THIRTY
One Year Later
THE PAST YEAR OF MY LIFE SEEMED TO FLY BY IN A BLUR. I closed Mike’s, since it was nothing without Clive, but lived in his apartment. I ate mostly ramen since I didn’t have a job and still slept on the couch even though Clive’s perfectly good bed was just a few steps away.
I couldn’t do it, though.
I had issues even going in the room, much less sleeping there. Instead, I closed the door, hoping the memories of finding him dead on the floor would stay locked behind the door, as well.
I drank way more than I should have, considering I had a supply room downstairs full of liquor. And when I felt like the loneliness would eat me alive, I left and walked the streets, letting the cold air sting my skin until I went numb again.
I was on one of my lonely strolls when I ran into someone I never thought I would see again. I had reached the end of the curb when my ankle buckled in my drunken stumble down the darkened sidewalk.
I fell into the wall, hitting my shoulder against the brick building that caught me. A cloud of beer-tainted breath hissed between my teeth. My shoulder felt like it was on fire, but the alcohol running through my system quickly dulled the pain. I would be feeling the pain when morning came.
Pushing against the bricks, I flipped around until my back was against the wall. The cold air burned my lungs when I sucked in a deep breath as I tried my best to stop the world from spinning. Closing my eyes, I took a few more deep breaths, mentally preparing myself to move again.
Normally, I would be smart and drink at the bar, but I couldn’t stand to be in that place. Not when it was officially the one-year anniversary of Clive’s death. For the entire day, I sat alone and dwelled over the date as the walls of the place closed in on me, making me feel like I was suffocating.
Being in that place alone left me feeling raw and angry. I felt rage for everything I had lost in the past year of my life. I was falling apart, and even though I knew it was wrong to feel that way, I felt like it was all Clive’s fault.
So many times over the past year, I wished I had never crawled through the window of Clive’s bar. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be feeling the pain I felt. I was alone and broken inside before I met Clive, and I had accepted that life.
When he came into my life, he had slowly put the pieces of me back together. But when he died, I came apart in ways I hadn’t known was possible. Of all the losses in my life, Clive’s left the biggest scar.
I stayed wasted, hoping to numb myself from everything. Hating Clive felt wrong, but I couldn’t help it. I hated him for leaving me. I was angry with him for not getting better like he promised he would—for leaving me his legacy, knowing I would screw it up and never fulfill it.
He set me up to fail and didn’t even have the decency to stick around and watch me destroy my life.
That was what I did.
Destroyed things.
I was sure I ruined my birth parents before I was even born. I blew through every foster family I ever had like a category four hurricane, including the one where I fell in love with Jane.
I devastated a family I had never met, leaving two kids orphaned, and for what?
For a fucking TV and hope that maybe, just maybe, I could show Vick all about Jessica Rabbit and my sick, fucked-up fascination with cartoons.
Clive had been wrong to think I could do anything with his long-forgotten future.
I was fucked up in the worst of ways, and the type of stupidity I was cursed with had no cure.
Rage moved through me, making my bones feel broken and my skin bruised. I pushed away from the wall in search of more liquor, needing not to feel. I hadn’t gotten two steps when I heard a noise in the dark alleyway at my side.
Everything was fuzzy, including my hearing, so I wasn’t sure exactly what I was listening to. I stopped and tried to focus on the sounds.
“I said get the fuck off!” The angry words were cut short, and there was another muffled sound.
“Do you think I care what the fuck you said? I paid for this; now you’re going to fucking deliver.”
“You paid for twenty minutes. It’s been twenty minutes.”
“It’s not my fault you took so long to get me off. Now you’re going to give me something extra.”
“The fuck I am!”
I could hear the struggle of the two in the dark of the night, but I couldn’t make out their shadows. Instinct told me to mind my own damn business and keep walking. I wasn’t exactly in the state to fight, but something about the girl’s voice stirred my insides. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t convince myself to walk away.
