Chapter Three
Micah
W hen someone woke me up by pounding on my door at three in the afternoon, I thought it was a very aggressive Jehovah’s Witness. Or maybe my landlord, because he sucks at giving me twenty-four hours’ notice for repairs even though I’ve repeatedly reminded him I work nights.
I sleep during the day. Which means if you need me to be anywhere but unconscious in my bed in the afternoon, you need to give me notice.
I had stumbled to the door and pulled it open without looking, which was my first mistake. My second mistake was freezing as the blind-panic instincts of my childhood took over and the rest of me refused to believe what I was seeing.
Patrick Moynihan. Thug. Criminal. Domestic abuser. Possibly some kind of mafia boss now, if the rumors are true.
Also, my former stepfather.
He and his goons had burst into my apartment with the decorum of a pack of rabid wolves, dragging what I initially thought was a corpse behind them, wrapped up in a ratty blanket.
When I realized the corpse was Tadhg and he was actually alive, if barely, it was the second time I froze in shock.
Fuck you, Mom , for bringing these people into my life all over again.
When she dragged me out of bed twelve years ago and told me we were making a run for it, I thought that was it. I was losing my brother forever as the price for escaping my stepfather. I didn’t expect her to completely turn her life around, but I thought at least this chapter of our past was closed, with all the good and bad parts it contained.
Instead, I find out that Mom’s been secretly in touch with Patrick fucking Moynihan, the bane of both our existences, for years. She and I still don’t have the best relationship. When I can’t get hold of her, I assume it means she’s relapsing. Turns out, sometimes it also meant she’d been letting Patrick crawl his ass from Oklahoma to Missouri just to spend a “business trip” getting high with her here in Mission Flats. So, when he needed to go on the lam, he knew exactly who would be the easiest to exploit.
And when he showed up on her doorstep with Tadhg looking half dead, instead of making him take his son to a hospital, like a rational human being, my lovely mother said, “Micah’s an ER nurse, he can help.”
Now Patrick is pacing up and down, worrying a trail in the kitchen floor and arguing with one of his henchmen about something while I focus on not overhearing anything I don’t have to. The other three men, who all manage to look like carbon copies of one another despite having vastly different hair and clothes, are lounging around my home, taking up a disproportionate amount of space and sneering at my decor.
And poor Tadhg is on my couch, propped up as comfortably as I could arrange him, drifting in and out of consciousness.
I told her 400 miles wasn’t far enough away from him. We should have moved to the moon.
We should have taken Tadhg with us like I begged her to, and said fuck the consequences.
Patrick stops his pacing abruptly to snap at me.
“Help him, boy! Why do you think your mother sent us here? She said you were a… nurse.”
I don’t miss the derision in his voice when he says ‘nurse’, because he doesn’t bother to hide it. Of course, he’s still the kind of old-school douchebag who would consider nursing a humiliating profession for a man.
Never mind that he’d probably faint at half the shit I see on my shifts, no matter how many people he’s arranged to be murdered. There’s a difference between seeing death from a distance and being elbow-deep while trying to stop it.
“Yeah, I’m a nurse. At a hospital. Where the drugs and medical supplies live. Do you think I steal stuff to keep at my house? Everyone I know would go to the hospital if they got hurt, and I’d lose my license if I got caught stealing.”
I’m working very hard to keep an edge to my tone and not let my hands shake. I remember how good Patrick was at scenting fear, and I’m sure he’s only gotten better at it as he’s risen in power.
His henchmen can’t be much safer, either. They’re already eyeing me up and down like I’m a novelty. Of course, it doesn’t help that I threw on the nearest clothes I could find before answering the door—fitted gray sweats and a baggy, cropped Eras Tour t-shirt. It’s not quite short enough to be a full-on crop top, but everything about the cut of the clothes is not-heterosexual enough for these guys to clock it.
Just enough to make the atmosphere in the room even more uncomfortable than it was already.
I wasn’t expecting to have to put my homophobe-guard up. At least, not more than your average day in rural Missouri, which is something I’ve gotten very good at managing.
“He needs IV antibiotics. He needs pain meds. He needs stitches, and potentially surgery. An X-ray would be great. And all I’ve got is a normal human first aid kit with basic wound care shit. If you really want him to live, you’d take him to the hospital.”
Pat looks at me like I’m stupid. Maybe I am. I already know he’d let his son die rather than jeopardize his business. I may have only known him when I was a child, but I saw how little he cared about Tadhg in picture-perfect clarity back then. I’m sure it hasn’t changed.
