From seeing the first whippet of flames until landing on my side on the grass, it had only been around two minutes. I allowed ten seconds to lounge on the ground, time enough for the fire to leak into Peter’s bedroom and French kiss the shattered window. A flame licked out a few feet above my knees. I scurried away and leveraged myself to standing.
Grabbing Begone’s scruff, I pried her claws out of my chest, making pained hissing noises as I swerved to the back gate. Cat hanging in one hand, I fumbled with my arm, pulling my cell phone off the Velcro holder. I punched in 911, just as I kicked the gate open.
The way the townhomes were situated caught my eye. A row of connected families, held together by kindling. At seven a.m. all three were most likely occupied.
“911, what's your emergency?”
“Detective Austin Glass,” I rasped out.
“Are you injured, Detective?”
“Yes.” This time I was louder, pushing as much sound into my voice as possible, which resulted in a choked coughing fit. The problem was I was trying to make my way from the alley all the way around to the front with a burning pair of lungs. I also had something wet sliding down my legs, a chest bloodied from scratches, a jerking flea-ball in one hand and my cell in the other. “Fire. Detroit Street. 1400 block.”
I repeated the address, hanging up before the operator could ask questions. At townhouse-door-one, I began kicking with the shoe that wasn’t slick with blood. I couldn’t scream, but eventually someone came to the door.
“Get out. Fire.” It was all I managed to say before the world swam out of focus. I stumbled forward, caught in a pair of chubby arms—or breasts, it was hard to tell.
I heard yelling from all sides and inside the house. Begone slipped from my fingers. Didn’t see which way she went but I tried to get out words to the effect of “Hope you get run over by the fire truck. Fucking cat.” What actually came out of my mouth was, “Ho tk fkcat.”
“Oh, dude! You’re bleeding,” a heavily accented voice said. I blinked up into a blurry face with skin the color of toffee, only then realizing I had crumpled to the cement walkway. “We gotta move you, dude, ‘kay? Just don’t go all whacked.”
Fingers attached to my wrist and the waistband of my pants and pulled. I wasn’t moved so much as dragged/scooted over the grass. With a wedgie severe enough to permanently add two octaves to my vocal range, I waited, bled and moaned on the sidewalk with a slowly growing community of indistinct faces surrounding me.
The entire world was speaking in rapid Spanish, huddled in a circle around me as if preparing for a beat down. Someone pushed me to my side and jerked down my sweatpants. As Peter’s neighbors discussed my ass in a language I didn’t understand, someone put that goddamn cat against my stomach. It squirmed its way under my t-shirt to hide.
Why couldn’t you hide under the fire truck tires?
I heard sirens and banging, most likely from the fire department. The sea of people opened to allow two paramedics in, then reclosed behind the kneeling attendants. I couldn’t see where I was situated on the block, until firemen started to move people away. The skyline revealed itself. I looked past a grey haired EMT to see I was three houses from the inferno that engulfed Peter’s home.
As a mask was being slipped over my face, and my sweatshirt was being cut open, the cat attached itself to me once again. I groaned, hissed and mentally promised the EMT my babies as he pulled the thing away.
“Can you tell me your name?” He asked calmly, as if he hadn’t just removed a furry demon from my stomach like an Aliens re-enactment.
I breathed in a heavy dose of fresh oxygen. “Austin,” I replied, resisting the urge to add Darth Austin at hearing the sound of my muffled voice.
“Austin, I’m Jase. Are you the officer who called in the fire?”
“Yes. Bleeding in back.”
“Maureen’s got you.”
I processed another set of hands flitting down my back and over my ass. If this many people were going to be seeing that part of my anatomy, I was going to have to start using a Stairmaster.
Jase flashed a pen at my eyes and checked my pulse with two fingers. “Did you fall or hit your head?”
“No.”
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“No.”
“Any allergies?”
“No.” He continued asking me questions pertinent to medical history. I answered for a minute or two, but as the cognizance of what happened finally pushed through, I began to panic.
