by Lisa Henry
“Okay!” Matt called. “We’ll be out soon!”
Hayden stooped to pick up his shirt. “Remember that time I was going to make a good impression on your parents?”
It was a joke, but Matt suspected there was truth behind it. Hayden had blown him in a public toilet in City Lane. He wasn’t shy about sex—he was the sort of guy who would happily talk about his sex life in a room full of nuns—but Matt’s parents? Matt’s parents clearly made him nervous.
“They don’t mind,” he said. “They’ll probably give us shit about it, but they’re not going to think any less of you or anything.”
“I’ve never met anyone’s parents before,” Hayden said, his voice soft. “I never had parents. It’s…” He pulled his t-shirt on, turning away from Matt’s gaze. “It’s stupid. I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”
“You’re not being stupid.” Matt climbed off the bed and caught Hayden by the wrist, tugging him close. Hayden’s face was flushed. “Give them a chance. If you can handle Grandad, you can handle my parents.”
Hayden’s mouth quirked. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Matt said. “Now let’s get out there before the pizzas get cold.”
“Yeah. Because that’s the issue here.”
But Hayden let Matt lead him toward the door anyway.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Eight weeks later
The sun beat down on the back of Hayden’s neck, and his boots slipped in the dry sand. He half-skidded down the shallow dune, kicking up a shower of sand. Kate, sliding down after him, swore under her breath, and Hayden held out a hand to steady her.
“Thank you, my love,” she said, slinging her bag more securely over her shoulder.
“You’re welcome, dear.”
A few hundred metres down the beach, a huddle of teenagers was standing over a prone figure. As they got closer, Hayden was glad to see that at least someone had got the kid into the recovery position, although that seemed to be all they’d done. The towel the boy was lying on was covered in vomit and sand. The boy’s eyes were half-open, but not focussed on anything. Each time he breathed out there was a wet sound like air escaping a punctured pool toy, and a bubble appeared in his left nostril. Hayden could smell the alcohol even over the vomit.
He tugged his gloves on, and then leaned down to touch the kid’s shoulder.
The kid flailed, fists swinging, and Hayden stepped back.
Okay, so that’s why none of his friends were helping him. The kid was clearly maggotted, but still had plenty of fight in him.
“How much has he had to drink?” Hayden asked, eyeing the empty UDL cans in the sand, and the cluster of eskies a few metres further up the beach.
“Maybe about six?” one of the girls hazarded. “Or seven?”
“Has he had anything apart from alcohol?”
They all mumbled and shook their heads.
Hayden didn’t know whether to believe that or not.
It was schoolies week. Well, it was schoolies week down at Airlie Beach and at Surfers Paradise, and there were celebrations over on Magnetic Island that Hayden had specifically not volunteered for. Screw the overtime. Sometimes he didn’t want to spend his time up to his knees in vomit and hysterical teens. So of course he and Kate had managed to find the only isolated group of drunken schoolies who hadn’t had the money to leave Townsville for the week. And it wasn’t even nightfall yet—it wasn’t even 3 p.m. yet. These kids must have started early.
Hayden gave them his patented rundown: “If he took any drugs, tell me now. Some drugs interact badly with others, and it’s important that the doctors at the hospital know exactly what they’re dealing with. We don’t report it to the police, okay?”
“He didn’t,” the girl said. “He’s just had a lot to drink.”
Hayden hoped he could believe her. “What’s his name?”
The wind whipped the girl’s hair around her face. “Justin.”
Hayden leaned down, careful to stay out of the range of the kid’s fists. “Justin? Justin, can you hear me?”
No answer.
Hayden touched his shoulder again, and Justin came up swinging.
Hayden and Kate retreated a few metres down the beach.
“Aren’t you going to do anything?” the girl exclaimed.
Kate crossed her arms over her chest. “Not while he’s carrying on like a pork chop.”
Justin was breathing and in the recovery position. He was in no immediate danger.
A bead of sweat slid down the back of Hayden’s collar. His gloves were making his hands hot and clammy as well. He’d left his cap in the ambulance. His bottle of water too.
The little waves rolled onto the wet sand, the water rushing almost all the way up to Hayden’s boots before sliding back into the ocean again. When the water retreated, bubbles appeared in the sand, bulging out of the holes dug by tiny crabs and then popping in the air.
