;; Caveat Lector ;; Real life. It'll really kick your ass. But I'm back and hopefully, I can get further with the series now. I know this chapter doesn't have a lot of interaction with Jason and Liz or Nathan and Delila, but.. It was a necessary evil to write it now, to set things up for events to come. I'm also sorry it's not longer, but I felt like trying to keep it going would have resulted in a jarring end to the chapter, so.. Now it's out there and now, I can get back to work, revisiting the timeline I had all done for this to see if there's anything I want to add or take away.
all of you who reviewed this so far, oh my god, thank you so much for your kind words. I can't express just how much they made my heart happy. notenoughlove I am so excited to sit down and write that part out, you have no idea. It's been bugging me and I keep wanting to rush right in but I manage to keep myself from it. Thank you!
my anonymous reviewer, I absolutely had to reset Jason to his default settings because the Jason we've been getting for years now is, well.. It's just not working for me. I mean I love a hitman type but c'mon.. The guy can have personality. I firmly believe he would truly be better off if he were to step away from Carly and Sonny and all the drama they bring to the table and we won't even start on my rant about him with Sam and how sometimes, you should just walk away the first time. Neither of them are bad characters but.. They both possess traits that typically don't lend well for anything lasting, let alone make room for love to flourish. And there's all the stuff they've been through. Anyway, I had to take this chance to give us the gift that could have been Liason. Or rather, my own interpretation. I'm so so so happy you like it!
"Something wrong, sir?"
The question caught Jason off-guard and he glanced over at his new hire. After a second or two, he shrugged and shook his head. Oh, there was a lot going on in his mind alright but the fact remained... it had to be grief.
Grief that he hadn't allowed himself to have before he left it all behind and chose to become his own person again. Grief he'd felt so deep that he couldn't even begin to wrap his head around it most days, let alone allow himself to attempt coming to terms with it. Nobody who called themselves close to him even seemed to begin to understand just how far this grief ran. The most shocking part of his decision to turn over a new leaf thus far had been the eye-opener in the form of only having his mother and maybe two other people who seemed to get that losing Lila years ago had really done significant damage.
Sam claimed to love him once and even she didn't seem to notice or care in the long run.
He cleared his throat and shook his head again, forcing himself to seem as if he weren't lost in thought before Delila interrupted. "No,nah. Everything is fine. Did the owner of the Volvo from hell come by to collect it, finally?"
"Not yet. I've been calling the woman all damn day. You'd think that as persistent as she was about it being fixed before Friday, she'd actually show up really quick to collect it."
Sean spoke up from the desk he sat behind. "She doesn't come by tomorrow night, I'm getting someone from PCPD to come down here and check it out. Seems more than a little fishy to me that she insisted we couldn't look at anything or touch anything other than what we absolutely had to in order to repair it. There was also just something about her that rubbed me wrong."
Jason nodded in agreement. "I know what you mean. I'll try to call her again, if I get nothing on my end, I'll let you know so you can make the call. The last thing I want or need right now is PCPD in here on top of us when we're all law-abiding citizens."
"Yeah,well.. In the eyes of the law, once you got a record, man..." Sean shrugged as he said it and chuckled because it amused him. He also had a bit of a checkered past, so naturally, when the two men decided to go in half and re-open the garage, expanding it when Diego, the kid they hired, proved himself capable of overseeing his own area across town, a lot of questions were raised and for the most part, a good half of the town's population thought it was either a fence for stolen goods or a place for Corinthos to launder his money.
Little did they all know, Sean found himself thinking, Sonny rarely steps foot through the doors. It's almost as if my buddy Jason served his purpose or the guy might possibly be a little afraid of him. When he chuckled, Jason's brow raised. "The hell is so funny?" Jason asked in a light tone.
"Just amuses me how half the town thinks we're a fence or a front and couldn't be further from the truth."
"Let 'em think that. The fact of the matter is we're the only damn garage in town and I'm pretty sure nobody's about to make the hour drive down to Benson-Hurst just to possibly have their ride end up in a chop shop. Because we all know the garage there is exactly that." Jason mused as he rubbed his chin. He turned his attention to Delila, gazing at her swollen knuckles. "What the heck happened there?"
"The hood to that Tacoma I was working on at lunch. It's not a big deal. I'll throw some frozen peas on it when I get back to my place tonight." Delila shrugged it off as she dug around in her pocket to grab her cell phone when it started to ring. She stepped out of the office area to answer the call and as soon as she realized it was from the school the twins went to, her stomach rolled.
