He went to the warehouse. Dallas liked to work with his hands when shit got to be too much, and there were always crates to be built and piles of salvage to be picked apart and sorted.
Not tonight.
He heard the crashing sounds from outside the building, and they only got worse when he slipped inside. Louder. Lights flickered in the workroom, and the crack of shattering wood punctuated rhythmic thuds as Dallas smashed a sledgehammer into what had probably been a stack of newly built crates not so long ago.
Jasper rubbed the knot forming at the base of his neck and groaned. "Come on, man. What the fuck?"
Dallas paused, but only to snag a half-empty bottle of whiskey off the table. He took a healthy swig before waving it at Jasper. "My fucking booze. My fucking crates. I can smash them all day long because I'm Dallas O'Kane."
"Sure." Jasper bent to retrieve a jagged splinter of wood from the floor. "But someone's gonna have to rebuild it all."
"Is that why you're here?" Dallas drank again, still clutching the sledgehammer in one white-knuckled fist. "Because your girlfriend's busy rebuilding things?"
Dallas O'Kane didn't fish for information, he demanded it. So this halting, roundabout question meant the world really was ending. "Why don't you ask me what you really want to know?"
The tortured noise Dallas made was that of a wounded animal. "Because I don't want to know. I don't want to know if I broke her so bad even Noelle can't fix it." Swinging the sledgehammer, he sent a shattered piece of wood flying toward the salvage pile. "You didn't see the look on her face, Jas. Lex was afraid of me. Lex."
There were a million ways to fear, and at least as many reasons why. "Should she have been?"
"I don't know." An admission. A plea for help. "Fuck, man. I don't fucking know."
Jasper caught the handle of the sledgehammer and twisted it away from Dallas. "I don't know a lot about women, but I've been watching you and Lex for years."
"Yeah?" Dallas snapped. "Ever seen her terrified of me before?"
Christ help him not to beat his best friend's ass. "When I lived out on the farm, there was this dog there. Mean bastard, crazy. Must have bit a couple kids a year, but old Robbins kept him around because he was a damn good guard dog. Once the mutt got it in his head something was his, he'd rip up anyone who tried to take it."
Drunk as he was, Dallas eyed him suspiciously. "Robbins? The bastard with one hand torn to hell and back?"
"Uh-huh. Dog got him." Jasper hesitated. "I'm not good with words, but I know you have a crazy, mean dog in you. If you can't keep it in check, it'll bite the shit out of you."
"Don't worry about me. Worry about the rest of you." Dallas lifted the bottle again but didn't drink. Instead he stared at the label as the amber liquid sloshed back and forth. "I can't keep it in check. Never really could. Lex was the one wearing a collar, but she's had me on a leash for years. And now she's leaving."
"Maybe it's what she needs to do." Jasper snatched the bottle this time. "Maybe you need to let her. Because all I keep hearing is how low you are, how bad you fucked up. How you don't want her to go. You haven't said jack shit about what's good for Lex."
"Because everything I try makes it worse," he roared, lunging across the space separating them. Dallas's hand closed around the bottle as they stood toe-to-toe, the potential for violence seething in the air between them. "Everything I do hurts her more," he repeated in a quiet, chilling voice. "So if I have to drink myself halfway to dead to find a way to let her leave, that's what I'm going to do."
"You can't," Jasper reminded him softly. "You're Dallas O'Kane."
"Not tonight." He closed his eyes, but not before Jasper got a glimpse of bleak, utter hopelessness. "Tonight I'm a man who has to figure out how to let go."
If he could figure out how to do that, then he might not have to. It didn't take a genius to see Lex didn't want to leave--if she did, she'd be long gone already, and none of them would ever hear from her again.
It didn't change the problem at hand. "Come on, then," Jasper said.