Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (35 page)

And Georgia most of all. She’d been talking to Hamish, at night when she thought Damon wasn’t listening, but he’d never stopped listening to her, never stopped wanting things to be different, even when he turned away from her love. When she talked to Hamish he heard restrained need in her voice. He wasn’t sure what it meant, could be she needed closure, could be her therapist suggested they talk, maybe she still loved the guy. Two months ago, they’d have talked it through, he’d have known the answer to that; now he couldn’t afford to hope it was otherwise.

Tonight there’d be no going back. He’d break it off. Tonight he’d give Georgia what she really needed from him, not what she’d destroy herself over.

Someone pulled at his arm and he shook them off. Even if they spoke in his ear he wouldn’t be able to hear them. His head was full of the boom of the bass line, a rolling storm in his head that matched his mood. He was pleasantly buzzed, his balance was shot, and his ears would be ringing in the morning, but this was exactly where he needed to be.

Eventually they’d give up pulling at him. Eventually they’d be so fed up with him they’d leave him the fuck alone. He’d been no good for them, so it was time to stop being the point they revolved around. Eventually had to be tonight, even if it meant he made his ears bleed.

He let the music be his pulse point, the alcohol be his brainwave, the knowledge that this was the best thing for them all anchor him in the noise and the stinking heat of the place. He’d already made Georgia cry tonight. He had no evidence of that, but he knew it all the same. He’d know he succeeded if she left him here and didn’t come back to the house.

Pulling again, a body leaning in on him, a woman, not Georgia, feeling for his hand. Then a sharp pain as the she-devil bent his finger back. Taylor. She let go his hand and screamed in his ear and it was more noise and more knowledge and then she was gone and so was his beer, but there was no way to get another. He could never find his way to the bar alone without making a mess of things.

Next time someone touched him it was with enough force to pull backwards. He was dragged away from the stage edge. Security maybe, damn slow to act, that’d been a bonus. Those hands pushed him through the crowd, through a doorway, it was quieter but his ears were ringing. They propped him up against a wall. More than one voice talking at him, but he genuinely couldn’t hear them. He laughed and then his ears cleared and it was Sam holding him upright and Jamie shouting at him.

He tried to struggle free, but Sam spun him face to the wall and wracked an arm up his back. It should’ve hurt more than it did.

“Ready to go home now.” Jamie said. It wasn’t a question.

How did they get here? Georgia must’ve called them. Taylor wouldn’t have wanted to see Jamie.

Sam pushed his arm higher and now it hurt. “Fuck off and leave me alone.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re pouring you in a taxi and taking you home.”

“Take the girls, leave me.”

“The girls have already gone. You think they like seeing you this way? Damn Damon, you’re officially out of control. Man, you have to get this together. Do you want to lose Georgia?”

When he smiled at that they took offence, and he grunted in pain as Sam forced his arm higher. Pain had a way of sobering you up. He was floating but not legless.

“You’re not the only person in the world who doesn’t get what they want. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and shake this off.”

“Fuck you.” He might get a broken arm out of this, not exactly how he’d thought it would play.

“Let him go.”

Georgia! He struggled to get away from Sam, pushing into the pain and off the wall until he remembered it didn’t matter. Better that she see this humiliation too.

“Please let him go.”

Sam’s hands came away. Blood pounded into his elbow and shoulder and he pushed off the wall and turned to face them. “Go home, Georgia. I don’t want you here.”

Sam hissed and shoved him. Jamie said, “Leave it.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Georgia, he doesn’t mean that.” Sam trying to help.

“He knows.” Fuck, that was Angus. He’d have left Moon Blink to come here. He’d be furious.

“Who else is here?” Was Taylor watching this as well? Heather?

“When you wouldn’t come away from the stage, I called Jamie and Sam,” said Georgia.

“I called Angus,” said Jamie, which was something useful from this crap, the brothers were on speaking terms. “And you know what, you don’t deserve any explanations. You’re going home and you’re going to get your head out of your arse and stop doing this shit.”

They could make him leave the club. He didn’t have to make it easy for them. He walked forward, knowing he’d encounter resistance. He met a male hand to his chest.

