I make my way inside the same building I've been inside more times than I can count. Being here is bittersweet and, by that, I mean it feels more bitter than it does sweet. Fuck my visual memory. Fuck it straight to hell. Because even though the name and scenery have changed, I can still see them here. I can still visualize Trevor and Monica.

Memories...

Memories of me acting like a fucking idiot and losing myself inside of my head just trying to forget. So much time spent here forgetting my shitty past experiences by losing myself in casual sex and amphetamines. If I'm completely honest, I feel like doing those exact things right about now. But although the compulsion is there it's not something I'm actually going to let myself do. Monica may be gone but her memory is still a constant beckon of light inside of my head.

I look over my shoulder at the remodeled bar behind me remembering all the times I'd worked behind it. I'd closed this club down when Seth was born not being able to sell the stupid thing. My old therapist be damned. There are just too many memories here to hand it over to anyone else, well, at least while I was still alive.

After I die I don't really give a shit what happens to it. I'll just be another hole in the ground. Just another headstone to mourn by. All of the shit that has been my life will be over and all of my memories here will die with me.

Stop going to the dark place, I scold myself mentally. The dark place is just where my head naturally goes. I'm a fucking pessimistic prick if there ever was one.

I glance around the space that just a few years ago had been completely rundown. After Monica died I began restoring it. I couldn't see a place I associated with the two people I loved most, other than my son, rotting away like their corpses in the ground. Again, fuck my visual mind.

But even though I hate the stupid thing at least I could see her here again. I can visualize Monica inside these four walls with her long flowing chocolate waves and matching eyes. I can picture her back when we first met, back when I was a shit-show of a mess and she helped pick me up off my ass. My lifeline. My saint. My Monica.

She'd been taken out by a god damn drunk driver on the evening of Thanksgiving. The one thing I thought would eventually take away my life took away the love of my life. Life is an ironic bitch and god is a fucking sadist.

I feel a painful tug inside of my chest that threatens to knock me over. I have to blink a few times and shake my head to try and rid myself of the other painful images. "Get your shit together, Sean." I repeat this mantra to myself several times a day. Scratch that, more like a hundred times or more. A constant reminder to myself not to fall all the way down into complete fuck-up land.

Get your shit together. Keep your head on straight. Repeat. Don't fuck your dead wife's sister. The later I definitely won't have a problem with, well, again.

Just the thought has me fucking infuriated with myself for about the millionth time since it happened. No sense in beating myself up about the past though, that's never done me any good. I sit on a stool by the bar and look around the empty dance floor thinking about the most recent mess I'd gotten myself into. I run my hands through my hair giving it a good hard tug, hopefully pulling out some common fucking sense by the roots.

Jenn had come over to pick up a piece of jewelry she said Monica must have had that belonged to their mother. She'd called me and asked for me to check at first and when I couldn't find the ring she asked if she could come check for herself. I'd thought nothing of saying yes at the time, but that turned out to be a huge fucking mistake.

Mistake should be my fucking middle name. Sean Mistake McCaslin. Sounds about right.

I'd gone upstairs to my bedroom, our bedroom, to get Monica's jewelry box for her. I had kept everything of Monica's, even a few years later thinking maybe, just maybe she'd walk through the front door. Maybe she'd shake off the snow on her cap from that night. Maybe...

I'd gone in her closet to grab that damn box when a fragrance entered my nose that made my heart stop. I'd had to grip onto the door frame afraid I'd fall to my knees if I didn't because that fragrance, her fragrance, entered my nose. I knew exactly where that small glass bottle filled with the potent aroma that embodied Monica sat. It sat on her dresser, right where she'd left it.

When I'd eventually been able to make myself turn around the image of a woman standing there, surrounded by her fragrance, had made my dead heart squeeze inside of my chest. She has hair similar to Monica's. She is the same size, height, and god damn my mind because all I could see was her. I just saw Monica.

So when she'd come up to me and placed her hands on my chest I felt as if maybe some of the lonesomeness, some of the dread, would fade away. Maybe she'd come back. Maybe she'd already dusted her snowy cap. Maybe...

But when she'd kissed me it wasn't the same. She didn't taste the same. She didn't touch me the same way because no one could touch me the way Monica had. There were no hands like hers. No one could make me feel the way she had. No one.

