Lose the Road
By – TempestRaces
Chapter 15 – Let Go
"Drink up baby doll. Are you in or are you out? Leave your things behind, 'cause it's all going off without you. Excuse me, too busy, you're writing your tragedy. These mishaps, your bubble-wrap, when you've no idea what you're like."
"Come on T, it's time to go home."
"Is it?" she asked, clearly unaware of the time.
"Yeah, it's gone 11."
"Aww Harry, that's not late."
"It is to my brother, who's practically ancient by your standards, and is usually on his way home by now, leaving the staff to lock up. And they're almost ready to leave."
"Well, we'll go then, but do we really need to go home?"
"Well, you're not going home, because you're in no shape to drive, but you're coming to my home, and yes, we really need to go there."
"But I'm not ready to call it a night."
"Where exactly do you want to go then? You're supposed to be trying to keep a low profile. Remember?"
"If it was safe enough to come to your brother's restaurant, wouldn't it be safe enough to go to your club?"
"One, I don't do clubs, and two, too likely you'll run into someone who remembers you."
"Harry, it's been two years."
"Still. Too risky. You're you, and thus unforgettable. Home."
"Fine!" she sighed, ignoring his comment about her unforgettableness, thinking he was just being facetious. "Let's go then."
They got in the car and started off. "Harry, how'm I gonna get the truck home?"
"You're not. I'll take you back there tomorrow when you're done sleeping it off. I have several spare rooms. Don't worry about it."
"I don't think that's such a great idea. Just take me back to the hospital. I'll sleep it off there. You and I driving around together isn't smart at all."
"Nothing you've done so far this week has been very smart at all. Where you going to spend the night in the hospital?"
She shrugged one shoulder. "Doesn't matter. I'll find somewhere."
"You sure?"
"Yeah." They fell silent for the better part of 15 minutes as he drove back they way they'd come. "What'm I supposed to do here? How'm I gonna make this happen?"
Harry sighed. "I don't know kid. I don't think you should. I mean, I know you're not gonna listen to me anyway. But I think it's a crazy idea that you should set aside."
"Damn, I know you're right. But I can't. I'm in too deep already. I'm so torn between wanting him in my life so badly I don't know how to let him go, and hating him so much I feel like I can't breathe with the weight of it on my chest. It's like I'm drowning, and the only way I can breathe again is to learn to stop hating him. How'm I supposed to live if I never learn to breathe again? What if I can't breathe without him?"
How could he encourage her to forget Vince and move on after that revelation? There would never be closure for her, she would never go forward, until she either forgave him, or got over him. She'd just spend the rest of her life stagnating in the what if thoughts about what might have happened if they'd worked out their issues. If they got back together. "Since you put it like that, this is what I think. I think you need to be known to have left for home at least a day, if not more, before he goes missing. Otherwise, you're going to just disappear along with him, and they're not going to just let it go. They're going to go looking for you in Santa Fe, and find out you never existed in Santa Fe. Then they're really going to be hot to find out who you actually were. And if they dig T, they're going to find you. They're going to find out that Jesse has a cousin who knew the team and he loved like a sister, and never had a sister to begin with. Then they're going to come for you.
"You need to make a show of getting things in order, of saying good-bye to everyone, pointing out you're on the way home, can't take any more time off. Make it natural, and normal, and cry and be sad and promise to keep in touch and come back soon, make it seem like you're going because you have to, and it's time, not because you've run off into the night. Then you need to let other people deal with getting him to you, somewhere outside the city limits. Someone needs to rent, steal, make an ambulance—but get one from somewhere. Pretend to be the cops sent to move him to the prison hospital. Walk brazenly out the front of the ER and load him up. Drive off. No one will think to find it suspicious until the real cops come looking for him and can't find him. Then they need to meet you somewhere in northern California and switch him over to your truck. And then you need to drive like fucking greased lightning to this friend of yours. And he needs a new identity more water tight than a duck's ass before you go any further than that."
"I'm supposed to just leave Bryce to move him alone?" His words put her deep in thought. She hadn't realized before, but what Harry said was completely true. If she disappeared exactly when Vince did, it was going to arouse suspicion.
"I would suggest that Bryce—whoever he is—will need an accomplice, and the accomplice isn't you. I'm telling you this now T, if you disappear the day he does, without a word, without telling the doctors and nurses that you have to leave Jesse and asking them to make sure he's ok and to keep you updated if anything goes wrong, they're going to catch you before you're half way to Toronto."
"I'll tell him what you said tomorrow when I speak to him and see what he says."
"Ok." Harry pulled up in a dark area beside the hospital, not wanting to pull under the bright lights and likely CCTV monitored awning at the front door. "Off you go."
Tempest looked over at her friend, saw the worry on his face. "I'm gonna be ok Harry. It's going to be fine."
"I sure hope so T. I don't want you in trouble. And I don't want you heartbroken again."
"I won't be. If I think I can pull it off, I'll see you again before I go. If I can't, I won't. Either way, I'll miss you."
"Miss you too kid. Don't do anything stupid. Well, stupider."
She chuckled. "Ok. See you around." She got out of the car before she could talk herself into tears over the last time she'd say good-bye to Harry for a long, long time. Slamming the door, she walked around the nose of the car, and into the lights around the front door. She forced herself not to look back. Not to wave, or do anything on camera that would give away who she came with. She heard the Mercedes start back up and then the door wooshed shut behind her, and Harry was gone from her life again. She rode the elevator up to the 14th floor, snuck through the halls, and didn't even consider Jesse's door before she was opening Vince's.