My phone was still clutched in my hand. I batted away Jase’s fingers in order to dial Peter’s cell. It rang twelve times before a voice came on to tell me that user was not answering. I hung up, dialed again. As the phone continued to just ring, I grabbed the EMT’s sleeve and twisted it in my fist. “Get a patrol car to my house. Now!” Big mistake yelling. Huge. It was nearly impossible to get the address out between the coughs that followed.
Jase’s face twisted in confusion, wrinkles becoming more obvious as he frowned.
“Fire was deliberate.” My voice was hoarse, but it wasn’t as difficult to breathe. Talking hurt, but wasn’t impossible. “The people staying at my house live in that tinderbox over there.” The slow slacking of his features gave me hope he understood what I was saying. He picked up his handheld radio and called in to emergency dispatch.
“I need to get to my house.” I tried to sit up and weaved as a wave of dizziness crashed into me.
The EMT flattened a hand against my shoulder, gently pushing me back down. “A patrol car will be there in a few minutes, officer. We need to get you to the hospital.”
“Dizzy,” I said.
Jase nodded. “Smoke inhalation. It’s always worse than what people think.”
I was too worried to contemplate going to the hospital. If the fire was meant for any of the boys, they were in danger. And my fears were being heightened by the fact that Peter wasn’t answering his fucking phone.
Maureen began dressing my wounds, giving me an idea of just how extensive they were by the size of the bandage. I didn’t stop them as they loaded me onto the gurney on my uninjured side. But they would have had to pry the phone from my cold dead hands.
My wounds weren’t serious enough to warrant a siren, so when Peter finally answered the phone, I heard him clearly.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I barked. Jase cleaned the wounds on my chest with antiseptic. I tried not to make any noise as it bit into each scratch.
“I was in the shower. Why do you sound like you’re in a tunnel?”
I was getting him a waterproof phone! “Are you at my house?”
“Course. Is something wrong?”
“Are you alone?”
“I’m not all that turned on by the Darth Vader voice.”
I tightened my mouth and pulled the oxygen mask off my face. “I don’t want to have phone sex, Peter.” Jase choked a laugh, unsuccessfully trying to cover the sound with his fist. “Joe’s house just burned down,” I said delicately.
The swallow I heard was about as much emotion as I expected from him. “Are you hurt?”
Was I hurt? His first question. Now I couldn’t breathe at all. If I wasn’t careful, Peter was going to steal my soul. “No. I’m fine. Cai’s pet is fine. I don’t think anything else survived. Is Darryl still there?”
“Everyone’s still here. Did you really save his cat?”
“Have actual tests proven that’s a cat?” The ambulance doors opened, and Jase tried to take my phone. I held up a finger which Jase ignored as he pulled my mask back on.
“What’s that noise?”
A flurry of hands and voices around me drowned him out a little. “Gotta go. Stay at home,” I said falteringly as the gurney jostled me.
The doorbell rang just as he asked, “Are you in the hospital?” I hoped to God it was the police I’d sent and not….
“Don’t let anyone but the cops in. I’ll be home soon.”
I hung up as the speaker sy
stem started to page someone.
Jase and Maureen rolled me into a half-sheeted cubicle in the emergency room. “Good luck, officer,” Maureen said.
“Yeah. Thanks, guys.” As they were leaving, I picked up my phone to call Luis and then remembered. “Hey, what about the cat?”
“FD will take it to the pound,” Jase said, walking backwards. “You can pick it up there.” He gave me a thumbs up and vanished out the automatic doors.
“Officer Glass, how are you feeling?” The nurse was a big woman. Amazonian-large with a thick middle and bright floral scrubs. I focused on her long fingers wrapping around the curtain and pulling it closed around us as she entered.
“Less woozy. Can I make a phone call in here?” I looked for the nearest exit.
“Let’s wait until the doctor has a look at your wounds and I’ve taken your vitals. Looks like you’re going to need some stitches.” She smiled kindly as she looked at the chart. When she started pulling on rubber gloves, I prayed that Peter liked scars.
