Page 52 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)

LINCOLN

Idrummed my fingers on the table as I anxiously waited for Dean to show up.

I needed someone to talk to, someone to help me sort out the shit tumbling through my head.

Except he was late, and now I was drunk.

I’d started with one drink to ease the anxiety, but that was quickly followed by two and three more when Dean didn’t show up.

It was just a hazard of his job, and I knew that.

“Sorry!” A loud voice pulled me from my anxious spiral. I rotated in the booth to see Dean weaving around a drunk bachelorette party with a quick apology. Watching them swoon over him made me chuckle.

Objectively, I knew Dean was attractive with his cropped dark hair and bright blue eyes. He even had the tall, muscular, and tanned thing going on for him. But we were so busy being each other’s emotional support floatees to keep from drowning in our trauma that I’d never see him in that way.

“I’m late, I’m late,” he said in a rush, dropping into the seat across from me. He huffed out a quick breath. “I had to wash the vomit off, but the smell wouldn’t come off my shoes, so I had to buy new shoes on the way over.”

“Sounds gross,” I muttered.

”It was.”

“I started without you,” I told him as I downed the last of my third glass.

“Oh, it’s one of those kinds of nights,” Dean replied. “You want to tell me what’s going on? Or are we just drinking until we need a cab home?”

Ah, yes. I was the one who set up this little chat.

“So… question,” I began slowly, “as a paramedic, are you bound by law to report illegal activity if you hear about it? Off the clock.”

“Not generally speaking, but aren’t you a lawyer?” he countered, frowning slightly. “Aren’t you supposed to report a crime?”

I made a sound, weighing my options about how to approach everything. The alcohol had my head buzzing, making it harder to think straight and harder to form a thought.

“I did a… thing,” I admitted. “Bad thing? Good thing? I definitely did an illegal thing.”

“Color me monumentally intrigued,” Dean said. Lifting a finger, I beckoned him closer as I leaned on the table. He crossed his arms and inched closer.

“I got married,” I whispered. The humor drained from his face as I said the words, and I braced for the backlash.

“I need a drink for this shit,” he murmured. Leaning out of the booth, he snapped his fingers and yelled, “Hudson! Hey! More beer!”

The bar was big enough to be busy but small enough for Dean to be heard over the noise. A bartender covered in tattoos with unkempt chestnut hair waved at him.

“He’s attractive,” I commented as I shamelessly ogled the guy.

“He’s just Hudson,” Dean retorted like that meant something to me. I made a face but said nothing. There was probably more to their story, but I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to be both a mess and supportive at the same time.

“That’s his fourth glass, and that’s your first glass,” Hudson said when he joined us, setting the two beers down for us. I took mine immediately because I needed the liquid courage to make myself talk.

“Fabulous,” Dean replied. “We’re going to need them.”

“Don’t drink too much. I’m watching you, Matthews,” Hudson told him with a wink. My gaze flicked between the two of them. There was definitely more to their story.

“I can handle my alcohol, Wilcox!” he shouted after the bartender.

“Friend?” I asked when we were alone.

“Co-worker,” he replied. “Firefighter.”

“Fascinating.”

“Not as fascinating as the fact that your ass got married,” he shot back. Ah, yes. There was the backlash I’d been expecting. “What the fuck, Lincoln?”

“I just—”

“And that’s not illegal,” he interrupted.

“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s not.”

“Then what the fuck did you do that you consider illegal?” Dean asked while I took a long drink

“Insurance fraud.”

“Insurance fraud?” he exclaimed, and I shushed him quickly. “Lincoln!”

“It’s not that bad!” I retorted. The look he gave me said every little thought he wasn’t telling me. I conceded, “Okay, it’s a little bad.”

“It’s fucking illegal, that’s what it is,” he snapped. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“He needed help!”

“Who needed help?”

“Nash,” I said as if he knew who Nash was.

“You’re killing me, Lincoln,” he muttered. Reaching across the table, he took the beer glass from me. I tried to protest, but he was having none of my shit. “All right, look. Why don’t you start from the beginning, okay? And no beer for you until you tell me how this happened.”

And so I told him everything—minus the cum-drizzled coconut.

I couldn’t tell him about that one. Besides, I didn’t know Dean that well.

But I told him about randomly running into Nash, his headaches, the hospital, my insurance stipulations, my actual proposal, and the fact that we were married and living together.