"Wait. Hold on.. Okay, what happened again?" Delila took a deep breath as she tried not to let every bad thought going through her mind take root. The teacher explained that around lunch a man had come into the office and attempted to sign out Dallas and Della, but since there was no one else on Delila's contacts list authorized to do so, the school had sent the man away.
Delila let out a ragged breath. "This man.. did he give a name?"
She felt her stomach lurch when the teacher took a second or two and then answered, "I believe he said his name was William. He seemed like a charming man."
"Oh, he does at first. The twins.. They didn't see him, did they?"
"Oh no, no. If someone doesn't pass our authorization check, they're sent off school grounds. The twins did have an encounter on the playground earlier that left them shaken up enough that they came in from recess an entire ten minutes early, though. Between the man trying to check them out without proper authorization and whatever happened then, I thought it best to call you."
"Thank you. I'll be around to get them as soon as I can, if that's alright? There's.. There are a few things I need to explain when I do, just so next time it's crystal clear."
"Is everything alright, ?"
"I'll explain when I get there. I'd really rather not get into this sort of thing over the phone." Delila answered before hanging up on her end. She wandered back into the office and sank down in the chair, putting her head in her hands as she tried to give herself a minute or two to allow her heart to climb back down out of her throat.
Jason and Sean exchanged a look and Jason spoke up. "Everything okay, kid?"
"The one thing I've been most afraid of is apparently going to happen." Delila answered, keeping it as vague as possible. Jason's brow raised and he started to ask for a further explanation, but Delila spoke up instead, asking her own question. "That call I just got was from the school.. I.. Is it okay if I go pick up the twins?"
"Nothing's wrong?" Sean gazed at the young woman in concern. Jason was doing the same, but he nodded towards the office door. "Go on. Family first around here. That's my one rule."
Delila took a deep breath and thanked Mr. Morgan profusely before grabbing her leather jacket and the keys to her truck and rushing out of the garage. As soon as she was out of earshot, Sean spoke up.
"Something was definitely wrong just now. You still firmly against me allowing Spinelli to dig around, find out what we can about her? I mean, for all either of us know, Morgan.. She could be in danger. She could've moved here to get away from somebody and I just think..." Sean was about to go on but Jason's nod of agreement had him going quiet. Jason cleared his throat and answered, "I was thinking the same thing just now, to be honest. And if we know what's going on, maybe we can help somehow."
"That's what I was thinking myself." Sean agreed.
Jason stepped out of the office to make the call to Spinelli and the entire time he was explaining what he wanted Spinelli to look for when he did this background check, he tried a thousand times to tell himself that the reason he was doing this was simply for the safety of a woman left alone to raise two kids. That it had nothing to do with the woman in question reminding him so much of a daughter he'd lost years prior and never actually gotten to know.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he felt this familial type connection to the young woman in question, he told himself firmly, and he had to stop and think about it all. He'd lost his chance to be a father to Lila, that had been taken from him. There was no way the dreams he'd been having lately were true at all.
Because they couldn't be.
All of this had everything to do with his grief and trying to do the right thing, a good thing, in a situation he was concerned about.
But the harder he tried to convince himself this was the case, the more he knew deeper down that there was so much more to it than that.
"Ah, Stone Cold. It's been a while, friend. How may the Jackyl help you?" Spinelli asked, listening as Jason filled him in on everything he wanted him to try and find out. Spinelli jotted it all down and then asked after Jason finished speaking, "Have you chosen a worthy therapist, Stone Cold? I'm so glad you've chosen to heed the wise advice of your mother."
"Me too." Jason answered. And after a second or two to think about it, he came up with the one way to finally put the nightmares and the lingering gut feeling he'd always had about the night he and Sam lost Lila behind him. "Hey, Spin?"
"Yes?"
"Remember I told you that I didn't want to know exactly what happened the night Sam and I lost Lila?"
"Of course. You've told me a thousand times that knowing won't help, it won't change anything and it won't make the pain any less. Why, are you changing your mind? I'll happily do some digging if you like."
"I think it's time. I just... Look, I need to find some kind of closure, ya know? I'm going on the advice of that therapist Monica found for me.. Maybe if I see it all in black and white, I can finally get the grieving over with."
"I'll start on all of this right away, Stone Cold."
"Thank you, Spinelli."
"This is what friends are for, sir." Spinelli answered before hanging up the phone, eager to start looking into everything that Jason had just tasked him to look into. Anything to finally help the man work through everything he'd been through. Anything to help a friend.