Because I had a feeling I was about to get Frankenstein ass.
Chapter Sixteen
Hospital Admissions
Nurse Jackson’s posture could have been used to end an exclamatory sentence. Even as she gently drew away the bandaging from my backside wounds, her body was ramrod straight. Considering her size, the effect rendered me cowed.
I twisted to look at her over my shoulder. “How many stitches?”
Cleaning the excess dried blood off, she leaned closer to my ass, increasing my embarrassment level. “The doctor will say for sure, but between you and me, I’d say ten?”
That didn’t sound so bad. “In the biggest laceration,” she continued. “The other two will probably require less. Maybe none.” Balls of blood-soaked cotton fell from her hand into a nearby silver trashcan. She had big hands. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Man hands.
After taking my blood pressure, getting a patient history, examining my chest and applying an ointment to the inflamed scratches, she pulled a sheet over my hips and slid my chart into a nearby plastic holder before vanishing through the curtains. I lay there, bored, glaring at my blank cell phone. The resident finally arrived just as my eyelids drooped.
“Officer Glass, I’m Doctor Wicks.” A bright white smile beamed at me between beautifully shaped red lips and skin the color of polished mahogany. “Mind if I take a look?” He nodded to the sheet. I was alert now. Every part of me was alert now. This was not a good day to start openly admiring men.
“Unless you can faith heal from there?”
He laughed magnificently, rich and baritone with enough treble to raise the fine hairs along my ear. When he pulled the sheet off my ass, I focused on the pain, hoping to quash my erection. “When was your most recent tetanus shot?”
“A few months ago.” There was no way I would turn to look at this guy while he examined my ass. When his fingers gently moved over my skin, I prayed he’d have no reason to look at the front of me right then.
Half-naked, lying on my side, with only a thin sheet covering the front, an erection would most definitely be noticed. I tried to imagine Nurse Jackson attempting a penile examination with a metal rod. Unfortunately, her size and manly hands had the opposite effect. If my growing cock was the icing on a shitty day’s cake, Peter’s arrival in the face of my unwelcome woody, was the cherry on a turd sundae.
“You’re hurt,” Peter said redundantly, by way of a greeting. Naturally, he had zero expression to clue me in to his thoughts on the matter.
“It’s a few scratches.”
“From the cat?”
“When I see tests to prove it’s feline, I’ll believe it. For now, it’s just a demon-thing. Hey, didn’t I tell you to stay at home?”
Wicks rolled his traveling stool to where I could see him, interrupting Peter’s response. “I’m going to numb the area with an injection, officer,” he informed me. “You’ll feel a small pinch. Then we’ll get these stitches in, and your friend can take you home.”
“Stitches?” Peter went around me to look. Everyone was going to be staring at my ass today. I was ordering that Stairmaster the moment I left the emergency room. “The cat didn’t do that,” Peter stated.
“Thank you, Captain Obv— ow!,” I growled, twisting to glare at the smiling doctor who was feeding a syringe into my butt cheek. My glare switched to Peter in the wake of the doctor’s obliviousness. “Why are you here?”
He stood there, gripping my keys tightly in his palm, the keychain medallion dangling between his long fingers. It was his only sign of emotion. Anger? Fear? Or annoyance? “Darryl and I don’t have a place to live.”
I closed my lids for a second, then focused in front of me, my deep inhale trying to mask my hurt. Peter moved slowly around to my front, pausing at my knees. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t breathe through my humiliation. To say that Peter’s arriving with an agenda was painful was an understatement. “Stay at a fucking hotel for all I care.”
“Okay,” he answered, but made no move to leave.
“Get out of here, and leave my keys.”
“You’ll need a ride home.”
“Hoping I’ll change my mind about you staying with me on the ride home?” I sneered.
“No.”
The tug of the needle moving through my skin was all I felt as the doctor began sewing. He cleared his throat gently. I didn’t give a shit if Doctor Hotness was embarrassed by our conversation. I was angry.
