Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Going still, swallowing the lump in his throat, Rian stared up at Damon. “Do...do what?”

  “What you did last time.” The words came out hard, like Damon was cutting their edges with his teeth. “Don’t tell me this was just some mechanical fucking thing. A one-night stand.”

  Rian’s heart went completely still, while the rest of his body seemed to convulse to compensate, every vein constricting in on itself in a clutch of hurt. He couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but ache and spin dizzily and want, but he managed to find faint words.

  “It...it wasn’t.”

  “Why?” Damon demanded, harsh—yet even if he seemed so furious, that firm hold on Rian’s hand wasn’t cruel. Instead it felt like a needy question in the form of touch, a longing to have some kind of contact, some kind of closeness, even as they battered at each other once again. “Why did you say that, last time?”

  “I... I...”

  “Rian.” Dark eyes pleaded with him, and behind the hard glare of anger was...was...pain. “Please. For fuck’s sake, tell me what’s going on inside your head right now. Because with the way we’ve been going at each other, this isn’t just fucking. You want to know what’s going on inside my head? Maybe let me into yours, too.”

  “I...fuck.”

  Damon smiled pallidly, his grasp on Rian’s hand loosening. “Something other than ‘damn.’ Gotta be serious shit, huh?”

  But when Damon’s grip relaxed, Rian clutched tighter, his chest seizing as though, if he let go of that grasp, he’d forget how to breathe. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, because it wasn’t an answer to Damon’s question but it was the first thing that came to mind. “I’m sorry, I just... I didn’t want to hurt you, I didn’t want you to feel like I was using you so maybe if it was just...you know...a simple thing, casual...maybe...”

  With a sigh, Damon slumped, looking at Rian wearily. “Did I say I felt used?”

  Rian drew his lips in between his teeth, biting down on them both from the inside before whispering, “...no...”

  “Because I didn’t. You decided that for me,” Damon growled—but his fingers tightened on Rian’s again, holding them closer, pressing them against his chest and the heated, steady beat of his heart. “Without asking me, you decided what you should do about my damned feelings, and thought you were gonna ‘fix’ that entire situation by closing off and taking all that shit on yourself. That’s not what the hell I wanted at all. Not to save my feelings, and not to save myself.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rian felt like he was crumpling; like he could say it over and over again, say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry and it wouldn’t be enough. “Then...then what did you want?”

  “I wanted—”

  Damon didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Not when the flash of headlights swept over them, bright against the descending dark, and now Rian’s heart skipped for a different reason as Damon dropped down, flattening himself atop Rian and beneath the line of sight from the windows; Rian tried to peer past him, while Damon twisted to squint over his shoulder.

  “Shit,” Damon whispered. “Think we’re far enough out of sight?”

  “Depends on who that is,” Rian hissed back, stomach lurching nervously, body tightening with an adrenaline-fueled rush of tingling nerves. “But we should probably pull ourselves together and find out.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Damon dragged his jeans up around his hips and twisted back into his shirt before zipping up and angling his body to block line of sight from the front windshield to Rian, while Rian hurriedly squirmed back into his clothing. As Rian hissed and struggled in the back of the Jeep, Damon leaned forward between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, watching an oversized Ford pickup on monster truck wheels, bouncing on its elevated shocks, come rumbling into the cleared stretch of dirt that pretended to be a parking lot.

  With the Hank’s Roadhouse logo on the driver’s side door and the fact that Damon knew that beat-up testosterone-fueled junker from the obnoxious way it roared whenever, over the years, Gordon Drew had come trundling into town for some shopping or just to be fucking loud because he thought he was someone important and everyone needed to look at him...there was no mistaking who it could be.

  Especially when Gordon Drew carried himself with that same self-assigned importance, including the arrogant swagger in how he moved as the Ford’s engine cut off, the headlights went dark, and he pushed the driver’s side door open to lever himself out. He was an angular man who looked as if someone had taken a better man and sucked all the goodness out of him to leave him a sunken, ropy collection of loose limbs and sallow skin, with his wide mouth twisted into an almost permanent thin-lipped sneer and a nose that pinched to a needle point at the tip. His eyes were hard and flat and small, sweeping over the dirty bar’s exterior with the proprietary sense of a king surveying his land.

