On Solid Ground Read online

  “You okay over there?” Beck waves his hand in front my face. “Go anywhere fun?” He laughs, but then rubs his hands over his thighs—a gesture that seems born from nervousness.

  Shaking my head, I try my best to clear away the not-so-friendly thoughts that were just there.

  “So, Berta,” he prompts.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, the truck was huge and I knew we’d be spending a ton of time in it. It was going to be our home essentially.” Though I try to contain it, my voice takes on this thin, wispy quality. The memories crash over me with tidal force, threatening to pull me under, weigh me down, and make breathing impossible.

  “So Berta it was,” he fills the deafening silence for me, understanding the reasoning for my name choice and seemingly okay with not needing to know the reasoning for my near-breakdown. Picking up on the change in my demeanor, Beck drops that story by stepping out of the Jeep. “Come on,” he scans the lot, “looks like everyone else is already here.”

  Thankful for the air in my lungs and the calming force walking in front of me, I step into the bar. The sounds of the loud rock music and the aromas from the deep fryer welcome me as I make my way inside. Most of the people here look like Beck—bearded and tattooed, your stereotypical ‘bad news crowd.’ Feeling mildly out of place, I keep slightly behind Beck as he greets his friends. They all seem to offer him a sad look of condolence or of understanding—I know the look well enough to see it on other people. It’s a look I hate—one of pity that brews nothing but self-loathing on my part. But seeing it on their faces, knowing that it’s directed at Beck, makes me wonder what put it there in the first place.

  “Dax, this is Ty.” He pauses to take a sip from the beer he’s just been handed from the bucket of longnecks sitting in the middle of the table. “He owns the shop with me.”

  Handing me a beer, Ty chin-nods at me, too busy finishing off his own drink to say anything. After wiping a vividly colored forearm across his mouth, he holds out his fist and grunts a “hello” before turning around to grab another bottle. “Beck told me about the piece he did for you,” he mouths around the glass.

  “He does amazing work. Thing fucking itches like hell, though.” We share a small laugh and then I take a sip of my beer.

  Catching Beck’s face twist in what I can only call embarrassment, I have to say I feel anything but ashamed knowing that he talked about me to his friend—even if it was strictly for business purposes. But the look on Beck’s face suggests it was more than just work-related chatter in which my name was brought up.

  “Lube,” Ty announces to no one in particular before looking directly at me. “Keep that shit lubed up and you’ll be good as gold.”

  Choking on my beer, I laugh at his response. Lube is always necessary, I think to myself. Beck shakes his head as he smacks Ty upside of his. “Dude, chill,” Beck admonishes. Even if it’s jokingly so, the threat is there.

  “The fuck, man?” Ty whines, rubbing a hand over the spot where Beck just smacked him. “I’m sure he knows a thing or two about lube,” Ty adds, winking over at me, before giving Beck a much less friendly look.

  Waving a handful of darts in my face, Beck pulls me over to an open board. “Don’t mind him,” he explains before effortlessly tossing a dart. “He can be a real ass sometimes,” he adds, sinking yet another dart even closer to the bullseye.

  After his last throw, Beck struts over to the board, his ass and legs perfectly showcased in his jeans. Maybe it’s the beer I’ve already downed that’s making my tongue a little looser, or maybe it’s just being here with Beck. It could be knowing he was talking about me with Ty and that he was drawing me naked. All of that paired together somehow puts me at ease. So as he hands me the darts for my turn, I let my eyes roam over his body, from head to toe, not caring at all that he sees me openly taking him in. “Why is he an ass?” Curious, I arch a brow and let my lips pull into a small smile.

  “What?” Beck laughs nervously, crossing his arms over his broad chest. Even though the look he’s giving me suggests he’s being calm and cool about it, I can tell he feels put on the spot. It’s in the way he’s tapping his toes, running his fingertips over his scruff, averting his eyes.

