Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series)

by Briscoe, Laramie

  That struck Bianca as odd, but she didn’t say anything about it, just nodded. “Sure, Jagger knows I’m going, so I’ll tell him to tell Layne too.”

  Jessica hopped up from the table, grabbing her notebook and her coffee as she did so. Quickly, she made her way back to her room and hid the notebook with the others. On second thought, she made a note on the pages of the book to ask Bianca about some of the stories from her strip club days. There had to be an erotic romance in there somewhere. Ten minutes later, she had run a brush through her hair, applied some light makeup, and put on a pair of jeans and a thin t-shirt. As she left the room, she grabbed her wristlet that she used to keep her money and pertinent cards in before walking back to the main room. Meredith and Bianca were talking animatedly and laughing when she saw them.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s go, ladies,” Meredith said, twirling a key ring on her index finger. “I’ve stolen the man’s truck, that way we don’t have to get lead foot over here to drive us.”

  “It’s not my fault that Rooster knows me by name,” Bianca grumbled.

  “Who’s Rooster?” Jessica asked, but she recognized the name from somewhere. It was sometimes hard to follow along with their conversations because they all knew the same people. When they did that, she felt like such an outsider, but she had to be honest with herself, she was an outsider.

  “He’s a local sheriff’s deputy. He has a problematic relationship with the club, but a few months ago he helped get me out of hostage situation,” Bianca swallowed hard. “And since then, I’ve been just a wee bit reckless when I drive. I feel like I’m lucky to be alive and I should embrace it. He may or may not have pulled me over roughly five times since that happened. Either way, I still have no piece of paper that says I’ve been ticketed; I think he has a soft spot for me now,” she grinned.

  “That’s not to say that another officer will have a soft spot for you,” Meredith argued. “Plus, you know, Tyler and I have been trying to have a baby, so I would like to stay alive to do that.”

  Even though Meredith joked about it, Bianca knew that it was becoming a sore spot with the other woman, so she reached over and put her arm around her friend. “Okay, I’ll let you drive. You didn’t have to call me out in front of our new friend, here.”

  Jessica realized that this is what she had been missing in Hollywood. She didn’t have real friends like this. Yes, she had people that she could meet for dinner, but most of the time, it was just so the paparazzi could see them together and publish a picture. It was all about networking, it was nothing about developing real friendships with people.

  “Y’all ready?” Meredith asked as she grabbed her purse and led them out of the clubhouse.

  “Sure are, I can’t wait to shop. I haven’t done it in a really long time,” Bianca said as the group of them made their way to Tyler’s truck. Bianca couldn’t help but think of all the years she had worked her ass off just to put herself through school. But she would keep to herself the fact that Jagger had done some jobs on the side for Liam and made an obscene amount of money that he had loaded on a gift card for her to shop until she could drop. Four figures was probably not much to the Hollywood starlet sitting in this vehicle with them, but to Bianca, it meant the world.

  “Have you heard from any of the girls today?” Layne asked Jagger when the two of them sat down at the shop for lunch. It was unusual that he hadn’t heard from Jessica all day. He knew that Steele had taken her phone, but surely to God he had given it back by now.

  “I left my personal phone at home today, just got the prepay on me, and B hardly ever texts or calls it. I haven’t heard anything from her, but I know she was supposed to go to Goodlettsville today. I bet she invited Jess,” he told his friend as he took a bite of the burger.

  “It makes me nervous when I can’t get in touch with her, especially since she came here because someone broke into her house.”

  “If she’s with B, she’s fine,” Jagger told his friend, trying to smooth over what he saw becoming very ruffled feathers. “Both of them are smart women, and I don’t think they would do anything to get themselves purposely in trouble. You need to calm down about this.”

  Layne didn’t understand why he was getting so pissed off about Jessica’s silence. He could feel the anger seeping into his body and taking over his personality. It was a rage that he couldn’t control, didn’t even know how to begin to cope with. “But she needs to tell me where she’s going.”

  “How’s she going to do that if she doesn’t have a cell phone? You told me earlier that Steele took her phone. Do you want me to call B and make sure that Jessica is with her?” Jagger asked.

  That would have been the smart thing to do, the thing that most men would have done, but instead, Layne shook his head. “No, if she wants me to know where she is, she’ll tell me.”

  Jagger couldn’t believe how stubborn Layne was being. He needed either a swift kick in the nuts or a slap across the face. “Let me just tell you, you’re being fucking stupid about this, and I’m gonna go ahead and give you a piece of unsolicited advice. Next time you go see Doc Jones, you need to tell her that you’re having anger issues, because you should not be getting irritated at her over this,” Jagger grumbled as he got up from the picnic table and took his food to the office.

  Everything that Jagger said Layne heard, but it didn’t shut his brain off. It didn’t make him think thoughts that were natural for other people. This was his damage, this was his perception of reality, and he knew that it was as skewed as it came. The bitch of it was it didn’t necessarily make it better, and he knew that too. He got up so roughly that the picnic table shook, and he strode over to Liam with so much force that it caused his leg and foot to hurt.