She paused just inside the door, leaned against it for a split second before he was looking her way, clearly still up, and worried from the look on his face. She walked to the side of the bed before it all crashed into her and a sob caught her by surprise.
"What's wrong?" he asked, trying not to panic. Trying not to panic that he was helpless to go to her, trying not to panic that he didn't know what was wrong, what had happened. "What happened?"
"I'm never going to see him again," she finally managed to get out, around her tears.
Relief floored him that that was all. That she was drunk, and thinking about what she was giving up had her down. He wasn't very good at it, but he could deal with her sad and drunk. He'd done it enough in the past. "Aw baby, you don't know that. Come're." He lifted his good arm up to make room for her and was surprised pleasantly when she just crawled onto the bed and lay her head on his chest without an argument. She seemed to swing between hating everything about him down to the noise he made when he breathed and still being completely into him to the nth degree, and he never knew how she was going to react to anything he said or did until it was over and done. He'd had a fifty fifty shot of her getting into the bed, and telling him to fuck off for thinking she'd ever want to be in close contact with him again. He was glad she'd gone with the option that lacked fighting, because he couldn't handle it.
"Yes I do! In a few weeks I'll never be able to come here again."
He just rubbed her back while she calmed down for a moment, gathering his courage to spit out what he wanted to say. "There is another option you know. The one where you don't do this crazy thing. The one where you go home for a bit, give your notice, pack your stuff, get your car and come back to go work with Harry. The little hard evidence they have on me isn't sending me down for anything near what that cop is saying. He's trying to scare me, and to date he's only managed to scare you."
"You sure? What if he's right and you're wrong?"
"You go after Bryce when you get tired of waiting for me?" Vince offered, trying to make a joke.
"Don't think I haven't considered it, several times," she quipped back. "Who says I'd wait for you anyway?"
"You gonna be like that?"
"You don't know there isn't some hot parts advisor with a fast car and my name all over him back up home anyway. Not like you ever asked, or indicated you cared either way." She had to get the dig in, had to be catty. She didn't know how to not. Had to point out he'd done very little to acknowledge his mistake with her. That all he'd admitted was that he should have called. But yet, did still assume that she'd been waiting on him, that there was no one else. He shouldn't be making that assumption with her. She thought she'd be less annoyed if he'd assumed the opposite. Not that she was so into him that she'd been pining and crying into her cornflakes for the last two years. There could be someone else. Should be someone else. So why was he so sure there wasn't that he hadn't even asked?
"Better not be anyone with your anything all over him anywhere," he mumbled into her hair.
"Naw, well, not anymore. I left him last month anyways." She yawned, still pissed off he thought she was so pathetic she couldn't have moved on instead of waiting on him. "I intend to sleep here," she announced like a decree.
"What if I don't want to share my bed with you?"
"Then I'll go find some other injured dude that could do with the company and sleep there. I ain't that bothered where I sleep as long as tired, drunk ass driving don't figure in my near future."
He chuckled. "You take all the fun out of everything."
"So I've been told."
"If you're going to go to sleep, shouldn't you at least take your shoes off and get under the blanket?"
"I guess so." She did as he suggested, levering herself up with a sigh, and the minute she was tucked up under the blankets curled into him, she was out like a light.
He couldn't sleep himself, thinking about everything he'd done, and everything that had happened in the last two years. Two years and two weeks, he corrected himself. He'd started the mess then, and was still making it now. Why couldn't he be strong enough to tell her no, that she wasn't doing this crazy thing over him? That she wasn't going to end up going down hard in some stupid Bonnie and Clyde ending over him. That he wasn't worth it. That she needed to go home and find that guy with that fast car and day job. Forget him for real this time. He wanted her too bad to do it, selfish to the end, that was him.
He was still awake two hours later when the nurse came back in to do her checks. Every two hours or so they came to poke and prod him and he'd rather be in jail then dealing with it. He saw her mouth go to open and shushed her, glad it was almost always Martha and not some nosey loud mouth. She held her hand out for his wrist without a word and he accommodated her with a sigh.
"Does she smell of liquor?" Martha asked in shock.
"Likely. She was next thing to drunk when she landed," he whispered back. "She's going through a lot and I'm not much use to her, am I?"
"At least you seem to make a good pillow I suppose," Martha whispered back. "You feeling alright? Pain medication at a reasonable level and everything else we ask you every two hours?"
"I'm fine. Go away."
She nodded. "Try to get so sleep. Don't brood over Miss Thing all night."
"Why's she Miss Thing?"
"Walks around like she owns the place and everyone in it."
Vince laughed, really laughed and took a minute to get himself in check. He hurt his gunshot he laughed so hard. Tempest shifted and frowned in her sleep, swiping at his face in her irritation even though she was still out cold, and he got himself in check as he dodged the slap. "She's always been that way. Can't see it ever changing. She doesn't mean anything by it. Just how she is."
"That's why she's the perfect partner for you I suppose. Obviously the two of you are two halves of the same arrogant person."
"She's just a friend."
"Oh really? Is that why she sleeps there with you like she's done it a million times before?"
"She hasn't slept with me a million times before. She doesn't even like me. Just has a soft spot for lost causes."
"She doesn't look like Saint Jude."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Obviously you don't get it. Go back to sleep."
"You gonna leave me alone for the rest of the night then?"
"Nope. Back every two hours like clockwork."
"Fucking joy."
When Nurse Martha flipped him off on her way out the door, the amused shock caught him by surprise and he thought he was going to laugh himself into a pulled stitch for sure, but then Tempest's second slap of the night was more on target, and he settled down to watch her, rubbing his stinging cheek but still chucking to himself, that she could slap that hard in her sleep.