Chapter 29 Tallus
Tallus
Echo yipped when I started the Jeep. I imagined her giving me hell for sitting in Diem’s spot, while wondering where her daddy was and if we were leaving without him. She peered out the window again, then barked in my ear.
“Okay. I know. He’s coming. He went to rescue Darcy. Remember Darcy? The bratty man-child he adopted?”
Echo cocked her head and made a noise in her throat as though acknowledging she understood. She was smart to the point of creepy sometimes.
I glanced in the direction of the storage facility, then toward the main road in the distance, but there was no sign of them. How long had it been? Five minutes? Three? Ten? Had Darcy been caught?
Time ticked by, and the longer they were gone, the more I worried. Soon, it was me whimpering and not Echo. She sat like a pillar, staring along the dark street, waiting in an eerily similar fashion.
How long were we supposed to sit here and do nothing?
As I was about to give up and search the compound, Echo barked. A dark form materialized from the shadows, running from the main road up the side street in our direction. One person, and they weren’t big enough to be Diem.
Darcy collided with the Jeep before scrambling to get the door open.
He fell into the passenger seat, tumbled over the middle console, and nearly landed face-first in my lap before righting himself and slamming the door like he was being chased by zombies.
Huffing and puffing, cheeks red from exertion, he stared out the window toward the main road.
Echo clambered from the back seat to the front and licked Darcy’s face, her joyful tail whacking me with every violent swing.
“Echo, Echo, move. Your ass is in my face. There isn’t room for you up here.”
She huffed and relented, returning to the back seat, but not before rotating once, stepping on my thigh, and swatting me in the mouth a final time with her tail.
I spat fur before barking, “Where’s Diem?”
“He went after Luke. Holy shit. Ohmygod, ohmygod. He looked furious. I think he’s going to kill him.”
My brain stuttered, momentary panic eclipsing reason, but my senses quickly aligned, and I shook my head. “No, he wouldn’t. Diem wears that murderous expression like a second skin, but he doesn’t hurt people.”
“Are you sure?”
No, but I didn’t say that out loud. Diem used to be a fighter.
He used to be reactive and aggressive. Long before I met him, he used fists instead of words.
He still had a hair-trigger temper at times, but he’d adopted different outlets to temper his rage.
He punched walls and cars and smoked cigarettes and drank too much. He didn’t run around killing people.
But if provoked…
If protecting someone he cared about…
“Dammit, Diem. We talked about this.” I shouldered the door open and tumbled out, shouting, “Stay here,” before slamming it again and racing in the direction Darcy had come from.
At the intersection, as I was about to turn onto the main street toward the facility’s front gate, a roaring, racing Bentley Continental streaked by going at least twice the speed limit.
Lukyan.
I jolted to a stop. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
I was in the open. Did he see me? No. The guy seemed to be in too big a hurry to notice anything.
He blew through the red light and didn’t slow down.
As he flew past, my brain registered one significant detail in the seconds it had to process.
The car’s windshield sported a complex spiderwebbing of cracks all centered around a point of impact. Then, the car was gone. Its roaring engine slowly faded into the distance and blended with the usual sounds of a city at night.
I took solace in the fact that dead people didn’t drive cars.
I kept running, peering beyond the fence and along each row of units, searching for signs of Diem while keeping my ear tuned for the car’s return.
About twenty yards from the main gate, as it mechanically whirred closed and the lock engaged, Diem staggered into view on the other side of the fence, emerging from a row I hadn’t checked.
He wasn’t limping, per se, but he had the weary gait of a man who had run a fasted marathon on no sleep.
“D?” I ran to the fence and clutched the wires, scanning him head to toe as he approached. His clothes were rumpled, and he’d lost his ball cap. His hair stuck out every which way, damp with perspiration. His gray eyes bore thunderously into mine, but otherwise, he seemed to be in one piece.
The only thing visibly wrong was his right hand. Locked in a fist and cradled against his stomach, the knuckles bled.
I wasn’t shocked so much as I was concerned. Diem punched things when he was angry. Inanimate objects mostly. Sometimes to his detriment.
I reminded myself that Lukyan wasn’t dead. I’d seen him drive away, so the bloody knuckles weren’t a result of Diem caving the fucker’s skull.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.” Diem leaned his forehead against the fence, the diamond pattern pressing grooves into his skin. His heavy gaze locked on me, chest heaving with each panting breath. “He tried to run me over, so I fucked up his pretty little car.”
