Well, he was not fucking having it.
“I told you, no bracelets.”
Johnny sniffed, dropping the final few beads into the pot. “No? Okay, well, I feel like purple today.” He gave a tight-lipped smile as he slid two bottles of nail polish across the bench. Midnight Sky and Damson Dream.
Taylor growled. “No.”
Johnny shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He leant forwards and picked up the bottles, shaking them and twisting off the lids.
Taylor began pacing, thumping every other locker. Partly from the simmering anger in his gut, but also to ward off anyone else that might be thinking about coming down there. Inspector be damned.
“I mean, where the fuck does the boss get off treating us like that? Acting like we haven’t been in the job for nearly ten years, like we’re fucking probies that don’t know our arses from our elbows?”
Johnny sighed and began swiping the brush across his thumbnail, already making a mess of his cuticles. He was doing it on purpose, Taylor knew that.
Johnny’s eyebrow twitched. “Sure, but you can’t argue that our heads haven’t been in it since Sam died. I mean, when was the last time we went out on an actual job? When did we last have a roll around, or go on a proper raid? Shit, dude, you can’t deny that we haven’t exactly been on top form.”
Taylor grunted and flung a leg over the bench, dropping onto it in front of Johnny. Two of the pots toppled over, sending beads clattering to the floor. Johnny didn’t reach for them.
“What do they expect?” Taylor asked, slapping Johnny’s hand away and snatching the nail brush from between his fingers. “We were with her. Sam. She asked us—” Taylor swallowed, the Sam-shaped hollow in his chest beginning to ache again. “She asked us to go with her, JP. To follow Maya, but we—” He sucked in a sharp breath and pressed his lips together.
He licked the pad of his thumb and cleaned away the excess paint around Johnny’s nail. Johnny had broad, smooth nails, and with each brush stroke Taylor felt his nerves beginning to settle.
“I know,” Johnny replied, voice quiet as he picked up the threads of Taylor’s words. “We got drunk instead.”
Taylor’s hand went still and he gripped Johnny’s fingers. Samantha had been found at the bottom of a storage chute in the abandoned woollen mill just a few months before. Hands bound, throat slit, bag over her head. Taylor thought about the image of her most nights. Had nightmares about the black and white pictures they’d shown him and Johnny when Major Crimetook their statements. When they’d had to stand up in court and explain why they’d left her alone that night.
They’d fucked up. Worse, they’d been terrible fucking friends.
Taylor swallowed, hard. “What’re we gonna tell the pack?” he asked, glancing up.
Johnny sighed, his steady gaze like a hook pulling Taylor in. “We tell them the truth. That we’re transferring to Falkington for a fresh start. Then, after that, you’re going to let Maman cut your hair, because it’s a fucking mess.”
CHAPTER 2
RAINBOW HOUSE
Johnny
The purple nailpolish was still a little wet as they traipsed through the car park with their spare uniforms, empty holsters and law books they hadn’t looked at in years. Falkington officers were collecting their tactical gear and taking it directly to Dingly Heath, which just felt like rubbing salt in the wound.
It was like a walk of shame—people were staring, a few of them smirking and laughing. It was pretty mortifying, actually, and Johnny had to hold Taylor back as he snapped at every single person who passed them.
“Stop it,” he growled, kicking Taylor’s ankle as they wove between the Battenberg patrol cars. The sun was high and bright, making the tyres stink of rubber and the paint shimmer. Taylor elbowed one, knocking the wing mirror up and disturbing a week’s worth of cobwebs.
“They’re laughing at us,” he said, not-so-subtly thumping one of the car doors.
Johnny clenched his teeth. “Fucking let them.”
They rounded the corner into the staff car park where Taylor’s black Ford Focus was waiting. It had an obnoxiousorange stripe down the bonnet and along the sills, though it was barely visible beneath the mud and dust. Johnny had installed the stripe as a joke on Taylor’s eighteenth birthday, and Taylor had never peeled it off.
Sighing, Johnny drew in a long,longbreath. His nerves were beginning to settle the further they got from the police station, and the more distance they put between it and Taylor doing something stupid.
Johnny had nearly lost his grip on him in front of the inspector, Taylor’s anger unravelling so suddenly that even Johnny had had a job getting his own thoughts in order. The pack bond was funny like that. Their emotions, their thoughts, all wound so tightly together that sometimes it was difficult to know if his feelings were his own.
It was intrusive as shit, and Taylor’s emotions were so fucking chaotic it was a wonder neither of them had hit the bottle. Or drugs. Or both.
Over the years Johnny had gotten used to tamping down his own feelings, learned to control his scent and push back his wolf when it demanded more. Taylor did enough reacting for the both of them, after all, and his anger had been simmering just beneath the surface over the last few months.
