Page 95 of Reckless

“He needs loyal men right now or he won’t be able to do what he has to. But mostly he gave you something that his father took from him a year ago.”

“What is that?’

“The right to make your own choice.”

The doctor gave me a pill bottle filled with painkillers and let me leave. I went straight to the bar. I didn’t have anything of value there, but since I was leaving that place behind for good, I wanted to check my office and the basement. Just in case.

The bar was closed, just as I thought. There was something shiny on my desk, that caught my eye all the way from the door. I couldn’t really miss it. It shone bright in orange, right in the middle of the dark grey and black interior.

I walked over and took the keychain, looking at it as if I saw it for the first time. In a way I did. I saw it for the first time since I found out I had feelings for Hannah Spencer.

Being the mess that I was, I had to find out I was in love with her the moment she decided she wanted nothing to do with me.

I took my keys and put them on the keychain, then walked out of that bar for very last time.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tyler

TwelvedaysafterIsaw Hannah running up the stairs away from me, I was still a coward and continued to postpone the call I should have made the moment I got my phone back.

I spent a day or two debating what to tell her, to get her to listen to me. And everything seemed idiotic. Around day nine after the beating, I realized I was fucking it up even more by staying silent so long. But I still didn’t call.

Being alone with my thoughts reached a new level of unbearable, so I invested my free time into drinking in the nearest bar.

“What is that?” A female voice asked. It was coming from the woman sitting next to me at the bar counter one evening. I lifted the item I was holding up in the air.

“My keychain.”

That was the only explanation I offered. I wasn’t going to start telling a total stranger that it had been glued to my hand ever since I found it on the desk in my former office.

“It looks old,” she tried to maintain the conversation. “Why don’t you get a new one?”

Because I fucking want this one.

My phone lit up with a call. Clementine. I had started to dodge her calls again, after she yelled at me over the phone about Hannah. All I understood from her shouting was that Hannah kept everything incriminating a secret. Just like she kept the secret about our one-night stand five years ago.

The desire to be close to Hannah overwhelmed me, so I decided to take Clem’s call and devour the crumbs she would offer me. If any.

“Hey, little monster. What’s up?”

“I have news,” she said all businesslike. “You were right.”

“I have to disagree. I’m almost never right.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled, annoyed at my melodramatic behavior.

“We have known for a while now, but I was so mad at you, I couldn’t bring myself to call and tell you,” she paused. “It’s a girl.”

The world changed in that moment. I didn’t know how exactly, but I felt it change.

“It is?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I get girls. I can handle a girl.”

“You can piss a girl off, that’s for sure.” She didn’t mention Hannah, but it was in her tone. The inkling that hurt her best friend.

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