“Damon, let’s go home.” Georgia calm and rational. That’s not what he needed from her. He turned his face away, stepped to the right, towards what he hoped was the door they’d brought him through. He could follow the sound of the band.

“Damon.” Angus in his face, a hand in his shirt, another at his throat, but gentle, cautious. Still, it stopped him. “Get your shit together.”

He swallowed, closed his eyes. What they all needed him to do was back down, be himself, behave. What he needed them to do was get on with their lives without him. They’d all be better off.

“Get off me.”

Angus’ fingers pressed harder at his neck. “I’m not going to stand by and watch you trash your life.”

He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. He didn’t need his voice to fail him now, and with the pressure from Angus’ hand it just might. “Fuck off.” He cleared his throat again. “My life. My choice.”

Angus’ breath was hot on his face; they were chest to chest, but unevenly matched. Angus was sighted and sober, but he didn’t need to save someone from making a dreadful mistake. He didn’t love Georgia and need for her to give him up before he took her back to dark places she’d been brave enough to climb out of once and should never have to again.

Angus didn’t have what Damon did. Fear, such fear that in his need he’d become the very thing Georgia left behind, a man crushed by the weight of things gone wrong in his life.

“You mean that? If you mean that after everything we’ve been through together, I’m walking away. I’m done with you.”

He would become the thing that Georgia regretted; a nightmare of self-sacrifice and repeated mistakes, and for Angus, Taylor and Jamie he’d been a different kind of burden, one they’d carried since childhood. And when he’d been the one person in a position to change things for the three of them when times got tough, he’d let them down, been too blind to see what he should’ve known was in front of him.

He pushed against Angus’ hands and they disappeared.

Feet shuffled, someone laughed. Half sentences from conversations he was excluded from. Sam said, “That’s it?” making it a question.

“How did you get here?” Taylor with a genuine one.

“I’ll take you home,” said Jamie.

“Don’t, please don’t.” Sam, he’d be talking to Georgia.

And then they were gone and he was alone.

He sagged against the wall and breathed deep. Now when he checked out they wouldn’t try to find him. They’d be free of the worry of him. Taylor would stay at the house, Georgia could stay or go as she pleased and when she’d moved on, he’d come home and work out how to start again.

Georgia, Georgia on my mind. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting behind them. Nothing wrong with his tear ducts, odd they wanted exercise now.

Someone grabbed his shirt. It’d be his luck if he ended the night beaten and rolled for his wallet, phone and watch.

“Fuck off, I’m blind.”

“And stupid.” Angus. Beer now on his breath. “What are you up to, you bastard, you’re up to something.”

It was impossible to shake free, impossible to avoid Angus’ grip on his shirt, on the back of his neck, on his life. He’d known these hands, this voice, since he was five years old. They’d pushed him forward, held him up, slapped him with laughter. They’d been mad and clever together, plotted and prayed together. Bled together. They’d stood up for each other and bullied each other, been each other’s backstop, driver, medic, bank, excuse. But Angus had found his place in the world, he had a business to run and Damon was in the way.

“I don’t want your help.”

“You fuckwit. How can you still not get it?”

“What’s there to get? I want to be left alone.”

“So you can go swimming again? So you can drink too much and walk in front of a bus? Is that the plan, or have you figured out how to top yourself without Jamie to pick up the pieces, or Taylor to stop the bullet?” Angus pressed his weight on Damon’s chest. “Or Georgia’s heart to break.”

Damon moved his knee, got it inside Angus’, got his hands to Angus’ shoulders and shoved, got shoved back, and they were scuffling like teenagers. Angus could’ve cold cocked him and it’d all be over, but the arsehole toyed with it and Damon gave it everything he had until their grips came apart and their heavy breathing filled his ears. He might’ve ended this with a lucky charge, a lucky punch, but his lucky was all used up and Angus got the last word.

He left without saying a thing.

Damon reached for the wall and slid down it till he was sitting. He didn’t know where in the club he was, but it must’ve been a service corridor because no one was using it, maybe a fire exit. If he followed it, he might find the street, or someone to point him in the right direction. He’d find a cab, a hotel room. In the morning he’d go home, pack a bag and clear out.

