“Bertie,” he said, voice raised to carry to the counter. “Make my burger to go. I’ve got to get back.”
He slid out from the booth and waited at the counter for Bertie to fetch his lunch in a Styrofoam clamshell. A couple of minutes later, Morgan’s burger came out, a puddle of juice already on the plate under it.
“Here you go,” Bertie said as she slid it onto the table in front of him. Her eyes flicked over to the milkshake. “Funny thing, you know. Kids used to order that all the time. I see them sometimes—that firefighter, for one. Him and his friend….”
She trailed off expectantly. Morgan didn’t know for what.
“Yeah, well, it’s awful,” he said. Bertie just hovered there as she studied the blue liquid. Then he cleared his throat. “Burger looks great. Thanks.”
At last she left. Morgan picked up the burger, bun dented under his fingers, and stared at it while he waited for his appetite to come back. It didn’t, so he took a bite and choked it down anyhow. It lay heavily in his stomach.
He hadn’t decided exactly what he was going to do to put Deacon Hill in the picture, he reminded himself. And what if hedidtell Donna Calloway he was her son, and then he left? At least she could stop looking for her son. It might even be a kindness.
Would he tell Boyd that, he wondered darkly. He didn’t let himself answer, but he was done with the burger either way.
THE SMARTthing to do would be to go to Shay and pick his brain. He was Sammy’s brother, and he knew everything Morgan needed to run this con. It wasn’t as though Morgan would even have to lie. Shay wanted this to play out smoothly just as much as Morgan did.
So why was he slouched against Boyd’s door? He hadn’t even known if Boyd was home when he climbed the stairs until the muffled “Hold on” from inside.
If he were honest, Morgan already knew the answer. He had—what, a week?—left of Boyd’s pretty-as-fuck eyes and sweet mouth. Then he’d be out of here, and Shay would have Boyd and his justice all to himself.
That thought made Morgan taste bile in the back of his throat. He shrugged it off because that sort of answer would make a smart man—whose freedom and twenty grand had been bet on his ability to fuck people over—get out of here. Sentiment and second thoughts were the sort of thing that got you sent to jail, and no matter what they promised, no one actually waited on the outside. Luckily Morgan wasn’t really all that honest.
Shay might tell Morgan everything hethoughtMorgan needed to know, but he was a mechanic with an axe to grind, not a con artist. A lie lived or died on the details, and Morgan didn’t trust Shay to know what details mattered.
See? It wasn’t a lie, but it was a truth he could live with.
He thumped the door again with the flat of his hand. “Are you dead?”
“Nope.” The door opened from under his shoulders, and Morgan caught his balance as he turned. Boyd, hair messy and skin greasy pale, smirked at him as he propped himself against the jamb. “Maybe I’m getting laid.”
He smelled like sweat, sleep, and the sour bite of whiskey that had sweated out through his pores and soaked into his rumpled T-shirt. It made Morgan’s lip curl, the back of his throat raw as his temper scraped at it.
“And they had to get you drunk first?” he asked.
Boyd rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I did that myself,” he said. “Bad day.”
“Bet mine was worse.”
“I got fired.”
“I went to see your friend, and he called me a con artist,” Morgan said. “I guess it’s lucky you didn’t feel like you had to boast that we’d hooked up, or he’d have probably called me worse.”
Boyd squinted at him for a moment and then pushed himself off the door jamb with a groan. He left the door open as he padded back into the dimly lit apartment. Sweatpants hung low around his hips, the cuffs folded under his heels. “You know what? It’s too early for you.”
“It’s midafternoon.”
“Shit,” Boyd said as he folded himself over the breakfast bar and laced his hands together at the back of his neck. His voice was muffled between his elbows as he groaned, “This may be another bad day.”
If he wanted sympathy, Morgan was out. He’d done his time in foster care with drunks and their hangovers and trod carefully around their bitter, brittle tempers to avoid the beating they’d blame him for later. It wasn’t something he was interested in now that he could walk away when he wanted.
But he hadn’t, had he?
Despite the slow-brewed temper that clenched his jaw and made the back of his head ache, Morgan grazed his attention over the abandoned sprawl of Boyd’s lean frame. Damp cotton didn’t hide much of the muscle underneath, and Morgan swallowed hard as he reached the hip-cocked curve of Boyd’s ass. The worn sweatpants hung on his hipbones by the last bit of stretch in the band, and Morgan didn’t know if he wanted to fuck Boyd or just slap the self-indulgent misery out of him.
The thought tangled his hand for a second—the crack of his palm against Boyd’s ass and the heavy weight of arousal in his groin as Boyd squirmed—and his stomach turned in visceral disgust. He dragged his attention away from Boyd’s ass and fed the lust to his anger. His sour mood might make him an asshole, but at least it didn’t make him sick.
“How much did you have to drink?” he asked, his voice deliberately harsh.