  “I gotta go,” he told Liam, his voice clipped. It was hard to tell others what he needed, and he didn’t want to tell him why but knew he would have to.

  “Go where? We’re backed out the fucking parking lot here,” Liam told him, disbelief in his voice. Their legitimate business was beginning to take over their illegitimate business. Sooner or later they were either going to have to teach the women how to work on cars or hire some new people that weren’t members of the club.

  Layne couldn’t believe he was telling his pres this, but his pres had basically begged for this to happen, and if it was going to, he had to be honest about it. “I’m exceptionally pissed off right now over something so fucking stupid you would probably knock my ass on the ground if I even told you what it was. I need to go talk to Doc Jones before I do something incredibly dumb and ruin every part of this relationship I’m trying to build with Jessica.”

  Liam heard the thickness of Layne’s voice as he got further into his speech. The sunglasses that Liam wore muted everything around him, so he took them off and carefully looked into Layne’s eyes. He could see that the other man was struggling, that the darkness was trying to pull him under, and Layne was trying to hang on to the ledge with both hands, nails digging into the dirt. He imagined that if he was watching this on TV, those nails would probably be breaking at the quick, and Layne would be about to let go and give in to that darkness. “Go,” he told him. “We got you covered.”

  He didn’t have to be told twice. Without a look back to the shop where everybody else was working, he stormed over to his bike and hopped on. He felt like he was in a race against time to save not only his mind, but his life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Layne, I’m surprised to see you this early today,” Doc Jones said when she opened the door to his persistent knocks.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry to spring this on you, ma’am,” he told her, and he really was. “But I need to talk with you.”

  “Don’t be sorry, what’s happened?” she asked as she ushered him into the room she used for her appointments.

  He had a seat on the same couch he had sat on the day before. “I’m pissed and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

  “Okay then, why are you
upset?”

  “I’m not. I said I was pissed,” he told her again. “Upset and pissed are two totally different things with me.”

  “Then explain to me what’s going on here.”

  He couldn’t sit on that couch anymore, he had to get up, he had to be able to move, not feel like he was caged in. She didn’t say anything when he did this, but her eyes followed him sharply as he made a circle around the room. “Jessica went to Goodlettsville, she doesn’t have a cell phone, I can’t get hold of her, and she didn’t even tell me she was going. It’s pissed me off.”

  The older woman’s eyebrows screwed together. “Layne, that’s not that big a deal,” she softly told him.

  “Not to most people,” he agreed.

  “So explain to me why it’s a big deal to you.” She sat up further in her chair. “I’m pretty awesome, but I’m not psychic.”

  Hearing her use the word awesome struck him as funny. Not so funny that he laughed, but he did give her a small smirk. “I have trouble trusting women.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “Obviously trust issues haven’t been a problem your whole life, Layne. From what I’ve been able to gather, you’ve known Jessica a while, and you’ve apparently trusted her before. Am I right in that assumption?”

  “You are.” He finally stopped pacing back and forth, having a seat on the couch. He put his elbows on his knees and hung his head there for a long time. Did he want to open up to this woman, or did he want to keep running from his memories? A part of him knew that it might be easier to open up to someone who knew absolutely nothing about him and his past. Maybe he could stand to see disappointment in this person’s eyes because it didn’t mean as much.

  “Are you going to let me in, Layne? You’ve got to let someone in there.”

  What she said was right, and he knew that. “Yeah, I’ll let you in,” he finally whispered.

  “Then tell me, what happened that made you not want to trust women.”

  He swallowed hard and leaned back on the couch, closing his eyes. It was easier that way, he could hide from the guilt that he still felt. With his head tilted against the soft cushion, he began to speak. “Jessica and I had a sexual relationship, but it wasn’t cheap. That’s not to say that I ever thought it would really go anywhere. She’s an actress for fuck’s sake, and I was a military guy. It’s not like I was comfortable in her world. It was different for her though, she could fit into mine.”

  “How?” Doc Jones asked, needing him to elaborate so that she could fully understand.

  “Back then she wore a wig in movies; not a lot of people knew what she really looked like. When she would come see me on post, she wouldn’t wear her wig, she wouldn’t be heavily made up, and she wore regular clothes. Most people believed we were high school sweethearts, because that’s the type of vibe we gave to others.”

  The picture he painted didn’t sound anything like what she had imagined. “What happened?”

  “I did—do—love her. I’ve only told her that once, but she’s a very special person to me, always has been. It’s different though, when you go into a war zone and you’re not sure if you’re going to come out of it alive. Things are magnified, feelings are magnified. When I left, Jessica and I made no promises to one another, even though I knew that she felt for me the same way I felt for her,” he continued, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “What changed that?”

  He brought his hand up to his forehead and rubbed vigorously, almost like he was trying to wipe the memories away. He moved his tongue along his lips, like he wanted to get rid of the taste in his mouth. “She went out to dinner with some Hollywood type, and the news even made it over to the war zone. It pissed me off. I don’t know why it did. We were still talking every chance we could, and I knew what she was doing, but the day I heard about her on the news we lost two members of our patrol. One of those guys was a really good friend of mine.”

