"Right, so…let's get back to the agenda," Andy said.
While I should have been listening to the updates and dilemmas, I started wandering through the rooms. It looked different with protective tarps on the floors, and scaffolding and construction equipment everywhere. Almost sterile. With all the furniture and home goods removed, it was the same as any other jobsite.
Just about.
There were some memories that lingered even when everything else was gone.
The small linen closet beside the window seat where I'd hidden whenever Angus was on a bender and looking to unleash some rage.
The back staircase he threw Erin down when she was thirteen, breaking her arm in three places.
The alcove in Shannon's room where I'd camped when it was too scary to sleep alone.
The room where my mother died.
And because my brain enjoyed fucking with me, I found myself in the middle of the nursery, thinking about the child Tiel and I weren't expecting.
Of course she wasn't pregnant. It was my fault, that much I knew. I wasn't putting a baby in her any more than I was proving string theory. Either my sperm didn't swim or the ones that did were dysfunctional, or the universe knew I was too fucked up to reproduce.
Or maybe—probably—Angus was right all along. I was a mistake, an accident, a fucking mulligan. I shouldn't have been born, and the only course correction was ensuring my genetic material never poisoned another generation.
He was right, and so was Tiel. I couldn't fool anyone into thinking I was capable of keeping anything good.
There wasn't a single moment of my life that wasn't a fucking disaster. As an adult, I knew how to cover it up with trendy clothes and professional expertise, but when those pieces were stripped away, I was still the excessively anxious kid who couldn't go anywhere without a crate of prescriptions and medical supplies. I was wildly risk averse—I stuck to my playbook and kept everyone at a safe distance—and for years, I had been just fine.
Tiel was perhaps my one uncalculated risk. Those girls—the ones at the bars? There was no risk there. I had enough emotional distance and condoms to guarantee it.
She was a gamble. A noisy, colorful, gorgeous gamble, and it was clear that I lost.
I lost it all.
I was on a mission to obliterate everything. That's what sitting in an empty nursery in the most haunted house in Massachusetts did to a guy. It made him want to erase memories and kill brain cells.
"You should not be here. This is a terrible choice, and you should not be here," Riley said from a few steps behind me. "Girls claim they want space, but they want you chasing them. Yeah, they want some time to cool off, but for the most part, they want to take a deep breath and see you right there—not here, but there, wherever she is—with chocolate and flowers and shit like that."
I ignored him. I was exactly where I needed to be, and it was long overdue. He'd been bitching at me since I announced I was hitting the bars when we got back from the visit to Wellesley but I'd had enough of his mother hen routine. I couldn't take a piss without him asking where I was going and offering to hold my dick, and of course he appointed himself as my chaperone tonight.
"Have you called her? Texted? Sent a carrier pigeon?"
Fuck space.
Fuck time.
Fuck room to breathe.
Fuck everything.
Heading toward my regular red velvet booth, I waved at Alibi's manager and gestured for drinks. I was swallowing whatever she brought my way. "No. Why? She told me to fuck off, or something like that."
Riley's hand landed on my shoulder, stopped me in my tracks, and spun me around. That kid was built like a tight end. I wouldn't put it past him to sack me, and part of me was hoping for it. I wanted to hit something, but more than that, I wanted something to hit me. I wanted to focus on a different form of pain.
"All right, grasshopper. Listen. Couples fight all the time. Like, constantly. Matt and Lauren spend more time debating things and making up than doing anything else, and trust me, I've witnessed all of it."
He rolled his eyes and shuddered.
"But here's the secret—it's always your fault. Whatever it is, your fault. Even if she's being an asshole, it's your fault. Just apologize and do nice things, and it's better."
He shrugged as if it was that fucking simple.
"Call her. Apologize. Say something sweet, and you'll have some good old-fashioned make-up sex all night."
The manager appeared with a gin martini, and I sent her a wink. "You remembered," I said. She shrugged as if she remembered everyone's drink orders, and tossed her wavy blonde hair over her shoulder. "Good girl."
As she turned to leave, I smacked her ass.
"No, no, no. That's enough. We are leaving now," Riley said. I knocked back the martini in one gulp. "You have lost your fucking mind, son."
"Yeah, I have." I crossed my arms over my chest and rocked back on my heels. "And I'm not interested in looking for it. What's the point?"
Riley brought his fingers to his temples in obvious frustration. "The point," he bit out, "is that you love Tiel, and you need to fix things with Tiel. You should not be here right now. You should not be inventing ways to self-destruct. Why is this so complicated for you to understand?"
I handed my glass to another blonde. I didn't think she worked at Alibi, but she took it nonetheless. She must have spent everything on the breast implants because those grapefruits were busting out of her dress. She wasn't a natural blonde, either.
I doubted there was anything real about her.
"Gin martini and some shots. Get yourself something, sugar tits, and put it on my tab."
"Ignore him," Riley said. He grabbed my bicep and towed me toward the door. "We're going, and you're not leaving the house until you get your shit together."
"Would you just back the fuck off?"
I shook out of his hold and leaned against the wall inside one of the cells converted into a cozy drinking nook. This part of the jail once served as the drunk tank.
