Lose the Road

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 12 – You Fight Me

"The only way out is letting your guard down, and never die, forgotten, alone. And forgive me my love, I stand here all alone." ~Breaking Benjamin

"So, do you really want to go to jail for anywhere from 5-20 years and find out that she's finally moved on when you get out?" Bryce decided to jab the weapon where it hurt again, still trying to instigate his desired result.

Vince rolled his eyes. "Yeah, it'll be way better for both of us to end up in two different jails in two different countries when this all blows up in all our faces."

"Who says it has to? This guy she knows is some kind of super computer hacker. He's given her an identity down here she's totally confident will hold up under scrutiny. Who's to say he can't do the same for you up there?"

"Like any friend of hers is gonna help me after what I did to her two years ago."

"Her friends all seem loyal to a fault. I don't think very many people deny her things she really wants when they have the ability to give them to her. You know, unless the friend in question is you, and all she wants is an indication it's ok to be in love with you. You found it easy enough to deny her that, the first time around anyway. Why was Dominic worth all this, but she's not worth one more little illegal effort?"

"I'm trying not to die here! Do you have to be so damn cruel?"

"Yeah, I do. Seems to me if you'd done the right thing in the first damn place we wouldn't be here. Her cousin wouldn't be across the hall injured. Your friends wouldn't be on the run from the law. Can't you see that your actions fucked everything up for everyone because you couldn't man up?! If you'd done the right thing right away last time, instead of waiting until desperation set in, none of this would have happened. If you'd gone to find her instead of trying to save her from herself when clearly she's the smarter half of any relationship between her and you, none of this would have been happening. You should have trusted her to make up her own mind in the first place."

Maybe it was cruel and unusual to say such things to Vince when he couldn't get up, and they couldn't go talk it out with their fists in the parking lot the way brothers tended to do when they pissed each other off, but Bryce couldn't get over the idiocy. It had to be corrected now, or the whole idea was a waste of time. If Vince didn't get over whatever hang ups he had about himself that had driven him to enact his stupid plan two summers ago, he was going to keep pushing her away and she needed him to let her in, finally. To finally get over the doubts what he had done had raised in her, about herself. She needed him to stop holding her at arm's length until he forgot himself, let her in deeper than he wanted her, and then pushing her violently away when he realised where she was. So Vince had to be ready to be real with her this time. And he also knew that Vince needed her to pick him, want him for just who he was. He knew his brother had hang ups about his worthiness stemming from their childhood, but it was time to put the past in the past. He looked at Vince, saw the stubborn, self righteous look on his face, and realized he wasn't done yet. Vince was somehow still able to rationalize the summer of '99 to himself and that couldn't be allowed to stand. It wasn't rational, what he'd done.

"You know Harry offered her a job? She was going to take it and come live here. Even though you'd never even let on you'd be ok with it, would even want it. Want her here. Even though there was a good chance you'd throw it in her face. That she dared to presume you'd want her around any longer at all in the first place. Was going to get her own place and just—be around. Be around Jesse and Harry's and be normal and let you see what you were missing, get used to the idea on your own terms. She said she could over look all the other stuff that came before, and was going to, but then instead of not even just wanting her too, not even just on that one last night, you apparently just didn't, and moreover decided to make out with some nameless whore where you had to be fairly sure she would find you. Which meant you threw away all that other stuff she was planning. And she couldn't forgive that, so she ran. And if you're going to treat her like that this time around, I'll phone an anonymous tip about this plan in myself so that you go to jail. You can't do that to her again. She is too good for you, so love her because she wants you anyway." He knew it was finally enough when he made his little brother cry. He'd only seen it happen twice before in 24 years and he knew it meant he'd finally made his point, shitty as he felt about the necessity of it. He patted Vince's shoulder to show there were really no hard feelings, at least on his side.

"She deserves better than what she'll ever get with me."

"But for whatever reason she has, she doesn't want better. You think a woman like that, let alone one who works with nothing but men day in day out, stays single all this time because she can't get a date?"

