understand that this is a symptom of what you’ve gone through, not a new reality. As you explain that to her, I want you to let yourself believe it. We’re going to get you fixed up, Layne,” she told him as she closed her notepad.
“You sure?” he asked.
She almost thought he was joking by the tone of his voice, but when she got a look at his face, she saw just how serious he was. “I promise, Layne. I’ve dealt with people in worse shape than you, and they are now extremely productive members of society. They are boyfriends, husbands, fathers, and best friends. Just because something bad has happened to you, it doesn’t have to ruin the rest of your life. You can either let it define you or move on.”
He sat there for another moment before he opened his mouth again. “One of the doctors at the VA told me that I just needed to come to grips with the fact that I would never be the same person I was before all this happened.”
“That doctor was right, you might not ever be the same person as before, but I’m here to tell you that you might even be a better person than you were before. We’ll work through this—together. You’re not alone in this—at all. I’m here with you, and I’m willing to bet you have a clubhouse full of people who are willing to help you, no matter what that help entails.”
She was right, he did. It was just hard to accept. “No doubt,” he nodded.
They walked towards the door, and Layne saw Jagger sitting outside, waiting on him. One last thought caused him to turn to the older woman. “Are you going to prescribe me anything?”
“Do you think you need it?” she asked him, her eyes taking everything in.
“No.” He shook his head. “Everything they’ve always prescribed me makes me feel weird.”
“Then we’ll do it without medication if that’s what you want. This is about you and your journey, not about what pills and medicine can do for you.”
He was happy with that and felt more in control of his life than he had in a long time.
“Hey, Doc Jones.” Jagger waved from where he stood beside the car.
“Hey, Jagger.” She waved back at him. “How’s B doing?”
“Good,” he nodded. “Nervous about starting teaching though. I’m pretty sure we’ll be in soon,” he laughed.
She laughed along with him. “You know I’ll make time for you. Keep your eye on this one and make sure he doesn’t take himself too seriously.” She pointed at Layne.
“Will do.” He nodded towards her as he and Layne got in the car.
Neither one of them said a word as Jagger started the car and they left the little farmhouse in the dust, but Layne was sure that his life had just changed in the most important of ways. When they got a few miles down the road, Layne looked over at his friend.
“Thanks,” he said, softly.
“For what?”
“For being my friend and checking on me. Those playing cards were the best thing that anyone could have done for me. You’ll never know how much I appreciated that.”
“You’re one of my best friends, Layne. I’m not going to let you do this to yourself. Anything you need, I’m here.”
That was exactly why Layne wanted to get himself taken care of. He couldn’t disappoint these people.
Chapter Sixteen
Jessica was nervous, nervous as hell. It had been hours since Layne had left to go see Liam, and he had yet to come back. Millions of scenarios ran through her head. Had he done what they asked him to do? Had he freaked the fuck out and gone AWOL? What would she do if he hurt himself because of some ultimatum she had convinced Liam to give him?
Desperate to stop the thoughts racing through her mind, she logged onto her email account. There were a couple of emails from her manager asking her where she was. She still couldn’t believe she’d left Hollywood without anyone knowing. Soon, she would have to face the consequences of those actions, but she wanted just a few more days. Just a few more days that she wouldn’t have to deal with everything that came with her brand. As she was scanning, she saw another email that warned her one of her accounts had been compromised. It read like Greek to her, so she got up and walked towards the dark room that Steele normally occupied.
“Travis?” she poked her head in as she knocked on the door facing.
“Yeah?” He didn’t even look up from where he sat in front of a computer screen typing what she could only describe as gibberish. When she didn’t say anything else, he stopped and turned so that he faced her.
“Something weird is going on with one of my accounts,” she told him, biting her lip. She hated to interrupt him.
“What kind of account?” he asked, taking the glasses he wore off his face and rubbing his eyes.
“It’s from my cell phone company.”
“Motherfucker,” he groaned. “Why today?”
Jessica hated to cause him grief, but the way he jumped up seemed to mean that this was important. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“Not your fault, but why don’t you show me what you got.”
The two of them walked to the main room where she had her laptop set up at the table that everyone normally ate at. Sitting across from him, she watched as he put his elbow on the wood and used his thumb and forefinger to twist the soul patch of hair he had on his chin. If she hadn’t been so hung up on Layne, she would admit that Steele was a good-looking guy, even when he wore a look on his face that said he wanted to kill someone.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, when his expression got stormy behind his black-rimmed prescription glasses.
