Things get tense when the cars start rolling up, when familiar guys start getting out. And by tense, I mean belly-twisting, fist-balling, jaw-clenching tense.
They’re all fifteen years older, but we recognize them like it was yesterday. We gave them all nicknames back in the day, and we murmur them now, remembering together.
A few step out of cabs. Familiar faces, every one of them. Brooke’s dad arrives, still with the wire, according to Rivera. Eventually all the big players are there.
I put a hand on Grayson’s shoulder. “This is them going down,” I say, more for myself than anything.
“Gotcha, motherfuckers,” Cruz whispers into the air between us.
Once they’re all in there, we wait some more. Rivera warned us that the cops would keep back until they felt like they had everything they could get off the wire. Cruz thinks they’ll come in the back and flush them out the front if they run.
Suddenly a white van rolls up. “What the fuck?” Cruz says.
“TV news,” Knox grumbles.
Another news van arrives. Reporters are getting out, staking out sight lines to capture the arrests live.
Nate gives me a look. “Somebody called the news.” The way he says it, he thinks it was me.
He’s right. “That’s terrible,” I say. “Awfully embarrassing to be arrested on live TV.”
A couple of the guys snort.
“Love it,” Grayson growls.
And then it’s happening. Police cruisers zoom up, as if out of nowhere, stopping right up on the sidewalk, one, two, three, four, five. A police van turns the corner, lights flashing. There are more flashing lights from cop cars on the other side.
The windows of the place are thick with stained glass, but I’m betting they’re seeing this. People are gathering. It’s a circus. The cops put up tape to create a perimeter.
“It’s time,” I say. I don’t mean anything specific by that. Just everything. It’s time for everything. I grab Brooke’s hand. Our gazes meet. Hope swells in my heart. “Come on.”
We step out of the shadows, all of us together—my brothers. Brooke and Abby. We edge up between news vans, hanging together as a group.
The ornately carved doors burst open. Detective Rivera appears with Judge William Fossey at the top of the marble steps. Fossey’s hands are cuffed behind his back. His jaw is set, his face pale, and his eyes bright with horror as he surveys the crowd and news cameras, but then he seems to collect himself, and he smiles as the reporters rush up and ask for comment.
“Fake news,” he says. “Nothing but lies.”
Then he sees me. He sees Grayson. He sees the group of us, strong together. A force for right.
It’s then that I think he knows he’s well and truly fucked. I swear, some of the life visibly drains out of him. He seems smaller, even. Rivera drags him the rest of the way down the steps and toward the waiting police van.
Other men get dragged out in the same way, there in full view of the world, the beginning of a long walk of shame and misery. And each and every one of them sees us. We make sure of it.
Something stirs in my chest each time, like I want to shout and swear and throw shit and I don’t know what else. It’s fucking overwhelming.
In a good way.
We stay until the last of the guys are out. We stay there long after the news crews race down to the police station to do more interviews. Long after the crowds disperse and the sun is setting over the buildings.
We’re a little shell-shocked, I think.
Grayson is the one to break the spell. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 30
One month later
Stone
They love video games and pasta.
Nate looks over at me from the other side of the couch and just rolls his eyes. We’re out at his farm. We had this whole outdoor trek and meet-the-animals thing set up for the four boys who were stuck in that strip-mall basement, but they haven’t gotten past the sweet setup in the living room.
Cruz shovels spaghetti and meatballs into his face like he’s never eaten before in his life. Knox groans. “You’re getting tomato sauce on the controllers.”
“Got you!” One of the kids—Harley—blows up Grayson’s guy. Grayson’s laughing, working the controls, vowing to get them all back. Being the baby of the group, Grayson connects with the kids best.
Miles—he’s maybe thirteen—plays with sullen determination. He reminds me a lot of me. Angry. Hard-eyed. Zero trust. He was the oldest one, too.
The four of them know we were inside like they were. Years longer. They know we got them out, but we’re not here for a thank you or some big fucking emo moment. We’re giving them what we wanted when we got out. A place to be kids. To be their own kids.
Child protective services almost didn’t let us take them out of the group home for this day-on-the-farm thing, but Rivera and Brooke’s dad intervened. They got a child psychologist on the case who told the authorities how healing it would be for them to hang out with guys who came out the other side of what they’d been through.
And the boys, they weren’t talking. I mean, even more than they aren’t talking here. They were clammed up hard, not trusting any adults. It didn’t take a genius to realize we could reach them.
They sent a social worker along. He’s reading in the corner.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen them smile,” he told me fifteen minutes after they got here.
The room explodes in laughter when Grayson goes down. I clap a hand on his shoulder. “Too slow, old man.”
The kids laugh at him. They sound like…kids.
They’re looking for homes for them. Two of these boys were orphans; two were runaways. Throwaway boys, all four of them. Just like us. Except they’ll get lots of therapy and hopefully a stable place to grow up, unlike us.
I thought about taking them for like two seconds, but we don’t have the life for raising kids. Not yet, anyway. I don’t know whether we ever will. For now they deserve a stable life, not an abandoned hotel or a hidden cabin in the woods.