  Rian’s head popped over Damon’s shoulder abruptly enough to make him recoil, jerking from glowering at Drew to look over his shoulder at Rian instead.

  “Is that him?” Rian whispered. “Gordon Drew?”

  “Uh. Yeah.” Damon arched a brow. “You don’t have to whisper. He can’t hear us from over here.”

  “Oh. Um. Right.” Rian coughed a little. “So what now?”

  “Well...” Damon frowned. “We can wait. Watch. See who comes through here tonight, if they give anything away. Or...”

  “Or?”

  “We can just outright ask him. He’s a dick, but if he’s seen a kid hanging around here he might say something just so he doesn’t get his liquor license suspended.”

  “That,” Rian said firmly. “Let’s do that. I want to do that.”

  Damon eyed him sidelong. “Since when did you get so confrontational?”

  “Damon,” Rian said primly, “I have had a child collapse in my class, had to deal with Walden’s attitude for weeks, been buried in an avalanche of pure trash, and had my brains fucked out by the most objectionable, rude man I have ever met. You’ll excuse me if my temper’s a little short.”

  With a grin, Damon asked, “So I’m rude and objectionable, huh?”

  “The worst.” Rian smiled wickedly at him, eyes flashing, then twisted away from Damon, reaching for the rear passenger door. “Let’s go.”

  Damon just blinked after him, but couldn’t help smiling.

  Falwell really was something else.

  But Damon thought he was really fucking starting to like whatever that something else might be.

  He followed Rian from the car, pausing to lock the Jeep and catching up to Rian just as he snagged one skinny sandaled foot on a fallen branch and wobbled forward. Damon gripped Rian’s arm, steadying him. “Careful there,” he murmured, and kept a light hold as they both picked their way through the brush and trees to emerge out into the twilit lot.

  Reluctantly, Damon let Rian go while Rian brushed himself off, straightening his still disarrayed clothing before clearing his throat and lifting his chin. Gordon Drew slammed the door of his truck closed, turning toward them with a startled jerk—then frowning warily, fingering his keys.

  “Doors don’t open for another hour,” he said, his thick voice gruff with an ambiguous drawl that could have been from anywhere. “Come back then. No loitering.”

  “Not here for that, Drew,” Damon said, shoving his hands into his pockets, slowing as they drew closer to Gordon. “Damon Louis. Rian Falwell. We got a few questions to ask you, that’s all.”

  Gordon Drew squinted at them suspiciously, then cocked his head and looked longer at Damon. “You’re that kid the Louises adopted, ain’t you? When did you get back into town?”

  Damon lofted his brows and stared at him flatly. “About ten years ago. I teach up the hill now.”

  Drew dragged his lips into a smirk and swiped back his greasy hair, iron gray that still retained hints of oil
y yellow. “Huh. ’scuse me if I don’t have anything to do with the fancy folk up the hill, Louis.” He took a few steps closer, his stride aggressive despite that leering smile that remained, fake and overly obsequious even as he darted another, longer look at Rian as he said up the hill, contemptuous. “You want something?”

  “Yes,” Rian said, completely unfazed, returning Drew’s gaze with hazel eyes turned flinty and calm. “Considering you don’t have anything to do with ‘the fancy folk up the hill,’ but one of our students has a shirt from your...” Rian flicked a look over Drew from head to toe, before pointedly dragging his gaze up to look in him the eye. “... Roadhouse.”

  Damon bit back his grin.

  Sometimes, that snotty attitude Rian could put on came in handy.

  Drew curled his upper lip. “And?” he spat. “It’s a fuckin’ shirt, he could’ve gotten it anywhere. Maybe someone else gave it to him.”

  “So I guess he coulda gotten bruised up anywhere, too,” Damon said flatly, before Rian added in coolly articulated tones,

  “Bruises that we have photographic evidence of. Documented for the police.”

