“What the hell are you doing?” his best friend said when he got out of his vehicle in uniform.
“Sirens and lights, Dan? Really?”
“You break the law, that’s what happens, Jay. You know I have to take you in.”
“It’s a stupid fucking law, anyway,” Jay muttered. “Who arrests people because they don’t want to dance in memory of a woman who should have known better than to dance through the streets anyway?”
“Amen, so let’s go.”
Jay sighed.
“I got your pizza in the cruiser, so you won’t go hungry in the cell.”
He sighed again and got into the passenger’s seat.
“That face looks like it hurts,” Dan added.
He didn’t reply.
“I told those McAllisters, because I had to dance with them, if they come at you again, they’ll answer to me. But I managed tosqueeze Lynx’s shoulder really hard. Couldn’t do more because too many others were watching.”
“I can handle myself, Dan, and you’d be no different if it was Zoe who was in Blue’s condition.”
“I’d kill you, but I’m big enough to know that you’re not someone who is usually reckless, so, actually, I’d probably only maim you.”
“Real good of you. Are you really going to lock me up?”
“Them’s the rules, bud.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Parts of it I’m enjoying and other parts I’m not. Like how you’ve got all this shit going on inside you that’s making you crazy and you’re not talking to me about it.”
“I’m not really the talk it out type, Dan, and I’d think you’d know that about me by now.” Jay put his head back on the rest, suddenly exhausted. He felt his friend’s eyes briefly turn to him.
“I thought we didn’t hide things from each other?”
He snorted because he’d been hiding shit from Dan for years. “Dan, no one knows everything that’s going on inside people, even if they are close friends.”
“Yeah, I guess I knew that about you.”
Jay heard the hurt in his friend’s voice and didn’t know how to explain. He’d deliberately locked the dark stuff away inside himself. Yes, Dan knew that his childhood had been rough, but not how rough.
Not the nights he’d spent with his pillow over his head, shutting out noises. Or how on hot days, he’d worn long sleeves to hide the bruises. Yes, he was a child then, and that was years ago, but some things just left a stain on your soul that could never be erased no matter how much you talked it out.
“Okay, here’s how this is going to go. I’m locking you in a cell, and then you’re telling me all the shit you haven’t.”
“Not happening,” Jay said.
“I have my ways of getting shit out of people, and I know you better than most,” Dan added.
Jay didn’t speak because they were slowing down outside the station, but then he didn’t have anything to add. No one could make Jay speak if he didn’t want to. Many had tried and failed.
Chapter 17
His cell wasn’t big, but it was clean and, Jay guessed, had everything he needed for a short stay or somewhere to sober up, which often happened in Lyntacky.
He balanced the pizza box on his knees, grease seeping through the cardboard. Pepperoni. Double cheese. The coffee sat on the floor beside him, steaming faintly, and the ice pack Sybil, the administrator, had pressed into his palm earlier had dulled the ache in his jaw to something manageable.