Nate wanders over to Miles, sitting beside him on the sofa, all nonchalant like he’s not observant as fuck. He’s got something in his hand. A book. I can’t read its title from this far away, but there are enough glossy pictures as he flips through the pages to show me it’s about animals.
The animals gave him a purpose.
Miles passes the controller to one of the other boys, then scowls down at his hands. But even from here, I can see his gaze shifting to that book with every turn of the page.
Nate’s a gentle man, something most of us can’t really claim to be. Maybe he could end up adopting one of them.
In a few minutes the book is half in Miles’s lap. He’s silent as they turn the pages, but it’s something. God, it’s something.
Knox takes over for Grayson, running the games. He’s talking trash.
I have to hand it to Detective Rivera—he took point on the investigation. Dozens of guys have been arrested beyond what we saw that day at the club. City leaders. Business luminaries. Dirty cops. Wealthy heads of Franklin City’s oldest families.
The arrests have torn the city apart. Good. Most of the men have been denied bail. They tried to get special treatment. No-go. They’ll be heading into the general population of a prison with child-predator signs on their backs.
I won’t be losing any sleep over it.
Ryland comes in and collects the plates, offering fourth servings to anyone, but we’re full. Beyond full. The pasta, it was a little overcooked; the sauce, a little too salty, but that’s not the point. The point is that it was cooked with love by someone who gives a shit about these kids. That’s what made it fucking perfect.
There’s a hole in my chest, like there always is when Brooke isn’t near me. She offered to skip class for this, but I don’t want to be a bad influence. Well, not too bad. She has important shit to learn. About government and fucking society.
The kids
are going to have a lot more meals like this, wherever they end up. No more stale pizza. No more crumbs.
The gaming winds down. Nate manages to get the group of us outside to kick around the farm.
It’s a nice evening, with one of those sunsets where the light feels glowy and soft. There are different fenced-in pastures here, and rolling hills beyond. We stop at the goat pen. I suppose we’re quite a sight, the seven of us older guys like battered Vikings watching four boys feed the goats.
I put my hands over the length of the wooden fence. Watch them laugh. Watch them forget themselves for a while. Nate’s laughing, keeping the goats in check.
The oldest one—Miles—comes out and stands next to me.
“That brown one almost took your thumb,” I say.
He shrugs. He’s so like me, it kind of hurts. He doesn’t even want to say that much. He doesn’t think anyone gives a shit. It’s cool. I get it.
He’s staring at my arm. He looks away when he thinks I’m noticing. I’m not sure what the fuck is up with that until I realize it’s the scarification he’s eyeing. “It’s axes,” I say.
“I thought it was just an X,” he says.
I hold it out. He’s curious to touch the thing with its raised white lines, but I won’t invite him to. It’s not what he needs. “Double-sided axes. We all have them.”
“You did it…”
“Yup.” In the basement. That’s what he’s asking. “With a sharpened nail we pulled out of the wall. Scratched the hell out of each other.”
“They musta been mad,” he says.
Nobody likes marks on the merchandise. “They were mad, but it was too late because we had a plan to get out. Got out a few days later.”
“And you killed the fuck out of them,” he growls.
I nod, glad the social worker isn’t nearby. We promised we’d be positive role models. I trace the X that the axes make. “Old-style battle-axes. We found the design in some moldy book down there.”
“And you scratched it in. Like war paint or some shit,” he says.
“It goes with our vow to each other,” I say. “‘One blade to protect my brothers, one blade for vengeance.’”
“That’s your vow?”
“That’s our vow,” I say.
“You have a vow.” He stares at my arm a long time. I let him. “I wish we’d got to kill them.”
“Nah, it’s better this way,” I say. “Way worse for them, too.”
“You think?”
“I know,” I say.
“I wish we at least had a vow,” he finally says.
“You do have one.” I wait until he’s looking up at me, and I repeat it. “This vow of ours? It covers all four of you. You’re my brother same as Nate or Knox over there. One blade to protect my brothers means you. It means you’re not alone out there. It means you have somebody to reach out to. Okay?”
He touches his own arm. I don’t know whether he believes it. “I want one, too. I want you to make it on me.”
Grayson catches my eye from the other side of Miles. How long was he listening? A glimmer in his eyes tells me he must’ve heard that last part, anyway. “Let’s all think about it for later,” he says. “Okay? Don’t go doing it yourselves.”
Pretty sure the caseworkers would be mad, too.
Somebody finds a Frisbee, and we throw it around awhile. And then the farm dogs get involved and it’s a party. It feels good. I don’t know who’s helping each other more—are they healing us or are we healing them?
But the answer doesn’t matter. With brothers it goes both ways.
Epilogue
Five months later
Brooke
My criminal justice class is in one of the oldest buildings on campus, with seats so small and so packed it’s hard to squeeze out of them. There’s an old bell that still rings, from when colleges still had those. It runs a little early, and the professor always tries to keep talking.