“Looks like someone’s tried to hack your phone. You have the iPhone, right?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” she asked as she pulled the electronic device from her pocket and handed it to him.
“Unfortunately,” he grimaced. “You do realize with this little piece of equipment, someone can know your whole life and where you go?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s the point, right?” she asked. “I need to be accessible in my line of work.”
He sighed. “Give it here; I’ll see if anybody has installed anything that could be putting us all in danger. Remember, you’re with a group of people that are criminals who don’t need to be accessible to everybody else.”
She swallowed hard. She had never even thought about that. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Just let me take a look at it and see what’s going on. This might take a while, so stick around here. I’m gonna need both your laptop and your phone. I need to sync up in case I gotta wipe it.”
Jessica felt stupid, and if there was one thing she didn’t want to feel, it was that.
Apologi
ze to Jessica. Those words kept replaying in Layne’s head. He wasn’t one to apologize—ever. Especially since he wasn’t exactly sure what he was apologizing for. Well that wasn’t true, there were a million things he should be apologizing for, so maybe he should just pick one and concentrate on that one, this apology go-round.
That wasn’t the only thing that prickled at him. What if she didn’t forgive him? Then where would he be? Would he be able to stay here with her? This was the place she had come for protection and peace of mind. What would it say if she had to leave because he was an asshole who couldn’t control himself around her?
Letting himself into the clubhouse, he took a look around. Steele sat at the table, working on Jessica’s laptop. “What’s going on?” he asked, as he pulled up a chair and had a seat.
“Your girl has had a security breach. A breach that could show people just where the fuck she is and bring them to this clubhouse,” Steele said, his eyes hard as he ran a scanner on her computer. “The thing that chaps my ass is I just ran a virus scanner on this piece of shit computer, and she did have a virus on it, but I removed it.”
“Do you know where she is?” Layne asked, looking around the main room.
“She got up and left when I told her she may have brought people here unknowingly. She went back towards the dorms, and I haven’t seen her since.”
Well, wasn’t that just fuckin’ perfect? If it wasn’t him trying to piss her off and get her out of here, she was doing it to herself. “Let me know what you find out on that.”
“Will do.” Steele pulled a stick of gum out of his pocket and began angrily chomping on it, so hard that his jaw cracked. “I’m still a few hours from being there, just to let you know.”
Leaving him to it, Layne got up and made his way back towards the dorms, wondering just where Jessica was. He first checked his room, even though he was pretty sure she wouldn’t go back in that room for a very long time. When he checked the room and she was nowhere to be found, he went to the room she stayed in the night before. He knocked softly on the door and heard a mumbled reply.
“Okay if I come in?” he asked as he pushed the door open just far enough that she could see it was him.
“Sure, but I’m going to tell you right now, if you’re here to tell me that I’ve put everyone here in danger…I’m not up for that right now.”
He made a mental note to check with Steele and see exactly what the other man had said to her to make her feel that way. “No, this is about me, it’s not about you,” he told her.
She sat up on the bed Indian style and motioned him inside.
“You want me to leave this door open or close it?” he asked, carefully. He was so unsure of how she would feel being alone with him, and it settled like a stone in his stomach that she would be scared.
“I trust you, Layne. You can close the door.”
Those words meant more to him than he ever imagined words could mean. He quietly shut the door and walked over to where she sat on the bed, sitting down on the opposite side of where she did, facing her. There were several moments of silence that stretched between the two of them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“Liam had a talk with me today,” he started, absently running his hand over the jeans that covered his thighs.
“Did he?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to let on that she knew what that talk had entailed. She was positive that Liam hadn’t mentioned that she had in reality come to him, and Layne was already in such a precarious position, she absolutely did not want to spook him.
“He did.”
She sat there for a long time wondering if he would elaborate, but she could tell by the way his posture straightened and by the movement of his mouth several times without any words coming out that he was having difficulty expressing himself. Just let him come to you, she told herself. Let him set his own pace with what and how he wants to tell you.
“He asked me to seek counseling after what happened with you,” he pushed out from a throat that was thick with emotion.
Her response was careful and slow in coming—she wanted to make sure she didn’t seem too eager. “What did you say?”
“I wanted to tell him a great big ‘fuck you’,” he laughed, although the sound lacked humor.
“I just bet you did.” She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face.
A real grin answered hers. “I so did, but that wasn’t possible.” His faced sobered. “He threatened to take my patch if I didn’t get help for what’s going on,” his index finger pointed to his forehead, “up here.”