“You bitch!” the second voice hissed. “You fucking bit me, you stupid slut! That’s fine; you want it fucking rough, that’s exactly how I’ll give it to you.”
“Touch me again, and I’ll fucking kill you!”
He laughed, and I knew if I didn’t step in, there would most likely be two dead bodies in the morning.
“She said to leave her alone,” I growled into the darkness.
The sound of struggling stopped, their deep breaths echoing through the night. I moved to step deeper into the alleyway but figured that wasn’t a smart move since I didn’t have a clear view.
One stranger stepped out of the shadows with a knife in his hand, ready to strike. But once he moved into the light and got a good look at me, he stopped.
I wasn’t sure what it was about me that made him pause, but I liked to think it was the absolute disregard for anything in my eyes that put fear in his heart.
“Listen,” he said, licking at his sweaty top lip. “I got no beef with you, all right? The slut owes me. So why don’t you keep on walking and forget what you saw here?”
The Earth was still shifting around me, the alcohol in my blood making me dizzy and unbalanced, but I stood tall, hoping he thought I was sober enough to put up a good fight.
“Not going to happen,” I said. “You have two choices. Get the fuck out of here, or see how good my aim is. If I were you, I wouldn’t bet on me missing.”
I didn’t have a gun on me, but he didn’t need to know that.
I didn’t blink as I stared back at him and watched the conflict in his eyes. His gaze moved over me, searching for a gun, no doubt. His swallow was visible as he debated the choices I gave him, and then with a curse, he decided not to take the chance.
“Whatever. Keep the slut,” he hissed.
His steps echoed through the alley as he walked away. I stared at him until he was no longer visible before I turned away.
That was when I saw her.
Her dark hair was loose around her face; trash stuck to the ends of a few strands. Her face was so pale it practically glowed in the dark, and her lips were swollen and bruised as if she had been punched in the mouth.
Her features were older, her eyes harder, and her body language was that of a cobra; poised and ready to strike.
My gaze moved away from her face, taking in her dirty, ripped clothes. She was dressed in a worn leather jacket, a ratted old shirt, and a short denim skirt that had more holes than fabric. I looked away, allowing my eyes to settle once again on her familiar face.
Vick.
“Sebastian? Is that you?”
The deep rasp of her voice instantly sent me spiraling back to another dark time in my life.
Murder.
The liquor in my stomach soured as it danced its way up my throat and threatened to spew.
“Vick.” Her named tumbled from my lips.
She wrapped her arms around her middle, and her eyes lit with anger and embarrassment. But just as fast as it appeared, it was gone, and she squared her shoulders.
“Stop fucking looking at me like that, Sebastian,” she hissed.
“What are you doing here, Vick?”
She was the last person in the world I expected to run into. Especially on such a terrible anniversary. I was busy mourning the loss of Clive. The last thing I wanted to think about was the loss of the family I had destroyed.
“Like you care,” she bit out angrily.
I shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t.”
Hurt softened the hard lines around her eyes and mouth, and a very small part of me felt bad. Maybe I wasn’t as dead inside as I had hoped.
“Fuck you, Sebastian.”
I sighed. “It’s been a long night.”
“It’s been a long couple of years,” she snapped. “Again, not that you cared.”
I lifted my arms in the air. “What do you want from me?”
“Some answers to start with.”
“I don’t have answers. At least not to the questions you want to ask.”
She ignored me and asked anyway. “Why did you leave me behind, Sebastian? Why didn’t you come find me? Where have you been this whole time?”
“I told you I don’t have answers, Vick.”
“You owe me, Sebastian.”
“I don’t owe you shit. I’ll see you around.”
I turned to walk away, but she was right on my heels and followed me down the street.
“The fuck you don’t. You just disappeared. No note, no ‘goodbye, Vick, have a nice life,’ nothing. Why, Sebastian? Why?” She grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop. “Why?”
“You murdered two innocent people, that’s why! I couldn’t stand to be around you. You reminded me of everything I hated about myself.”
My words cut her deep. I could tell by the gasp that exploded from her mouth.