Normally I like to be respectful, to take excellent notes, to be a model student. That’s something I did for myself, not for my parents, so I keep doing it now. Except when it comes to my last class of the day. Then I use my arm to sweep my books and notebooks into my messenger bag and dart into the horde of other impatient students. There’s chatter all around me. A frat party tonight. Some kind of protest happening in the quad. I’m sure it’s interesting, but I have my own kind of party to attend. My own kind of protest.
I skip down the old rubber-lined steps, keeping a light handle on the scarred wood railing. When I reach the bottom, I push out of heavy metal doors with the rest of the crowd. The sun makes everything glow—the concrete sidewalks, the flagpole. The cars lined up in the parking lot.
Tucking my bag close to my body, I dart along the sidewalk.
It takes me an extra second to find this car, because it’s parked behind a big delivery van. Then I see it, the white truck that’s distinctly Stone. There are way too many fancy cars in the garage, new ones, expensive ones. This is the one he drives.
I dash to the driver’s-side door, holding my breath. The door opens.
Then I’m sliding into the seat, tossing my bag into the back. The man in the passenger seat doesn’t say a word. At least until I start the engine with the remote key sitting in the cupholder.
“Five o’clock,” he says.
I glance in the rearview mirror. Sure enough there’s a suspicious-looking black Toyota sitting in the corner of the lot. Suspicious because the dust around the front bumper doesn’t match the license plate. It’s been switched. Recently. Probably from some poor car stuck in impound.
“No problem,” I say, easing out of the lot.
We’ll go west, which is also the direction that the Bradford Hotel is located. Of course we’ll probably go all four directions before this is over. That’s the fun part.
“What’s the plan?” I ask. “Anything I need to know? If Knox is cooking again, I vote we stop for takeout.”
Stone reaches over and slides a strand of my hair between two fingers. “Cruz on the grill.”
I smile. “That works.” Cruz on the grill means burgers. He gets creative, mixing in mushrooms and cheeses and crazy spices. He makes veggie versions for Calder. The guys make fun of that, but Calder’s impervious to any and all teasing. We’ll eat at the giant table, all nine of us. Sometimes Ryland noodles around on his guitar, taking requests.
I’ve never loved a place more than the Bradford Hotel. The guys are like a big, unruly family, but the love between them runs strong as steel. They yell a lot and argue and laugh too loud and even throw things when somebody’s being annoying or incredibly hilarious.
There are no rules. No stern glances when you take a second helping of dessert. No lectures on manners…unless they’re coming from me.
Not that I do it a lot—just the basics. For example, I’ve got the guys holding their dinner knives in their right hands while cutting food; then they put the knives down and switch their forks to their right hands to eat. They groaned a lot when I first taught it to them. Stone thought I was joking the whole time, but now they’re doing it. Maybe they do it just for me, but it’s a good thing to know.
Nate adopted the oldest of the boys—Miles—and he sometimes brings him around when things are quiet on the farm. He seemed happy to have Miles learn this stuff.
My parents still keep my stuff in my bedroom, and I visit them for Sunday dinner now and then, but I’m living at the Bradford full time while I go to the local college. The guys are fascinated by my criminal justice books—I sometimes catch them reading them—and you can tell they don’t know what to think about my plans to be a lawyer, but Stone is one hundred percent with me.
He still leads that group with the wild strength and passion that I love him for. I know that he comes off like he doesn’t need anybody in the world, but I also know a different part of him. I get a part of him that nobody else gets—the strong, passionate man who’s also tender, curious. Vulnerable, sometimes.
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br /> I took over one of the rooms for my study space and painted it yellow and decorated it with pictures and posters and a bookshelf full of my favorite novels.
Sometimes if I’m in there too long or late, Stone comes pounding at the door, blazing with raw heat, kissing me like a madman, shoving me up against the wall like we haven’t seen each other for a year.
The Toyota waits for a minute and a half before following.
“Are you sure?” He’s baiting me. “I can take over if you can’t lose him.”
Working with the authorities had one very nice bonus. Those arrest warrants for Stone? They’re gone. Which means he’s a free man. That doesn’t mean he’s off the hook for anything illegal he does now. That’s why Detective Rivera can’t let it go. He’s a good cop, down to the bone. He worked with Stone and his crew to free the boys, but he can’t leave us alone either.
And he’s desperate to figure out where their headquarters are.
It would put a wrinkle in the crew’s activities if they had to hide their comings and goings from Detective Rivera. The secrecy of the Bradford Hotel is a real advantage, but mostly the men just like it.
And maybe the women, too. Abby and I don’t really love the cops sniffing around, even if we like law and order. The men are a bad influence on us, maybe. But we’re a good influence on them. We complement each other. We help each other. …
“Give me ten minutes,” I say, pulling to a stop at a red light.
And most of all, we challenge each other.
Stone reclines in the passenger seat, watching the rearview mirror. He’s in a dusky green shirt that matches his eyes.
He gives me a quick grin. I can’t believe he’s mine, sometimes. I want to kiss him, to feel his hands on me, to feel his heat on me, but not yet.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 109
