Page 74 of Dirty Beasts: Chance

He sighs, a long, bitter, resigned sound. “My cousins, and my uncle. I’msofuckin’ angry at them, Nik. It burns inside me like acid. It’s like that sour stomach the day after you’ve had way too much to drink, but worse. It’s eating away me from the inside and I don’t know what to fuckin’ do about it.” He shakes his head. “Your girl, Kelly—earlier, before we left, she said somethin’ that’s stuck in my craw. She said that we don’t forgive people sothey’llfeel better, we forgive people sowewill.”

“And you’re thinking, if you can figure out how to forgive the people who got you hooked on meth and fucked up your life, maybe you’ll finally feel…” I trail off, unsure how he’d feel.

“Free,” he fills in. “I’d finally feel truly free. Being angry at them, blaming them…it’s weighing me down. It’s got me trapped in this fuckin’ cycle of bitterness and resentment and guilt. Like, I made that choice. I did that. No one else but me. So it’s not their fault, it’s mine. But then a little voice starts whispering that I was fuckin’ wasted, I could barely stay on my feet—and mama, you got no clue how much booze it takes to put me in that state. Bottles of whiskey, I’m talking—bottle-z, plural.” He shakes his head. “I was so far gone I think I’d have done anything I was told. I think I thought it was pot. I don’t even remember smoking it, to be honest. It’s just this hazy, vague memory of the whole world spinning and my cousin Eddie handing me a pipe and telling me to try it. After that? Nothing. And that little voice is like, it’s Eddie’s fault, not mine. I wouldn’t have hit that pipe if I’d known what it was. But I didn’t ask. And I was the one to get myself so shit-faced I was incapable of even asking. So I just…I go in circles, and I get angry at them and at myself…” he trails off, shrugging.

“Do you think you have PTSD?”

He frowns, paws a hand through his loose, wild, tangled, wind-blown black hair. “I mean, yeah. You don’t do the shit I’ve done, see the shit I seen, and not have some kind of trauma from it. I have nightmares. Not all the time, but I have ’em. I get flashbacks. But…” He shrugs, groaning a sigh. “I just think of my buddy Jameson. He tried out for Recons with Rev and me and a few others. Good dude. Solid. Dependable. Funny. Then one day he just…couldn’t handle it anymore. We got back from an op and…he never came back from the shower. I went to check on him, and he was just standing there, staring at nothing, shaking all over. The water was ice cold, but he didn’t notice. He pulled it together, to a degree. Rotated out, went home. His family has a ranch in Oklahoma and I guess he was okay for a while. And then he snapped. Thought he was downrange, in combat. Totally lost in his head, in the past, I dunno. I guess eventually through a lot of therapy and getting a support dog, he’s able to function again, but…he ain’t the same.” He shrugs, flipping a palm to the sky. “I’m not there, and so I guess I figure I’m fine. Like I said, I have my moments, but for the most part, I’m okay. I think in part, because Rev and I came from such a fucked-up life already, combat wasn’t so much of a shock to either of us. I dunno, though, I’m just guessing.”

“I guess I just wonder if maybe it’s a spectrum, right? And it manifests in different ways and maybe for you it’s not overt, not like your friend Jameson, but it’s still there, and the drinking and getting hooked on tweak…maybe that was part of the way you were trying to cope with it. I’m obviously not any kind of an expert, but…”

He nods. “I think you’re right. I just…I can’t use it as an excuse.”

“No, I’m not saying it’s an excuse. You and I, maybe more than anyone, understand the necessity of taking responsibility for our choices and not trying to excuse or justify them. But I think we can allow for mitigating circumstances. Not excusing, just…explaining, maybe. Or…understanding, for ourselves, how we got to where we were. Because before you can forgive your cousins, I think you gotta forgive yourself.” I grin at him. “Weren’t you the one telling me about Rev learning to forgive himself?”

He groans a laugh. “Like I told you, I’m good at knowing the right thing to say and being there for other people. I ain’t so good at taking my own advice.”

I curl my arm around his and rest my head on his shoulder—I feel self-conscious doing it. Silly. Girly. I’ve never been that girl—never had a boyfriend of the cuddling and PDA variety. I’ve never been…good at overt displays of affection, receiving or giving. My mom and Erin aren’t that type, either. In fact, the only regular hugs I ever got were from Gram.

But with Chance, I feel an opportunity to be someone new. To be different. And I remember a conversation we had back when we first met—not that long ago chronologically, but emotionally, it feels like ages ago—about how Myka gave Rev a kind of sweetness that cured the darkness in him. Or, at least, helped him emerge from the darkness and find a new version of himself. Or something like that.

I told Chance he’d never get that from me. Because I’ve never gotten it from anyone. Mom loves me, Erin loves me, Gram loves me, but it’s not that kind of love. And I thought, then, when I had that conversation with Chance, that I’d lost forever whatever love I may have had from them.

But now…

Things feel different.

For me.

For him.

Forus, because somehow, I feel like anusmay actually be possible.

And I don’t think he’d ever come out and say it in so many words, but he wants, maybe evencraves, that tenderness he’s seen Rev and Kane both receive. He saw what it’s done for them, and he wants that for himself.

God knows he’s earned it, from me. Why he wants it with me, what he saw in me, I’m not sure. But I’m not going to argue anymore. I can’t. Because I want what he’s offering.

Fuck, Ineedit.

I need to feel loved. Not just by my mom or Erin or Gram or Kelly…

I want and need what Chance is offering me. The word “love” hasn’t been floated. That’d be nuts—we just met. But it’s there, in the ether between us.

That’s what this could be.

And so, I suppose for me, the next step is to try on for size the act of showing sweetness to him.

When I lean into him and rest my cheek on his huge, hard, solid bicep, he twists and kisses the crown of my head.

And it’s a kiss I feel down to my bones. It makes me shudder all over, because it seems to melt something inside me. Rattles the walls around my heart.

“I need to go to Hawaii,” Chance murmurs.

“Well, I’ve got nowhere to be, and I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii.” I feel shaky and nervous, as I try out another attempt at showing him sweetness—I palm his cheek, turn his face down to mine, lift up, kiss him.

Not hungrily, not hot and wild. Soft. Tender. Slow. Just lips damp and warm on his, my fingers drifting around to the back of his neck, into his hair, curling over the shell of his ear, tracing the line of his jaw and the soft scratchiness of his beard.

When the kiss breaks, our foreheads meet, rolling together. “Wow,” he murmurs. “That was…a hell of a kiss, mama.”