My attention moved from Diem’s face to his bloody hand. Only then did I see a few pieces of beaded glass stuck to his skin. “Wiggle your fingers.”
He clenched and unclenched his fist, hissing with pain. “Stiff. Not broken. Probably going to swell like a balloon. I’ll ice it later.”
“His windshield. You punched his windshield. I saw it. You have glass in your hand.”
Diem grinned, and if I didn’t know the man as well as I did, I would have called the expression semi-psychotic. “His fancy fucking Bentley ain’t so fancy anymore.”
“Jesus, D.” I couldn’t stop the laugh that exploded from my chest. “You’re a freak.” I wanted to reach through the fence and hold him, but I couldn’t. “Get over here.”
He tilted his head, sizing up the obstacle in our way. It had been an easy climb earlier. His expression suggested it wouldn’t be this time. Shaking out his injured hand, he scaled the fence with a grimace and landed with a groan on the ground beside me.
He examined his fingers, hand trembling, then wiped the blood on his jeans.
“Careful.” When I reached for it, he pulled away.
“It’s fine. We’ll worry about it later. Where’s Darcy?” he asked.
“In the Jeep.”
“No, I’m not.”
We spun toward the voice. Darcy stood twenty feet away with Echo on her leash. The dog pulled and danced and tugged, doing all she could to get to Diem. Darcy struggled to hold her with one hand. His casted arm cradled near his body.
But it was the sheer devastation on the kid’s face that made me hold my tongue when I was about to give him shit for not listening.
Diem must have read my intent. He cupped the back of my neck and planted a gentle kiss on my temple, whispering, “Let it go,” before approaching Darcy.
Echo sniffed and chuffed and demanded attention.
Diem indulged her for a second, letting her smell his hand while reassuring her he was fine. Not once did he take his eyes off Darcy. The kid shrank in on himself when Diem took Echo’s leash.
Diem told Echo to sit and “Fucking relax,” and she did so without blinking.
Darcy’s chin quivered. He cowered, hugging himself tighter as he stared at the ground like he expected trouble or a lecture… or a smack across the top of the head.
“Are you okay?” Diem asked.
Darcy nodded, sniffled, and went to town on the fidget ring. He crisscrossed the toes of his running shoes; a weird quirk I’d seen him do numerous times. “Are you?”
“Gonna take a lot more than a fucking Bentley and a pompous scam artist to take me out, kid.”
“Did I screw up?”
“No. You did good.”
Darcy peeked from under his bangs, assessing Diem like he didn’t believe him.
Then, Diem, the guy who had taken over a year to learn how to share a bed with me, who, when I met him, feared intimacy and touch and bonding and connection of any kind, reached out and ruffled Darcy’s hair before tugging the kid into a hug.
The man-child, the petulant brat who had somehow fallen into our lives, who rubbed me the wrong way every time he opened his mouth, wrapped his arms around Diem’s middle, buried his face against my burly boyfriend’s chest, and cried.
Diem held him, and although he looked ten flavors of uncomfortable and awkward, and although his muscles stiffened with the contact and his forehead rippled with uncertainty, he didn’t let go until Darcy wore himself out.
He rocked the kid side to side, he rested his chin on his head, and he told him over and over that everything was going to be okay.
Whatever unfounded jealousy I harbored melted away. Diem’s world grew a fraction larger every day. One baby step at a time, and I couldn’t have been prouder.
We returned to the Jeep in silence. Diem kept one hand on the back of Darcy’s neck—not in a controlling way, but in a comforting way. I’m here, it said. I’m with you, it said. You’re not alone, it said.
Diem drove. One eye on the road, the other on the rearview mirror and Darcy.
The kid sat in the back with Echo, the pair subdued, both peering out the window as the city zipped by.
I took Diem’s blood-spattered hand and examined it, plucking pebbles of glass from the cuts, cleaning them with an antibacterial wipe I found in the glove box.
How many times had he punched the windshield to cause the impact crater and spiderwebbing?
Diem was strong, but that would have been a feat.
“Are you sure you didn’t break anything?” I moved each finger, checking the joints.
He opened and closed his fist to prove he hadn’t. I must have looked unconvinced. After I finished doctoring him, he weaved his fingers with mine, brought my hand to his mouth, and kissed it.
“I saw the windshield when he raced by me.” My stomach clenched. “That had to have hurt.”
“It did, but my shoulder made the initial crack. My fist did the rest.”
“Your shoulder? Is it bruised?”
“Probably. Doesn’t hurt right now. Ask me tomorrow.”