His Dangerous Ways✔️

Chap. 34 Beer Bottles and Plans

The cool wind caused a small shiver to run down my spine as I stood on the balcony outside Cat and I's room, but that didn't stop me from raising the flask I'd been drinking out of. The cars below were loud, but they sounded like a whisper compared to the deafening thoughts whirl-winding in my brain. I took another drag of my cigarette, feeling it move through my body, before slowly blowing it out. I'd gone through at least a box, and even though I knew I'd told Cat I'd stop, it was extremely hard to do so without her. Everything was.

I desperately wanted to crawl back inside and slide into bed with one of Cat's shirts and recount every memory with her like I had been doing throughout the day, but my body was too heavy and sore. It was only a week before we- I mean I was set to meet with the Silencers to negotiate Cat's release and I'd been training and strategizing like crazy ever since I'd gotten the messages. I've been up against them many times in the past, sometimes only escaping by the skin of my teeth, but I'd gathered a lot about their strategies every time. They liked to simply overpower you without really any strategy as long as they could overwhelm you, if they couldn't they'd retreat and target the ones you loved like the cowards they are. The bullet wound in my arm and my missing girlfriend reminded me of that.

"River, come on man, you've been out here for an hour, you need to come inside," Liam's voice instructed from behind me, causing me to flip him off. I knew he didn't deserve it, but I was just so fed up with everything and everyone that the slightest thing set me off. "I didn't expect that to work, but you gotta try sometime, right?" he said as he sat beside me, completely unfazed as he helped himself to the beer bottle that I'd been working on before I moved on to the flask.

"How's Mason doing?" I asked, finally facing him, causing him to shake his head as he downed some.

"Not so good," he admitted.

"What do you mean?" I asked since I'd been preoccupied strategizing and training so much that I barely been able to check in on him even now that he's been back home and was in the room right down the hall from mine.

"He's doing fine physically," he explained. "Health-wise he's doing great, though he's still in pain, which is understandable, but now I think he's developed PTSD."

I sucked in a breath as I brought the flask to my lips once more. I struggled with PTSD when I first started this job, especially after my first hit, but after that, I became kind of numb to everything, as sad as it sounds. "I'm sorry man, that's terrible," I said. "Why do you think he has it now? I mean, he's been doing this for a while and this isn't the first time he's gotten shot."

"I think it's because that was the closest he's ever come to dying," Liam said looking out once more. "He also blames himself for what's happening to Cat right now, despite the amount of reassurance I give him that it's not. He just doesn't want to listen. I mean, he wakes up crying or yelling and it breaks my heart that I can't carve those thoughts out of his head, so I do the only thing I can: I hold him and try to console him, even though I don't even think that works. Gosh, I just hate feeling so helpless, not just with Mason, but with Cat too. It's crushing."

"Trust me, I understand," I sighed as I took a drag from my cigarette thinking about the night Cat had a nightmare about what Shawn and Heather had done to her, and they were still going to pay once we got her back.

"Man, River, I'm sorry. I'm over here talking about how I can hold Mason in my arms, but you don't even have-"

"It's fine," I said, feeling gutted as he spoke. "Just...you just need to be there for Mason. If he needs to cry, let him cry. If he needs to scream, let him scream. If he wants to burn the world to the ground, be there with a fire extinguisher. Just be there when he crashes because that's when he needs you the most."