Whatever the Cost (32 page)

“Lemme take you home, Pidge. Wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I allowed your husband any more worry ’bout your well-being. What d’you say?”

Liam’s anxiousness grows, spreading over his face. He doesn’t move a muscle.

“I have to call him,” Clay warns.

“I know,” Liam nods wearily.

Clay dials and says only a second later, “Found him.”

Liam can hear the shrillness of Jacen’s voice through the phone from many feet away and it just makes him feel worse.

“Nah, I’ll bring him to you. Jay... Jacen. Jacen! Hey, I know. But he’s fine. We’ll be there in five. Won’t let him out of my sight. Scout’s honor.”

Liam stares blankly down the mostly abandoned, tree-lined street, with a few stars coming out in the clear, cloudless sky. He’s unable to meet Clay’s gaze after he hangs up.

“Come on. Get in the car.”

“But the things I said to him,” Liam aches. “When he was only trying to protect me and do what he thought was best for us, for me....”

“If you’re worried about whether he’s going to forgive you, no need to worry. He was so convinced he’d lost you for good, you’re pretty much golden right now.”

The shame is too great, though. Liam remains frozen to the spot, unable to imagine facing Jacen when he sounded like he knew, positively
knew
that Liam was lying dead in a gutter somewhere—caught at last by the boogeyman or possibly done in by his own hand.

As Liam bites at his fingers, marveling at his own ability to so deeply disappoint people he loves, Clay plays his last card, saying simply, “Avery, get in the goddamned car before you break that poor kid’s heart for good.”

Expelling a held breath sharply, half-laughing, half-sobbing, Liam bites down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood and gets to his feet.

Yasha twists Jacen’s arms up behind his back, pinning them there and keeping his death grip on the thick ropes of muscle running through them as Valery leans all of her meager weight against Jacen’s chest, her hands splayed across it.

“Jacen,” she says soothingly, “Sit the fuck down.”

“Let me go!
Let me go!
” he rages, fighting against them.

“They’re on their way here! You need to wait. Two minutes.
Two minutes
and they’ll be here.”

“Get
OFF OF ME
!”

“No. We’re not letting you run out there and hurt or kill yourself for no good reason. You’re not in your right mind.”

Suddenly, Jacen stops his fierce wrestling against them and goes perfectly still. “Okay. Okay, I’m cool. I swear. I’ll sit down. Maybe you can get me a drink? There’s bourbon in that box in the corner.”

“Yeah?” Valery asks.

“Yeah,” Jacen pants, catching his breath.

Slowly, she eases off of him and stands up straight, her gaze darting to Yasha’s face every now and then. Just as slowly, Yasha releases Jacen’s arms. They fall to Jacen’s sides and he flexes them, his chest rising and falling heavily.

“Easy,” Yasha coos. “Easy....”

For a full ten seconds, Valery and Yasha actually believe that Jacen has really, finally become rational once more. Yasha is the one to detect otherwise and shouts to his wife, “Grab him!”

Growling like a crazed animal, seething and spitting, Jacen tries to get past her before she can, but Valery’s right hand shoots out, grabbing hold of Jacen by his weakest, most vulnerable spot, knowing there’s no other way to subdue him given the difference in their sizes.

Jacen cries out with exquisite pain, his voice rising a number of octaves as Valery’s fist closes up like a vise around Jacen’s testicles.

“Sit the fuck down.
Now
,” she commands viciously.

Jacen’s mouth works around a silent, choking scream as he crumples to the floor. He nods, defeated.

“Good boy,” she sighs.

The crazed, off-kilter, maybe-the-fastest-way-to-the-sidewalk-is-a-leap-from-the-window look on Jacen’s face starts to fade at last. Yasha takes a deep steadying breath, bracing his hands on his thighs. Valery goes to look for the bourbon. She finds it and some plastic cups, pouring the booze into three and handing them out. Jacen downs his in one gulp and refuses to meet their eyes.

“It’s gonna be okay, sweetie,” she assures him. “I know you don’t believe that one bit, but it will. Clay knows him better than anyone.”

Jacen takes it like a slap, wincing, but it’s evident that scenarios are still playing out in Jacen’s mind—Liam running off again, getting away from Clay and disappearing into the night, this time for good. A drive-by hit as the phone call from earlier is traced to San Luis Obispo and Liam is spotted on the side of the road, taken out by one well-aimed gunshot to the center of the head. Liam deciding that maybe all he’s good for after all is a fuck, letting the one wrong guy get too close and taking a knife to the belly, bleeding out on the pavement or in the back of someone’s van.

He twitches forward with a scared whimper, teeth gritted and ready to spring toward the door, to get to his feet again, but Yasha circles his neck from behind, hugging his chest, pulling him back flat on his ass once more, his back flush to the large box behind him, on which Yasha now sits.

“He—he could... he could be....”

“Shh.”

“He could... I-I have... I have to....”

“No. You don’t. Not this time, TJ.”

Every muscle in Jacen’s body tenses and he battles against the waking nightmares, seething through his teeth, fighting not to drown in terror.

