Page 6 of Indecent Lies

He liked the quiet family town, the work and the people.

He found he wasn’t drinking as much either, choosing to fall into his motel bed at night to sleep soundlessly until it was time to get up again.

Nor was he warming the beds of faceless women.

Sex and booze were never the formula to forget any troubles and he learned that pretty quick. He didn’t like the hangovers and he hated knowing he was using bodies to make himself feel better for a few minutes.

The truth was, he’d fucked up so much he couldn’t see a time when he wouldn’t feel guilty for betraying his friends… family really.

So, day by day he just did what he could and went on living.

Everyone knew him as Tait Hunt. Not one person called him Texas and for weeks that felt strange. He’d gotten used to his road name; it gave him a purpose in life he’d never felt before, joining the ranks of the Renegade Souls, but he’d seen to it that he fucked that up royally.

So, Tait he was.

That night, after saying bye to Austin, he climbed onto his bike and rode a few miles down the road into town and mounted the stairs to the second-floor motel room he rented by the week. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was kept clean by a daily maid service and he didn’t need much anyway.

More tired than usual, after digging a trench for most of the day, he staggered into the shower and let the cooling water fall over his head while he sudded up with soap and cleaned off the daily grime.

Once he was dressed in black sweats, leaving his feet and chest bare, he ordered a sausage and onion pizza to be delivered and crawled onto the bed.

It was small and lumpy in comparison to the king size, high raised bed he had back home. Fuck, he missed that bed.

Home. Could he even call it that now?

If not, then he needed to think about getting rid of his loft apartment sometime soon.

Cut his last and final tie to the city he’d loved for years.

Until then, it would stand empty.

The last cut, he knew, which was always the deepest.

He thought he was done hurting but as he lay on his back, scrolling through his phone newsfeed, he got a jolt through his chest seeing an email in his inbox.

After reading it, he knew he should have left it untouched, because now his guts felt on fire.

Dread and that old guilt weighed him down until he had to roll himself off the bed and he walked the short distance to grab the lone bottle of Jack Daniels, pouring three fingers into the glass, he downed it in one, the burn chasing through his stomach did little to moderate his anxious feeling.

Looking over at the bed with his taunting phone laid face up, he inhaled slowly and ran a hand through his growing beard.

He’d never had this much facial hair before.

Always perfectly groomed.

Perfectly pressed clothes.

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

He scoffed at that. He was a fucking liar and a joke.

Nothing was fucking perfect, and certainly nothing about his life.

He’d straddled two lines for the last few years and his realization had been he was just as fucked up as everyone else.

If not more so because he marched into his crimes with both eyes wide open.

It didn’t matter if he had reasons.