Bad Habit Page 5

  “Or a ghost leg,” Justin put in.

  Liam had to admit a ghost leg was a lot more interesting than confused axons in his peripheral nervous system. “Or it’s a ghost leg,” he agreed. Though what haunted him from the accident wasn’t twenty pounds of bone and muscle. It was Ross. On fire.

  “Dork.” Kevin rolled his eyes at his brother.

  Though they left Liam out of it, Kevin and Justin started a foot-kicking battle under the table.

  “I hope today was less stressful for you.” Greg took the platter of chicken Liam passed him.

  “It was, thanks.”

  Four years ago, Mom and Greg’s wedding had felt like most other Mom-triggered random events in Liam’s life. He’d been on active duty, had seventy-two-hour leave for the service. But unlike most things involving his mother, this marriage—and her sobriety—had stuck. Having a stepfather still felt strange.

  “No blasts from the past today?” Deon said, and if Liam’s leg wasn’t killing him, he’d have kicked Deon. Hard.

  Mom was quick to jump on that. “What kind of blast are we talking about?”

  Liam swallowed some dry chicken. “He means Scott.” No point in trying to deny it. Deon was obviously going to drag it out. “And no, he didn’t come back today,” Liam added for Deon’s benefit.

  “Scott?” Mom repeated. “Scott McDermott?”

  Kevin and Justin had no idea who Scott was, but even they could sense the tension and abandoned their contest over who could flick a bread crumb the farthest in case this was more entertaining.

  This had never been Liam’s life: cozy family dinners on Sundays. He’d never asked for it. All he’d ever wanted was for his mom to get help and stay clean. But I have so much to make up for, baby.

  “How is he?” His mom’s voice was as neutral as she could manage.

  She and Scott had never had a high opinion of each other. Mom had actually used the words juvenile delinquent more than once. Scott couldn’t see past his own mommy issues. Whenever they’d been in the same room, Liam had felt like a meaty bone between two hungry dogs.

  How was Scott?

  He’d been Scott. Snarled like Scott. Kissed like Scott. The whole dizzy pull of him had taken less than thirty seconds to turn Liam inside out again. Which was exactly the reason why they couldn’t ever work. At least Liam had learned his lesson now. Knew he couldn’t save everyone. And if he forgot why for even a second, he just needed to look at where his right leg used to be.

  To his mom he said, “He’s the same. Still piss”—he glanced at his stepbrothers—“angry.”

  “Of course he is. He will be until he accepts that it’s making his life unmanageable.”

  Liam recognized the phrasing from one of the twelve steps and bit the side of his tongue. He was glad to have his mom back, but he wished everything wasn’t always about her steps.

  “Can I be excused?” Kevin asked.

  “Do you want to be excused from dessert?” Greg glanced at the spinach hiding under a thigh bone.

  “No.” Kevin slumped back in his chair.

  “How was practice?” Liam said to stave off any whining.

  “Wet.” Kevin shoved his plate a few inches.

  Justin appreciated the change in subject, though. “If you got a special foot attachment, I bet you could do really far kicks, like, and go to the NFL.”

  “I don’t know if it would work like that.”

  “I saw some guy online running on these spring blades. Why couldn’t you get something like that for kicking?”

  Liam opened his mouth, but he didn’t have an answer. He almost wished he was still listening to his mom on what was wrong with Scott.

  Deon jumped to Liam’s rescue with an explanation about joints, pounds of pressure, and force, which would probably bore Justin off the topic.

  God, Liam’s head—his face—hurt. He almost pinched his nose, then realized what a stupid idea that would be.

  “You can be excused and still get dessert.” Greg’s voice was low under the onslaught of questions from Justin.

  Liam managed a smile. “I can help clean up.”

  “Kevin is perfectly capable of loading a dishwasher.” That earned Greg an eye roll from his son. “But if you feel up to it, I need a hand in the garage.”

  When Deon started clearing the table, Liam followed Greg into the attached garage. Other than Greg’s seven-year-old red Ford Fusion, Liam couldn’t see anything Greg might need a hand with. Liam could change the oil and air filter, but he wasn’t Scott, who could see through an engine to know when one spark plug was dirty. Liam imagined Scott there with them now. At least your mom had enough sense not to marry some asshole who drives Chevys.

