Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Keannen
THOUGHT BURNS AWAY IN the fires of rage as I storm toward the men encircling Tim. He catches my eyes, and his widen, fear warring with surprise. His gaze clues in his assailants, who wheel toward me to see who’s dumb enough to take on three guys by himself.
Me. I’m dumb enough. When I’m this angry, I’m dumb enough for a lot.
I have no plan, no calculations, no plot more intricate than “get to Tim.” The second I saw him in danger, something snapped, and now I’m operating on pure, rage-blind instinct.
I cock my arm back as I approach the guys, and one steps in to shove me away. The apparent leader sneers at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he says. “You’re outnumbered, even if this little fairy could fight.”
It’s been a long damn time since I’ve heard words like that used like that. Their slurs could do for an update, but I guess living in the middle of nowhere will leave you behind on the latest hateful lingo.
The guy who intervened shoves me again, and I lunge at him, but the third guy pushes me away. I stumble, but come right back, even as the trio chuckles.
“Get the hell out of here,” I snarl.
“Or what? You can’t win.”
“I don’t need to win to hurt you.”
A flicker of fear streaks across the guys’ faces, even as they laugh. Shitty bullies like this never expect anyone to swing back at them, which is why I said I don’t need to win. One broken nose will rattle them, even if I get mine broken in response.
Shit, I’m actually willing to get my ass kicked for Tim, aren’t I? The realization is dull under the roar of anger turning my vision red, but some piece of me pauses to acknowledge it. I reacted in an instant, not a beat of hesitation holding me back. I may have told Tim that I have my reservations, but when it actually mattered, absolutely nothing in this world could have kept me from flying to his rescue.
I might try to untangle that later, but right now, the leader looks like he really might take a swing at me.
I square up. This isn’t my first fight. I nearly got expelled a few times back in high school. Tim witnessed some of those bruises. I was an angry kid with a grudge against the entire world; I guess I still am, in a lot of ways. At least that shit taught me how to take a punch — and how to deliver one.
As the leader pulls back to swing, I cock my arm as well. His fist flies at my face. There’s no avoiding it, but I turn so it glances across my jaw. Even as the pain blooms bright, I swing, shoving my fist right into his gut. He got a glancing blow, but I punched the breath right out of him. By leaning into his strike, I made sure mine hit twice as hard.
He doubles over, clutching his middle and stumbling backward. My jaw is pulsing, a bruise already forming, but when I run my tongue along my teeth, they’re all where they should be, so he didn’t get me that hard. Plus, I’m still on my feet, and my opponent is clinging to his companions as he wheezes and sinks to the parking lot pavement.
One of his buddies recovers, leaving his man behind to charge at me. I sidestep the swing. The guy must be drunk. He forecast the move from the moment he stood up, and it’s a wild swipe that sends him stumbling past me without me having to do a thing.
“Asshole,” he spits. “You and your boyfriend are going to pay for that.”
Boyfriend. My boyfriend. The assumption does make a certain amount of sense, considering the way I charged in here. Despite the looming threat, I look past the guy and at Tim, whose eyes are fixed on me. My boyfriend… I told him that couldn’t be, but here I am getting punched in the face for him. If he can’t be my boyfriend, why am I taking these hits for him?
The stumbling attacker demands my attention when he steadies himself and takes another swing. It’s as sloppy as the first, but I let him beat on my shoulder so I can grab the front of his shirt and spin him around, throwing him to the ground. He lands with a thud and a groan, and this time he wisely stays down.
That only leaves one, and he’s looking a lot less certain about winning than he used to. I advance toward him, slow, deliberately menacing steps. He glances between me and the leader, who’s busy wheezing for breath. Looks like this band of idiots isn’t as brave when they start going down. The last man standing seems about to bolt when someone bursts out of the bar.
“Hey, what the hell is going on out here?” a man calls as he runs toward us.
I brace, but he grabs the final upright assailant and yanks him around by the collar.
“I told you if you got in one more fight you were out of here,” the man says. He looks like a bartender perhaps.
“Come on, Derek. We were just messing with them.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Roy. I said no more and I meant it. You’re out of here, all three of you. Get them up. Now.”
“You can’t be taking some queers’ side. They’re not even from around here.”
“I’ll take whoever’s side I want,” the bartender says. “Are you going or am I making some phone calls?”
The man, Roy, puts up his hands in a placating gesture. The man I threw to the ground manages to get up on his own, but the leader needs to lean against Roy, both of them stumbling as they scurry away like rats escaping a cat.
The bartender plants his hands on his hips and sighs as he watches them go. Shaking his head, he turns back to me and Tim.
“You alright?” he says.