Replaying my words in my head, I even winced at their harshness. But the truth hurt, and what I had said was all truth.
She didn’t back down.
She didn’t walk away.
“And now?” she asked, quietly.
She was desperate and seemed fragile. Both things she had never been before.
Taking my first real look at her, I could see what the past few years had done to her. It made me wonder where we would be if I had never left.
“Now.” I sighed. “Now, I have new reasons to hate myself.”
“I never meant for you to hate me, Sebastian.”
I didn’t respond.
What was really left to say anyway?
I didn’t know exactly how I felt about Vick, but seeing her and walking up on her and that guy left me with an uneasy feeling.
“You want a drink?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure why I offered the olive branch, but I did. It was probably because I was lonely. I was sick and tired of being alone and sad.
Sure, we had a past, but for just one night, I could forget about that if it meant having someone around to help me forget about Clive.
She smiled. “After the night I had, I could definitely use a drink.”
“Let’s get out of here before that guy comes back with his friends.”
It didn’t take us long to get back to Clive’s.
We stood outside the dead building. Just looking at it made me feel as though I couldn’t breathe. Every time I stood outside the place, the reality of what I lost was like a blow to my chest.
“Mike’s?” Vick mocked. “Sebastian, this place looks like a dump. I doubt they even have any alcohol in this place. Let’s just find somewhere else.”
“It has alcohol,” I told her, and when I walked up to the front door, Vick looked around nervously.
“I know you’ve been out of the whole breaking and entering game, but it’s best if we find a window or something in the back.”
Her words twisted painfully in my chest, but I pushed away the memory and fished for the keys in my pocket.
“Sebastian, seriously, let’s go around back.”
I pulled out the keys and held them up in front of her face. “Chill, okay?”
She frowned. “How the hell did you manage to swipe the keys to this place?”
“I didn’t swipe anything,” I said, unlocking the door and pushing it open. “I own it.”
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth sagged open a little as she stared at me.
“What the fuck do you mean you own it?”
“Exactly what I said; it’s mine. Now, are you going to go in or are we just going to stand outside and freeze our asses off?”
A million questions formed on her lips, but she kept her mouth shut and walked in. Shutting and locking the door behind me, I passed her and made my way to the bar.
“How the hell do you own this place?” she asked, looking around. “And what the hell happened to it?”
She was referring to the half of Clive’s still charred from the fire.
It had been a year since I tried to burn the place down, and I had no plans to clean up my mess. The place couldn’t run without Clive. There was no way I could handle doing it on my own. What would be the point of fixing it up?
“There was a small fire.”
“Okay, now can we get back to my other question? How the hell do you own this place?”
I sighed.
There was no way to get around the question. I knew Vick, and she wasn’t going to drop it.
“Drink first, answers second.”
I placed two shot glasses on the bar. She took a seat on the other side and waited while I poured. Setting the bottle of Jack down, we picked up the glasses and downed them in one swallow.
“Okay, we drank. Now, spill.”
And so I did.
The story came out, filling her in on everything I had been up to since I left her. I told her about Clive, his death, and the legacy he left behind … left to me. I told her everything, and I knew while I was speaking that it was more the liquor talking than me.
When I finished, she told me what she had been doing since I left, and how she hadn’t been lucky enough to find someone like Clive. Instead, she had spent time running with Anthony, my ex-boss and biggest drug dealer in New York, and his crew.
Things were different after I left, and Anthony had become too intense without me there to balance things out. She fought her way out of his grasp and left, going into hiding since he didn’t believe in women leaving him.
With no money, she fended for herself and had turned to selling the only thing she had worth anything … her body.
It killed me that she had felt forced to do that, but I couldn’t regret my decision to leave.
We spent the rest of the night drinking and catching up.
“Do you ever think about them?” I asked, releasing the words and thoughts before I could stop them.
“Who?” she asked with a frown.
At first, I thought she was purposely being clueless, but I realized she really had no idea who I was talking about.
“From that night, Vick. The family.”
