He asked if he could call her again, next time he was in town.
She pointedly did not ask, “Why?” Or, “Will you stick your tongue down my throat next time, or is that a third date thing?”
Painting on her most satisfied smile, Trace waved one last time as she climbed into her car, her lips numb, her ribs aching, as she realized a painful fact.
Why didn’tshegrab him by the waistband and yank him close and shovehertongue down his throat?
Time to get real. She was boring.
2
Speak of the devil
“IknowI’vesaidita couple… hundred… thousand times, but Cole?” Jeremy said with a laugh laced into the thick gravel of worry in his voice. “Please come home.”
Home. The word spiraled in Cole’s mind like a leaf in a windstorm, still, silent until it was sucked against the overwhelming pull. Each time he refused the invitation, it chipped off another piece of him.
He held the phone to his ear, carefully over the steri-strips holding together the laceration on his cheek, the itch from the freshly removed stitches still prickling around the wound. Every joint in his body ached, every wound. His side where he had a dozen more stitches not due to come out yet. His shoulder nagging to stretch outside of the sling. His ankle throbbing inside the walking boot. Pushing off the threadbare sofa, he stepped over loose boards and stopped in front of the window.
The amber streetlights glowed with an eerie ambience in the misty smog. Sirens wailed, engines squealed, but his crevice of a view of the city was motionless, no one daring to step out at night. Not in this neighborhood, anyway.
A far cry from the crisp air of Foothills, his home for the few years of his life he could almost callnormal.
Before he could respond, he heard rustling and whispering on the other end, muffled at first, but achingly familiar. Another voice came on. “Cole? It’s Ellen. Are you okay?”
A whiff of a smile lifted his cheeks, tugging on the wound, sending throbbing jolts across his jaw. “Yeah, Ellen. I’m okay.”
“No you’re not, you’ve got that thing in your voice,” she said, the fierce woman more convincing than the ones who had strung him up and tortured him until he broke. Sounded dramatic, but hell, he’d forgotten what normal felt like.
The side of his mouth lifted, and he shook his head, backing away from the window. “I, uh, took a few hits, but I’m fine. Just got back to my apartment.” Safehouse, but she didn’t need to know that.
“A few hits?” she said hoarsely, her delicate soprano simultaneously murderous and airy with worry. “What does that mean? Cole. You need to slow down before something… before…”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. That something had happened, and he shouldn’t still be alive.
“I, um…” The words dangled from his uvula. The outer corners of his eyes burned. “I quit my job.”
Tornadoes sucked in air less dramatically, the pair of his former foster parents probably spinning with confusion at the foreign phrase. “Whuh—what?” Ellen said, and the phone rustled again. “Great. Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay.”
“Cole, did you say you quit?” Jeremy asked, his voice little more than a whisper, as if afraid he hadn’t heard right. “As in, you’re…?”
“I mean, you’ve only asked a few hundred thousand times, but if you really mean it, I want—need—to come back.“ More than he’d needed the transfusion. The heavy drugs to sedate him enough to reset his shoulder without him deliriously fighting back. Or the walking boot and crutches for the ankle injury he’d earned from jumping out the three-story window. And definitely more than he needed the “bonus” his employer had offered in the attempt to reverse his resignation.
Gushing profusely, Ellen hiccupped a surprised laugh. “Of course we mean it. We’ve meant it every day since you left. This is your home. It always will be.”
Sinuses filling fast, he puffed a small breath through pursed lips and nodded, the swelling under his eye burning as salty tears flooded down his face. “K. I’ll, um, see you tomorrow afternoon. I’ll send you my flight info.”
“You’re comingnow? I… that’s… Oh my gosh, Cole. We can’t wait to see you. Jeremy will pick you up at the airport. I’ll have your favorite cookies ready. I’ll get to fixing up your old bedroom.“ Ellen talked so fast, he could picture her strawberry blond curls bouncing as she searched the house to start preparations before he’d even hung up.
“See you soon,” he said again, clicking off before he could wimp out. Ten fucking years, with a few brief visits back to the only place he’d ever even considered calling home. Before the Perrys took him in, he’d bounced around from his mother’s to his grandmother’s, juvie, foster homes, group homes, but nothing stuck.
Until the Perrys. With a heart too big for his own good, Jeremy Perry had taken in dozens of foster kids over the years, always short term for those who were in limbo between permanent placements. Until Cole. No one else would tolerate the teenage boy with a record for stealing cars before he’d learned to drive, and the personification of the “fight or flight” response.
He’d do anything for the man who couldn’t hit a nail on the head with a sledgehammer. For the baker who baked cookies to compel him to stick around. Not just any cookies, but peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and topped with sea salt, crispy on the outside and gooey in the middle, perfectly balanced in every bite. Three years with the Perrys, and he had spent the last ten grateful for every damn day of normal with them.
Cole confirmed the ticket to SeaTac and forwarded his flight information along to Jeremy. No personal items cluttered the studio he used as a safe house after the job had gone to hell. He plucked his wallet from the stool at the side of his bed and stuffed it in the back pocket of his jeans, his phone in another pocket. His dominant arm secured in an immobilizer, he maneuvered his left arm into the sleeve and hoisted the jacket around his injured right shoulder. Flipping the sweatshirty hood of his denim jacket up, he walked to the door and dropped the key on the arm of the sofa.
Night suffocated the streets. Not even the alley cats wanted to hunt the rats that rustled in the dumpster. Uphill toward the bus stop, he hobbled on the cushioned ankle boot, the crutches they’d given him impossible to use with the shoulder, reaching the stop as the bus rounded the corner.
