Chapter Seven
Chapter
Seven
“It’s Friday night, Lukey!” Sean draped an
arm over Luke’s shoulders and smiled happily. He’d already been
half-drunk when Luke had arrived home from work to find the guys
sitting around the Gage living room, the air dingy with cigarette
and pot smoke. They’d been waiting for him.
Lucas tried to remember how he talked to
these guys. “Does Friday even matter, when you’re not working?”
“Yeah, it does,” Tinker said firmly. “Because
the ladies work, so it matters to them. They’re gonna be out in
fine style tonight, all dressed up, looking to hook up.”
“Unless you’re going to be a one-woman man,
now?” There was something sharp in Sean’s smile, something Luke
didn’t want to even try to figure out. “You and Mandi Carter—that
went well? Are you guys a thing, now?”
“I like her,” Lucas said honestly. “But it’s
not a thing.”
“Good!” Scotty had started drinking rye at
some point while Lucas was away, and it made him seem older,
sitting over there sipping on his glass of amber poison. Made him
seem almost mature, right up to the point when he opened his mouth.
“She’s a whore. And you shouldn’t be tying yourself down to
somebody, not this soon. You need to have fun for a while,
right?”
“I like her,” Lucas said, and he stared
Scotty down. Maybe he’d opened her up to abuse when he’d said they
weren’t a couple, but Scotty needed to watch his mouth. And Lucas
had always had a good stare. Something about his eyes unnerved
people, and he’d gotten out of more fights than he could count just
by looking like a psycho.
Sure enough, Scotty looked away first,
muttering something about how Luke didn’t used to be so touchy.
Luke sighed and looked down at the bottle of
beer going warm in his hand. He wanted to drink it. He wanted to
find a dozen of its friends and drink them too. Life used to be so
much simpler, back when every problem was solved by a drunken night
with his friends, and when he and everyone else lived by the same
unwritten but absolutely clear code of honor. Scotty was right:
Lucas had changed. And it really didn’t seem like anybody else had.
Lucas put the bottle down on a nearby end table and only then
realized that everyone in the room was watching him, waiting to see
if he was going to push the thing with Scotty any further.
Sean’s voice broke the awkward silence.
“Okay, you grumpy fuck, go have a shower and get all pretty.” But
Sean’s arm tightened around Lucas’s shoulder, preventing him from
leaving. His other hand slid up to grip Lucas’s jaw on either side,
gentle for a quick, private moment before squeezing like a
stereotypical grandmother. “As pretty as you can manage with this
ugly mug.”
It was hard to smile with Sean’s fingers
still squeezing his face, but Lucas tried anyway. He leaned into
his friend, just a little, Lucas’s lean torso pressing against
Sean’s beefier side. Warmth, strength, acceptance. A quick taste of
comfort was enough to get Lucas through a lot. He pushed away,
wrenching free with a playful snort, and headed for the stairs.
Shower and get pretty. For Sean, he’d do what he could.
Three hours later in the bar, Sean’s arm was
back around Lucas’s shoulder. This time, though, it was a different
Sean. His arm was rigid, almost trembling, and Lucas felt dizzy
with remembered emotions. He knew how Sean was feeling—the savage
joy of the adrenaline rushing through his body, the way hormones
and alcohol were fueling his intoxicating rage, narrowing his focus
until he could see only enemies and allies. His body was preparing
him for battle, making him into the warrior his distant ancestors
had needed to be, and Sean wasn’t doing a damn thing to control it.
He was addicted to the rush, just as Lucas used to be. The world
was complicated most of the time, but in a fight, there were no
shades of grey. There was only red.
“Just walk away, man,” Lucas said, although
he knew it was hopeless. “Who the fuck cares? He stole your wallet
in high school? What’s next, somebody who took your crayons in
kindergarten?”
“He stole from me,” Sean said slowly, as if
Lucas was stupid. “And he was never man enough to even admit it.
Fucking Dylan Hayes. It’s time for him to go down.”
“You never had any money in high school,
Sean. How much did he take?”