  “Can’t forget he comes back stinking to high hell, too. Every night.” Damon lifted his head, flaring his nostrils, breathing in deep of the evening air, cool and crisp but with a sour edge as oily as Drew himself. “Smells kinda like this place.”

  Gordon Drew stared between them, his smirk vanishing to leave an expression of commingled disgust and dismay; Damon just looked at him steadily, while Rian folded his arms over his chest, pursing his lips and arching a brow.

  “The fuck you want from me?” Drew demanded in a rough growl.

  Damon narrowed his eyes. “Northcote. Chris Northcote. The fuck is he doing out here every night?” he asked. “What kinda shit you letting happen on your property?”

  “Nothing,” Drew retorted immediately—too immediately, not exactly fucking convincing. “People come here, they get drunk, they go home by last call, I cut ’em off if they’re too drunk to drive. So maybe I miss a few, I ain’t perfect, but that’s it. We get a few brawls, nothing else.” He pointed a gnarled finger at them, keys still clutched in his fist, jingling. “Just ’cause you town fuckers look down on me don’t mean I don’t run a clean establishment.”

  “Clean,” Rian repeated with lofty disdain, drawing the word out sardonically, cl-e-e-an. “So if I were to ask Chris, what would he say? What would he tell me, if I told him we’d discovered his connection to your bar and asked him to tell us the truth?”

  Gordon Drew said nothing, avoiding their eyes—but he flinched as Damon took a step closer.

  “We can hear it from him or we can hear it from you, Drew,” Damon bit off. “Might as well take your chance to tell your side of things first.”

  Drew scowled, his face purpling in an angry flush; he pulled back his upper lip, baring his teeth, and Damon tensed himself, bracing for backlash, but after a moment Drew snapped, “He told me he was fucking eighteen.” He let out a furious sound of frustration. “He looked it, why the fuck would I figger he wasn’t old enough?”

  “Old enough for what, Mr. Drew?” Rian said through his teeth, only to be met with mutinous silence. “Old. Enough. For. What.”

  Balling up his fists, Drew put his face through a series of contortions like he was fighting his mouth to either get the words out or keep them inside, before he flared, “Fucking bouncing, aight? I ain’t letting some kid drink in my place, but he said he needed the fuckin’ money so I let him work door security under the table. What’s your fucking problem?”

  “My fucking proble—” Damon broke off, cursing up a fucking storm, letting out every iteration and variation of fuck he knew; he had to turn away or he was going to do something immensely fucking regrettable.

  “Do you hear yourself?” Rian snapped. “Our problem? You let a child be brutalized by adults. You violated child labor laws so you could save a few pennies paying someone illegally. And lest you forget and need to hear it again, that person you were paying illegally was. A. Child.”

  “He fucking wanted it, why the fuck are you getting shitty with me over it?” Drew threw back. “He was fuckin’ begging me. And he was good at the fuckin’ job.” When Damon looked back... Drew had the nerve to be fucking smiling, like he actually had some kind of affection for Chris, or pride in him, but it was all so fucking fake. “Look, he muscled people good, but like...he wouldn’t let ’em start fights with him. Even when they were smashing up on him, he didn’t fight back. Kinda self-sacrificin’ like that. I’m teaching him good life skills, y’know. Whaddya call that? De-escalation?”

  “I call it fucking child abuse.” Damon’s blood was rising, feeling like it was about to pop through his fucking veins, his fingers clenching so hard his knuckles ground into his palms.

  This fucking explained everything.

  The bruises. The sneaking out. The exhaustion, working late nights at a bar.

  And why Chris had felt like he’d had to hide, and might get in some kind of legal trouble if he got caught.

  Mother fucker.

  “Yeah, well, you can fuckin’ rejoice, ’cause it’s over now,” Drew snarled. “Kid ain’t shown up for a week. He’s fucking fired anyway. Not even worth the six bucks an hour if you can’t show up to work.”

  “Six dollars an hour isn’t even minimum wage.” Rian spoke with haughty scorn. “You really have no shame, do you? Do you know where your ‘generosity’ landed Chris?”

  Drew let out a snort that was more of a barking burp. “Do I fucking care?”

