Chapter 6 #2
“Yeah.” Steven let himself be pushed back. “Right. Of course.”
“Jake works at the Oaks, yeah?” He knew this because he’d served Myles a number of times, but anything to keep Steven distracted.
“He does.”
“He knows Kreed and Lucky well?”
Steven hissed as Myles applied a small daub of antiseptic cream to the first cut. “He does.”
“So they’ll be able to help him until you get there.”
“Yeah. And Lucy.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jake’s girlfriend.”
Myles smiled up at his patient. “So Jake has a lot of help. Let’s focus on you.”
Steven blinked at him, breath held, eyes wide. “Who are you?” he asked after a minute.
“Myles. I knew Lucky way back. And Ozzy. Jet and Shelly are my niece and nephew. We’re here for a summer vacation.
” He finished dealing with the second finger and reorganized the supplies to prepare for moving on to the third.
“I can’t believe Jet is helping in the kitchen over there.
It was like pulling teeth to get him to carry his dishes to the sink at home. ”
“How old is he?”
“Sixteen. Going on Smartest Dude in the Universe, if you ask him.”
Steven snickered. “Sounds like me at that age.”
“Me too.”
Steven hissed through his teeth as Myles cleaned the last cut. “You like the Oaks?” he asked through a tight jaw after a moment.
Myles shrugged but thought about it. “It’s interesting. Not the kind of place I ever expected to find Lucky.”
“Why’s that?”
“When I met him, he was a teenager. Knew everything. Tried everything. Got himself into more trouble than a pig in a slaughterhouse.”
“Wow. That’s an analogy.”
Myles grinned up at him. “Farm boy.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “At least, that’s where I started out.”
“Started out?”
Myles shrugged. “Grew up on a pig farm. Hit high school and knew I wasn’t staying in butt-fuck nowhere. Due to the lack of actual butt-fucking, you see.”
Steven snorted.
“So soon as I was old enough, I signed up. Couple tours in the army. That’s how I know Ozzy.
More time than I like to think about with no home at all.
Where I met Lucky. Then rehab, my sister’s place for a couple years, and now here.
” It was a condensed version, and it left out a lot of the heartache between middle school and the army, but this wasn’t the venue for that kind of soul-baring.
“With your sister’s kids.”
Myles winced and may have squeezed the bandage to Steven’s finger slightly harder than he’d intended.
Steven hissed.
“Sorry. Yeah. She died. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” He patted the last Band-Aid into place and sat back on his heels. “But life keeps on keeping on, so… Thought it would be good to get the kids away from the house where their mom passed, and out of the city for a while. Give them a clean break, see what’s next. So here we are.”
Steven raised his injured hand a few inches. “Lucky me, then.” He smiled, and a pink flush dusted his cheeks.
“Glad I could help.”
A flop of hair fell into Steven’s eyes, and without thinking, Myles reached up and brushed it aside.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Sure.” His eyes were so blue. Almost enough distraction to keep Myles from fixating on his lips as Steven’s tongue darted out to dampen them.
Outside a door slammed, and a voice rose in sharp anxiety.
Steven jolted, and Myles almost went back on his ass, saved only by Steven’s surprisingly strong grip on his forearm.
“Jake,” Steven said. “I should—” He jerked a thumb at the back door.
“Yeah, of course.” Myles scuttled back and rose. “Go ahead. I’ll tidy this up.” He waved at the table strewn with discarded packaging and bloodied gauze. “Maybe keep him out there until I clear up the blood?”
“You don’t have to—”
“I don’t mind.” Myles plucked the cloth from the back of Steven’s neck as he stood, replacing it with his hand when Steven shivered. “Look after your brother. Let me clean this up.”
Steven nodded, the pink in his cheeks deepening. He ducked his head and squinted at the rug in front of the door. “Thanks.” He turned to face the door, reaching, hesitating, then drawing his hand back.
Myles heard something about the midnight sun—more Robert Service, he suspected—then the door creaked open, and Steven straightened his spine. “Be right back.” He stepped outside, chin high, back tight, like he was walking into enemy territory.