“Oh.” She looked away. “No, I don’t. Why would I? It’s over and done with.”
I took a swig from my bottle, the liquor fueling the fire in my stomach from her words.
“We killed them, Vick. We took those parents away from those kids. They will never see each other again because of what we did.”
“We didn’t have parents.” She shrugged. “The world is unfair, Sebastian.”
“It’s not the same. We couldn’t help what happened to us.”
“I can’t change what happened, Sebastian, and you running away from me wasn’t going to change it either.”
I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t.
We sat in silence as the sun slowly started to rise, melting away the night fog and sending a spark of light through the boarded-up windows of Mike’s.
It bothered me that she was so indifferent toward a night that had basically blackened my soul. She so easily put it behind her.
How could she never think of them again?
“You have a good life here, Sebastian,” she said several minutes later. “It’s not much, but it’s much nicer than the place we used to have.”
At that, I chuckled.
I could barely remember the terrible tin building we tried to survive in and how difficult it was with no electricity or water.
“Why are you wasting it?” she asked, breaking through my memories.
“I’m not.”
“The fuck you aren’t. Look at you,” she said, pointing her bottle at me. “You expect me to believe this is a one-time thing? You expect me to believe you don’t live your life drunk out of your mind? We know addicts. We know drunks. You’ve got the yellowed eyes of a man who drinks too damn much.”
“I expect you to mind your own damn business.”
“Well, too bad. You could really make something of yourself. It’s not every day people like us get handed a future wrapped in a pretty little bow.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but I can see that this Clive person meant a lot to you. And he obviously cared a lot about you, too, if he left you everything. How would he feel if he knew you were wasting it?”
“Stop,” I growled. “I told you; you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Despite my snapping at her, she pushed. If Vick was nothing else, she was persistent.
“Come on, Sebastian. You could really make something of this place.”
“No.”
You could open your own place. I can help you.”
“No.”
“I’ll be your assistant. I’ll do whatever the fuck you need.”
“I said no!” I growled, throwing the bottle of Jack over her head and smashing it into the wall behind her.
I slammed my fists down on the bar, and she flinched. I was breathing hard, and the sound filled the now deadly quiet space.
“Fine,” she said coldly. “You said no.” She crossed her arms. “You didn’t need to waste an entire bottle of Jack, though.”
My lips twitched as her sullen words managed to melt my anger. I held back my smile. I could have strangled her if I wasn’t so busy trying to shake the guilt of her words away.
It was true.
Clive would be kicking my ass if he knew I was wasting away his legacy.
Legacy.
The word left a bad taste in my mouth. I was tired of saying it, of thinking it. Clive wasn’t thinking when he left everything to me. He was wrong about me. He was so fucking wrong about me.
“Let’s go,” I said, standing from my barstool.
“What? Where?” Panic moved across her expression.
“Upstairs. There’s an apartment up there where I stay. I’m beat, and I’m assuming you have no place to crash tonight. No place warm anyway.”
“I don’t need your pity. You left me a long time ago, and I’ve been doing just fine.”
“You call selling your ass just fine? You and I have a different definition of the meaning just fine then.”
“Fuck you, Sebastian.”
“I’m not in the mood to argue. Follow me or don’t, but I’m locking up, and you’re either staying or getting lost.”
“You’re a dick now.”
“Wrong; I’ve always been a dick.”
“Not to me, you weren’t.” She looked hurt.
“I’m going.”
I made my way up the stairs to the apartment. Seconds later, I heard her footsteps creeping up the old wood stairs.
It would be weird to share the small space with someone after so long. After Clive died, I was so hell-bent on keeping myself in an alcohol-induced state that I hadn’t bothered bringing anyone into my space.
“So this is your place,” she said, leaning into the door and looking around.
I went around, picking up old food containers, dirty laundry, and cups.
“You’re welcome to stay somewhere else if it’s not good enough for you.”
“Oh, shut it. I’m just giving you shit. It’s better than the streets.”
“You can sleep in the room in the back. Just let me get it ready.”