If Tadhg works for the same organization—like the tattoos crawling all over his skin say he does—then his father will be even more pragmatic about the situation. A natural hazard of the job.
Pat steps up to me, puffing out his chest and drawing himself up in a way I haven’t witnessed in years, but is still deeply familiar.
He’s a little slimmer now. Still muscular, but in a lean way, without the pudge. It makes his face seem more angular and hawkish, but his brown eyes are clear and his skin, although wrinkled, looks better. Maybe he stopped drinking so heavily. I’d say good for him, but really, I mean good for the people around him.
It always seemed like his tendency to violence was directly tied to the booze. The fact that he’s immersed himself in organized crime since Mom and I left indicates otherwise, but maybe he’s at least stopped beating on his family.
On Tadhg.
Tadhg, who has fucking grown. Which makes sense because it’s been over a decade. But it’s still startling to see. Even unconscious and bleeding out, the strength and power in his body is obvious.
I would take that as another sign Patrick doesn’t lay hands on him anymore, but I’m not that na?ve. Pat always held absolute control over my brother’s emotions, and abuse like that—from the day you’re born—isn’t something you outgrow.
Also, there are other ways to abuse someone than with your fists. Even if Patrick stopped laying into his son; even if Tadhg didn’t have to spend more nights hiding in closets after I left, it doesn’t mean he isn’t still hurting him every day. And knowing Tadhg like I used to, he’s probably still convinced he deserves it.
I realize Patrick is staring me down, waiting for a reaction to his posturing. He’s still intimidating, I’ll give him that. The air of menace, the cold glare, the set jaw covered in gray stubble. The large snake tattoo on his neck that matches everyone else in the room except me.
It’s all a vibe. A vibe designed to make me feel small if I let it.
“Are you saying you won’t help him?” he hisses.
Internally, I’m at full fight-or-flight. But I’m very practiced at appearing calm in a crisis, so I don’t think I’m letting anything show.
“Look, I wasn’t expecting this, but I definitely don’t want Tadhg to die. I’ll help however I can. I’m just saying I don’t know how much I can do. I think you need to take him to a hospital. If you’re gonna keep refusing…” I sigh, running a hand through my messy bedhead and weighing exactly how much I’d be risking my nursing license here. As well as my brother’s chances of survival.
His color is fucking terrible, and it’s getting worse by the minute. A gray pallor is setting in, and he’s shivering under the blanket. I touch his forehead, and he feels as feverish as I imagined. When I feel for a pulse, it’s racing, like his breathing is, despite the fact that he’s unconscious. I press my thumb into his nail bed, and the sluggish way his blood refills tells me all I need to know.
This is more than an infected wound. This is the start of sepsis. If Patrick keeps dithering over this, it’ll be too late for Tadhg no matter what they decide.
Ugh. Fine . But I want the gods of medical ethics to know I’m only doing this because I basically owe Tadhg my life a thousand times over.
“If you can get your hands on some medical supplies—I don’t want to know how—I can help him. But you need to get it here now. IV antibiotics, painkillers if you can, IV fluids, suture shit, and anything else you can get your grubby little paws on.”
Patrick narrows his eyes at me, but I can see him make the conscious decision to let the disrespect slide. I’m young—if we’re not talking in gay years—and because of my girlish figure, I look even younger. I’ve found that people will let you get away with a lot of shit when you’re doe-eyed and boyish.
Hooray for twink privilege.
“Alright. But if he dies…” Patrick trails off, because the rest of the sentence is clear without him needing to say it out loud.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Consider me suitably terrified. Go get me what I need.”
I turn to grab whatever medical supplies I do have in the apartment. My voice stays level, thank god, although there’s a hint of a tremor to my hand that I’m trying to hide.
I really, really hope this doesn’t end in my untimely, brutal dismemberment.
When I get back to Tadhg with my bag of mediocre wound care shit, Patrick is arguing with one of his men. The tall one with a dark buzz cut who stands out because he’s the only conscious man in here not vibrating with a threatening, chaotic energy. I didn’t know they hired people who weren’t savage lunatics for this job, but apparently, I was wrong. I pretend I’m not listening while I set up to clean the wounds as much as I can, but I pick up the gist of the conversation.
“Where’s that blond dumbcunt we recruited from the motorcycle club? Isn’t that the point of hiring locals? So we could be set up to run a proper organization by the time we got here? I didn’t drive all this way to grow fucking corn.”