But I'd let her. I'd let her touch me. I'd let her undress me and do things that only one other woman had since I don't even know how long. And after I'd closed my eyes, imagining her, I had to open them. When I did I'd felt hollower than I think I ever had because the reality of it was that no one compared. No one ever would.

I pick myself up off the barstool feeling a wave of self-loathing settle over me. I fucking hated myself for what I'd done and even worse what Seth had heard and seen. Seth. That kid is the best thing I've done with my life.

I make my way over to the staircase that goes up to the private area overlooking the club. I'd stumbled down and up these stairs more times then I'd care to admit. I take them two at a time because even in my fifties I've managed to keep in shape. Once I reach the top, I take a few steps into the room and freeze at the image before me.

There's my son, the mirror image of myself, buck fucking naked on the couch with some broad laying across his chest who is also buck fucking naked. Oh fuck. Not just any broad I soon realize. Nope, this one has long, familiar red hair. My son did not just fuck his best friend's little sister. I glance at her face briefly, thanking whomever that her body is lying in just the perfect way on top of him to cover any obscene body parts from my view.

Yup, that's definitely little Rae alright. Well, it appears she's not so little anymore considering her present condition. "Jesus H Christ, Seth. What were you thinking, kid?" I mumble it to myself not wanting to wake the sleeping pair.

I'd known there was something going on between the two of them the moment that guy had come to pick Rae up. I'd watched how Seth's hand grabbed the wooden door tighter, how his jaw ticked in anger and his eyes turned a shade darker when he'd walked up. The jealously was practically emanating from his pores as she walked away with him.

I'd never seen him like that. Yes, I've seen my son angry but never jealous. I suppose it's in our genetics. A predisposition to cavemen tendencies when the woman we want to be with is with someone else. One of my own memories in this very club is validation of that, but he'd ended up being more than deserving of the beating I'd given him.

I walk carefully over to my desk making as little noise as humanly possible as I do. I open the drawer where all of my important paperwork is, making sure I grab out the documents I'd came here for. Once I retrieve them I make my way quietly out of the room but not before I take one last look over my shoulder at Seth, shaking my head in the process.

That boy may look and act like me sometimes but he has his mother's soul. Rae was a bag of damaged goods if I'd ever seen one and, just like his mother, Seth was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Well, if that flame radiated darkness deep within, slowly withering its light from the inside out.

There was something broken about Rae. Something had happened to her that had tarnished her and maybe Seth knew. Maybe he didn't. But I did. Darkness recognizes darkness. And she definitely had it in her.

When I'd asked her why she'd moved here I'd seen it. There was a familiar hollowness in her eyes and a defensiveness in her posture that only someone who'd endured trauma would know. And I know.

"That kid better know what he's getting into." I whisper to myself but, if he's anything like his mother, it won't matter.

The way he'd looked at her the other night had told me that. The way he was holding her body at this very moment told me that. He was protecting her, keeping her darkness at bay. Just like Monica, a light in the darkness.

"Hello? Seth?" I hear a voice calling from down below and I'm hoping that voice doesn't belong to who I think it belongs to. I shut the door loudly, hoping to wake him, before jogging down the stairs quickly to find the worst-case scenario in the middle of the dance floor. "Oh, hey Mr. McCaslin is, uh, Seth here by any chance?"

"How many times do I have to tell you to call me Sean, Rhys?"

"Sorry, Mr.... Sean. I was wondering if Seth was here or if you've seen him." He looks around uneasily and I'm really hoping he doesn't suspect anything and if he does at least I can try to put his mind at ease. Well, at least a bit at ease until my son can tell his best friend he's been sticking his dick in his little sister.

"Nope, can't say I have, Rhys. Just went upstairs to the office to grab some paperwork but I've got to be heading out." I start walking to the door and thankfully he follows. I look up at the window seeing my son there, looking down at me. I give him a hard stare, one that says you're fucking welcome before shutting the door. I may have saved his ass this time but my kid has got some serious explaining to do.

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A/N:

Hopefully that answered some of your questions regarding what happened in chapter 2. Also, I don't think I could ever tire of writing from Sean's perspective.