Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series) (20 page)

“At the expense of others?” he asked, coughing loudly.

“You didn’t know that, you didn’t understand it, and you sure as hell didn’t mean for it to happen. Sometimes we make mistakes.”

“Mistakes,” he spat out. “How do you tell a mother that her son died because I made a motherfucking mistake? How do you tell a wife or a daughter that her husband or father died because I was selfish?”

Doc Jones’ heart broke. He took this so badly, and she wasn’t sure how to get it across to him that sometimes things just happened. “You’ve got to forgive yourself, Layne. We are all human,” she hugged him to her.

“I don’t feel human.”

“Human is feeling the things you are, it is questioning everything that you’ve gone through and going through the grief process. It’s coping with the fact that a woman that you believed in lied to you.”

It was as if he flipped a switch, he came out of that blackout zone. The tears stopped and his voice went back to normal.

“Her lying to me has stayed with me. Then there was an incident towards the end of my deployment that’s stayed with me too. We were in a huge firefight, and another one of my friends was killed right next to me. That’s where I sustained the damage to my leg.”

“Wow,” she said, leaning forward when he went to get up.

“I know, so much happened over there in a year, and I just wasn’t equipped to handle it all. Then I come back here, and everybody wants me to be the same person I was when I left. Well, the Layne O’Connor that left wasn’t the man who got friends killed and cared more about fucking some chick in the war zone than he did if he was going to come back at all. The Layne that left here actually gave a damn, and this one,” he said as he beat his chest, “just doesn’t. I don’t care about anything.”

“That’s a lie and we both know that. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t feel so bad about what you did there, especially what you did with another woman. I think you don’t want to care, so it’s easier for you to let people believe that you don’t.”

“You’re kind of scary, how smart you are,” he complimented her.

“I have a degree,” she answered dryly. “What I’m concerned about with you, Layne, is your anger. You’re right, you weren’t justified in the anger that you experienced today because you didn’t know how to get hold of Jessica.”

“I just snap so easily,” he breathed deeply. “I don’t want to, but I do.”

“It’s a symptom, but it’s one you’re going to have to learn to control.”

“How the fuck am I going to do that?”

She raised her eyebrow at him. “By doing what you did today, removing yourself from the situation, seeing me if you have to. Anger is good in some instances, and I’m not telling you to let it go altogether, but you can’t be getting pissed at Jessica because she went on a shopping trip with friends and she didn’t clear it with you first. There’s a name for men like that.”

He knew where she was coming from. He didn’t want to be an abuser, ever, and he knew without a doubt that if he didn’t get this taken care of, he was heading down that road right now. “What do you suggest?”

“The same way you go to that dark place, Layne, you need to learn to go to a good place. When it gets to be too much for you, close your eyes and go to a beautiful place that you can remember easily. A place where you were completely and utterly happy.”

He didn’t escape the irony when he realized that place was with Jessica.

Chapter Nineteen

“T
hank you so much for inviting me,” Jessica told Bianca and Meredith as the three of them sat at dinner after their marathon shopping trip. It had been nice being with them, away from the clubhouse, but nice also being a friend on a day trip with other friends. “I haven’t done that, just for the fun of it, in a very long time.”

“Why not?” Bianca asked as she took a bite of the appetizer they had ordered. “Don’t people, like, pay you to come shop in their stores? Just because of who you are?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “That’s the thing; I haven’t done hardly anything for just the fun of it in so long. I was beginning to wonder if I had it in me anymore. I can’t even tell you the last time I went out with a couple of girls just for the hell of it. Usually we go out together so the paparazzi can be called and they can get a picture of all of us together. Then they can talk about how good of friends we are one week and the next week they can make up stories about how one of us slept with the other one’s boyfriend. It’s a slippery slope that we navigate in the entertainment business.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Bianca told the women as she took a drink of the Jack and Coke both she and Jessica had ordered. She swallowed and waited a moment before she continued. “I kissed ass for a lot of years and would be fake when I had to be, but I couldn’t do that all the damn time.”

“It does get old,” Jessica admitted. That was something she couldn’t say in her everyday life. No one would understand where she was coming from and call her crazy if she even mumbled those words. “You start to wonder if people even care about you or if they just care because they can be seen with you. It’s a weird business. One that, if I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t get into.”

Meredith laughed from where she sat. “It’s so funny that you say that because I’ve been thinking the same thing about my chosen profession.”

Jessica watched as the other two women exchanged a look. It wasn’t a pleasant look, but that didn’t keep her from being curious. She wanted to ask, to see why they shared what they did, but figured it wasn’t her business. If there was one thing she didn’t want to do in this little group of friends she had found, it was offend or force herself upon them. “So if you could do anything in the world, what would be your dream job?”