Tim nods.
“They hit you?” the bartender asks, nodding his chin at my likely swollen jaw.
“Not hard enough for it to matter.”
The bartender snorts a laugh. “Hard enough for it to matter to me. I’m sorry for those idiots. I warned them, but some folks got ugly in their souls, and there’s no getting it out.”
“Will they call the police?” Tim asks in a small, scared voice.
The bartender shrugs. “Not if they’ve got any sense at all. If the cops show up, I’ll make it clear they swung first. They’ve had run-ins in the past, so I don’t think they’ll want to add this to their records.”
Tim sighs with relief. I rub my jaw, which is starting to throb now that the adrenaline is ebbing away .
“Y’all come back inside,” the bartender says. “I owe you a round. Whatever you like.”
“Thanks,” Tim says.
The bartender nods and returns to his bar, leaving me outside with Tim.
My jaw isn’t the only thing coming back painfully as the rush of fear and adrenaline dies down. Suddenly, I’m face to face with the fact that I rushed into a hopeless fight in order to save a guy I swore I hated.
Tim stares at me, not speaking. I go to him instead, but as I stand before him, I find myself clenching and unclenching my fists, unsure what to say, more scared than when I believed I was about to get my ass kicked in this parking lot.
“Are you okay?” he says.
I nod.
“That doesn’t hurt? It looks pretty nasty.”
“A little. Not bad.”
I can’t even find whole sentences. My throat is too tight.
“Thank you,” Tim says. “I didn’t know what to do. I froze up. If you hadn’t shown up…”
A fresh surge of anger wells within me as I imagine those men getting to beat Tim down without any interference whatsoever. Tim wouldn’t have fought them. It’s not who he is.
The anger loosens my tongue, and words spring out on their own .
“No one gets to mess with you except me.”
Tim pauses, eyebrows rising. Then he laughs, short and loud and genuine.
“No one but you?” he says. “Sounds a bit possessive.”
“Yeah, maybe it is.”
That stops both of us dead in our tracks. There’s a confession lurking beneath the stupid banter, a confession both of us have been avoiding this whole time.
“He called you my boyfriend,” Tim says quietly.
“That’s the part you’re worried about after almost getting your ass kicked?”
I’m trying to be sarcastic and lighten the mood, but it doesn’t work. Tim looks me directly in the eyes.
“Yes,” he says. “Actually, yes. When he said that, I was expecting you to deny it, even in a moment like that, but you didn’t.”
My throat is closing up again, but I manage a quiet, “I didn’t.”
“So then what the hell is going on between us, Keannen? You started by wanting to mess with me, but I don’t think that’s what this is anymore. It changed along the way before we ever had a chance to talk about it.”
“There’s a lot to talk about.”
“There is,” Tim says. “If we had met on tour, maybe it would be different, but we have too much history between us. I know that’s what’s getting in the way. I understand. I get that you hate me for what happened in high school. But can we at least talk about it? We were kids, Keannen, and you don’t know everything that happened.”
I don’t. All I know is that he left. Perhaps that’s why that phone call with his parents scared me so much. It suggested a whole other side to the story that I’ve never known about, a side that might have changed how I reacted even as a crappy teenager with a grudge against the whole world.
“You don’t know everything either,” I say.
“I don’t,” Tim says, “but I’d like to.” He steps closer and takes one of my hands, prying the clenched fingers open so he can hold it. “I would really like to know about you, Keannen, if you’re willing to tell me. We could start right now. The bartender owes us a drink. Can we go talk? Please? This is eight, almost nine years overdue, I know, but I can’t go back and fix that. All I can do is try to listen now. Besides, we’re stuck here in the middle of nowhere until morning. What the hell else are you doing tonight?”
“I was going to get a drink and not think about you,” I say. It lacks the bite it should have. Of course I was going to think about him, and we both know it.
“You’re not as good of a liar as you think,” Tim says.
He keeps holding my hand and watching me, and something inside me cracks. His gentle touch is like a sledgehammer against a pane of glass. I’m scared of what lies beyond that wall. There’s a scared, lonely, hurt teenager lurking back there, a kid who felt like everyone in his entire life abandoned him when he needed them the most .
But Tim is right. We can’t go back. He can’t undo leaving. I can’t undo hating him for it. Either I live with this festering wound for the rest of my life, letting the infection spread to the rest of me, or I take a chance on healing it right here and now.
For the first time in my life, I give myself that chance.
“Fine,” I say. Tim starts to smile, and I add, “That doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
“I know. You don’t have to. I just want a chance to explain. And to listen to you, too.”
“Okay,” I say, and he leads me into the bar, not dropping my hand even when we step through the doors.