  “You apologized for him being an ass,” I mention smugly, grabbing the darts from his hand. Purposefully letting my fingers graze over his hand longer than they should, my skin feels as if it’s caught on fire. In all honesty, I have no clue what’s come over me. Fairly certain that my need for his reaction has more to do with wanting to know what he thinks of me than why he thinks Ty was being an ass, I push the point. “Was it because he suggested I lube up?” I waggle a rather suggestive eyebrow at him, shooting my first dart. Turning back to face him, I lift the last of my beer up to my lips. My head spins slightly, fuzzy with what little alcohol I’ve consumed. “Or was it because he ratted you out, let me know you were talking about me?”

  A huff and puff is all I’m given in response. A deep belly chuckle is all he gets in return. Pushing him even further, I let the second dart rest in between my fingertips, reveling in the coolness of the steel. “I saw the drawings, too,” I shoot the second dart as the words tumble out of my mouth. “At the beach,” I add as clarification, letting the final dart cool my overheated fingers. His profile is clear in my periphery, and if I look at him just the right way, I can see his cheeks heat more than a little.

  When the final dart pierces the cork, I jam my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, rocking on my heels, waiting—more than expectantly—for his response to the rather personal piece of information I’ve just dropped out there. Stepping into his personal space as he leans up against a high-top table, I divulge, “But I guess Ty wouldn’t have known about that, huh?” I finish with more sarcasm than I’d originally intended.

  Doing the exact opposite of what I’d expected, Beck leans into my face, leaving no more than a few centimeters between us. His hand falls to my cheek, lightly tapping it in a less than friendly gesture. “No,” he laughs, “he definitely wouldn’t know about that.” His laughter, though initially rough and harsh, softens as his hand lingers on my face. A heat-filled look passes between us, racing to every single nerve ending on every single extremity on my body.

  A sudden urge to touch him comes over me and by some kind of magnetic force, my fingers wrap around his wrist. Our eyes lock in a heated stare, not unlike the few we shared at the tattoo shop the other day, or at the beach earlier, or in his truck out in the parking lot. I’m beginning to think it’s the only way we know how to look at each other.

  His eyes move slightly, focusing on where my fingers are tightly secured around his wrist. “But it seems like you want to know something about it. Anything you want to ask me?” he sneers, his eyes dancing with an odd combination of meanness and humor.

  My fingers tighten on his skin. “No.” My voice is a low, harsh whisper. “But maybe there’s something you want to tell me.”

  A few moments pass. Locked in our silent stare, the rest of the bar fades into the darkness. Beck’s breathing is all I can hear, his touch all I can feel, his rugged face all I can see. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge paw-like hand clamps down on my shoulder. A booming voice calls out into my ear and before I can even piece together what’s going on, my elbow is driving into the soft flesh of a stomach, presumably the one that belongs to the man standing behind me. The rising tension boiling between me and Beck, and the shock of someone grabbing me from behind forces a gigantic bubble of panic to rise in my chest.

  Instinct takes over.

  While he’s bent over catching his breath, I spin on my toes, my hands falling to his hunched-over shoulders. Without even checking to see who it is, I pull his chest down onto my knee, knocking out any wind that might have been left in his lungs. “Dax!” Vaguely, I hear Beck’s voice call to me from behind. There’s an eerily distant and almost fuzzy quality to his words, cluing me into what the hell is going on.

  It’s a panic attack. God damn PTSD can’t even
leave me the fuck alone for a single night.

  Beck’s hand drops to my shoulder, pulling me away from who I’m just realizing is Ty, bent over and barely breathing before me. My anxiety quickly transforms into embarrassment and shame. “What the fuck?” Beck yells, brushing past me to help his friend stand up. Despite nearly knocking me over, Beck stands strong next to Ty, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and helping him down into a seat.

  “Dude, I was just grabbing the next game,” Ty chokes out as he finally catches his breath. A chug of beer leads to a coughing fit, only making me feel even worse for what I’ve just done. My heart is pounding in my chest and before I can try and calm myself down, I feel it pulsating in my throat, completely hindering my ability to take a full breath. The words I want to say fly around in my brain, but my mouth is completely incapable of saying anything more than a few barely intelligible stutters. “I . . . it . . . was . . . n-not . . . f-fuck . . .”

