Just because it would hurt to lose it didn’t mean their love was harmless.
Chapter Nine
Antonio
FuckingMikey.
Michael hadn’t liked 14-year-old Antonio, and he sure as hell hadn’t warmed up since.Crazy, gay, and on parole didn’t fit the yearly Christmas card.Or maybe it was the one time he’d taken the swing at the bastard.
Antonio shoved his hands deeper in his pockets, bumping his shoulder against Declan’s as they made their way away from Angela’s house and toward the bay.
It’d felt different, with Declan there.Better and worse.Better, to have someone on his side for once.Worse, because sure, he could put up with it, they were family.But Declan shouldn’t have to.Deserved better.
“Nothing quite like suburbia,” he said, as they passed another of Angela’s pointedly observant neighbors, standing there on their very tidy lawn with their equally tidy dog.“Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been pulled over around here.”
“I believe it.”Declan laughed, just a low, rasping exhale, as they turned off the sidewalk and down the little path that led toward the beach.“If pigs here’re anything like I’ve met, there was ‘suspicious activity’ or they thought they saw you swerving?Perhaps you ran a non-existent stop sign?”
“At least they can never say they got the wrong car.Not many people driving around this neighborhood in a silver ‘67 Mustang.”And somehow, he was grinning as he said it.
The thing was, Declan made it soeasy.Easy in the way it never was, with his family or his occasional hookups.The sluagh never watched him like he was half feral or might shatter at a harsh word.
If he reminded Antonio of anyone, it was his friends back in the joint.That automatic distrust of authority.The joy at poking the bear.Fucked as it was, sometimes Antonio missed prison.He’d had people to talk to.
Christ.Had it really taken selling his soul to make a friend?
“Despite it being a migraine on wheels,” Declan said, his voice a welcome distraction from Antonio’s self pity.“Itisa very aesthetic car.Pigs try to impound it?”
“Technically, it’s Angie’s.Same as the garage.”And yeah, he wouldn’t linger on that thought.Better to focus on Declan, the cracks that traced his skin and those pale eyes.“You must have really gotten up to some shit back in Ireland.”
“Oh, aye, so I did.”Declan met his sideways glance with an alligator’s grin, his accent gone thick.“Ran amok Norn Iron back in me day, just a wee bit of fun.Wouldn’t have believed the fucking shape of me then.Be right scundered to tell ye now.Bleedin’ RUC pricks.”
Fuck.Declan needed not to talk like that.Hereallyneeded not to talk like that.Antonio forced himself not to leer or lick his lips, shifting his gaze to the path just as it opened up to the beach and, beyond that, the water.
Enemy of water.
His steps faltered as he swallowed familiar dread.The kelpie’d gotten rid of the curse.Declan had made him.Still, his pulse started racing.
“I’ve likely bigger teeth than anything in this water,” Declan said.
Just that.No frantic reassurance or order to man up.Antonio took a breath.
Sand and seagulls and the sound of waves.Too cold and too late for people.The most dangerous thing around was standing right next to him.And Antonio?He was already walking outside the garage, not wearing a scrap of iron, without gagging on panic.
Because Declan was next to him with his murder of teeth and wings of bone.Safe.
“If you pick a fight with a shark, I’m not helping,” he said, instead of any of the shit he maybe should have.“But I’ll put my money on you.”
“A wee shark.With an attitude problem.I daresay it would…”
The voice grew quieter.Less important.Words without meaning, and Antonio’s feet dragging, because…
Becausesomething.
“Yeah,” he murmured to whoever it was he’d been talking to.
That didn’t matter.What mattered was thatsound.Beautiful and familiar and coming from somewhere behind him, so Antonio turned, searching.
Could music sound like a promise?Could love be music?Because that’s what it reminded him of.A time when he’d felt loved.
