I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “‘You’re my best friend, Lucas. And I love you, but…like a best friend. I don’t want to lose our friendship, but you need to understand that I love Liam in a way I’ll never be able to love you. I’minlove with Liam. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I wasn’t totally honest. I know this is going to hurt you, and I’m sorry. I wish I knew how to make it hurt less, but I just can’t. I understand if you can’t be my friend anymore, but this is just how things have to be.’”
“Wow.” This was Claire. “That’s some brutal honesty for you.”
I nodded. “Hit me like a fuckin’ knife to the gut.”
“What’d you say?” Ram asked.
“I didn’t say a damn thing. Didn’t know what to say. Didn’t have a single word in my head. Just…emptiness. Pain. Rage. Confusion. I don’t fuckin’ know, just…mainly it was just pain.” I hung my head. “So I did somethin’ then that set me on a course that would end up defining me as a person. I went out, bought a handle of Jack, and got obliterated. Alone. In the motel room. I just walked away from that park, went straight to the nearest liquor store, bought a handle, went to the room, locked it, chained it, put out a do not disturb sign, propped a chair in front of it, and sat and drank that whiskey outta the fuckin’ bottle until I couldn’t hear Lena’s voice in my head no more.”
Liv sniffed. “Oh, Lucas.”
I glanced at her. “What?”
Her smile was gentle. “That doesn’t define you.”
“Maybe it don’t no more, but it did. For forty years, that shit defined me. If I wasn’t drinkin’, I was thinkin’ about it. Every waking moment of my life I spent running from her, from those words—I love Liam in a way I’ll never be able to love you. I heard it on repeat, on a loop. Over and over. Getting blasted was the only way I could think of to make her voice stop.”
“It still hasn’t stopped, has it?” Liv asked.
I sighed, a long slow sad sound. “No, it hasn’t. Being sober, I’ve learned to ignore it, but I still hear her. I can move past it now, though. I’m workin’ on it. But yeah, you’re right.”
Liv rubbed my shoulder. “You’ll get rid of her voice, Lucas.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Hopefully.” I hesitated a while. “So, to finish the story, when I woke up I was in the back of the truck, in the bed of it. The truck was moving, and I just lay there in the back for a long, long time, staring up at the sky and listening to the wheels on the road, my head aching, heart cut to ribbons, what Lena had said running through my head, cutting deeper and deeper with every second. I sat up, and Liam was driving, with the women in the cab with him. We were just outside of Seattle.”
Another long silence.
“He stopped the truck, got out, came around, and stood facing me. ‘I ain’t babysitting your ass no more, Lucas.’ That’s what he said. His first words to me. I told him I don’t need him to babysit me. We argued. Fought about me drinking, about all the shit we’d been stuffing down for years. About Dad, about living in Ketchikan. He wanted to open a bar of our own; I wanted to get the hell out of Alaska. Finally, after a fuckin’ hour of bickering like little bitches, he came out with it. ‘You’re just jealous,’ he said. ‘Jealous of me because Lena chose me instead of you.’”
“Ouch,” Bax said. “That had to hurt.”
I chuckled. “You could say that. I decked him. Knocked him flat on his ass. Truth be told, it was kind of a sucker punch, but I was pissed off. ‘I ain’t jealous of you,’ I told him. ‘She belongs with me. She oughta be with me, she oughta be mine. Shewasmine, but you stole her.’”
“And she was in the truck listening to this?” Bast asked.
I nodded. “When I shouted that at Liam, she got out, told me that wasn’t fair—he hadn’t stolen her, they just fell in love.”
“Bet that helped,” Bast said, obviously sarcastic.
“Yeah, tons,” I responded, equally sarcastic. “Liam just looked at me with this pity in his eyes. I mean, I was a fuckin’ mess. I’d passed out and I don’t know what all I did after I blacked out, but I had a black eye and there was barf all over me and my clothes were ripped…never did find out what I’d done after blacking out, and don’t want to know. But man, that pity in his eyes?” I shook my head. “That was the thing that made me snap. I just…I dunno. I snapped. I attacked him, and it turned into a hell of a fight. Neither Caitlin or Lena could stop us. I was operating on pure rage born out of pain. He was just defending himself, for the most part, but it turned into its own thing. How long it went on, I don’t know. Till we were both bloody and bruised and couldn’t stand up.”
The sadness in Liv’s eyes was haunting.
“He got in the last hit. Socked me in the jaw, knocked me on my ass.” I swallowed hard. “Last thing I saw of my brother was him turning away. He tossed my bag onto the side of the road. Got in the truck and drove away. I never saw him again; never saw Lena, or Caitlin either. Never saw my dad again. I watched them drive off, my twin brother and the woman I loved. Once they was out of sight, I stood up, grabbed my bag, and started walking.”
“Where’d you go?” Rome asked.
I shrugged. “Nowhere, really. Just walked south, away from Seattle, away from Alaska. I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore, and then I hitched a ride with a trucker as far as Oregon. He dropped me off in some little one-light town, and I got a room. And a bottle. I’d taken all of my money with me when we left Ketchikan for Seattle. I think deep down I’d known I wouldn’t be back.” I traced a pattern on the bar top. “Six months of wandering, odd jobs for cash or food or a place to crash for the night…I ended up in a podunk town in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, middle of Oklahoma. Saw a sign on a factory looking for help, no experience required. I went in, got the job, started working right there and then. It was summer and I slept in a field behind the factory, under an old oak tree. A few weeks later, I got my first check, used it as a deposit on a trailer. Figured I was about as far from Alaska as I could get, and I was sick of walking. Might as well stay there. Which is what I did. I never left that town again, except for goin’ to Walmart two counties over. Forty years, I worked in that factory, drank myself stupid every night thinkin’ of Liam and Lena, and Dad.”
I shrugged, swallowed hard. “And that there is the story. First time I ever told it all to anyone, and probably it will be the last and only time.” I stood up, trying to remember how to breathe. “Ya’ll excuse me. I need to…I gotta go.”
I walked out of that bar, alone.
10
Liv
He walked out,and I let him go.