Vince took a minute to get his emotions in check. It took longer than he would have liked and he blamed it on the drugs, and the fact that all the shit in the last two years, but especially the last few months just—crashed into him. The fact that Letty got hurt, that any of them could have been killed, all tied back to his decisions. The fact his friends were all on the run now was all his fault. He should have told Dominic no. He knew if he had, Dom never could have pulled anything like this off. He might have lost the garage, he might not have all the parts he wanted for all the cars but he'd still be living in his family home—with his family all under the same roof.

He'd said yes out of a purely selfish desire to live his own life on the edge and he had known it wasn't as safe for the rest of the team as he'd told himself time and time again he was making it. He'd been justifying something stupid to himself by lying to himself about how safe he was making it for everyone but him. "I don't think I'll be able to do it. I'll never be well enough to get down the stairs, not even in two weeks time. I'd do anything for her, but I won't be able to do this. Not even for her." He'd wanted the same thing as her two years ago. He'd wanted that apartment, he'd wanted that life where she lived in his bed, his kitchen, in his arms on their couch, and he'd stolen it from both of them it seemed. And he'd give anything to give it back to them both, because he owed her everything he could give and then some, but he couldn't give her this. He was too broken.

"Let me worry about that. You just worry about how you're going to make this worth the risk to her later, after."

"What can I ever do that will make this kind of risk over me worth it to her?"

"Let her in—all the way—for once."

Vince wasn't quite so ready to let that statement stand unchallenged, no matter how much of an ass he knew he'd been. "You know, she was never big on letting me in either. She has more walls than any other person I've ever met and she never took them down for me. Only in her most unguarded moments, and even then it was only a few seconds before she got the walls back up. Everything emotional always had to happen fast an furious, so it could be over. She was always frantic to get the walls back up again."

"Maybe that's how she figured you'd want it. And the way that wouldn't let you see she had feelings for you that you didn't share. You started off your relationship with her as a one night challenge because she was the woman who shouldn't want you, the one that you shouldn't have touched with a barge pole. You think she didn't know that from day one?"

"How would she know that? We never talked about anything like that."

"Vince, everyone but you knew she was in love with you from, oh, at least the night you introduced me to her for me. It was likely the same night I figured out you were falling for her. Everyone but the two of you knew. But again, because she's the smarter half of your duo I gotta figure she figured it out and allowed herself to admit it before you ever did."

"If she was so into me why didn't she start a scene when she found me that night? Why aren't I down a few teeth? She slaps hard enough to split lips, let alone if she ever really clocked me one with a fist. Why did she just walk away without a word?"

"You'd replaced her with a fake titted, fake haired groupie the night before she had to leave. I gotta figure she already wasn't feeling so hot about herself after the way you kept pushing her away, and that that was the last straw. Maybe after that she told herself you weren't worth making a scene over. Why don't you ask her if you want the answers? Do I look like I have tits all of a sudden? How the fuck should I know what was going through her chick brain?"

.

Tempest walked into Jesse's room still absolutely fuming and sat beside his bed. He looked up from the latest issue of the import tuner, which she could only figure some nurse with a mother complex had brought him, because she sure as fuck hadn't.

"Wow, you're fucking pissed," he told her incredulously. What had happened to set her off that bad in a hospital?

She sat and sputtered for a few seconds, unable to find words. "He is the most frustratingly stupid, slow, dim witted, arrogant, asshole on the face of planet earth!"

"Vince?"

"Who else?" She sat back into her chair forcefully and ended up in an irate sprawl.

"What'd he do this time?"

"He tried to sit up, with a gunshot wound over his oblique abs, like a fucking moron. Jesse, this was such a bad idea. I'm gonna kill him where the trucker failed before we ever reach the boarder anyway." She sighed through her nose, almost a snort.

"I thought you said no." Jesse sat up a little straighter. He'd thought the save Vince plan had been vetoed. She'd never outright said no, but she'd made such a scene and production about the logistics of it all, he'd just figured that was her way of telling him to grow up, once again.

"I didn't say yes or no. I said it was crazy and that he was too hurt for it. Then I called Bryce for advice and he wants to help me pull it off." Ironically she started wishing Leon was there.