“What? I don’t know. Jesus, Lucas!” Sean
pushed away and glared at his friend. “Seriously, Lukey, what the
fuck happened to you in jail? I thought you were going to come out
a total badass, not a fucking pussy. In the pen, if someone stole
from somebody, what would happen?”
“We’re not in the pen. And trust me, you
don’t ever want to be there. It’s not full of badasses, it’s full
of losers. Guys who lost control, guys who got caught. Guys who are
too fucking stupid to just follow the rules and stay out of
trouble.”
Sean was quiet for a moment, then nodded
sadly. His arm was a little looser around Lucas’s shoulders, so
maybe this talk was doing some good after all. “They broke your
spirit,” Sean said softly. “I get it. All this bullshit about
following the rules—they brainwashed you, Lukey. It’s like you were
in a cult or something. You need to get deprogrammed.”
“A man is dead, Sean.”
Again, though, Sean was clearly working on
the “action movie” understanding of death. “Yeah. I know. But that
was a long time ago, Lukey, and you’re still alive. Time to get
back on the horse.”
Lucas stood. It was almost curfew time
anyway, and he really didn’t mind leaving a few minutes early. He
was reaching for his wallet, ready to pull a few bills out of his
fast—iminishing cash reserve, when Sean’s body tightened again.
“Mother fucker,” he hissed, and Lucas turned reluctantly to follow
Sean’s gaze and see the new source of outrage.
Dylan Hayes, the notorious wallet-thief, had
his arm around Mandi Carter, and she was smiling up at him.
“Sean, no,” Lucas said. “I told you, there’s
nothing going on there.”
“You said you liked her.” Sean was gearing
up.
“She’s a nice person. I like her. I
don’t…Sean, for fuck’s sake.” Sean knew this. How could Sean not
know? “I’m not interested in her. I don’t care if she goes home
with Dylan Hayes, or anybody else. It’s fine.”
Sean’s face was twisted into a snarl when he
turned to Lucas and said, “Dylan Hayes doesn’t know that. He saw
you with her, and now he’s with her. He’s calling you out,
man.”
“So he controls me, now? He wants me to do
something, so I have to do it? Bullshit.”
Sean was right about one thing, at least.
Dylan Hayes was calling Lucas out. How else to explain the
way he stared in their direction as he leaned down and pressed a
kiss to Mandi’s temple, his hand drifting from her shoulder to her
chest…
And Sean was moving, charging across the bar,
a soundtrack of cheers and screams driving him on. Dylan pushed
Mandi aside, moving to meet Sean head on, and Sean ducked to avoid
his fists, then surged forward to tackle him across two tables.
“Fuck yeah!” Mikey roared from somewhere
behind Lucas, and then the crowd was in motion, most people pushing
backward out of the way, a few from each side rushing forward,
looking for a match.
Lucas was pretty sure he was going to be
sick. He knew the code. He was supposed to push forward and join
in. If there was no one available from the other side he could try
to taunt a bystander into a scrap, or he could haul an enemy off a
failing ally and finish the fight for his side. It would be only a
little less honorable to join in with a friend, turning a fair
fight into a two-on-one beating. He knew what he was supposed to
do.
Instead, he backed up. When he ran into the
ring of bystanders and someone tried to push him forward into the
fight, he turned and shoved his way through the crowd. He had the
same rush of adrenaline he’d always gotten when there was fighting,
but he couldn’t use it the way he always had. He needed to move,
and he needed air.
When he made it out of the bar, he walked
even faster and refused to turn around. He’d driven down with Sean
but had been prepared to take a cab home. Now, he knew he wouldn’t
be able to sit still for even a short car ride. Instead, he broke
into a jog. He was running away. He was a coward and a disgrace.
And there would be consequences.
Lucas was dozing on the couch when the front
door crashed open. He stood automatically, wondering if the cops
had come to find him, then didn’t relax at all when Sean and the
boys staggered into the room.
They saw him and stared. No words, just
aggression. And Lucas had nothing to say, either. It was Sean who
finally broke the silence. “What the fuck, Lucas?”
Sean was bleeding from a slice across his
temple and the other side of his face was swelling across his
cheekbone and up around his eye. He had a split lip and bloody
knuckles. And he was probably in the best shape of any of them.