  Doc Jones made some notes on her pad of paper. Scribbling furiously, she tried to keep up with the words that her mind wanted to ask him. “Seeing her with another man coupled with a good friend dying made for a bad situation, huh?”

  “Bad situation is probably a good way to put it,” he agreed.

  “How bad did that situation get?”

  He sighed. “Like most people who are stuck in a war zone, you’re surrounded by it. But I was lucky; we had some contractors who came to ours every couple of days. There was a girl who kept looking at me when she would drop off our rations and gear. Just so happened that day was one of the days she was there. Relationships are highly discouraged between anyone over there, but you’re in a highly intense situation—a lot of men and women are away from their husbands and wives. Many of them use it as free rein to have that affair they’ve always wanted to have. So while it’s discouraged, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. It does. It happens a lot.”

  “So you went into a relationship with this woman? Am I reading into this correctly?”

  Layne shifted in his seat. “Not exactly a relationship, to be honest with you. It was sex, a lot of it, whenever and wherever we could. It was forbidden, so it was hot and I couldn’t get enough. Meanwhile, I was still talking to Jessica and sharing things with her. I really was a bastard, but you have to understand. This was the only way I could get through the deployment; I had so many things going on, so many people getting hurt. We had suicides and people being sent home because they just couldn’t handle it anymore. This was the only way I could keep my sanity. I had to trust someone besides the men I slept beside every night. I started really telling this contractor some things, nothing that could hurt national security, but I was freer with her than I should have been.”

  “What was her name, Layne?” Doc Jones asked. She found it odd that he didn’t give this woman a name; he just used “her”, “she”, “contractor”. For some reason he didn’t want to mention her name.

  “I can’t. If I say her name, then I give her power again, and I don’t ever want to do that,” he shook his head.

  “Okay, we’ll deal with that later, but keep going.”

  “One day, we got a call from our commander that they were bringing in some contractors and we would need to interrogate them because they had been found outside the green zone, fraternizing with some locals.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “Not really,” he shrugged. He was beginning to get agitated. He got up and walked around the room, hands on his hips, his back to her. “We all did patrols, the kids loved us. There were dogs that would constantly try to follow us back behind the gates, and there were people in the community who looked up to us. Those people knew that we were trying to give them back their homes. It got boring being behind those gates all the time, soldiers and contractors alike would sometimes go outside it. What was unusual was that they wanted us to interrogate them.”

  “Did you always interrogate?”

  “No, but it was part of my job, depending on what was going on. I didn’t actually interrogate her, but I sat in on it. I found out that she was giving information to members of an off-shoot terrorist group. She was making notes of our procedures and the way we had things set up on the inside, things like that. Things that nobody would really think about when you’re sneaking off to fuck. It hit me like a ton of bricks, what she had been doing each time she convinced me to have forbidden sex with her in a different location was not exciting like I thought. It was wrong.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  He laughed, but it was without humor. “How do you think it made me feel? Like shit. I mean like complete and literal shit. In getting my fuckin’ rocks off, I was potentially endangering the people who fought alongside of me. It pissed me off. In the end, she came at me with a gun that she had somehow smuggled in, and we had to put her down.”

  Doc Jones flinched. He said that like the woman had been a diseased dog, and she was glad for once that his eyes were closed and he hadn’t been able to see it.


  Out of nowhere a loud scream came from him, and his knees hit the floor. “She fucking lied to me, lied to me, I endangered every person I cared about. I could have gotten everyone on my base killed. I could have gotten myself killed. Do you know how guilty I feel?” he screamed at her. “Do you know what a piece of shit I feel like every day that I get to walk around and those guys over there that didn’t get to come home have me to thank for it? Their families—they have me to curse,” he bit out, tears rolling down his face. “All because I was a dumbass. It’s so much to live with every day,” he cried. “So much, and the guilt eats at me,” he admitted.

  Doc Jones got up from her seat and went over to have a seat next to him, pulling him into her arms. “Layne, all we do is try to make it through the days. We do that however the hell we can. Sometimes those choices aren’t smart, sometimes they don’t even make sense, but all we can do is put one foot in front of the other and move forward.”

  “At the expense of others?” he asked, coughing loudly.

  “You didn’t know that, you didn’t understand it, and you sure as hell didn’t mean for it to happen. Sometimes we make mistakes.”

  “Mistakes,” he spat out. “How do you tell a mother that her son died because I made a motherfucking mistake? How do you tell a wife or a daughter that her husband or father died because I was selfish?”

  Doc Jones’ heart broke. He took this so badly, and she wasn’t sure how to get it across to him that sometimes things just happened. “You’ve got to forgive yourself, Layne. We are all human,” she hugged him to her.

  “I don’t feel human.”

  “Human is feeling the things you are, it is questioning everything that you’ve gone through and going through the grief process. It’s coping with the fact that a woman that you believed in lied to you.”