She couldn't talk to Jesse about what the thoughts of being in close spaces, in close contact with Vince did to her. It would feel like showing weakness and she never showed Jesse weakness if she could help it. And now certainly wasn't the time to start. Leon on the other hand, she could dump all this on and for whatever reason her fucked up brain had, she would feel free to keep it real to him. Much as she knew he wouldn't want to hear it all, had never really gotten over how she kept picking Vince when it was stupid, and she wasn't a stupid person. Couldn't see how someone so smart could keep acting like such an idiot. He would listen to her and he would feel free to tell her how it was, in his opinion.

But he wasn't around and he wasn't likely coming back any time soon. So she was stuck with her own council. Unless she wanted to risk a call to Angelo, but he was a bit biased toward her side in almost every matter that concerned her, so he wasn't really going to be the sounding board she wanted. In fact if he knew what she had running through her head he would be quickly trying to talk her out of her plan. And the honest fact was she knew it was stupid, knew she shouldn't have anything to do with it, but she wanted it so bad she wasn't going to do the smart thing and she certainly didn't need someone like Angelo trying to talk her out of it. The level of influence he had over her, he'd likely manage.

"So how are you going to pull it off?" Jesse finally asked when he got over his shock that she was actually entertaining the idea.

"Dunno. Hoping Bryce does."

"Who is that guy anyway?"

"Vince's friend. His partner in doing the kind of things he decided to drag you all into with him. Stupid," she muttered.

"What's stupid?"

"You all doing what you were doing and Vince letting you in the first place. So god damn stupid."

"What'd you know about what Vince does?"

"Damn J, I've always known he was into something, he didn't really make it any kinda secret. He told me he got paid to make people think twice. What else could he have meant? Besides that, he told me he was the one who made it happen, because of people he knew. The night you sent me to check on him, he told me. But I knew before then. I've always known."

"Still dunno how you know the specifics."

She got fed up of his attitude, like she wasn't smart enough, or grown enough to know the truth of the matter. "Because Harry paid me to buy him a truck load of stolen car parts back in the day and it ended up being Vince and Bryce I bought 'em off. That was a pretty big clue right there."

"Excuse me?!"

"Yeah, your reaction's tame as hell compared to what Vince said that night lemme tell ya." Strangely when she remembered that night, the most startlingly clear part was the way his shoulders had felt under her finger tips as he'd lifted her out of the trailer so gently, his hands lingering around her waist.

"I can't believe you! What were you thinking?!" Jesse sputtered.

"The shocked outrage is a bit much don't you think? You've asked me to commit a felony as it is here. I think the risk I'm taking now is worth about 15 years more than the risk I took then. And this time it's because you asked me too, not because I want the money."

"I don't care what's a worse crime. That was way more dangerous."

"I was fine. Harry sent a body guard. I actually wish I could get together with Harry and catch up."

"How'd you know Harry anyway?"

Realising she couldn't really make Jesse aware she could have moved down years ago, she just shrugged in answer. "I'm gonna go out for a bit. I have shit to do. I'll see you later?"

"If you come back. I'm stuck where I am."

"True that. I'll come back. Catch you later."

She left the room and crossed the hall. She leaned into the door of Vince's room, looking at Bryce instead of the man in question. "I'm heading out, got shit to do."

"What could you possibly have to do in Los Angeles?" Vince growled out. His conversation with Bryce hadn't put him in a great frame of mind.

"What I have to do or don't have to do as the case might be is really none of your business. Not anymore."

"Jesus!" Bryce threw up his hands. "Enough." He shot Vince a pointed look and stood. "I'd appreciate a lift back to the bike."

"That's fine, let's go."

"You coming back?" Vince asked as Bryce crossed the room. Bryce figured it was obvious he was talking to the girl so he didn't answer.

"Yeah, later."

Vince just nodded in answer, and with one look at him Tempest knew he was scared and lonely and she knew it was part of what was making him behave so badly. But she wasn't ready to not be angry with him just yet so she backed out of the room and waited for Bryce in the hall. When he joined her she saw his mouth go to open and she held up a hand before he could speak. "Don't. I'm not in the mood yet. Not ready to hear it yet."

"Fine, but we need to talk if you're going to pull this off."

"I'll give you my number, we'll talk. But not now. Not yet. I don't know how to handle this yet."

"Fine." Bryce answered on a sigh.