Patrick’s voice gets louder and louder as he snaps at his underlings, but whichever one responds seems unintimidated.
“Yeah. Eamon. I’ll call him. I’m sure he can sort something out. Give me a second.”
After that, it’s all murmuring interspersed with silences. Which gives me the time to focus on my long-lost stepbrother and assess his medical condition.
My professional medical opinion is that his condition sucks.
They only had him in boxers underneath the blanket, so once I pulled that away, it was easy to see the extent of his injuries. Each wound is covered by bandages that were hastily placed, and they’re all so soaked through with blood and serosanguinous fluid they’re practically peeling themselves off. He has tattoos everywhere. Mostly cheap-looking with the kind of dark, violent imagery and fake-Irish symbolism I expect from a gang like this, but they do nothing to hide how much damage there is.
I’ve got a plastic bag thrown down flat so I can toss everything onto it and easily clean it up later. The more bandages I peel off, the more dread sinks into my bones.
There are at least three entry wounds: one to the shoulder, one to the hip and one to the side that could easily have hit nothing or could have hit a bunch of organs that are slowly killing him. Without imaging, there’s no way for me to know until it’s too late. What’s worse is that none of them are healing well. They’re covered in tacky, congealed blood and scabbing that I wouldn’t doubt is covering pockets of pus.
Tiny, bright-red little lines spiderweb away from each wound, confirming this shit is infected as fuck. Tadhg needs serious, real-person medicine, and he needs it yesterday. If his dad tries to pawn me off with a bottle of something oral, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Without IV meds and fluids, my instincts right now are screaming at me that my brother doesn’t stand a chance.
His eyes flicker open for the first time since I’ve been poking at him. They’re hazel, with a ring around the iris that looks like liquid gold. When we were little, I thought they made him look like he was magical or something. Sometimes I told myself he had magic powers, but he had to keep it a secret. He couldn’t tell me until the time was right.
One day, if I was patient, he would use his powers to break us both out and take us to a different world, and we’d never see our shitty, neglectful parents again.
It’s the same stupid shit all little kids dream about. But looking at his eyes, even though they’re hazy with fever, transports me right back to that daydream for a minute. I’m so distracted I barely notice he’s reached for me until I’m grabbing his hand back on instinct, like we used to when we were little. When things got really bad.
He blinks at me, and I can read the confusion on his face. It’s obvious he doesn’t know where the fuck he is and wasn’t expecting to see me. The thought makes me smile, although nothing about this is funny.
“Hey, Tadhg,” I say, his name rolling off my tongue like it still lives there. Like we haven’t spent over a decade apart. “Fancy seeing you here.”
I can see the moment he grasps that what he’s looking at is real. Something in his face crumples, and his chest lifts with the kind of tension that I know means he’s being slapped by a wave of emotion.
It doesn’t help that we’re being watched by Patrick and his parade of thugs. I’m sure Tadhg doesn’t want any of them seeing him vulnerable like this, let alone daring to have a feeling. If this crew of losers doesn’t scream toxic masculinity , I don’t know what does.
“I’m sure it hurts like a bitch, brother,” I say. Hopefully, that will pass off any reaction he has as pain, rather than the dreaded clutch of emotion that strikes fear into these men’s fragile little hearts. “I’m going to get you fixed up. Promise. Try to stay still.”
Relief filters down into his face, and relaxation takes him just a moment before he closes his eyes and slips back into sleep.
I’m hit by my own wave of emotion. It’s incredible how much I’ve missed him, even after all these years. But there’s no time for that right now, so I pack it away along with all my other feelings.
At least I have the stuff to clean up his wounds and get a better look at how badly the infection has set in. While I pull together my supplies and make a start, I look up at Patrick. He’s still hovering, completely useless for anything apart from increasing the level of tension in the room.
“Did you find something? Are supplies coming?”
He nods but doesn’t elaborate. Great.
The smallest of the men—although that’s not saying much, they’re all unnecessarily beefy—looks even more bored and twitchy than the rest of them. He’s around my height, maybe 5’10”, but broad-shouldered and well-muscled, wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off to put all that muscle on display. Every inch of him is in constant movement, like he’s anxious or possibly on uppers. His hair is shaved into a short mohawk that was probably dyed green a couple weeks ago, but now looks faded to a bleached-out dishwater color. His face—which has several shitty, faded tattoos, probably to hide the fact that he’s even more baby-faced than I am—is making a constant series of expressions as he examines everything I own, picking things up and putting them down one after another without relent.