Something touched his foot. “You’re fucking it all up.” A hand to his knee, then Taylor was on the floor beside him, her head on his shoulder. “I’m the screw-up, not you.”

He should’ve brushed her off, gotten to his feet and found the street, but she wrapped herself around his arm and hung on. “I need to be alone, Tay. I need to work this out on my own.”

“Are you breaking up with us?”

In spite of the situation he laughed. “I’m no good for you right now. No good for anyone.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“So are you. Why didn’t you tell me about—” This time it wasn’t his volume control failing, he didn’t know what to say. He’d tried to talk to her before but she’d brushed him off.

“Being up the duff. Same reason you’re not telling me what’s going on in your head now.”

“It’s not the same, Trill. That was too awful, too hard on you, on Jamie, on Angus. I should’ve known. I should’ve helped you,” he gave up trying to keep his distance and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her hard up against him. “All of you.”

She resettled in his embrace. “What could you do? What could anyone do?”

He shook his head. Something, anything would’ve been better than the nothing he did. “You have to put it right with Jamie.”

“You have to not be such an arse to Georgia.”

If Georgia was his heart, Angus was his blood, Jamie was his bone, but Taylor was his conscience. “I’m messed up and I’m hurting everyone and I need to cut Georgia free so she doesn’t get crushed.”

“God, give me a break.”

He cleared his throat. “Give me one. You’re messed up and you hurt Jamie and he loves you.”

“I didn’t know he loved me, and anyway he doesn’t anymore.”

“Fix it, Trill.”

“I don’t know how. I’ve never known how with Jamie. He takes my breath away. Remember the day you got home, the perfume that made you sneeze? Yeah, well I was going to see this new guy until I realised the only reason I wanted to see him was that he looked like Jamie if you kinda squinted and he stood in a certain light.

“All my life it’s been Jamie and I’m so wrong for him. That night should never have happened. He was leaving. We were drinking. I thought he was drunk and wouldn’t remember and then a baby. Jesus, I didn’t want to be a mother. I wanted it all to go away and then it did and that was worse, so much worse.”

Taylor put her hand on top of his, he flipped it and they clasped. They sat quietly, just being there with each other, the noise of the club less discordant than what Taylor had just admitted.

“You’re going away, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “For a little while. Long enough for Georgia to move on.”

“It’s a bastard act.”

“I should take that from you.”

“You should do better than me. I thought you loved her.”

“It’s because I love her.”

“Then you understand why I did what I did.”

He understood better than he could ever explain. He squeezed her hand. The concrete floor was starting to bite into his backside. “Where are we?”

“Fire exit. Security is so slack arse here. Don’t leave her like this. I like her. She’s good for you.”

He sighed and stretched both legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “But I’m not good for her. She knew it when we met. She tried to warn me off.”

“But you bulldozed her.”

“I gave her a fish.”

“As in for dinner?”

“As in gold.”

“And that convinced her of your charms?”

“It was meant to help her see past what I couldn’t offer.”

“And what’s that. Because from where I’m sitting—”

“In an echo chamber corridor with a draft that smells like chalk and old socks.”

She elbowed him. “You’re pretty damn special.”

“I’m disabled.”

“When exactly did you start thinking about yourself like that?”

He turned his head and stuck his nose in her hair. Taylor had started smoking again. Right after her story came out. He breathed and coughed. “Quit the fags, Trill. You don’t want to screw up your throat.”

“Answer the question.”

“Somewhere between going totally blind and losing my voice.”

“Fuck. But you know it’ll be all right, not the same I know, but you’re not incapable, you’ll adjust, you always bent the world around you, you’ll…shit.”

He could tell her. He ached to tell someone other than his parents, but if he told her she’d make it hard for him to do it his way. The verdict was well and truly in. His days as The Voice were over. He wasn’t getting more of his vocal abilities back, he was losing more everyday and the new round of surgery was an exercise in crossed fingers. They hoped to save his larynx, but he’d been told to plan on needing an artificial speech aid. It might’ve been worse. He’d get to keep his tongue.