Jessica nodded, not knowing what to say. This was one of those hard times in life where you weren’t sure what the correct response was to the hard decisions. “I don’t know what to say, Layne,” she finally answered.
“You don’t have to say anything. If I want to keep this patch, if I want to keep my family, I’ve got to get my shit together. There’s no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. I’m fucked up, I’m broken, and I need to be fixed.”
He said those words with such a hollow tone to his voice that it broke her heart.
“Is that really how you see yourself?”
“It’s the only way to see myself.” He scratched the back of his neck and sat up straighter. “So, I agreed. I had my first appointment with Doc Jones today. Jagger took me. Apparently he and B both go to see her on the regular.”
That surprised her, but she didn’t let it show. “How did it go?”
“I told her about what happened here last night. I told her what I did to you, but I didn’t tell her everything.”
She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to react. Should she touch him? Should she tell him it was okay, that he didn’t have to continue with what he was saying to her? In the end, she didn’t have to say anything, and he kept going.
“I didn’t tell her how ashamed I felt when you came in here instead of staying in my room. I didn’t tell her how scared I was when I realized that both Liam and Tyler had hold of me. Tyler can normally put my ass down by himself. The fact that it took both of them…” he trailed off, having a hard time finishing his sentence.
“You’re not yourself,” she whispered softly.
“You’re right, I’m not, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be that person that you remember again, but I can’t tell you how fuckin’ sorry I am.” The words ripped from his throat, the emotions right along with them. “I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am, or even what I’m sorry for. There’s so much, Jess, so much that I should be apologizing to you for. There are even things that you don’t even know, that I’m scared you’re going to find out and then you aren’t going to look at me again the way you looked at me before.”
“I’m not perfect either, Layne.” She took his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Both of us have been in many different places and situations since we were last together in any sense of the word.”
“But I’ve been in the pits of hell,” he argued. “I’m not fit to be sitting on this bed with you, much less to be thinking about touching you.”
The honesty in his face got her; he really did believe the words he spoke to her. She had to find a way to show him that while she had been scared the night before, she was willing to help him work to get back to a semblance of the man she had once known, cared for, and slept beside.
“We’ll do this together, Layne,” she told him, clasping their hands together, entwining their fingers.
Out of anything he had imagined would come out of her mouth, this had been the absolute last, but he couldn’t help but be the most grateful bastard in the world.
Chapter Seventeen
“Hey Liam, we’ve got a problem, and I’m not sure how big it is.”
Those were the last words that Liam wanted to hear out of Travis Steele’s mouth. They could run the gamut of ‘we’re screwed’ to the even worse ‘we’re fucked up the ass without the courtesy of lube’. “Do I need to come down
there?” he asked, although he knew the tone of his voice told Steele that he didn’t have time for this.
“Yeah, I need some help here,” the other man said on the other end of the phone. “I’m not exactly sure what we’re facing, and I need you to give me permission to do what I need to.”
Those were also words he didn’t like to hear from Steele, who could usually handle anything that was thrown at him. Even worse was if it was from Steele, it had to do with security, and right now, the baby sleeping over in the bassinette next to Denise in the living room meant that their security had to be top notch. “I’ll be right there, and if Tyler’s not down there, do me a favor and call him.” There was not another person that Liam trusted more in the world than his best friend, and if decisions had to be made, he wanted the quiet but formidable presence of his second in command.
“He just walked in, pres. I’ll grab him, and we’ll meet you at the table.”
Disconnecting the call, Liam sighed, throwing a look at the woman in his life. “I’ve got to take care of some business, and it’s Steele-related business, so make sure you get Mandy and Drew in here and everything’s locked down.
“Are you expecting trouble?” she asked, glancing at Tatum, who slept blissfully unaware. Trouble seemed to follow them around, but now, with the new baby, she wanted to make sure that she knew what she was facing.
“I’m not, but you never know. It’s better to be prepared than to be caught with our thumbs up our asses,” he told her, sitting down as he put his motorcycle boots on.
Denise walked over to where he sat and pushed against his chest so that he leaned back against the soft cushion of the chair. She sat in his lap and turned to face him when he wrapped his arms around her waist and put his chin on her shoulder. “I understand what this life is now, Liam. It’s not going to scare me away from you or the family I’ve created here. Let me get Mandy and Drew inside and then lock up as you leave, that way you don’t have to worry about us.”
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