Left with the detritus of the wound cleaning, Myles tried not to imagine himself posting up at Steven’s back for support. This wasn’t the street, it was Steven’s backyard. And Steven wasn’t a barely-adult, he was a grown man. He didn’t need a practical stranger getting protective over him.
Instead, Myles made short work of sorting packaging into the blue box and garbage, and filled the sink with hot, soapy water to clean up the blood.
He had the door frame washed, the big pieces of glass picked up, and was sweeping up the slivers when the back door opened for Steven, Lucky and Kreed to troop into the kitchen.
“You didn’t have to clean all that,” Steven protested.
“I don’t mind. Good to feel useful.” Myles dumped the last dustpan—filled with glass slivers and no small amount of stale dust bunnies he’d discovered behind the fallen picture, into the pizza box, then carefully closed the lid. “Got tape? Best seal this up safe.”
“Sure. Yeah.” Steven opened a kitchen drawer and rifled around inside.
“You good here, Steven?” Kreed asked.
“Yeah.” Steven stopped looking to turn to the couple. “God, I’m so sorry, you guys. You should get back. I can handle this.”
Kreed patted his shoulder, and Lucky hugged him, making Myles do a double take. The Lucky he had known was more of an arm’s length kind of guy. Everything changed, it seemed.
“Thanks, guys. I really appreciate…” His voice trailed off as he walked the two men to the front door of the shop and let them out.
He was gone long enough, thanking them, Myles supposed, that he started looking through the kitchen junk drawer for the tape himself. He was so absorbed in the task, he didn’t hear Steven’s return.
“What are you doing?”
The question startled him. He dropped the handful of batteries he held, wincing when they thudded to the floor and began rolling in all directions.
“I, um.” He waved at the half-empty drawer and pile of random items on the counter. “Was looking for the tape. The drawer was, um.” He scrubbed a hand down the side of his jeans. “Unorganized.”
What the fuck was he doing? He hadn’t been thinking, he just… the mess… “Shit. I’m so sorry.” He raised a hand, poised to sweep everything back into the drawer, but still, he hesitated.
“You don’t…” Steven laid a light touch on his forearm. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I should never have… I wasn’t thinking.”
“But it was a mess.”
“It kind of was.”
Gentle, Steven pulled him away from the open drawer. “I can tell tossing it all back in there would hurt your brain.” He said it with a lilt and a half grin, but his gaze held something else. Empathy?
“A little bit.”
“So you don’t have to.” Reaching around, Steven retrieved a roll of packing tape and held it out. “Why don’t you tape up the box. Finish off what you started, and leave this for me.”
Myles huffed and unclenched his fingers from their unconscious balled-up fists. He took the tape and returned to his previous task. Steven had deflected so expertly. Myles almost didn’t feel like a complete idiot for letting his neuroses take over.
“Obviously,” he said, once he’d gotten the first strip of tape around the box and his embarrassment under control, “Jake has had some great support.”
“What do you mean?”
Myles considered as he wound a second strip, crosswise to the first, around the box. “You handled that—me—like a pro.”
“I wasn’t handling you.”
That got Myles to smile. “Sure you were.” He turned to hand him the roll of tape. “But it’s okay.” He held up a hand when it looked like Steven might protest. “I appreciate you accommodating my… neuroses. I overstepped.”
“Not on purpose.”
“No. But still.” He tipped his head to the pile of junk he’d taken out of the drawer in his attempt to organize it better. “Wasn’t my place. I apologize.”
“Accepted. Though for what it’s worth, I wasn’t offended.”
“Okay if you were. Sometimes it gets the better of me.” He plucked a marker from his pile to scrawl caution warnings all over the box, then capped it and held it for Steven to take. “I’ll get out of your hair now.”
Steven blushed, and Myles wondered if he thought about Myles pushing his hair out of his face earlier, too.
“See you around?”
“Probably.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay.”
Was it him, or had the kitchen gotten warmer? Before he put too much thought into whether or not the kitchen was paying attention to them, he hustled to the front door.
Steven followed, and Myles couldn’t help but look back as the lock clicked behind him.
Through the front window Steven smiled and waved.
Myles waved back, carrying that warm feeling across the street and inside the B and B when she opened the door to let him in.