THE LOST CAUSE BAR #wattys2017

Chapter 22

Very rough but the words kept coming and I had to get them out.

Devin's POV

            After the ambulance and the guys drove off with Delaney's father, Jack, my attention turned to the fire fighters and police working to stop and contain the fire. The rain is helping but the explosion made a bigger mess and debris is everywhere.

            The police while gathering wood and other material from the blast from the outer boundaries of the property found a hand-held gas tank filled with diesel. A trail could be tracked from the road to the bar. All of this evidence led the officers in charge of the operation to declare this arson and tacked on an attempted murder charge when they found out, Jack was found bound inside the building when I went inside to check what made our girl ....Delaney, freak out so much.

            I have to get use to the fact that she isn't mine to claim.

            The officers questioned me about my whereabouts, when I said in a field their questioning looks had me telling them the whole story. I even mentioned my call to Sawyer and Wyatt as verification for my story.  After they finished laughing they thankfully believed me even when It sounded absolutely ridiculous.

            So I passed inspection but the lines of the investigation led to one person, Delaney's Ex-boss, Mr. Needleman.  He is the only one I can recall Delaney mentioning in the past week about having something against her.

            After a few hours of evidence gathering, safety checks, and clean up the fire and police departments leave to continue the investigation back at their offices. While at the bar, the real work begins with an inspection of the inside of the bar. Phone in hand ready to take pictures for the insurance company I walk through the tattered front doors. Broken tables and bar stools litter the main room, the bar sands at half of what it use to be, all of the liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar are gone instead the remnants of the bottles are splayed out across the floor mixed in with other pieces of the establishment. The pool tables while whole are soaked and will need to be repaired.

The only piece that remains intact is the wall, the wall of lost causes where everyone from our tiny town at one point or another has listed their woes and feelings of injustice in the world. Whether it was work, romance or family related they wrote them in hopes of relieving themselves of the feels the lost causes caused.  Most are faded with time or worn because of fingers trailing over the words. But on in the middle of the wall, a darker and delicate set of ink catches the eye.

The handwriting is unfamiliar, denoting a new comer wrote their peace on the wall. The inscription reads, "Unreliable men who constantly disappoint who break every promise they have ever made and then say sorry like that will make everything better." The words sound just like a stubborn princess with a brand of sass all her own that moved here not too long ago.

            The hurt runs deep even though when she wrote this she wasn't talking about me but someone else.  The wall will stay if not for any other reason than to remind me of how big of a jack-ass I have been to her.

            Phone in hand and still looking at Princess' lost cause I begin to dial the long list of numbers needed to move the rebuild along starting with the insurance company and ending with the local contractor who said he will be out here in thirty minutes.

* * * * * * *

After three days of fending calls from Wyatt's and Sawyer's cell phone and even one attempt to use the hospital's phone and numerous other calls related to the bar one of them showed but it wasn't who I was expecting.

Jack lowers himself out of Wyatt's jack up Chevy and makes his way over to me. With a heavy look on his face I know the news he has will not be good.

"I'm not going to give you an out and saying what you have been doing is good enough because it isn't but she will thank you. On other news she woke up." With no answer from Devin Jack continues to say what he has to, "She asked for you."

His stiff body language clear to the old man that he should tread carefully, "before she fell into unconsciousness again. The boys are worried about you but I cant say I blame you for the distance. You feel like you have wrong her. I still feel like this. I have failed her many times over and once quiet recently but I know my Laney she has a giver heart. She will give and give until there is nothing left and I am half afraid that we are quickly approaching that mark. I can tell from the looks the other two give her that they love her but I can also tell that they are reluctant to move forward and I am fairly certain its because of you." The man sighs in frustration, " you are doing yourself and that girl a disservice by distancing yourself. She cares about you even through your asshole stick. You need to think long and hard about the decision you have made before you make the four of you miserable for the rest of your lives."

Jack walks back to the truck hopefully having his say and going back to hospital to his daughter. But none of us are that lucky, " Don't leave town because I can and will find you if you make my little girl cry."

Kicking at the dirt I look back at the progress made by the contractor and calculate how much longer it will take to finish repair and improvements, a week should finish out any work that is left.

And then my truck and the road no matter what that fool says he wont be able to find me if I keep moving.