It wasn’t more than a few minutes until Hayden saw the teenagers all straightening up, their expressions registering their horror. He turned his head in time to see two coppers cresting the dunes and heading down towards this sad excuse for a graduation party.
“Look out,” he said to Kate, a smile spreading over his face. “It’s Constable Dickhead.”
Kate snorted.
“Why are the coppers here?” one of the boys asked, panic pitching his voice higher.
The kids frantically scrambled to throw the UDL cans—both the open ones and the empties—back in the eskies. As though they really thought Matt or Sean wouldn’t check.
“The police would have been notified because me and my partner aren’t paid enough to be punching bags,” Kate said. “You can blame your mate Justin here, when he’s sober. If he hadn’t been acting like a peanut when we arrived, we would have called the coppers off.”
When Matt and Sean reached them, Sean took the lead and Matt came and stood with Hayden and Kate. Hayden elbowed him.
“Look at newbie. Taking names and laying down the law. They grow up so fast.”
“Twenty minutes ago he set the car alarm off when he was trying to unlock it. We were parked on The Strand at the time.” Matt looked like he was trying to keep a straight face, but his mouth quirked. “We got laughed at by a bunch of old ladies doing tai chi.”
Over at the eskies, Sean was opening every can of UDL and tipping the contents out onto the sand. The teenagers were shifting from foot to foot, clearly upset but unwilling to complain about it given that they’d been drinking in a public place, and not one of them was over eighteen. By the time Sean took their details and started writing out their tickets, they were wearing distraught expressions like he’d killed their puppy in front of them.
Hayden grinned, and rolled his shoulders. “Wanna help us out with our patient? He’s a fighter.”
Justin tried, but he wasn’t much of a fighter when he was lying on his stomach with his hands cuffed behind his back. Matt and Sean hauled him to his feet, and dragged him up the beach towards the parking bays on the other side of the dunes. Almost all the fight had gone out of him by the time they got him situated in the ambulance, lying on his side, strapped securely down to the stretcher.
“I’m gonna ride in the ambulance,” Matt said, tossing Sean the keys to the police car, “and make sure he doesn’t cause any shit on the way to the hospital.”
Sean nodded.
Hayden sat down beside Matt in the back of the ambulance, and Kate slammed the doors shut on them.
“Well, this is romantic,” Hayden said as the engine rumbled into life.
Matt ducked his head and smiled.
And then Justin groaned, jerked, and vomited all over the floor of the ambulance.
They spent the rest of the trip with their shirts pulled up over their mouths to try to escape the stench.
It was past 8 p.m. when Hayden parked in the quiet street in West End. The lights were on in the house, and even before he pushed the squeaky old gate ope
n he could smell dinner cooking. His stomach growled.
Charlie met him at the front door, tail swinging in a lazy arc.
“Hey, Charlie,” Hayden said, stopping to give him a welcoming pat before heading down the hallway. He stopped in the living room first, to where Joe was dozing in front of the TV in his recliner.
Joe had been home for six weeks now. He was a little slower, a little frailer, but his speech was back. Just yesterday he’d torn strips off Matt for going to get a personal loan to cover the costs of the bathroom renovation. They’d installed rails for the shower and the toilet to make it easier for Joe to use them unassisted, but the shower was small—the old bath took up way too much space in the poky old bathroom—and Matt wanted to remodel and get rid of the bath entirely and replace it with a shower that was big enough to fit one of those proper fold-down seats instead of the portable one Joe was using at the moment. Joe had insisted on paying for the renovations himself, going so far as to threaten to call Matt’s mum if he kept arguing.
Hayden picked up Joe’s half-finished cold mug of tea, and carried it into the kitchen.
Matt was frying sausages on the stovetop, and the oven was on. Hayden opened the door to inspect the vegetables roasting in the pan.
“Smells good,” he said.
Matt stepped away from the stovetop and kissed him. “How was the rest of your shift?”
“Not bad. Although I’ve spent most of it wondering if I still stink of vomit or not. You?”
“Same. I hosed my boots off at the station and I’ve cleaned them twice since I got home.”
“Living the dream,” Hayden quipped, and walked down the shallow back stairs to the open laundry. There was enough moonlight that he didn’t bother with turning the light on. He unzipped his backpack and bundled his clothes into the washing machine.
