“Give yourself a fucking break, dude.”This time it was Axl’s voice he heard in his head and for the first time ever, he listened to it.
Mike had died when a bullet hit his femoral artery and he’d bled out. They were in the field, and the tourniquet Kai had wrapped around his leg hadn’t helped. Surgery might have saved him but they were hours from a medic, a day’s drive from a hospital. He’d tried his best, but Mike bled out in less than ten minutes. The sheik, well he’d covered that. Not his choice...
His mother. God, his mother. For the first time ever, he faced that memory head on, recalling the memory in vivid detail. He remembered the paint falling off the walls, and the filthy mattress on the floor, and recalled the gnawing hunger in his belly. Jo had been huddled into a corner and he recalled her slow, labored breathing, her grunts of pain, and her weak hands as she tried to massage the pain from her legs. She’d been in the worst stage of withdrawal symptoms and had been off her head. She hadn’t slept for days and her default method of communication had been to scream at him. She’d looked like a corpse. He recalled her bony fingers reaching down her dirty tank top and her removing a couple of crumpled bills.
He’d felt a flare of excitement because the bills meant food, something he hadn’t had for two days running. She’d begged him to find some heroin for her, telling him that she’d die if she didn’t get a hit. He’d absolutely believed her.
He’d also thought that he might die if he didn’t eat something, and soon. So instead of walking ten blocks to find Jo’s normal dealer, he’d scored some cheaper heroin from a sleazebag dealer on the corner and had used the money he had left to buy bread, some milk, some eggs. Jo hadn’t noticed the food. She’d just reached for the drugs and pumped them into her system.
She never knew what hit her... and she’d never woken up again.
You didn’t kill your mother.He heard Flick’s voice in his head again, was surprised that it was so clear, and that he finally, on a cellular level, got what she was trying to say.
It was Jo’s choice to use drugs, to send her child to buy drugs, to ask her eight-year-old son to choose between food and the drugs that killed her. He did not.
Bad choices were made, and very bad consequences followed. But Kai was only responsible for the choiceshemade, and the lifeheled. Yeah, he hadn’t been a choir boy, and he probably had some bad karma to work off, but he’d done the best he could at the time, and he’d survived. And when the opportunity arose to make better choices, he’d done that too. He wasn’t noble or honorable but he tried to be a good man...surely that counted for something?
All his adult life he’d made good choices...except for the one that had him running away from Flick like the hounds of hell were nipping at his ass. Love, and loving Flick, terrified him, so he’d bailed. He’d chosen solitude and loneliness over love and companionship and, asshole that he was, amazing sex. He couldn’t be more stupid if they cut off his head. He knew he should fix this, but he didn’t know how, and he wasn’t sure if he was brave enough to humble himself and risk rejection.
Bullets, knives, and bombs didn’t scare him, but saying “I love you” and not knowing if the sentiment was reciprocated had him wanting to change his underwear.
He’d say it anyway. But first, he needed to get back to Mercy. Excited for the first time in weeks, he grabbed his phone and pressed the speed dial number to connect to Sawyer. And where the hell was Mark with his coffee? He needed a solid hit of caffeine to re-fire all his synapses. Soul searching was hard work.
“Hey.” Sawyer was sitting behind his desk. Kai zoomed in on his face and saw that Sawyer looked tired and stressed.
“Hypothetically...” Kai said and stopped.
“Hypothetically what?”
“Hypothetically, if I wanted to base myself in Mercy, what would I do there?” he asked, holding his breath He needed to work, to pull his weight. If—it was such a crazy thought and he couldn’t believe that he was giving it head space—if he went back home to Mercy, what would he do?
Sawyer smiled. “You can always do the community self-defense classes. Mac is pissed that he has to finish what you started.”
Kai raised a middle finger to the screen and resisted the urge to demand that Sawyer be serious. This was his future they were discussing.
Sawyer’s expression turned speculative. “Okay, let’s think this through. You’ve always said that there are corporations, security outfits, private armies who want specialized, individual, super advanced training to give their operatives a bit more of an edge.”
“Yeah, but the bigger courses generate more income. Economies of scale.”
“That was before you had Mark to run those courses. If Mark can do the run-of-the-mill stuff, then you can provide the specialized service. Kind of what you did for the sheik. And at the sheik’s rate.”
Kai felt a spurt of excitement. “You think it would fly?”
“Hey, if they want your focus and time then they should pay for it. And they will,” Sawyer sounded convincing. “You might not be able to do all the training here in Mercy but you could do most of it here. That’s if, you know, you could see yourself living in this hellhole of cute.”
Kai knew that he didn’t have a leg to stand on, so he kept quiet.
“You leaning towards coming back, bro?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“Thank the good Lord and all his angels,” Sawyer drawled. “Can I buy this damned building now?”
Shit, he’d forgotten all about that. “Yeah, make the offer. Buy the premises.”
“I’ll courier you the documents you need to sign.”
Kai shook his head as Mark walked into the room, coffee in his hand. “No, don’t bother. I’ll be back within a day or so.”