He snatched his hand back.
Two in, two out. He could swap with one of the other crew and grab a spare pair if he needed. Except…some things you can’t take back.
“We’re in,” he said to Harry as he stepped back to let the captain go first.
Once Harry’s back was to him, he tucked the hooligan under his elbow and fished in his pocket for the black extrication gloves he carried as backup. He pulled them on—not safety rated, but better than nothing—and stuck to Harry’s heels as they went inside.
The smoke was dense in the garage, a greasy, heavy gray that seeped in through the walls, but only a few flames flickered under the door and thin and blue on top of spills on the floor. It was hot enough to blister the paint on the cars and crack brittle zits of metal into the custom hoods and door panels. All that metal creaked and popped as the heat built.
“Apartment’s upstairs,” Boyd said. He pointed with the battered head of the hooligan toward the door that led into the fire. “Through there.”
Chapter Eighteen
MORGAN SLOUCHEDagainst the streetlight, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched under his borrowed hoodie, and watched as Mac, in a pair of old jeans and nothing else, walked his boyfriend to the Jag parked in the drive. They kissed goodbye over the driver’s side door. It was the sort of dry-lipped kiss Morgan would shove Boyd against a wall to do over, but Mac wasn’t a spring chicken. At his age, maybe you wanted affection more than your tongue down your lover’s throat.
But Mac trailed his hand along the other man’s arm as he stepped back so the guy could get in the car. And he stood in his bare feet on the cement to watch the Jag reverse—badly—into the street.
“… halfway in love with you.” Boyd’s voice repeated the casual declaration in the back of Morgan’s brain. And even ten years from now, Morgan would bend Boyd backward over the hood of that car so that wherever he was going next, he’d have Morgan’s smell on his skin and the taste of him in his mouth.
Morgan looked away from Mac’s drive and down at his feet. He swallowed hard, his mouth sticky and throat dry.Fuck this town.He’d been fine until he got here and Cutter’s Gap paraded all this stuff he didn’t evenwantin front of him just so he’d know he couldn’t have it.
What didhalfway in loveeven mean? Who got halfway to anywhere and decided they had to tell you about it? Did it mean they were on their way, or that they could still turn around and go back without losing too much time? Just pick one.
There was a crack in the pavement full of chalk dust. Morgan kicked at it with the heel of his boot and twisted his mouth bitterly. He was about to tell a lot of lies; he should try to be honest just once on the way in. Where Boyd was concerned, he’d take what he could get.
The Jag peeled past him. Behind the tinted windows, the boyfriend was already preoccupied with the radio. He didn’t bother to look back.
Morgan’s new hero.
A sharp wolf whistle jerked his attention back to Mac, who crooked a finger to wave over the street. Habit made Morgan bristle resentfully at the order, but he was there to talk to Mac, so he squelched it. He pushed himself off the metal pole and jogged across the street.
“I’m starting to feel stalked,” Mac said once Morgan was within earshot. “What do you want, Morgan?”
“To talk,” Morgan said. “Off the record.”
Mac rubbed his hand over his face. “It’s my day off.”
“Fuck it, then,” Morgan said with a jerky shrug. “If you don’t have time—”
“I didn’t say that,” Mac said. “Come in. Make Mrs. Bailey’s day.”
He lifted one hand over his head to wave at something across the street. Morgan turned and saw a fluffy white head and pink face disappear behind hastily drawn curtains. When he turned back, Mac had already gone inside.
Halfway worked out better, Morgan supposed. It wouldn’t take so long for Boyd to fix his mistake.
“WHY DIDN’Tyou tell me this before?” Mac asked over his shoulder as he cracked an egg into a pan. He cooked, apparently, but only breakfast and burgers, so you took what you got. Thankfully he’d pulled on a T-shirt before he started. Morgan didn’t mind a pelt, it turned out, although maybe it was just on Boyd—but he didn’t want it in his food.
Morgan fiddled with the salt cellar on the table. “It’s not exactly something to boast about, is it? ‘Do you know how many families took a hard pass on keeping me around? This many!’” he singsonged bitterly as he held up one hand with all his fingers spread. “Hell, it could have been more. Apparently I was an unlovable bastard even then.”
If he’d hoped Mac would argue with him, he was out of luck.
“Some people aren’t cut out to be parents. They try anyhow and fuck more people up.” Mac scraped the eggs, fluffy and yellow, with dashes of red pepper sprinkled through, onto a plate and grabbed some oven gloves to pull the sheet of bacon from under the grill. “Do you remember any names?”
“Dad. Father. Daddy. Mom. Mama. They all really wanted that, for a few weeks. Sometimes I went to school for a couple of months. Mostly they homeschooled,” he said. “My mom—the last one—her name’s on the social worker’s papers, but even that Graves wasn’t her married name. It was Fox or Faulkner or something.”
Mac brought two plates of food over to the table. He handed one to Morgan and then sat down opposite him. The smell of hot bacon and fried potato made Morgan’s mouth water. He’d just picked the scab off his childhood and let the pus out. He shouldn’t be hungry. His stomach disagreed, apparently.
The last thing he’d had to eat was a couple of slices of cheese pizza at the Calloways’.