  “He’s in the hospital.” Damon tried to take several calming breaths before he just—just—he didn’t fucking know, he just knew he couldn’t, but whipping around to face Drew had been a mistake when he just wanted to rip that fucker’s smug, self-satisfied face off. “He’s fucking on a goddamned IV. Dehydrated, beat to fuck, hasn’t been fucking sleeping. You feeling good about that? You feeling good about those life skills, huh? Teaching him it’s okay to let people abuse him?”

  With a look of utter sneering contempt, Drew said, “I just gave him what he wanted. If he’s old enough to wanna work, he’s old enough to take responsibility for his own goddamned deci—”

  Damon felt that hard, trembling fury rising to a break point...but before he saw it coming, a pale hand came plowing in from his peripheral vision.

  As Rian drove himself forward and, with all his weight, flung himself at Drew and smashed his clenched fist right into the middle of Drew’s face with enough force that he cut off mid-word in a garbled cry, his mouth slewing to one side, his nose flattening, his head rocking back.

  Before Drew dropped to the ground, stumbling and crumpling and lying there in a groaning heap, his keys spilling into the dirt, his jaw and the corner of his mouth already puffing with a thick purple bruise, a trickle of red spilling from one reddened, busted nostril.

  “Uh.” Damon stared down at Drew, shock knocking the fury right out of him to just leave him confused and frozen. Then he looked up at Rian, who stood over Drew, breathing hard, his hair wild, eyes snapping, face flushed, knuckles a hard-hit red. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

  “One of us had to. You wanted to, I would gather.” Rian offered him a strained smile that did little to hide the brimming anger leaving him vibrating with tension. “I’ll not let you get in more trouble than I would for it.”

  Damon smiled back grimly. “Watching you was satisfying enough.”

  “Fuck you,” Drew slurred, forcing the words around his swelling face as he clumsily dragged himself upright, sitting up and starting to gather himself to his feet. “You wanna go to jail on assault charges? I’ll—”

  He cut off with a strangled sound, cringing back, as Damon dropped into a crouch in front of him, bracing his hand between his spread thighs and leaning forward—nice and close and fucking personal.

  “
You are going to sit the fuck down,” Damon said firmly. “Because we got some phone calls to make ourselves. How you feel about twenty to thirty in prison, Drew? You even know what the Massachusetts child labor statutes are? ’cause I’d bet my next year’s paycheck you don’t have a youth employment permit signed by his parents. Not even a forged one. I doubt you even checked his fucking ID.” And while horrified, angry awareness dawned in Drew’s shallow eyes, Damon rocked back, standing. “Sit there,” he ordered, looking down at that disgusting excuse for a man, contempt rising up on the back of his tongue like sickness. “Stay. Don’t try to ditch town, either. I will fucking find you and drag you back by the scruff like the dog you are. And don’t even think about retaliation.” He tossed his head toward a still-glaring Rian. “You come after him, you deal with me. Got it?”

  Drew looked like he’d rather swallow raw meat than agree—but after a few moments he nodded slowly, looking at Damon with such pure loathing it filled the space between them as if it had physical substance, texture.

  And Damon let it roll right off him, smiling and showing all his teeth. “Good boy.”

  He turned away, then, catching Rian’s arm and nudging him gently. They needed to leave—now, before this turned into a brawl and they all ended up down at Omen’s little two-room police station explaining things to the town’s full complement of seven police officers. They ought to get the cops out here anyway, and quick, before Drew panicked and thought maybe running was a good idea after all.

  They’d only made it a few steps before Rian twisted to throw a huffy demand over his shoulder. “And stay away from Chris!”

  Damon was glad he had his back to Drew, because fuck, even when Damon was still so angry he could spit he couldn’t help smiling at Rian. “C’mon,” he murmured, guiding Rian toward the Jeep with a hand against the small of his back. “Had to get that last little bit in, huh?”

  “...it had to be said,” Rian mumbled guiltily, then winced and shook out his right hand with a hiss. “Ow.” He looked down at his hand, spreading his long, thin fingers; the knuckles were definitely a mess, and Damon glimpsed blood in the creases of pale skin; fuck. “Punching someone really hurts.”