“I would be a teacher,” Bianca answered, shrugging her shoulders. “There’s nothing else in this world I’ve ever wanted to do. I want to let kids know that there are other options than just the same old, same old. I wish someone had done that for me. Some people feel called to do things, and that’s what I’m called to do. I’m going to be living my dream come August.” She looked pointedly at Meredith.

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” Meredith admitted, sighing. She knew what she wanted to do, but she was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen for her. “I have my communications degree, and there are literally a blue million things I could do with it, but I’m just not sure I want to.”

“Then what do you
want
to do?” Jessica questioned as she took a bite of her food. “If there was absolutely anything—even trade places with me for the day?”

The table got quiet as Meredith thought about the question, and it was obvious that she was struggling as she bit her bottom lip. “I would be a mom,” she said quietly. “I would be a mom, and I would work at the battered women’s shelter and children’s home in town so that little kids wouldn’t have to grow up without parents. Tyler did that for most of his life, and it breaks my heart.”

The mood that had once been jovial shifted slightly with her admission. Jessica knew she had to cut the tension, and if that meant she had to share a secret about herself, she would do it. “I’d be an erotic romance author,” she blurted out.

Liquid went flying from her left, landing on her arm as Bianca spit out the drink she had just taken. Meredith began beating on her chest to dislodge the food she had just eaten and sucked down her windpipe.

Bianca recovered first. “You would
what
?”

Now this was the embarrassment she had hoped to avoid. “Be an erotic romance writer, if I could,” she said again.

“Like…” Meredith started and then stopped, blinking rapidly, trying to find the words that she wanted to say. “Fuck it. Do you have something that I could read? I’m an avid reader.”

That was it, Jessica snort laughed. “Oh my God,” she giggled.

“What?” Meredith glanced over.

Bianca grinned from where she sat. “You have to admit, you were very quick to ask her if you could read her stuff. Do you like to read that smut, Blackfoot? Are you holding out on me? Do you and Tyler act out scenes?” she teased.

“Maybe, but what I’m really getting at here is…can I read it?”

She had already gotten herself into this, and Jessica knew there was absolutely no way she was going to get out of it. By trying to be closer to these two women, she had opened her mouth and stuck her foot in it. “I’ll let you read some in a few days.”

“You say that now, but we’ll get back home and you’ll get busy and you won’t let me. I’ll have to sick my big, bad, hubby on you.”

“If she’s writin’ smut then maybe she’d enjoy it,” Bianca giggled.

The three of them busted into laughter that caused other patrons of the restaurant to take notice. They tried to quieten down, but the more they tried to stop laughing, the louder they became.

“We better get our check and get out of here,” Jessica laughed. “I would hate for you ladies to get kicked out of an eatery with an actress who’s trying to keep herself out of the limelight.”

Meredith giggled, holding her hand over her mouth. “I just had a thought. You can totally stay out of the limelight… in Layne’s bed,” she grinned. “Acting out the scenes that you’ve written or getting inspiration for the next ones.”

Her face a bright red, Jessica threw her napkin at the other woman. “Just shut it!”

The ride back to Bowling Green was peaceful as the three of them hit I-65 North. Jessica sat in the back of the truck, the other two women up front. It was nice to be by herself for a little while, especially given the secret she’d told them. She hadn’t meant for that to slip out, but when she had seen the look pass between Bianca and Meredith, she knew something had happened with the two of them in the past and she wanted to let them know she trusted them. There was something about these people—her writing had been one of her most closely guarded secrets for years, and she had just blurted it out. Instead of making her feel stupid, though, it freed her. Maybe they were right. Maybe she needed to hide away in the clubhouse, write her stories, and live her life. Maybe that would make her happy.

Stretching her legs out, she thought of Layne. He usually occupied her thoughts when she had down time—especially in a car. They had spent so much time together in a car when he had been in the military. When she came to see him for the weekends, he always had a car. Didn’t matter that he didn’t actually own one, he had always found one to take her around in. They loved going someplace quiet, parking, and just talking. She missed that. When they got back, she was going to ask him if they could do that again. No matter what had gone on between the two of them, she missed how it used to be. She wanted to get back there; she wanted to spend time with him in a place where they both felt safe.

“You okay back there?” Bianca asked, turning in her seat.

“Yeah, just enjoying the ride.”

“I love the ride from Bowling Green to Nashville and back. I don’t know why, but it’s my favorite. I love coming up on Nashville and seeing the hustle and bustle, and then when you leave, you hit the top of that hill right at the Highland Rim Speedway exit and you know you’re getting closer to Kentucky. It’s always a nice trip for me—except for the traffic.”