  At the sound of my words—if you can even call them that—Beck lifts his head and eyes me carefully.

  “Wha-at . . . I . . . it . . . was . . . j-just . . . an acci . . . I d-didn’t . . .” Wanting nothing more than for my mouth to just fucking sync up with my brain, I let out a loud growl of frustration. After raking a hand through my hair, I slam my fist on the table, knocking a beer to the floor. The brown glass splinters at my feet, the crash sounding more like gunfire to my ears than a bottle breaking. The amber-colored brew, the shards of dark glass, and the neon red light all combine together to make the beer look more like blood than anything else—at least to me.

  Desperation brings my fingers up to my eyes, needing to rub away what I see on the ground before me. Keeping my eyes closed so hard so that I begin to see spots, I wait another minute, hoping that when I open them again it will just be a broken bottle of beer shattered on the ground.

  No such luck.

  What I see before me is Delaney’s head, split open, his lifeless eyes staring back at me. That image gives rise to a full-blown panic attack. My vision blurs, and the blood rushes so loudly in my ears that I can’t hear a single thing except my own pulse. Only the fact that I’m hyperventilating assures me that I’m even capable of breathing.

  “Dax?” A calm, soothing voice fades into my consciousness. “Hey.” Beck steps in front of me, holding his hands up, palms out, letting me know he’s going to keep his distance.

  “Air,” I gasp. “Need air.” My legs are lead and as I try to walk out of the bar, I trip over my own two feet. Figures, I mentally laugh at my own inabilities. You’re so broken you can’t even walk and talk.

  Just as I expect to fall to the ground, a strong arm wraps around my waist, pulling me against a warm, solid body. “I’ve got you,” Beck explains calmly as he helps me out into the open air of the parking lot.

  Yet, when we lean up against his Jeep and my feet—and my brain for that matter—begin working again, the last thing I want is for him to let me go.

  The change washing over him is immediately noticeable when we step outside. His feet steady and I can see the rise and fall of his chest stabilize. Figuring he’s doing much better now, I pull away from him, wanting to give him the space he so obviously needed inside.

  He’s pinned my arm in between his back and the rear panel of my Jeep, so it takes a little maneuvering to let go of him. His body flops back against the metal of the Jeep once my arm is free. Standing there for a brief moment, I rub some feeling back into my arm before moving away completely.

  His shoulders are rounded in a defeated slump, his arms hanging almost lifelessly from his body. He won’t look up and I don’t dare ask him to—especially if he’s not ready to be looked at. His body language brings me back to the countless times I tried to talk some sense into Nikki.

  She’d come home from benders that would last days and days. Completely wrung out and high as a kite, she’d sit, slouched over in the corner of her room. Rocking back and forth, she would refuse to look up at me. She never explained why she couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with me, or why she would never utter a single word in those moments. After more than a handful of those times, even though she wouldn’t acknowledge that I was there for her, I wanted to yell and scream at the top of my lungs. Shaking her frail, skin-and-bones body was something I actively had to talk myself out of doing. When I’d had enough one night, I finally laid into her, cursing and yelling more than I ever had in any of the times she’d come home high.

  Despite the fact that my words were mean, venomous bullets intended to hurt her, she never once winced. When I had exhausted myself, literally needing to take deep gulps of air, she craned her head up to me. The only way I can accurately describe what passed between us was that it was a nothingness. Her eyes were empty, completely soulless—black almost. It reminded me of something out of a horror movie.

  And that’s when the harsh realization that she was no longer my Nikki hit me in the gut. When she went to this place, to the drugs and the numbness, she stopped being the sister I knew—the girl I loved and wanted to save more than anything. She was someone else entirely and I realized then that was exactly why she never wanted to look at me when she was like that.

  No one wants to be seen when they’re like that.

