Bad Habit Read online

  He left his foot on the brake and pushed down the clutch to start the car and felt the rumble in his nuts. He didn’t see cars like Scott did, but even Liam could tell why people worshipped Mustang Fastbacks. And Scott was letting Liam test out his ability to drive in it.

  He shifted into Neutral and practiced putting pressure on the gas pedal.

  “Stop being a pussy and drive the car,” Scott snapped.

  Liam put it back into first, took a deep breath, and eased up on the clutch and pressed the gas. The car lurched forward, bucked, and stalled.

  “Goddamn it. Sorry. I don’t think this is going to work.”

  “So you stalled it. Big deal. Start it again.”

  “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but—”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  Liam blew frustration out of his nostrils and cranked the starter again.

  “Right. So whatever you did last time,” Scott said in a calmer voice, “don’t. Go lighter.”

  “Not what you used to say.”

  “Focus.”

  It took two more stalls, but finally Liam was lurching around the lot and even managed to get the car into second. For a few moments he forgot why they were doing this. Just him and Scott in a muscle car, darkness drifting by outside. Like one of the stories they’d tell each other at St. Bennie’s. What they’d do when they got out. Drive cross-country. See the sunset on the Pacific. The throaty engine vibrated under his ass, and he felt Scott watching him, felt the weight of his attention. But mostly it felt like freedom. Until he had to downshift again, let up on the gas too much, and stalled out.

  “Not bad,” Scott said.

  “I suck.” Liam turned to face him, grinning. “But I could so blow you right now.”

  “Yeah, well.” Scott nodded at the lightening sky. “Gonna get pretty public here in a bit. Time to get you home to Mommy.”

  Liam put a hand on Scott’s thigh and felt him flinch. “Thanks.”

  “No big.”

  But it really had been, even if he’d only done laps around a parking lot.

  “Before, that wasn’t just a rebound thing. I want—” Liam cut himself off. How could he ask for a second chance, ask Scott for anything, without explaining what had happened first? If Liam pushed, he wouldn’t be surprised if Scott was the one to pull a vanishing act this time. Feral. Damn. “I wanted to be with you.”

  Scott stared through the windshield, silent, muscles rigid under Liam’s hand. Finally he said, “For old times’ sake?”

  “No, not just for that. I meant it when I said I missed you.”

  Scott swallowed. The bob of his throat was all Liam could read in this light, no cues from his eyes or his lips. He let out quick breath, then slumped in the seat, hand going to the back of his neck. “I might have missed you a bit.”

  Liam bit his bottom lip to keep from smiling.

  LIAM CUT off a bite-sized piece of his waffle and stuffed it into his mouth. His mom and Greg were reviewing the transportation requirements for Kevin’s and Justin’s Saturday activities. He stabbed a fresh piece of bacon, figured his newly manners-obsessed mom wasn’t paying attention, and shoved the whole piece into his mouth. She still gave him a mom look.

  The only potential issue on Liam’s schedule was whether his nap would conflict with his Netflix binging. Reeve hadn’t even set up a rehearsal today.

  His phone buzzed against the dining table, violating the no-electronics-at-the-table rule. His stepbrothers gave him wide-eyed looks.

  “Liam.” His mom turned the two syllables of his name into a full sentence of disapproval.

  “Sorry, might be work.” Liam grabbed another forkful of waffle and pushed back from the table. “’Scuse me.”

  His mom sighed, but Liam was already limping away from the table toward his room. He shut the door and glanced down at his phone.

  U get called 2 work?

  His phone didn’t know the contact, but he did. His pulse rate escalated so fast he felt it in his ears.

  It’s Scott btw.

  Liam smiled and texted back. No work.

  Cool. I’m down at the Eastridge corner.

  Scott had accepted Liam’s number but hadn’t offered his own, and they hadn’t said much on the drive back from the parking lot. Liam had wondered if Scott would act like nothing had happened the next time Liam saw him at Schim’s.

  Give me ten.