I deserved all of this misery. Every moment of every day of my miserable life should feel this horrible.
I was exactly where I belonged.
I glanced up, avoiding Riley's steely gaze, and watched people pouring in and out of the bars and restaurants. This was one of the features I loved about The Liberty Hotel: the catwalk ringing each floor. This was where it felt most like a repurposed jail, where I could imagine guards patrolling the corridors.
"Let's get out of here," he said.
That was a great idea. Truly.
If I was even remotely concerned with self-preservation.
"Yeah, I'm gonna go fuck that blonde with the tits. Get me another drink, or four."
She was standing against the bar, pretending to be perfectly casual. Her eyes widened as I approached, and she gestured to the shot glasses lined up beside her. I downed two, and two more, and another two. I inclined my head toward the hall, and tipped back the last two shot glasses.
Precisely enough to feel nothing.
"You down?"
"I'm Melan—"
I pressed my finger to her lips and shook my head. "Even if I knew how to care, I wouldn't."
She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment, but grabbed my hand and led the way. She knew the drill.
The alcohol was moving through my system quickly, and my hold on the horizon loosened. She tightened her grip on my hand and yanked me through a doorway. She was small but that didn't stop her from slamming me against the wall, and promptly rubbing her silicon investments all over me. Her fingers were clammy and skeleton-thin, and they went straight to my crotch.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to remember anything about her.
This was the empty, soulless existence I deserved, the one that would never know love or happiness or hope. I wanted to lose myself in that. I wanted to fuck a random woman and not care, not feel an ounce of longing for Tiel. I wanted to cut myself off from the love she stitched i
nto my cells and I wanted to prove that I didn't need that shit.
And because it wasn't enough to simply drown in my own self-loathing, I pulled out my phone and fired off several texts to Tiel.
Sam: If something is broken
Sam: You fix that shit
Sam: You don't throw it the fuck away
Tiel: I don't want to throw anything away.
Tiel: Where are you? can we talk?
Sam: I'm very busy needing space
I wanted to crawl back to her, promise that she was the one—the only one—and beg her to understand that I fucked up with Magnolia and it would never, ever happen again.
The fake blonde pulled at the front of my trousers with a fury, unconcerned with my dick's wholly flaccid state, and no part of me wanted this. I hated what I'd done, and if it were possible, I hated myself even more. There wasn't a shred of arousal in me, but she continued stroking and jerking over my clothes while whispering filthy clichés about being a naughty girl and deserving a punishment.
Then she called me Daddy, and it turned my stomach. I had to stop this.
The acidic burn of alcohol and carrot-celery-honey juice and misery bubbled up my throat as I pushed her away. I choked it back for a moment, but another wave hit, and I vomited all over her.
And I mean all over her.
The first spurt hit her hair, and then her head snapped up to take the next two on her chest and dress. When it finally stopped, she gazed at the wreckage, horrified, and muttered something about my pathetic whiskey dick. She ran out crying, and left me alone in a puddle of puke.
Amazingly, only my shoes took the hit, and though I'd never wear them again, I needed just a couple of minutes to clean up before stumbling down the hallway toward Riley.
He was seated in a deep leather chair, his ankle crossed over his knee while he tapped his beer bottle against the armrest. I dropped beside him and signaled to the waitress. Maybe she could find me some flat cola. Or ginger ale.
I still felt like shit and wanted to crawl into bed more than I wanted my next breath. Cold sweat was running down my back, and I swore my organs were rattling against my bones.
"You didn't fuck her," he snapped, tearing my phone from my hands and making a show of wiping it clean. "You might be the biggest asshole in the universe right now, but you didn't fuck her."
I ordered the ginger ale, and deserved every ounce of scorn the waitress aimed at me. "Don't be so sure," I said.
"You are so full of shit," he said, scrolling through my messages. "That wasn't even five minutes, and you look like death. Your pants are covered in vomit, by the way."
I glanced down but couldn't see more than the vague outlines of my legs.
He busied himself with his phone while I sipped my ginger ale, but it wasn't long before the alarm sounded on my glucose monitor. I couldn't win. I knew my blood sugar was next to nothing, and I needed to force down some real food.
"I need to get out of here," I groaned, my head dropping against the chair.
"You think?" he asked, and hauled me up by the collar but I didn't have much strength to stand. "Son, you are scaring the shit out of me right now."
"No, no," I said, my tongue too heavy to form the words correctly. "I'm fucking great."
I puked a couple more times while we waited at the valet stand. I was bent over the bushes with Riley's hand gripping my shoulder when I realized he was talking.
"I think you owe me, dude," he said.
I turned my head to tell him I didn't owe him a goddamn thing, but I ended up spewing all over his shoes.
"Seriously, Nick, I need your help and I don't care what kind of doctor you are. I'm throwing him in the car and taking him to your ER."
"No," I groaned. "I just want to go home."
"You have lost the right to make decisions for yourself," Riley yelled, then he lowered his voice. "I promised I wouldn't tell anyone about you fucking my sister after Matt and Lauren's wedding, and you promised me a favor in return. I'm callin' it in, my friend."
