Page 77 of The Ones We Fight For

“Go barefoot. I don’t care. Just get in the car.”

If Talia wasn’t already aware that he was two seconds from taking her on the floor of her bedroom, then his urgency to get the hell out of her house probably revealed him.

“Walker!” Talia protested when they got halfway down the hall, her feet still bare.

“Fine,” Walker grumbled and backtracked to her room, striding straight over to her closet to snatch a pair of gray heels off her shoe rack. “These,” he decided, holding them up between them.

“Those work,” Talia agreed.

Walker took several hasty steps in her direction and held out one of the heels. Her eyes bore into his as she used his arm as a balance beam, sliding the first shoe on and then the other. He breathed steadily through his nose and wasted no time escaping her bedroom once both shoes were on her feet. Talia practically had to sprint after him in her stilts to catch up. It maybe wasn’t the most chivalrous thing to leave her in the dust, but it was either that or doing the most unchivalrous thing and ravaging her against the wall.

The ride to the restaurant was mostly silent apart from Walker tapping his finger against the wheel and the music Talia had turned up—thankfully, not any love songs. He was still doing his best not to imagine her standing in front of her mirror or lying on her back with her hair splayed across a pillow.

It’s just a date, it’s just a date, it’s just a date. The mantra Walker chanted in his head was failing miserably.

“So,” Talia interrupted his internal war, cutting through his thoughts like a hot knife in butter. “Should we talk about this, or are you just going to act weird the whole time?”

“I just saw my best friend naked. Excuse me for taking some time to process it.” Walker tried to make it sound sarcastic like hey, that was a funny little accident back there. No biggie, I’m totally chill. But he was not, in fact, chill.

“I wasn’t naked! And I’ve seen you mostly naked already. Now we’re even.”

Walker balked. “What? No you haven’t. When?”

Talia raised an eyebrow. “When I brought Piper home and you tried to dive bomb away from her vomit.”

Vomit! Walker clung to the word, trying to redirect all thoughts to something disgusting to calm himself down.

“Okay, I was wearing pants,” he argued. “Wait, did you check me out?”

“Don’t get cocky!” Talia chided. “You were an asshole. I was mostly trying to figure out why God gave you so many muscles when you were such a jerk.”

“That’s not a ‘no,’” Walker pointed out, a smirk growing on his face as he parked the car outside the restaurant. “Was I really that bad?”

“I believe your exact words when you opened the door to find me and Piper standing there were ‘what did you do to her?’ as if I’d brought her over to my house for a few keg stands and some night caps.”

“Keg stands and night caps have very different vibes,” Walker laughed, reaching over to unbuckle Talia’s seatbelt for her. “My dad was more into night caps, but scratch the night part and make it the entire day and then pass out at about six-thirty p.m.”

“My dad usually passed out after drinking a fifth of Scotch and throwing a tantrum.” She said it with a lilt of comedy, but Walker found himself immediately boiling over with rage, the joke falling flat. He released his own seatbelt with an aggressive, stiff-fingered jab. Talia noticed and reached out to touch his arm. “It’s okay. I don’t need you to protect me. He’s gone.”

“I know that. I want him to still be alive,” Walker seethed.

Talia’s hand fell away. “What would you do?”

Walker took a thoughtful breath. “I think I would feel better if I could physically punish him. For you, for Cole, for Paisley. I never want to be like him or like my dad. It’s like they were only here to cause destruction and pain.” The words flowed easily from his mouth, like they always did when he talked to Talia, but Walker still felt a jolt of guilt for speaking that way about his dad. While it always bothered Walker that his dad never accepted that he had a problem, never fought against his sickness hard enough to be present, he still felt a pang of affection for him. The memories weren’t all bad. “Do you ever worry that you’ll end up just like him?”

“Like my dad?”

Walker nodded.

“Yes. All the time.” Talia gave him a somber head shake. “He was so angry all the time. I don’t ever want to be that bitter. Sometimes I feel like I am that bitter, and it terrifies me.”

Walker bobbed his head, a simple acknowledgement. He knew Talia well enough to not contradict or dispute her feelings. She wasn’t anything like her father, but Walker understood how it felt to see parts of yourself and wonder where they came from.

“My dad was…” Walker paused. “It was like he just couldn’t control himself, ya know? Nothing was ever good enough to pull him out of it. Not me. Not Cole. Sometimes I think I’m like that. Like I can’t accomplish what I want to accomplish because I’m in my own way. I used to wish Dad would fall in love or something, and maybe then whoever he fell in love with would be good enough for him to go get some help. It’s stupid. I think he might have been in love with my mom, but she was just as sick. Or, at least, I assume so, since she died of an overdose. I never really knew her, but maybe my dad did. Cole always said Dad was broken before Mom died, but maybe he just felt helpless. It’s not like we had a lot of money lying around when I was a kid, to send him to rehab, but I just wanted him to snap out of it. I just wanted him to be there.”

Talia grabbed his hand and squeezed. “You’re good enough, Walker. You are. I wish he would have pulled out of it, for you and for Cole.”

At least for Walker, the reason for his dad’s negligence was understandable. Jeff Cohen was a different story. The anger and aggression that man had to have living just under the surface of his skin to ever be able to look at Talia or any other woman and want to harm her was pure evil. Walker’s stomach churned, disgust pricking at the back of his neck. “Where did he hit you?” he asked.

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