  He glanced down at his cargo shorts. They covered his socket, but the rest of the prosthesis was on full carbon robotic display. He hated needing help with things, hated things he couldn’t do, but he wasn’t ashamed of his leg. It was just that when he wore shorts, people wanted to talk about how it had happened.

  But if he wanted Scott to act like it was no big deal, Liam needed to do it too.

  Liam opened his door to find his mom about to knock on it.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s fine. I, uh, still don’t have to work. I think I’m going to take a walk.”

  His mom’s nose wrinkled, like she smelled the lie. “I can drop you somewhere while Greg takes the boys to practice.”

  “No. I just need to keep up my exercises and it’s more fun outside.”

  Mom searched his eyes. “Have you tried talking to Deon? I know you said—”

  “No, Mom. Talking isn’t going to fix it. It’s over.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. He was good for you.” His mom brushed at his hair. “Give it a little time. You know, sometimes things aren’t as finished as you think they are.”

  Mom wasn’t talking about Scott—would never root for him and Scott—but he still hoped she was right. There was too much between him and Scott to ever be finished. Liam ducked his head away from her hand.

  His mom flicked his ear. “I know you’re an adult, but you’re still my little boy.”

  He’d wanted to hear those words from his mom for so many years, have a moment like this, but he wasn’t that wishing little boy anymore. But he didn’t know how to tell her that. He accepted her hug and hurried out of the house.

  The Mustang idled a little way down Eastridge, but as soon as Liam turned, it rolled toward him. His skin hummed, and it wasn’t all just because of the powerful engine.

  “Hey.”

  Scott nodded and tipped his head at the passenger’s seat.

  Liam leaned on the trunk as he swung himself around the car.

  “Leg okay?”

  “Yeah.” He’d hurried and the sweat was threatening to break through the vacuum seal. As he lifted his leg into the seat, Scott shot him a look, then stared out the windshield.

  As Scott headed south, it occurred to Liam that he had no idea why Scott had driven up to get him. Scott had texted and Liam had snuck out of the house to meet him. He didn’t know what exactly was happening between them, if they were friends or fuck buddies or what. All he knew was Scott asked and Liam went.

  As Scott gunned the car through a yellow light in Towson, Liam wondered if Scott was headed for Schim’s, for the storeroom and more up-against-the-wall action. Liam’s balls vibrated from more than just the rumble of eight cylinders of the Mustang’s engine. Too bad Scott didn’t have a garage, because Liam fucking Scott over the hood of his car would definitely lead to them coming their brains out. Liam could totally manage to fuck standing up if he had the car to lean on.

  He jerked out of his fantasy when Scott pulled the car over to a curb, a vaguely familiar curb opposite a gray stone church. They weren’t that far from the shitty one-bedroom apartment over the liquor store. The one whose rent Scott had worked all those crazy hours to pay so Liam could concentrate on his classes.

  Liam wiped his hands on his shorts, dick no longer stretching the crotch.

  Leaving—running away—had seemed like the only option back then. At twenty-one, with guilt and fear and anger tangling him up until he felt trapped, he’d just wanted to get far away from everything. Despite the shit that had gone down with the accident—Li
am’s stump twitched in his socket—he hoped he was a hell of a lot less stupid now.

  Scott turned off the engine, and silence filled up the space between them.

  “I’m sorry.” Liam meant it, not just as something to smooth things over.

  Scott pulled the key free, and the car rolled them back a few inches as he released the brake. “For what?”

  Liam took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have just taken off like that.”

  Scott made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Don’t. God—”

  Liam was going to make sure Scott heard him anyway. “I should have talked to you first.”

  Scott slumped in his seat. “About what? Your sudden hard-on for a uniform?”

  “I needed a way to be sure I didn’t just come right back.”

  “So you decided getting shot was a good idea? Things weren’t perfect, but was it that bad? Were we?”

  “I was scared.”

  “Christ, of what?” Scott finally looked at him.

