Epilogue
“Hey, man. When are you going to put a ring on that girl's finger?” Zach touched the tip of his bottle to mine, his face covered in postnuptial bliss.
“Not today, but hopefully soon.”
Harper had been leery of attending Zach and Kennedy's wedding with me, worried another bomb would fall from the sky like the last time.
“Listen,” he leaned in, attempting to speak in hushed tones over the music in the room. “She has accepted what we do, knows how this lifestyle works and has a good head on her shoulders. I wouldn’t wait too long, man.”
I heard stories of how Zach had to keep things from Kennedy, how he disappeared for hours and even days with no real justification. At first, it put a wedge between them, but once he was certain about her, they talked and here we are at their wedding.
“Harper isn’t going anywhere. And I want to be done with the Navy before I jump into a marriage.”
Ross confided in me how Harper swore she would never marry a man in the military given the way Alex had died. It was important to me she keep the promises she made to herself, even if it meant I wouldn’t be in Zach’s position for a while.
“You got what, four months?
“One hundred and twelve days.”
“But who’s counting?” We said in unison, chuckling and tapping our bottles together again.
The music changed, and the DJ made some comment as to the elderly lady in front being a hot momma with her dancing skills. A new song started, and the tiny women got back into her groove.
“Honey, come dance with me.”
Kennedy Forrester-Michaels, the beautiful new bride and keeper of Zach’s balls, called from the edge of the dance floor. Her white dress glittering from the candlelight around us, the back tied up in one of those bustles and the hem nearly black from being dragged along the dance floor. Given the smile on her face, she didn’t give two shits about the dress, except how quickly Zach would be able to get her out of it.
“Duty calls.” Handing me his beer, he joins his bride without another word.
Tipping my bottle back and draining the remaining beer as I scanned the room for Harper. We had spent the last four days here in Atlanta, taking in the sites and enjoying one another’s company. Kennedy and Harper became best friends in the time it took us to get drinks the first night we arrived. They both enjoyed charity work, Kennedy with her horses and Harper with her clothes. They had made plans for Kennedy to come to Virginia and spend some time in the city.
“Logan, have you spoken with Matthew?”
Aiden took the spot Zach vacated. He had come down the same time as we did, enjoying the area and a few of the female flavors. Aiden had a thing for Southern women, the way they could insult the fuck out of you and make you ask for more. I had to agree with him, Harper had a hell of a twang when she was tired.
“I haven’t seen him tonight. Did he come to the wedding?”
“He showed up close to the end, stood in the back as Zach carried Kennedy back down the aisle.” Kennedy and Zach both came from influential families. As a man who was also raised in a privileged home, I understand the need to break society’s rules every once in awhile. Zach didn’t wait until the kiss was over before he scooped Kennedy up and carried her at a jog down the aisle, leaving a lot of stuffed shirts wagging their tongues at him.
“He’s been sitting at the bar since the reception started, tossing back Wild Turkey.”
When you depend on another person the way we have all these years, you learn when they are doing good and when they are trying to numb something. Matthew Parrish was a silent but deadly individual, who only drank the hard shit when he wanted to either start a fight or pass out. By the way Aiden described it, Matthew was self-medicating whatever is bothering him.
“You’re the doctor, Logan. He’ll listen to you long before he will any of us.” Aiden was right, it was my duty to check on him, to see if I could help him figure shit out or get him the help he needed.
“You guys see Matthew?” Ryan made his way out of the crowd, motioning over his shoulder at the bar behind him.
“We were just talking about him.” I went to leave when Ryan grabbed my arm, his eyes full of worry.
“You should know, he came without Rayne and his face is covered in two days growth.”
Crossing the packed room, Zach and Kennedy must have invited the entire city of Atlanta to this thing, you couldn’t take two steps without bumping into someone. Harper caught my eye as she danced with a girl I didn’t know on the dance floor. I waved to her and pointed to the bar, letting her know where to find me.