She shrugged. “I don’t mind taking the couch.”
“Nope. That’s my bed.”
“You have a room in the back, but you sleep on the couch? Why?”
“Why do you have to question everything? That shit’s annoying. It’s a bed. When’s the last time you slept in a bed?”
“True. Fine. I’ll take the bed.”
“There are drinks in the fridge, and I’m sure there’s something edible in the kitchen. I’ll be back.”
I made my way to the back room and stood in front of Clive’s bedroom door.
It was closed.
I’d closed it the day I left David’s office, and I hadn’t opened it since. Taking a deep breath, I turned the knob and pushed it open.
The room was dark, cold, and empty. Not that I had gotten rid of anything of Clive’s, but he just never had anything to fill the room. He wasn’t big on material things, and that showed in the way he lived.
It wasn’t until after I came around that he decided to make the place more of a home. I didn’t need all that stuff. It was already more of a home than I had ever had.
Pulling Clive’s blankets off, I stripped the bed and put a new sheet on that I’d found in the hall closet. I dropped a folded blanket on the bed and shook out the pillows. I didn’t like being in his space, so I turned to leave, letting Vick know her bed was ready.
“Okay, I got some blankets. The bathroom’s down the hall if you need it … Shit, are you fucking kidding me?” I cursed. “You couldn’t wait five minutes?”
There was no reply.
She was passed out on my bed … the couch. Walking over to her, I draped my blanket over her, and she snuggled under the warmth. I hit the light switch on the wall and made my way back to Clive’s room.
I had no choice.
I wasn’t about to cuddle up with Vick on the small ass couch.
In the room, I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. It was one night. I could sleep in his room for one night.
Standing, I moved to walk around the bed, and that was when I saw it.
The envelope David Spencer had given me.
Clive’s familiar handwriting had scribbled my name across the front, and my heart ached from missing him so much.
I hadn’t opened the envelope.
I couldn’t.
Instead, I tucked it away in Clive’s room with the rest of the paperwork I had gotten from David, hoping to forget.
I sat on the edge of the bed again and stared down at the envelope. Until then, I hadn’t been one bit curious about what he had written to me, but at that moment, my fingertips burned to tear at the seal and hear from Clive once more.
His final words to me could either make it worse or make it better. Either way, I needed to hear from him.
Turning the envelope over, I slid my finger under the flap and tore it open, pulling out a yellow piece of paper.
My fingers stung from the cold as I unfolded the paper and stared down at more of Clive’s handwriting, without comprehending the words.
Finally, I settled on the first sentence …
To my one and only son,
You brought purpose to my lonely life. I know you think you’re a black spot on this Earth, but what you don’t realize is you shined a lot of light on all the dark places in my life. Thank you for giving me something to smile about before I left this world.
Now, don’t you be a stubborn ass like me and turn this opportunity down. I firmly believe you came into my life for a reason, and it was so that I could have someone to remember me when I’m gone. So I could have someone to leave my legacy to.
Take it. Enjoy it. And when you find your Shelby Mustang, you hold on for dear life and spoil the hell out of her.
I love you, son.
LIVE.
My breath rushed from my body, leaving me breathless and weak.
For the past year, I had convinced myself that Clive had made the biggest mistake of his life by leaving everything to me. Clearly, he hadn’t been in the right frame of mind because if he had, he would have known better.
But after reading his words, I felt like I could do it. For the first time since he left me, I felt like it was possible. From the very beginning, Clive had seen something in me that I hadn’t, and it was time I proved him right.
I would build what he left behind and make it everything he ever dreamed I would and more. But first, there would be some changes.
For starters, I was no longer the boy I had once been. I had been groomed by the darkness of life—changed and formed by evil—landing in the shadows of a past I never wanted to look back on.
Sebastian Stephens would always live there … in the shadows.
But I couldn’t be him anymore.
I needed to get away from that name—that life—those memories.
Sebastian Stephens was no more. The darkness had taken him completely, leaving everything black.
Sebastian Black.