  The sunlight slashing through the car lit up Scott’s eyes, making those beautiful wavy lines, and Liam read the shock and hurt in their wide-open vulnerability. He was only trying to make this better. To explain.

  “I found those pills you were taking.”

  Scott’s brows slanted in thought. “Right. Lucy Pulaski’s diet pills. Man, caffeine just wasn’t cutting it anymore.”

  Liam had felt the frantic, rabbit-quick flutter of Scott’s heart, seen his eyes sink to dark hollows.

  “And you know my mom—”

  “Fuck.” Scott launched himself out of the car, slammed the door, and stomped away.

  Liam followed without the slamming, but he was having too much phantom leg pain to do any stomping.

  When Scott stopped to light a cigarette, Liam caught up.

  Scott stepped away from him. “Most people might notice the conversation is over.”

  “Right, because it takes a big man to outrun a guy with one leg.”

  Scott took a long drag and shook his head. “Funny how you don’t want me to notice your leg until you do. Make up your fucking mind.”

  Oh, Liam did. Right then. In front of the Heaven’s Hope Baptist Church of Govans, whose gospel music had drifted into the windows of their apartment a half block away, Liam knew he wanted Scott back in his life. Even if that life meant sharing something like the storeroom at Schim’s. Liam would do whatever it took to make Scott forgive him for taking off like that. This time everything would work out. It had to. Because even when Scott was being frustratingly stubborn, even standing here getting stupid-white-boy looks from a woman who’d come out to stand on her stoop and stare at them, Liam felt more like himself than he had since he climbed into that jeep with Ross. Before his life blew up.

  “Okay.” Liam grinned. He couldn’t help it. He’d fucked up last time, but he’d make it right. Because there was no one in the world who would ever make him feel like this.

  “Fucking nutcase.” Scott blew a cloud of smoke into Liam’s face.

  “Scott—”

  “I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I just wanted to apologize.”

  “I heard you the first fifteen times. And we were fine until you got me confused with your—” Scott shifted his grip on the cigarette as he brought it to his mouth, the pause louder than any words could have been. “—mother.”

  “So why’d you bring me down here, then?”

  Scott stubbed out the cigarette on the church gate and tucked the remainder in his pack. “I thought since the neighborhood was familiar, you’d be more comfortable practicing here.”

  “Practicing what?”

  Scott tossed him the key.

  Liam’s mouth was as dry as if he’d licked the ash off the cigarette butt. He looked down the block at a pile of bikes in front of one house, at the girls playing four square with a glittering pink ball across the street. His leg—stump—burned and prickled. “I can’t.”

  SCOTT DRAGGED out his calm, convincing voice. It was rusty with disuse, and nowhere near as smooth and seductive as the voice Liam could use to make Scott think something was a good idea. Still, Scott managed to coax Liam behind the wheel.

  Liam turned the engine over, but after a few smooth feet, they jerked to a stop. He hadn’t stalled it, just slammed on the brakes.

  “Do you want to keep needing someone to give you a ride? Do you want to let those bastards tell you how to live your life?” Scott asked.

  “Who?”

  “The ratfuckers at the MVA who pulled your license.”

  “Oh.” Liam zipped his hands around the steering wheel, knuckles meeting top and bottom as he made endless semicircles.

  “Don’t rub off all the leather.”

  “Sorry.” He jerked his hands away and then settled them back at ten and two.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s like trying to drive wearing stilts. It was one thing in the parking lot, but—” He dropped his forehead onto the steering wheel. “Jesus, I could kill someone.”

  People might think Scott was the stubborn one, but once Liam made up his mind, it took a fucking backhoe to shift his ground. Or finding the pills Scott had made damned sure to keep out of sight to keep Liam from overreacting. All the fucking way to the Army.

  “I won’t let you.”

  “Yeah? You’re going to be in the car with me, everywhere I go for the rest of my life?”

