I had my reasons for keeping my old apartment void of personal touches. I didn’t even have pictures of Coop out around the place. It just had the bare minimum needed for me to come, eat, and sleep. It was, hands down, my fuck pad. More importantly, there were no reminders of the life I’d left behind when I got out of the Marines.
I wasn’t enlisted long. I went in and got the fuck out. Don’t get me wrong; I respect the hell out of these guys. I respect the hell out of anyone willing to risk their lives for our country. I saw things and did things that can never be unseen or undone. I’ve killed, I’ve helped others kill, and I watched half of my unit blow up right in front of my face.
So when it came time for me to reenlist, I declined.
And then every day that I sat at home while my little brother was overseas on some unknown mission, I felt like I was dying a little inside.
I suspect that Maddox has his own demons that follow him from his time in the Marines. I know he’s highly decorated, but I also know that he suffered the worst out of all of us over there. The kind of shit that sticks to your skin and never, never lets go.
“Are you just going to stand there or do you actually plan on helping me clean up your shit? And where the hell is Cat?”
“Look, Mad, I know it looks bad—”
“Looks bad? This is what you think looks bad? My fucking flat screen is shattered! Want to tell me what in the hell happened?”
“Uh…okay.”
He just stands there, his hands on his hips, and waits.
I’m not afraid of much. I’ve stared down the barrels of more guns than I can count. I’ve fought hand to hand with terrorists. I’ve defused bomb after bomb. But looking into the stone-cold depth of Maddox Locke’s soul… Yeah, I’m man enough to admit that he scares the ever-loving shit out of me.
Not knowing the best way to even start explaining the clusterfuck of events that led up to the destruction of his pad, I start the best way I can—stuttering. “I… Well, you see. I…uh.”
He looks at me, his jaw twitching with frustration, his eyebrow cocked, and his nostrils flaring with what I’m sure is pure, unleashed rage. Shit.
“I might have brought a chick home the other night. She may or may not have gotten a little upset when I basically told her to leave.”
“You bought a chick home. To my house? A chick you don’t know? To MY HOUSE!?”
“I know you’re pissed, Mad. I’m sorry. I just…forgot.”
“You just forgot?” he mimics. “When you just forgot, did you happen to be swimming in one of these many bottles that I keep picking up off the floor?”
Really, what’s the point of responding to him? He knows—he fucking knows—how hard it’s been. If anyone knows what it’s like for me right now, it’s him. Which is the reason I left Beck and Dee’s place to begin with. I couldn’t handle the looks of pure pity that would come from Dee or the talks Beck would try and throw my way.
I’m lost right now. Trapped in a black hole of nothing. Coop was the last thing I had, the last something real. With him gone, I just don’t know what to live for. It sounds ridiculous even to me, I know, but he was everything I’ve ever lived for since the day our piece-of-shit mother decided that she loved being a cracked-out whore over a mother.
“This shit needs to stop.”
I was so lost in my head I didn’t even notice Maddox walking right into my space. We’re both evenly matched in body and bulk, but I know he could snap me in half if he wanted to.
“Brother, I don’t know how,” I whisper.
“You don’t know how to what?”
“I don’t know how to move on. I don’t know how to escape this...this darkness.” My voice cracks, and even though it’s the last thing I want, I crack right along with it. “He’s gone, Mad. He’s fucking gone and I don’t know how to get past knowing that he’s never going to come back. That my brother is dead. He’s dead and I wasn’t there to do a goddamn thing about it. You know where I was when I got that call? When I got the call telling me that I needed to get my ass here because it didn’t look good? I was balls-deep in some bitch I’d picked up. While I was screwing around, my brother was bleeding out, and that is fucking killing me.”
With tears falling down my face, my fists clamped tight, and my body rigid with anger, I crumble. I can’t even meet his eyes, because if I see the same pity that everyone else has thrown my way in the months that have followed Coop’s murder, I know I’ll snap.
“Do you honestly think you’re the only motherfucker who knows loss? Don’t get me wrong. It fucking sucks that Coop is gone, but do you think he would want you wasting your life away, swimming in bottle after bottle and whore after whore? I know darkness, Asher. I know what it’s like to live the same goddamn nightmare over and over again, but at some point, you need to wake the fuck up and realize there’s more to live for.” He shakes his head, looking off to the side and out the window of his apartment, where the sun is blazing bright.
Another reminder that life goes on.
“You’re killing yourself for what? To keep your mind on some continuous loop of grief? Constantly beating yourself up over something you have no control over? He’s dead, Ash. He’s dead and there isn’t anything you can do to bring him back. We all miss him—trust me on that. And pretty soon, if you don’t turn yourself around, you will successfully drink yourself to your own death, and please tell me what the hell that will fucking accomplish?”
“What the fuck do you know about loss, Maddox?” I scream, losing my tight hold on the control that’s been my only weapon against crumbling into nothing the last few months.
“I know every-fucking-thing about loss, Asher Cooper. I know what it’s like to lose your family, your friends, your life like you’ve always known it, and yourself. I fucking know what it’s like to have NOTHING, and trust me, what you feel right now is heavy, but it doesn’t hold a fucking candle. Work out your shit. Talk it out, fight it out, but stop fucking drinking it out. When you’re ready to take that step, you let me fucking know, but meanwhile, stop bringing sluts back to my house…and find my damn cat!”
He storms past me, knocking my shoulder so hard I fall right on my ass in the middle of his living room, and the only think I can think of is that he’s fucking right, but I have no clue how to fix my life.