  Greg went around to the back and lifted the trunk. “I put these in here for traction in the winter and keep forgetting to take them out.” Greg laughed. “I know it’s August, but I might as well get them out now. Save on gas.”

  Liam looked in at two bags of cat litter. Really? This was what Greg needed help with? With a shrug, Liam bent to grab the closest bag, but Greg put a hand on Liam’s arm.

  “You know I played basketball in college.”

  Liam shot Greg a confused look. Not that the fact was hard to believe, considering he was well over six feet tall, but it seemed like a strange time to bring it up.

  “Caught a lot of elbows to the face. Some accidental, some not. That”—Greg pointed to Liam’s nose—“is from a not-accidental punch.”

  Liam brought his fingertips up to his forehead as if that could hide the evidence.

  “You can tell me to mind my own business, but I noticed you slept here last night.”

  Greg was keeping track of his sex life now? Liam knew he should jump in with a complaint or an explanation, but he had no idea what Greg was getting at.

  “And your mom drove you to work this morning.”

  Oh. Then the rest of the dots connected. Poor Deon. Liam remembered Kishori questioning their patient while his Top hovered. Had everyone Liam knew been dragged to some kind of sensitivity training last week?

  “Deon didn’t hit me.” Liam had no idea how anyone could think Deon would hurt another person. He even swerved to avoid hitting an already dead squirrel. “He wouldn’t. Ever.” Liam’s anxiety ratcheted up. Deon was stuck in there doing dishes with Mom. “My mother doesn’t think that?”

  “No. I didn’t say anything to her. I don’t know anything about how two men, ah, who are together, might handle a domestic disagreement, but—”

  “I swear, sir.” Liam pointed to his nose. “This happened in the confusion when I was trying to get to a patient.”

  The sound Greg made suggested he needed more convincing.

  Liam used a scrap of truth to bolster the lie. “There was a crowd. If someone did take a deliberate swing at me, I didn’t see who it was.” Fractionally true. He hadn’t known for sure who had hit him until after. Until he was hunched over in shock and pain, knowing he wasn’t imagining things, that the guy who looked like Scott actually was Scott.

  After a long stare, Greg gave Liam a nod. They both hoisted a bag of litter onto a shoulder.

  “I’m driving the boys back to their mother’s. Want to come along for the ride?” Greg asked as they lowered their bags onto a shelf.

  Did Greg have plans for more one-on-one questions, or was he offering Liam an escape from Deon? Not that Liam needed one. Or wanted one. Deon was steady and supportive and definitely nothing like Scott. Not that there was a reason to compare them.

  Liam shook his head and winced at the extra stab of pain.

  Greg frowned. “I hope that’s not going to ruin things for your big debut.”

  Liam hadn’t even considered what effect his swollen nose might have on his voice. Backward Gaze might only be the house band for Schim’s Tavern, but they wouldn’t want their new lead singer making honking noises through Reeve’s lyrics.

  In rehab, one of the shrinks had made Liam sit down and make a list. Not bucket list
stuff, not exactly, but stuff he’d never done and had always wanted to. Things to try, once he finished PT. Liam had sweated it until someone walked by humming some old Johnny Cash song. With a jolt, he’d slipped back to Ross guiding Liam’s fingers into place on guitar strings, thwacking his knuckles when he screwed up a chord. In a flash, he’d scribbled Join a rock band, though the likelihood of it had ranked up there with spontaneously regrowing a leg like he was part starfish. At least until Deon found the list and held him to it.

  Two auditions later, Liam was surprised to get a call back from Reeve and Backward Gaze. From the first practice, everything about singing had felt so perfect and so wrongly self-indulgent that Liam would have kept the opportunity a secret. Except he still needed a goddamned ride everywhere.

  “They’re—we’re kind of grunge, so the look should be fine,” he told Greg with a half smile. “But don’t tell them I said that.”

  A shared secret would make Greg forget his questions faster.

  Greg arched his brows as Liam leaned in to say, “According to the industry, grunge is dead. Totally last century.”

  Since Greg had probably spent his twenties banging his head to Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, he laughed, exactly like Liam had meant him to.

  Needing to lie down with an ice pack was the reason Liam gave Deon for why he wasn’t coming over tonight. Though Deon didn’t argue, the length and intensity of his stare had a lot in common with the one Greg had given Liam. Next up was getting Mom to leave him alone, but finally he shucked off her offers of help with his leg and his ice pack and was alone in his room.