I begged him to take me home and let me sleep it off, Riley went straight to the hospital. I was too disoriented to care when the nurses stabbed me with syringes and tore off my clothes, effectively ruining a two thousand dollar Burberry suit and my favorite Eton dress shirt.
I didn't remember much after that. There was more, maybe a lot more, but it lurked in an inaccessible part of my mind.
When I woke up, Nick and Riley were seated beside my bed.
My mouth tasted like pennies, and was desert dry. "Where am I?" They glanced at each other, and Riley shook his head. He looked exhausted, and more than a little furious. "What happened?"
Nick shuffled forward on a rolling stool, and crossed his legs. "You're at Mass General." He pointed to the logo on his scrubs. "And right now, we're not buddies."
It hurt to open my eyes, and squinting was the best I could manage. "What?"
"It means you need to shut up and listen," Riley hissed.
"Sam, you had a blood-alcohol level of point two when you were brought in. That by itself is pretty impressive. You were in extreme hypoglycemia. You seized before we could get your sugar under control. The fact you're not in a coma right now is…unexplainably positive."
Maybe that was why absolutely every muscle in my body ached.
"You know the rules of this game. You work out hard, you crash. You don't eat, you crash. You don't sleep, you crash. You hit the bar, you crash. You can't do all that and expect your body to keep going." He tapped his pen against the tablet balanced on his thigh. "You and your brothers? Y'all handle stress the exact same ways. You run your bodies into the ground and have the balls to be pissed off when you realize you're just as human as everyone else."
"That's not what happened," I said. There was more I wanted to say, but my throat was burning. It would have been easier to speak if I'd been chewing glass.
"I'm keeping you for observation, and the endocrinology team is coming in for rounds at seven, but listen to this. You need to get your ass in line."
"Don't tell anyone else about this. Don't call Shannon," I said to Riley as Nick rolled away.
"Dude," Riley sighed. "How is me telling Shannon your biggest concern right now? I watched you have a fucking seizure. Do you have any idea what that's like? I can't sit here while you destroy yourself anymore."
"That's not—"
"No, Sam. No." Riley pushed out of his chair, pacing along the length of the thin curtain separating us from other patients. "You basically took a razor blade into the bathtub tonight, and you damn near succeeded."
"I didn't want to die," I rasped.
"You need to work through your shit," he said. "And you need to ask for help sometimes. You have to tell people when it's bad, and not just wait until you're circling the drain."
He continued pacing, his fists propped on his hips.
"I don't want to be a dick but, seriously, Sam, you need to deal with this. Get help. Talk to someone. Anything."
"I know."
"If you know, you should fucking do it," he said.
There was something I wanted to say but it stuck in my throat and I couldn't push past the heavy throb in my head. I fell asleep, and though I knew doctors and nurses were checking my vitals and drawing blood, I couldn't force my eyes open.
Later, Riley tossed some clean clothes at me and instructed me to get dressed. We drove home in silence, and he marched me to my room. I was still exhausted and didn't need any help deciding to get into bed.
"Take the meeting with Turlan tomorrow," I said. Riley nodded, but didn't move. "And…the rest of my meetings. Tell them I have the flu, or whatever. I don't care what you say, but I don't want to see anyone."
I didn't get out of bed all week.
I lost track of the world beyond the firehouse, spending my days numb and trapped in the maze of my thoughts. They circled and closed in on themselves, and they turned darker as the week went on. I doubled and tripled the dose on my sleeping pills an
d spent the better portion of every night in a blank, dreamless space.
It didn't matter whether I woke up anymore.
I was there, but I wasn't.
I pushed away from the table while my siblings discussed their projects, and I stared out the window at the sun-drenched street below. People were going about their lives, walking to school and work, arguing about politics and sports, cursing the weather. For everyone out there, life continued.
For me, life was shattering.
Eight months ago, I thought I'd found my new low.
I was wrong.
I couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't pretend that after everything we'd been through together, I could survive Tiel walking away from me or the things I'd done.
There was only one option left for me. I sat there, arms crossed over my chest and my feet propped on the windowsill, and I built my plan.
There were many things to get in order, and if I was doing this today, I had to work quickly. For the first time in ages, my mind wasn't fixated on germs or Angus or my broken fucking heart, and I was able to construct my action plan while my siblings talked over me.
"Hey," Riley murmured, tapping my arm. "You want me to handle Turlan?"
I didn't have to look up to know every eye was trained on me. "Yeah," I said. "It's all yours."
He spoke but I didn't listen. There was a time when the Turlan project mattered to me; hell, there was a time when anything mattered. It was long gone.
The meeting eventually finished and I made my way back to my office. I didn't let myself think about anything but the plan, and dug into the arrangements. It took the entire day and I only stepped out of my office for quick trips to the bathroom and printer. I forwarded all calls to voicemail, and I debated turning off my phone but there was a sliver of hope that Tiel would call or text and I couldn't risk missing that.
Shannon and Patrick held a weekly five o'clock budget meeting in her office, and I knew I'd find them there once my plans were finalized. Not wanting to return to the office after speaking with them, I grabbed my suit coat and messenger bag, and carried them down the stairs with me.
The Walsh Brothers Page 82