Living with Matt was good. It was easier than Hayden had thought. Of all the stuff he’d been working through lately, this was the easiest. He saw Eden once a fortnight, paid for out of his own pocket because he still didn’t want to put in a compo claim. That wasn’t a route he wanted to take, and he got most of the cost back through his insurance anyway. They’d been talking lately about Hayden’s mother, and whether or not he wanted to find out what had happened to her.
He didn’t.
Maybe.
He was curious, but what if he made enquiries and discovered she was still alive somewhere? What if he then felt a pull to contact her? There was always all this shit on daytime TV about closure, and about forgiveness, but fuck that. She’d never tried to get him back when he’d been in care. Hayden preferred to think it was because she was dead. He’d wanted a family who loved him, but that wasn’t the hand he’d been dealt. Making contact with her now wouldn’t change that.
Sometimes it was better to close that fucking door.
He had Matt, and Joe, and Kate and Jimmy. They were his family.
Hayden started the washing machine and went back inside the kitchen where Matt was turning the sausages in the pan. Hayden stood behind him, and put his arms around his waist. “You didn’t have to wait for me to eat.”
“I don’t mind.” Matt turned his head for a quick kiss. “And Grandad’s already eaten.”
Strange, how such a tiny gesture could fill Hayden with warmth. Strange too, that all the modest dreams he’d had as a kid, before his edges sharpened, had been about moments like these. He’d just wanted a home, and a family. Such small-drawn dreams, but they’d seemed as far out of reach as the moon and the stars.
Hayden didn’t miss living with Monique. He didn’t miss the views of the park and Ross Creek from eight floors up. He liked this little old house with its creaky floorboards and the windows that stuck and the possums that crashed over the tin roof at night. He liked the dog and the chickens and the green tree frog that perched on the edge of the laundry tub. He especially liked coming home to a house that wasn’t empty. If Matt was working, Joe was here. It felt good to have people in his life. It felt good to be a part of other people’s lives.
He and Matt ate at the kitchen table, with Charlie sitting hopefully by.
They talked about work, about Sean and Kate, and about the trip they were planning to Mission Beach next weekend.
“Mum’s coming down on Friday night,” Matt said. “So we can leave early on Saturday.”
A weekend off together was like winning the lottery. And spending that weekend together at Mission Beach…
“We’re finally gonna have that beach sex, right?” Hayden teased.
Matt cocked an eyebrow. “If you think you can handle it.”
“Oh, I can handle it.” Hayden picked up his sausage and licked the end. “I can handle anything you’ve got, constable.”
Matt eyed him narrowly. “You’re a bloody menace.”
“You love it,” Hayden shot back.
Matt smiled slowly, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”
And this was his future. Eating meals here with Matt. Helping Joe out. Slowly renovating this old, modest house. Weekends away whenever they could snatch them, and promises of sex on the beach.
Being in a relationship with the man he loved.
“You know what we should do?” he asked.
“What?”
“We should go and buy some ice cream, and then sit out in the back yard on a blanket and eat it while we watch the stars.”
For a moment Matt didn’t move. And then he stood up, the legs of his chair scraping on the floorboards, and produced his car keys from his pocket. “You stay here and finish eating. I’ll go get the ice cream. What flavour do you want?”
Hayden raised his eyebrows. “What sort of question is that?”
“Chocolate.”
“Chocolate,” Hayden confirmed.
Matt leaned over the table and kissed him. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be here,” Hayden said.
Matt threw him a smile and headed for the front of the house. Charlie trudged after him, claws clicking. The front door creaked open, and then shut, and a moment later, Matt’s car started. Charlie returned to the kitchen, turned in a circle, and sank down by Hayden’s feet with a sigh.
In the living room, Joe began to snore.
“I’ll be here,” Hayden repeated with a smile.
ALSO BY
LISA HENRY
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Sweetwater
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Tribute
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Fall on Your Knees, with J.A. Rock
Dark Space (Dark Space #1)
Darker Space (Dark Space #2)
Playing the Fool series, with J.A. Rock
The Two Gentlemen of Altona
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With Heidi Belleau
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With J.A. Rock
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Brandon Mills versus the V-Card (Prescott College #2)
The Good Boy (The Boy #1)
The Naughty Boy (The Boy #1.5)
The Boy Who Belonged (The Boy #2)
Writing as Cari Waites
Stealing Innocents
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
She attended university at sixteen, not because she w
as a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied history and English, neither of them very thoroughly.
She shares her house with too many cats, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.
You can email her at [email protected]
Or check out her website at lisahenryonline.com
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