“Maybe not yet,” he said. “Let me talk to him.”
Shay looked reluctant but nodded his agreement. He turned back to his mother and crouched down on the floor to try to soothe her panic. Boyd left them to it and ducked out of the office. He followed the mutter of scandalized gossip through the police station and out the back door. He heard the rattle of metal on glass, and something smashed around the corner.
Boyd looked around the wall to where Morgan stood in front of the vending machine, hammering his fist into it. The metal cage dented, and the glass front of the machine chipped and shattered as the metal hit it. Blood dripped from his split knuckles and splattered over the grubby concrete floor as Morgan punched his fist into the torn cage.
“Morgan,” Boyd blurted in shock. “That’s enough.”
It wasn’t. Morgan roared with a raw, cracked sound and drove one last punch into the machine. The glass cracked from one edge to the other, and Morgan slumped against it. His chest heaved as he panted raggedly, and then his knees gave way and he sank down into a crouch on the ground. He dropped his head back against the broken glass and closed his eyes.
“Sammy,” he said. “That’s my name now, right?”
“If you want,” Boyd said. He crouched down in front of Morgan and rested his hands against his pitched knees. “Morgan is a bit less weird for me.”
A brief snort of laughter escaped Morgan. He grimaced and pressed his bloody knuckles against his lips as though he could hold it back that way.
“How could this be less weird?” he asked hoarsely. “I can’t be Sammy, Boyd. I can’t do this.”
“Why not?” Boyd asked.
Morgan lowered his chin and opened his eyes. Tears welled on his lashes, and he angrily scrubbed them away before they could fall.
“Because I. Can’t,” he said. “This can’t have been an option. My whole life was shit. Nobody wanted me. Nobody kept me. And that was okay because that was just who I was and what I got. You deal the hands you’re dealt, and I got a shit hand. So what. But I could have grown up here? I could have been just some kid? I wouldn’t have to sleep with a fucking fork under my pillow because my foster dad hid the knives?”
He lifted his hands and gave Boyd a rough shove away from him, but Boyd caught himself on one hand.
“I could have been a fucking fireman,” Morgan yelled, as though that were the final straw.
“Do you want to be?” Boyd asked.
“Not the point,” Morgan said.
No, Boyd supposed it wasn’t. He straightened himself up and watched Morgan’s face twist with a knotted tangle of emotions. A tear escaped Boyd’s eye as he blinked. It ran down his cheek, and he sheepishly wiped it away. It wasn’t his pain. He didn’t get to cry over it if Morgan didn’t.
“I love you,” Boyd said.
“That doesn’t help.”
Boyd went to say something, but he supposed that wouldn’t help either. Maybe he couldn’t.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked.
Morgan wiped his nose and glanced up at him. “Do you want to go?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t have hit you,” Morgan said. “I just… I needed to hit something.”
Boyd sat down next to him and leaned in so their shoulders touched. Morgan’s hands were still twisted into hard fists, blood caked between the fingers and the crease of his knuckles.
“You don’t have to talk to anyone you don’t want to,” Boyd said after a moment. “We can leave, go back to my apartment, and lock the doors. You don’t even have to talk to me.”
Morgan choked out a strangled laugh and slung a heavy arm around Boyd’s shoulders. He pulled him in to a rough hug and pressed a damp kiss against the corner of his mouth.
“They’ll want to know who did it,” he said. “What they did.”
“Yes.” Boyd agreed.
Morgan closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Boyd’s. His voice was low and ragged. “What if I don’t want to know?”