“I couldn’t—” Lucas started, but Sean cut him
off.
“If you say one fucking word about parole or
curfew, Lucas, I swear to fucking God—”
“I’m not going back to jail,” Lucas said. It
wasn’t the real reason he hadn’t fought, but it was the excuse that
the guys might, just might, accept.
“But it’s okay if we do? Fighting over your
fucking whore?” Mikey was growling through an unmoving jaw, and
maybe it was because he was too angry to enunciate, but more likely
there was something broken under his purpling skin.
“I told Sean I don’t care about her. I told
all of you I don’t care about her. Don’t pin this on me. You guys
fought because you wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you want to?” Sean’s voice
was quiet, but it cut through the roaring in Lucas’s head more
effectively than a gunshot.
With one of the others, Lucas would have
avoided the question. But with Sean, he felt like he needed to try.
“I don’t know. I’ve changed. I don’t think I’m brainwashed, man,
but yeah, I changed the way I think. I just can’t do that stuff
anymore.”
“So you’d rather let your friends get beat up
than do something you don’t feel like doing?” Casey was the
quietest of the guys, so if he was speaking up, Lucas knew the
feelings ran deep.
“You want me to help you move, or build
something or work on your cars…we used to do all that stuff too,
you know…you want me to do any of that, I’m there. But I’m not
fighting anymore.” And he might as well get it over with. “No more
drinking, either. I’ve got three years of parole, but even after
that, no more drinking. I’m done with that.”
“Jesus.” Mikey snorted in disgust, then
winced in pain from the vibration of his face. “I had no idea you
were such a fucking pussy, Cain.”
“They might have bent you over in jail,”
Tinker said, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t straighten up now
that you’re out.”
Damn it. Lucas had seen Sean’s eyes narrow as
soon as he’d understood the direction the conversation was going.
“You should go,” Sean said. “Find somewhere else to sleep
tonight.”
Lucas had been afraid it would come to this.
“I can’t. With the fight, the cops are likely to come by here to
check on you or me or both of us. My parole says I have to be in
this house from nine ’til six. If they come by and I’m not
here…”
“Your fucking parole is a pretty handy
excuse,” Mikey said. He turned to Sean. “You need to kick his ass
out. What if he sleepwalks, thinks he’s back in the pen, and crawls
right into bed with you, like he did with his fuck-buddies
inside?”
Sean wasn’t looking at Lucas anymore. He
wasn’t looking at anybody, his gaze wild and almost feral, an
animal willing to chew off its leg in order to escape from a trap.
“Get your shit and get out,” he growled. “They’re right. You aren’t
the same person anymore, and the new person is a fucking
pussy.”
“Faggot,” Mikey supplied helpfully.
“Sean…” If Lucas could just get him alone,
they could figure this out. But of course there was no way Sean
could let that happen, not after the gay slurs had been broken
out.
“Get out,” Sean said. He still wouldn’t look
in Lucas’s direction.
Lucas moved. He had no choice, and it all
felt strangely inevitable, anyway. There was no point in trying to
drag it out any further. His old life was gone, and he didn’t have
a new one ready to take its place.
Up the stairs to cram his few possessions
into the duffel bag they’d come out of, then back down, past the
silent, damaged men smoking in the living room, and out onto the
front porch. The night was chilly, well below freezing, and Lucas
had nowhere to go.
He stepped off the porch and glanced back at
the living room windows to be sure no one was watching. Then he
crouched down by the lattice underneath the raised porch and found
the loose nails. It had been where he and Sean had set up their
clubhouse when they were little, and later where they’d stashed
whatever contraband they’d been trying to hide from Mrs. Gage. Now,
Lucas’s shoulders were almost too wide to fit through the opening,
but he scratched his way inside and managed to turn around to pull
the lattice back into place.
There wasn’t enough headroom for him to sit
up, so he curled into a ball on his side, his ribs digging into the
hard dirt beneath him, and stared at the back of the steps. His
sanctuary was no warmer than anywhere else outside, but it was
somewhere he could be out of sight of his angry friends without
totally violating the terms of his parole. It was pathetic, but it
was the best he could do.