Matthew Parrish was not an easy man to hide. Although, if he didn’t want to be seen by his target, he had the skills to make it happen. He occupied the last seat on the far end, shoulders hunched over and his hands wrapped around a highball glass.
“Motherfucker, don’t you know Zach is rolling in fucking money. You ain’t got to drink the cheap shit.”
Matthew’s attention never left his glass as he greeted me in the most broken voice I’d ever heard.
“Logan.”
Taking the seat beside him, ordering a new beer for myself, I kept my focus forward so as not to crowd him. “Want to tell me what’s so bad it warrants a nasty hangover tomorrow?”
Matthew huffed as he raised his glass to his lips, draining the amber liquid as the ice cubes clinked in the glass. “I fucked up, Logan.” Turning his head in my direction, turmoil rolling off him as sadness clouded his eyes.
“Must be bad if Wild Turkey is involved.”
Matthew motioned for the bartender to refill his glass, the young man behind the bar flashing me a look. I motioned for him to go ahead and fill the glass. His speech was still understandable, and he looked too tired to start a fight.
“Worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“This I have to hear if it beats Kosovo.”
Three years ago we tracked a group of arms dealers to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Kosovo. It was the middle of the night when we found them and had to clear a barb-wired fence to get into the warehouse. The night was so dark we couldn’t see a fucking thing. Matthew found a hole in the fence we could crawl under, but there was this stench all around. One by one, we got down in the sludge like stuff. I assumed it was old wastewater from the factory, but it turns out it was what was left of the victims these guys had killed. They had tried to melt their flesh by wrapping them in plastic sheets and tossing the corpses into a sauna. After we had bathed in bleach, we all agreed this was the worst condition we had ever faced.
“You remember Tombstone and the time he spent in the hospital in Germany?”
“Yeah, his wife couldn’t be contacted. When he got home, she had taken off with the kids.”
Matthew nodded his head. “I found her and the new fuck buddy in an abandoned hotel in Arizona. She was prostituting herself while he took all the money they had and injected it into his fucking veins. Those kids saw it all and were practically starved to death.”
“Okay, but it doesn’t explain why you’re drinking the way you are. You’ve seen worse than that. So what gives and what’s with the beard?” After Matthew got out of the military, he found a girl who shifted his world. Her name was Rayne, and she pulled him out of the shell his ex-fiancé put him in. For the longest time, he hid the scar on his face behind his beard. Rayne changed all that, made him comfortable in his own skin.
“Tombstone’s little girl was afraid of me, screamed like hell when I picked her up. She saw this fucking scare on my face and it terrified her—a little girl.” He shook his head, defeat written all over his face.
“When I got back to Charleston, I couldn’t get the little girl's face out of my head, and it got me to thinking. How in the hell would I feel if it was mine and Rayne’s baby? I couldn’t stand hurting an innocent child, especially one I helped bring into this world. So I broke things off with Rayne.”
“You did what?” I shouted, a bit too loud as the entire bar area looked in our direction. Matthew held up his hand to stop me, letting me know he wasn’t finished.
“After I said some horrible things to her, Tombstone called me up to thank me and let me know his daughter, Macy, had drawn me a picture to say she was sorry for how she acted. He said his ex-wife told the kids if they said anything to the authorities, she would send in a big man to take them to the desert and eat them. She assumed I was the monster from her dreams.”
“Oh fuck, man. What did you say to Rayne?”
“I lied and told her I didn’t love her anymore.” Matthew’s voice cracked as he confessed what he had done. Taking the last of his drink into his mouth, he slammed the empty glass on the bar, the ice jumping around inside.
“She ignored my calls and then changed her number.”
“Do you still see her in town?”
“Yes, she works the graveyard shift. So I follow her and make sure she gets to work and home safely.”
“Then there’s still hope, she hasn’t gotten a new man and she’s still employed. First things first, we get rid of this nasty shit.” Taking the empty glass from him and sliding it down the bar out of his reach.
“Second, we pour you into bed and you get a good night's sleep.”
“Then what?” He scoffs, leaning back against the chair.
“We get your girl back, that’s what.”
The End