“Bastard.”
If it had been a fair match, Boyd would have lost. He knew that. Shay actually knew how to fight and had been barred from half the bars in town for winning them. But this hardly even qualified as a fight. It was just two men in a scrap on the floor.
Shay drove a short, bony-knuckled punch into Boyd’s upper arm and got an elbow jabbed into his chin as payback. Knees and elbows slid on the scrubbed tiles as they both tried to get the upper hand.
“What the fuck—”
Mac grabbed them each by the collar and dragged them apart. He caught a badly aimed kick against his thigh, grunted, and left Shay sprawled on the tiles as he pulled Boyd to his feet. The shirt caught under Boyd’s arms as Mac shoved him into the wall.
“I expect better from you,” Mac said, one finger leveled at Boyd’s nose.
Still on the floor, Shay laughed bitterly and propped himself up on his elbows. He ducked his chin to wipe his bloody mouth against his shoulder.
“Yeah, Boyd, I’m just the fuckup. Nobody expects anything from me.”
Mac turned to glare at him. “You’re a civilian,” he said. “Boyd’s a firefighter.”
“Yeah, well, not for long, from what the blog said,” Shay said. “And just in case it matters, he started it.”
“It doesn’t,” Mac said. “Get up.”
Shay scowled but did as he was told. “How’s Mom?” he asked as he dusted himself down. “Is she….”
He trailed off. Boyd could tell from Mac’s face that there wasn’t a good answer to that question right then.
“She wants to see Sammy…. Morgan,” Mac said as he took his hand off Boyd’s shoulder. “Otherwise she’s going to the papers with everything she thinks we did.”
Shay pushed his hair back from his face. “Except we haven’t done anything,” he said. “It’s all in her head. Sammy was my brother. I didn’t hurt him.”
The silence that hung after that statement made Shay set his jaw, a flash of old, sullen resentment in the expression. He licked his lips and laughed bitterly, “And fuck you too, Captain.”
Mac looked tired. “It’s not like that, Shay.”
“It never is.”
Boyd had been on the wrong side of cryptic comments about the most important things in his life. He’d grown up there, always aware there wassomethingbehind the looks people traded over his head but never quite sure what. It sucked.
Now he was on the other side of the looks, and it sucked too. Whoever passed for the great and good in Cutter’s Gap had already gotten Boyd slapped with a suspension just for Morgan being back. They wouldn’t be happy with the sort of publicity Mrs. Calloway’s darkest imaginings would produce. By the end of this, whatever the truth was, they might all end up being run out of town.
Boyd didn’t want that. Neither did Shay, not really.
“I can talk to her,” he said. “I’m the one who went to meet Morgan. I can expla—”
“No,” Shay said flatly. He avoided Boyd’s gaze and hunched his shoulders as he stuffed his hands into his jeans. “You’ve done enough. Leave it to family.”
Boyd’s defenses should have already been raised, but the jab still slid through and pricked that raw spot over again. He sucked in a deep breath and started forward. Mac stepped in front of him and blocked him with an upraised hand.
“Enough. It’s not the place or the time,” he said. “Let Shay deal with his mom, and you go and get Morgan. The cat’s out of the bag already, so… it can’t hurt to let Donna meet him. Who knows. It might jog Morgan’s memory.”
Guilt undercut Boyd’s anger as he remembered Morgan’s confession from the night before. He was pretty sure that was something Mac would want to know, but it wasn’t Boyd’s story.
It would be better, he told himself as he backed away from another confrontation with Shay, if it came from Morgan himself.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll talk to him.”
Mac gratefully slapped him on the shoulder and then turned the gesture into a shove to send him on his way.
“Go on.”