At the end of it all, he just sat there staring at me, absorbing every bit of word vomit I’d spewed on the table.

Admittedly, there was a tiny sense of relief in him knowing.

I needed someone to know. I didn’t care about the insurance fraud part.

No, that part didn’t bother me in the least. My resolve was still there.

It was Nash and how he’d burrowed his way under my skin. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

“Lincoln, I say this with all the fucking love in the world,” Dean began finally, “but you’re an idiot.”

“I—”

“I wasn’t done,” he cut me off. “What the actual fuck were you thinking?”

“I—”

“I’m not touching the insurance fraud. You’re a lawyer. You know what kind of deep shit you’re in when someone finds—”

“If!” I interjected. I didn’t need him putting that out into the universe on my behalf.

“When someone finds out. After everything you’ve been through, what the hell were you thinking? Marrying a guy off the street and bringing him home with you? Do you realize what you’re setting yourself up for?”

“But he’s different,” I mumbled into my glass after I grabbed it back. Was drinking my best solution? Absolutely not. I just didn’t particularly care.

“He’s diff—Jesus Christ, Lincoln,” he scoffed. “You got attached to this guy, didn’t you?”

And therein was the problem.

I said nothing. I didn’t need to. From the look on Dean’s face, my attachment issues were written all over my expression.

“Are you a masochist?” Dean demanded. “After everything you’ve been through, you have to be a goddamn masochist to put yourself through this.”

“He’s not a bad guy!”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do—”

“No, you don’t!” he snapped over me. “You’ve known him for what? A couple of weeks?”

“I don’t expect you to understand it,” I said, “but we have a connection.”

One I had no idea how to explain to anyone. I was painfully aware of Nash right down to my very core. I couldn’t put words to it. Try as I might, I couldn’t make heads or tails of this wild and inexplicable thing between us.

“Lincoln.” His voice dropped in volume but not in frustration. “You need to use that beautiful fucking brain of yours for five minutes here—the one that got you that law degree. Letting your heart do all the talking is what got you in that whole mess with Chris.”

“That wasn’t my fucking fault,” I shot back.

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed quickly. “But we also have to take accountability for the choices we made while in the situation, and you, my friend, think with your heart and not your head. You can’t do this.”

“Are you saying I’m not allowed to date?” I frowned.

“What I’m saying is you can’t marry a man you just fucking met!” he hissed. “Date? Fine. I don’t fucking care. But be smart about it, or you’re just going to end up hurt again.”

“I’m not…” My words trailed off as I glanced around the bar.

I wanted to believe that I was right, and he was wrong.

I wanted to believe that Nash wouldn’t hurt me.

And maybe he wouldn’t. Not intentionally.

But the dark stuff he battled? That scared me.

There was so much depth to Nash that I couldn’t touch.

He was an amalgam of things I couldn’t begin to understand.

I wanted to, but I couldn’t. “Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”

“Lincoln.” His entire demeanor changed, and I backtracked quickly, realizing he thought I was talking about my own thoughts.

“Not me. I’m fine.” Or at least as fine as someone with my history could be. “Nash has a history with suicide, and I just… I don’t understand why. I don’t understand how someone gets to that point. How does someone want to kill themselves?”

“Because sometimes the pain is too much,” Dean whispered, “and you’ll do whatever it takes to make it go away.”

The absolute certainty in his voice was harrowing.

I scrutinized him. Dean’s life was nightmare fuel.

I was all too aware that I only knew a fraction of the awful things he’d been through.

I knew how much it affected him—how he couldn’t handle being touched, how he couldn’t maintain friendships, how he’d been alone for most of his life.

I couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of his pain.

“You’re lucky, Lincoln,” he said. “You’re lucky that you don’t know what that’s like. That’s a burden you don’t want to understand.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied softly, but he just shook his head.

We sat in silence, but Dean’s tortured thoughts were loud, written clear as day on his face. The guilt nagged at me. That was my fault, and I couldn’t fix it for him either.

“What I’m trying to say,” he began with a sigh, “is that I love you, Lincoln, and you’re the only person who gets me. We don’t hang out or talk regularly, but I do care about you. I care about what happens to you. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

I kept my mouth shut and merely nodded, not really sure how to respond to that.

“Just be careful,” Dean continued. “Please?”

“I will.”