Page 11 of A Perfect Holiday
But I ended the call and then raked my fingers through my hair. My phone rang again while I also got a text. Brax was calling and Booker texting. I knew the next step would be Brax showing up at my house since he had no idea I wasn’t there, but I couldn’t think straight. I had so much pent-up anger, and a tight ache lodged somewhere around my heart.
I threw my phone on Book’s counter and went into his room. Rummaging through his clothes, I found his riding leathers.Luckily we were about the same size. I put them on and snagged his leather jacket, shrugging into it before finding the keys to the bike hanging on a hook near the garage door.
I needed to get away.
***
I was far from home, and for me, it felt damn strange to be on the open road, traveling away from Verity and Duel. But I was stripped and ragged and torn. Feeling as damaged as I had so many years ago. In the saddlebag of Booker’s sleek, powerful motorcycle was a full bottle of Jack I’d picked up in Suttontowne before I peeled out of town.
Back when I was in high school, I had earned my bad boy image, and I was falling apart and heading for a crash of epic proportions. Next came the struggle to get sober and stay that way, partly because I was sick of feeling out of control and wanted my life to be different, partly because I loved my ma and didn’t want to see her unhappy, and partly because I had major daddy issues, and mostly because my brothers had been there for me every step of the way.
I was sure their tripdar was going off. I was also sure they were blowing up my phone, and Brax was out looking for me. Sure that Verity was calling and texting me.
I felt a twinge that I was adding to my wife’s stress and misery by being silent, but I had so much anger built up, so much fear, I didn’t dare engage with her right now. Which was the biggest reason I tooled out of there and left my phone on Booker’s countertop.
I needed speed. I needed wide open spaces. I needed to be by myself.
I tore up the miles. The sun beat down, turning the asphalt into a wavering ribbon of silver in front of me, but I couldn’t outrun myself or the hollow feeling camped out in my gut.
I passed through Crowley, Jennings, and by the time I hit Lake Charles, a good-sized city in Calcasieu Parish, my hands were aching, the clothes under my leathers were soaked with sweat, and I was thoroughly irritated.
I found a B&B, then hit the shower. I had every intention of drinking myself into a stupor.
But intention and hard, cold reality were two different things. I had stopped touching the stuff—the odd beer now and then, or sometimes a shot of Scotch, but that was it. I’d learned more than I ever wanted to know about hooch from my wild outlaw days, and a full bottle sitting on the bedside table was just a little too much hard, cold reality.
So I faced the night stone-cold sober. Stuffing both pillows under my head, I stared at the ceiling, trying to wrestle with the hollow feeling that had dogged me since Verity told me she had complications after Duel.
I’d hoped I could sort this out, get a handle on what I was feeling. I couldn’t outrun all the things chasing me. And I sure as hell couldn’t outrun myself—or images and memories and the longing for her.
Holy Mary Verity.
The preacher’s daughter.
My wife.
The love of my life for most of my life.
The love I had fought for tooth and nail.
But it wasn’t just that; there were other disturbing memories taking shape at the edges of my mind, memories I didn’t want to let out. I had learned a long time ago how to erect barriers; even as a kid, I’d known how to do it, and when that failed me, I substance abused whatever I could get my hands on until I had my barriers up and solid again.
My daddy was gone, and my thoughts of how I was supposed to act as a father had been skewed when I believed my daddywas a no-count thief and deserter of his family. My gut clenched thinking that I was here, away from Verity, but I knew in my heart I wasn’t deserting her.
But my daddy had disappeared, and it was only recently that we found out he wasn’t the man we believed him to be. In fact, he had been an upstanding guy.
Suddenly, I wanted to make him proud of me, even though he wasn’t here to see it.
My anger had a way of burning to ash. I wasn’t one to hold onto it. Shifting through those ashes, I knew what I would find. The core belief that Verity and I were a unit, unbreakable, solid and steadfast.
Maybe she hadn’t meant to keep me ignorant of her inability to hold a child in her body, but it still felt like a betrayal to me, and I needed to sort that out.
I got back on the bike in the morning and rode, ending up in this small run-down touristy shop and gas station that sat on the edge of the bayou. I gassed up the bike and grabbed something cold from the Coke machine outside, then wandered into the shop to stretch my legs. It had the usual selection of souvenir goods: some hoodoo voodoo stuff, T-shirts, a rack of magazines, a carousel of paperbacks. But in the back, tucked away in a corner, was a glass display case of beautiful jewelry.
Sitting dead center, on a piece of worn, faded blue velvet, was a ring. The workmanship was detailed and intricate, the design and quality that of a master silversmith, but it was the plain white card underneath it that caught my attention. Inked in beautiful black script were these words: “The Listening Ring.” And below that a few sentences. “The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.”
The ashes of my anger stirred as if a wind blew through them. I stared at the ring for the longest time, a taut feeling spreading through me.
And it was while I was standing, looking at the damned ring, that my conscience caught up with me, my perspective changed, and I knew our marriage was doomed, and in turn I would die, if I didn’t learn to listen to Verity. Set all my shit aside and give her my attention.