Valery straddles his legs and sits down on them. Settling onto Jacen’s lap, she closes the circle, embracing him from the front as Yasha holds on to him from behind. She presses a tender kiss to Jacen’s temple.

“Not all the nightmares come true,” she whispers to him. “He’s going to be fine.”

But what if he’s not?
every fiber of Jacen’s being cries out.

Yasha and Valery look at one another, each thinking the same thing—that Jacen is holding on too tightly to this. That Liam is the only thing keeping him anchored to the world, and if that tenuous hold snaps, Jacen will truly be gone, lost to them forever, taken by madness. The demons chewing at the tattered edges of his soul will win.

Jacen shudders, trembling violently as they wait, like that, for Liam to return, as if Jacen knows on a base level that there is no returning for Liam, that Jacen has been forsaken for his sins, doomed to an eternity of hell, alone, without a single ray of hope left.

For the first time, Jacen thinks to himself that it would have been easier if they’d been quickly tracked and found by The Company. At least then he would have had something tangible to fight against, something concrete to lay hands on and do battle with. There would not be this creeping dread, this niggling certainty that the man he loved more than life itself was destined to endure horrors beyond Jacen’s imagining, in penance for the simple crime of finding some happiness at last, after a lifetime of subjugation.

Jacen swallows back a small, hurt, hopeless sound and Valery caresses him, soothingly.

“He’s going to be fine.”

“You’re not this much of a bastard,” Clay accuses.

They’re parked in front of Liam and Jacen’s building, just a few feet from the stairs that lead up to where Jacen is waiting. They’ve been sitting there for long minutes, in stalemate.

“You don’t know me anymore. I’m not that stupid kid I used to be. I know what the world is like. There is no happily ever after. That’s just a sad joke idiots hold on to so they don’t go and eat a bullet. The only thing waiting out there is more pain. And this time I’m the one causing it. I’m not ready for this. I can’t do this.”

“You’re right, you are causing it. Jacen is up there, waiting for you, going out of his mind, and you’re just
sitting here
!” Clay shouts.

Liam doesn’t blink or flinch. He just stares straight ahead, blankly, out toward the road unwinding before them.

“Is this really who you are now? You’re the kind of guy that just gives up? Throws in the towel and lets the people who matter to him suffer needlessly? The kind of guy that would have let Tim suffer and die alone because it was too hard for
you
to bear?”

Liam sneers, laughing maliciously, his gaze piercing like daggers. “Fuck you. Really. Fuck you.”

Clay snaps. He gets quickly out of the squad car and walks around to the passenger side. He pulls the door open and says, “Get out of the car.”

Liam doesn’t react.

“Let me rephrase. Get out of the car or I’ll make you get out of the car.”

Laughing again, Liam’s expression is cold as he gazes up at his brother and says with a grin, “Whatever way you wanna play it, baby. I like it rough.”

Clay hauls him out by the front of his shirt, dragging him to his feet and slamming him back against the side of the vehicle.

Chuckling, sucking in oxygen after the wind is forced from his lungs from the impact, Liam says, “You know, an hour or so ago I let some guy pick me up in a bar, let him take me into the alley....”

It’s perfectly clear to Clay that Liam is being completely truthful, despite the strong smell of whiskey on his breath, and the searing anger of Clay’s reaction overtakes him before he can catch himself. He punches Liam in the mouth, connecting sharply and drawing blood.

Wincing, Liam touches the tip of his tongue to his bleeding lip. He spits out a thick wad of red-tinged saliva. Liam meets Clay’s blazing eyes head-on, not backing down an inch.

“It was kind of like old times, back when Tim was home, in agony, struggling just to breathe, withered and rotting in our bed, and I was out sucking dick for a few bucks a pop, pretending Tim didn’t even exist, pretending I was someone else,
anyone
else but the stupid fuck that cared about him.”

A measure of peace comes over Liam’s face just before the second punch connects, willing it, inviting it. After he’s knocked momentarily unconscious, he struggles to think of something else to say, anything else that’ll keep Clay pounding on him, beating him to a pulp. Because the pain feels good. It feels earned, a perfect echo of the internal torment flaying Liam’s soul.

When the world swims back into actuality, Liam slurs, with a bloody, swollen lip, “Come on, you pussy. That the best you can do? Hit me again. Hit me! HIT ME!”

Liam draws back his arm, preparing to let it go, to release a punch, blindly, as his eye starts to swell just like his lip.

“HIT ME!”

He swings. Clay catches his fist and denies him the satisfaction.

“COME ON! COME ON, HIT ME!”

Clay lets go of Liam’s fist and catches him instead, wrapping him in strong arms as Liam rails against him, whimpering and starting to sob, his voice cracking.

“What’s wrong with you?! You know I need this! You know I deserve this!”

“No. You don’t,” Clay laments, not letting go, just holding Liam to him. “You didn’t deserve any of it.”

Liam’s legs give out and he releases a long-stifled, gut-deep, wailing cry of pure pain and loss, one that he’s been holding in for years, for decades.

“Come on, Pidge. I’m sorry for losing my temper like that. You sure know how to play a guy, don’t you? Come on. Time to make it right. Life is short. We’ve gotta hold on to the good stuff while we still can.”