When his hands finally find a picture of me at Pride last year with my arms around a gorgeous man and both of us dressed in outfits that make it very clear where we were, he sneers.
“Are we really going to let Savage stay here?” he asks Patrick, while pointing to me. “What if he gets him sick ?”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Patrick opens his mouth to answer, but I don’t give him the chance. Without stopping what I’m doing, I snap at the mohawk-moron who keeps touching my things.
“You did not just spout that shit at me in my own home. No way. I’m a medical-fucking-professional and you all look like you crawled out of a meth den. I bet this is the cleanest place you’ve been in your entire life. You can’t barge in here demanding help and serve me this homophobic bullshit at the same time.”
The man who spoke looks taken aback by the fact that I actually replied, while Patrick’s face seems to be contorting itself, trying to settle on whether he’s angry or amused.
“You can’t have it both ways. Either you get your free illegal medical care and figure out how to suppress your crippling homophobia for a while, or you get the fuck out and take Tadhg to the hospital. But he’s febrile, tachypneic, and barely conscious. Which means he could be on the cusp of going septic, and you took so long getting here that it might be too late to save him, anyway. So, which is it? Hospital or secret medical care from the queer ex-stepson? I don’t give a fuck as long as Tadhg gets help.”
“Savage,” is all Mohawk says to me, his expression a mixture of anger and haughty disgust.
“What?”
“His name is Savage. He’s a lieutenant of the Banna, and you should show him some respect.”
The man’s voice drips with disdain, and he says the sentence with such conviction I think he genuinely doesn’t realize how ridiculous he sounds.
I use all my self-control to stifle the urge to laugh. Tadhg is dying, my life has been hurled into chaos, and all they care about is their fabricated military-esque chain of command. As if they’re not a bunch of redneck skinhead drug dealers playing dress-up.
And people like this say gay men are melodramatic.
“Yes. Savage. A completely appropriate and not-at-all ridiculous name. Well, he’s my brother, and this is my apartment, so I think I’ll call him whatever the fuck I want, but thanks for your input.”
When the man takes a step toward me, fury written clearly in his eyes, I flinch. I can’t help it. I’ve been trying to play it all cool, but I let myself go too far, clearly.
Tadhg isn’t even my brother. Not really, not anymore. We were two kids who were stuck together in a shitty situation by circumstance and used to look out for each other, but there’s no blood or real connection between us. The intense protectiveness I feel toward him is completely vestigial, and I don’t even know if he would appreciate it, if he were conscious. It doesn’t change the fact that I feel it just as deeply now as I always did, though. These men couldn’t carve that out of me if they tried.
They’re just all so ridiculous, I can’t help but laugh at them, even if I’m still half-convinced they’re going to murder me.
“Knock it off, Lucky.” Patrick’s voice cuts through the tension, and the man instantly takes a step back. “We’re here to clean this mess up and save Savage, not make it worse. Micah is Cheryl’s boy. He’s not to be harmed without my permission.”
How generous. Thanks, Dad .
Patrick is looking at the picture that sparked this little conversation with as much disgust as the others. I refuse to let it get to me, though.
I didn’t work this hard to be out and proud to let some ghost from my past send me into a flurry of self-doubt. Standing my ground is the only way to keep this powder keg from turning into a Chernobyl-scale disaster.
Inside, my organs are all curdling with fear. The remnants of all those nights spent cowering in a closet with Tadhg, hiding from Patrick, are too ingrained in me to let it go. But I can’t let it show.
We’re saved from any more awkward conversation by a knock at the door. I’m assuming it’s the illegal medical supplies, and I desperately hope my neighbors haven’t noticed the redneck mafia traipsing in and out of my place. My apartment has an outdoor entrance, and it’s on a corner, so maybe I’m getting away with it, but still. I already deal with enough snide shit for bringing “too many” dates home.
I don’t need to add criminals into the mix.
One of the random henchmen I can’t keep track of opens the door—as if it’s his place to let people into my home—and a tall, broad figure walks in carrying a jump bag. As soon as I get a look at who it is, my jaw hits the floor.
“Tristan?”
Green eyes narrow at me as he takes in the scene.
“Micah.” He nods.
He’s a county paramedic and a damn good one, while I’m an ER nurse at the only hospital with a trauma certification in the area. That means we interact a lot. I’ve known him for over a year, and while he’s always come across as anarchic and kind of an adrenaline junkie, I chalked that up to being a first responder.
In a million years, I never would have pegged him for working with people like this. My afternoon just went from chaotic to absurd, and I really want to go back to bed.