“No?” I echoed. “That’s it?” I thought Peter came because he was worried about me. Maybe cared about me a smidgeon? Instead, I found out he needed something else from me. I was livid, frustrated and dangerously close to wanting to punch his face in just to see something, anything besides apathy.
“Cai said thank you for saving the cat.”
“Get out, Peter,” I replied tiredly. He could shatter my soul right now, it was so fragile sitting there in his palm.
“You need a ride home,” he repeated.
“Stop calling it ‘home’, like it’s your home. It’s my home. You were just visiting. Emphasis on were.”
“Okay. You need a ride to your home.”
“All done,” the doctor said quietly. No smile in his voice now. Peter and I had sucked the joy out of the room. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with some prescriptions and instructions on how to care for the wound.”
Neither Peter nor I said a word as Wicks left. I stared at the metal trashcan, Peter stared at me.
“Do you even have money for a hotel?” I ground out.
“I can get money.”
Another moment of pathetic tension enveloped the space between us. I wasn’t sure how much more of this my heart could take. It was already on the verge of collapse. One more soul-crushing event short of deadened. The thought of Peter turning tricks again, or ‘a gig’ would be too much to bear. “Just stay at the fucking house.”
“Home,” he said.
“Whatever.” I answered despairingly.
“I liked it when you called it home.”
My stomach released a swarm of fluttering.
I squinted up at him, trying to understand how he could pack so much into words without a single emotion showing on his face. Then the flood of understanding showered over me. “You could have asked me when I got home.”
A hint of a smile passed over his lips. He looked to the curtains, either in hope or worry that we’d be interrupted again. What was his smile indicative of? That he cared? Peter was robotic only when certain emotions threatened to overwhelm him.
“Come here,” I ordered, the same soft tone I used way back when I realized he hadn’t stolen my money. He didn’t immediately step forward, waiting a few seconds before his hips were parked in front of me. His eyes turned down to watch my thumb brush against the breadth of skin visible between the cargo shorts and t-shirt. “Are these my shorts?”
“My clothes were dirty.” There was no missing the quiver in his voice, even as he t
ried to muffle it by barely moving his lips.
“You’re such a little shit sometimes,” I said, tugging at his shirt until he crouched in front of me. I searched futilely for anything in his face to tell me what he was thinking. “How many hospitals did you call before finding me?”
A one shoulder shrug, then, “This one was closest to our house.”
“Is it so hard to admit you care?”
I’d never seen such a direct, expectant gaze from him. “You tell me. Is it?”
“Touché,” I replied, pushing still-damp hair off his brow. “You scare the hell out of me.”
“You have all the power, Austin.”
My laugh was rueful. “Is that what you believe? Do you think I have any power when it comes to you?”
Footsteps and a tentative, “Officer Glass?” from the other side of the curtain made Peter straighten and move back. The fist in which he clenched my keys was covering the spot my thumb had traced. I also noticed the ridge of defined flesh above the waistband of his boxers. My clothes, it seemed, were just a bit too large for him. I resolved to buy him a closetful in my size. And…were those my underwear?
“All clear, doctor,” I called out.
With Peter in the room, I stopped taking an interest in how attractive Doctor Wicks was, or what he was saying.
“Let me just get you on your way with the prescriptions. A nurse will be by with some scrubs you can wear home.”
My gaze was constantly floating to Peter’s bare legs and stomach. I succeeded in retaining less than half of the instructions for caring for my wound because of the distraction. Wicks left with his jovial smile and a small chuckle as Peter took the prescriptions and instruction sheet from my hand.
“Are you hard?” Peter eyed my crotch.
“No,” I lied.
“Because of the doctor?”
“I just said I wasn’t hard.”
“He’s a lot older than I am.”
I couldn’t help but smile at Peter’s insecurity. It was about time he had some for a change. “He also smiles a fuck-load more than you. But you’re the one I’m taking home.”
“We could try—”
Shattered Glass Page 24