  Back when owning the Mustang had been nothing but a fantasy, the best part of it had been where he and Liam just drove wherever they wanted, fucking in a different hotel bed every night, leaving all the bullshit from their past in the dust. But Scott knew better now. You couldn’t outrun whatever life crapped on you. You had to learn to live with it. He wondered if Liam would ever figure that out.

  Scott sighed. “That’s what practicing is for, so you won’t need me once you get the hang of it.”

  Liam squared his shoulders, eased off the brake, and then jammed it down again.

  “Is it the clutch?” Which was a stupid question, since it wasn’t like Scott could pull an automatic transmission out of his ass.

  “Yes and no. I mean, at least I can feel where I am on the clutch pedal.”

  “What if it was a left-foot drive? An automatic?”

  “Sure. Let’s try it. You got one in storage?”

  “Asshole.” The fact that it was close enough to Scott’s own thought didn’t mean he liked hearing it from Liam.

  “Now you see why I’m stuck needing rides everywhere. Or moving onto a bus line.”

  Scott hadn’t clocked it, but it had to be over a mile from Liam’s house to the closest bus stop, which couldn’t be good for Liam’s leg. He’d seen Liam’s face when he got moving in the parking lot. Giving him a little bit of freedom again had felt like a safer way of putting that expression back on his face. One that didn’t cost Scott another piece of skin.

  “I’ll drive you back.”

  After they finished the clown fire drill around the car, Liam slunk into the passenger seat under the shoulder belt. “Where are you headed?”

  “Gotta pick up a few things and then help Chai get ready to open the bar.”

  Liam sighed and slumped like a slit tire. “I would literally trade my leg to not have to sit in the damned house all day.”

  Scott snorted. “You could just ask instead of being such a fucking drama queen. What the hell would I do with a metal leg?”

  “Then at least you’d know I’d have to stick around.”

  Scott shot Liam a look. “If you had the idea I wanted to make you stay where you didn’t want to be, that didn’t come from me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  SCOTT SHOVED a hand through his hair and stared into the mirror in the truck-stop shower. He hadn’t buzzed the sides since he got evicted and he was out of gel. Fuck-the-world hairstyles were tough to maintain when you were living out of a bar’s storeroom. It was probably time he started thinking past whe
re he was sleeping tonight. He could see about paying out some of the tax bill before they came after what little he had dropped in the bank to cover the Mustang’s insurance payment. Then an apartment, and—

  He sneered at the stupid bastard in the mirror. No surprise where all this thinking about the future came from. One ball-draining session up against the wall didn’t mean shit. They weren’t stupid kids anymore, which meant they couldn’t just keep making decisions with their dicks. For all Liam’s apologies and I missed yous, he was dependent on someone to drive him around. If he got his freedom back and still wanted Scott around, then they’d see.

  He stuck his head into the hall. The coast was clear. Trying to track down the random car part Scott had invented a need for should keep Liam busy for a few more minutes, especially since they wouldn’t stock something for a ’68 here.

  Scott ducked back behind the door to make his phone call in private.

  “Donnigan,” Jamie snapped into the phone.

  “It’s Scott.”

  “Are you under arrest?”

  “No.”

  “You assault someone?”

  “No.”

  “Lose that job at the bar?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you want? I’m working.”

  Like Scott couldn’t have already gotten to the point if Jamie wasn’t snapping questions at him. “What do you know about installing a left-foot accelerator?”

  “I’m sorry, did someone change my name to Google?”

  “Yeah, I’ll just look that up on the laptop I don’t have or my text-and-talk-only phone.”

  “I suppose I don’t need to ask why this is suddenly important.”

  “No.”

  Jamie sighed over a sound of waves slapping against fiberglass and a deep distant horn. “You get any days off from the bar when you can come down?”

  “Mondays.”

  “No good. You got mornings, right?”

  A motor whined high and sharp in Scott’s ear.

  “Fuck, Geist. Warn me next time,” Jamie yelled away from the phone. “I gotta go.”

  “Somebody break the speed limit in his kayak?” Scott asked, but Jamie had already hung up.