  Though he wasn’t jacked up on heroin, or cracked out of his mind, Dax was no different in this moment.

  Nikki had drugs flowing through her veins, helping her drift away to a place she’d rather be.

  Right now, Dax isn’t far off from her. Anxiety, panic, and sheer terror are the things transforming him. They’re making him someone other than who he wants to be.

  Except I can tell he wants no part of it.

  So rather than the rage and hatred I would feel toward Nikki when she was high, I let compassion take over. “Get in,” I prompt, tipping my chin at the opening where a door would be on my Jeep. Without saying anything else, I walk around to my side and start the engine.

  Dax only moves once the loud music blasts out from the radio, as if that sound was all he needed to shake him out of his paralytic state. With knotted brows, he looks over at me, confusion warring with shame on his tired face.

  Figuring the last thing he wants is pity, I opt for the cool and detached version of compassion. “You getting in or what?” I light a cigarette, puffing the smoke up into the black of the night. “‘Cause if you’re not, this is one hell of a neighborhood to walk through. Even for a soldier like yourself.”

  That rises a chuckle out of him—mocking though it may be. “You have no clue what I’m capable of,” he jokes, stretching up to rest his forearms on the crossbar of the doorframe. His well-defined biceps stretch his sleeves. His broad chest pulls the fabric of his shirt tightly. I know he’s probably just stretching the tension out of his upper body, but the way he’s leaning against the frame, the shape his body takes under his clothes—it’s fucking with my head and my dick for that matter. Shifting in my seat, I try to hide my reaction as he puffs out a loud breath, clearing his lungs.

  “So,” I prompt, taking another drag of my cigarette. “Care to join me?”

  “Depends,” he responds quickly, with a lightness I wouldn’t have expected from someone who’d just had a panic attack.

  “On?” I prod.

  “Where we’re going.”

  “Sounds like there’s an and I should be waiting for.”

  “And,” he emphasizes the word as his eyes dart to the dot of red light perched in between my fingers. “If you plan on getting rid of that while I’m here.” His gaze drops to the seat and my need to spend more time with him outweighs my need for another inhale.

  Tossing the butt out into the parking lot, I shoot him a wry look. “Happy?” I mock.

  A blip of laughter falls from his full mouth as he drops his arms from the frame. Without explanation, he walks over to my side of the Jeep, locates the butt I just tossed to the ground, and pinches it between his fingers.

  Since there’s no door separating us, he leans
right into the cabin and over to the ashtray. His body brushes up against mine, his scent—clean from his shower, but pure masculine rawness—billows around me. Not wanting to be caught smelling him—because, let’s face it, that would be weird—I just let him invade my space, without looking like I’m trying to take him into it.

  He pushes the butt into the ashtray and then leans against my doorframe. Staring at me, he gives me a look of mock-admonishment. “You should quit.” Unable to say a word, I watch him in the rearview mirror as he makes his way around the Jeep back to his side. “No more littering either,” he jokes, snapping his seatbelt in place.

  “What are you? A boy scout or something?”

  “Nah,” he shakes his head, some of the light returning to his eyes. “Just a soldier.”

  What started out as a gradual relaxation turns into a complete attitude reversal by the time we hit the beach. Cool and calm, Dax is leaning back in his seat, his long, lean legs stretched out in front of him. “Isn’t it a little late for the beach? Or do they never close here in California?”

  My face twists in disbelief at the dead serious tone of his question.

  “What?” he shrugs, shoving his hands into his pockets.

  Shaking my head, I decide to take it easy on him. “Nothing. Come on.”

  There’s nothing tremendously special about tonight. The weather is no different than it normally would be. The moon isn’t shining any brighter in the sky and the stars aren’t necessarily sparkling any more than they usually do.

  But with a comfortable silence surrounding us, broken only by the lapping waves of the ocean, I feel anything but ordinary when I look over at Dax walking next to me.

  “This way,” I direct him down to the large boulders piled up around the support beams of the boardwalk above us.