  Liam opened his phone to the probably illegal, certainly unethical picture he’d snapped of David Beauchamp’s treatment form. He enlarged it so the phone number scrawled at the top was legible. After shutting the door, he moved to the window and had shoved it up before remembering his days of sneaking out, even from the ground floor, were over. Assuming he and his droid leg could make it out and over the bush, he’d never get back in that way.

  Not that he really needed to sneak out. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. This was just about making sure Scott was okay, restoring the balance. He’d put Liam through two years at Towson; it was only fair Liam help him now. He remembered Scott brushing off the idea of selling his dream car with “Beats selling blow jobs.” Liam would do this and then he’d be able to let it go.

  He typed in the number and pressed Call. The drawled hello meant he had the right guy, but he said, “David Beauchamp?”

  “May I ask who’s callin’?”

  “This is Liam Walsh, the EMT who treated David at the fairgrounds yesterday.”

  “Ah. Hello, EMT Walsh. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m following up on your care. How are you feeling?”

  “Much better, thank you. I must say I’ve never heard of follow-up from a first responder. Is this some new insurance regulation?”

  “No, not at all. Just a routine check-in. Did you decide to seek follow-up care with a physician?” Liam scrambled for a way to steer the conversation to the cop who’d asked Liam if he was pressing charges. The cop had been one of the group to come to the first aid station with Beauchamp’s boyfriend. “You two are peas in a pod.” The cop knew Scott, would know where to find him.

  “I didn’t find it necessary. As I believe you were aware at the time, I have someone who enjoys keeping a close watch on me.”

  Most people—people with nothing to hide—were glad to answer even peculiar questions if they perceived the person asking had some kind of authority. Liam had relied on that and an encouraging smile to smooth his way more than once.

  Filling his voice with that smile, Liam said, “Now, one of the men who came in with you identified himself as law enforcement. I—”

  “EMT Walsh?”

  When Liam paused, David Beauchamp went on, “I consider myself somewhat gifted in the fine art of bullshit. Therefore, I have a finely calibrated sense of when someone else is engaged in shovelin’ it. What exactly did you call me for?”

  After a long breath, Liam gave him the truth. “I have to find somebody.”

  Chapter Six

  SCOTT LET the outer door of his apartment building bang shut behind him.

  Fuck this day. Fuck this week. Fuck my whole fucking life.

  He stomped up the stairs to find his down-the-hall neighbor Mrs. Freeman struggling with her groceries on the second landing of the four-story walk-up.

  “Hang on, Mrs. Freeman. Let me get some of those.”

  She paused and leaned on the banister before facing him. “Scott?” She squinted. Even though it was 11:00 a.m., the stairwell was dark with shadows since the light bulbs were out—again.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Scott picked up a few of the bags and gently pried the rest off Mrs. Freeman’s arm. She was eighty if she was a day, far too old to have to haul all this upstairs, let alone on the bus. “I would have driven you after work if you asked.”

  “You’re a sweet boy, but it was such a nice day.” Her wide-brimmed plastic straw hat bumped into his chin.

  It was hot as hell out, and the old lady was still bundled up in a sweater. He held himself to her achingly slow pace up to the next landing.

  She looked down at her wrist and then peered at him again. “What are you doing home in the middle of the day?”

  Scott gritted his teeth. He was the best goddamned mechanic Dressler had. The ratfucker should have stood by him. Scott was doing the customer a favor warning him that his dickhead teenaged son was grinding the hell out of the clutch on his Miata. Instead Dressler had fucking fired him.

  After a few seconds of silence, Mrs. Freeman gave him a sympathetic look. “Oh, hon. Not again?”

  So maybe it was the third time in two years his perfectly logical response to idiot customers fucking up perfectly fine engines had cost him a job. Fuck ’em all. Scott would open his own damned garage.

  “You come over later. I’ll make you that noodle casserole you like.”

  He didn’t exactly like it, but he’d praised the first one she’d made for him to thank him for driving her to the store. Now he was stuck with it. But given the fact that until he got his last check from Dressler, he had a grand total of sixty-seven dollars to keep him fed, gassed, and in cigarettes while he looked for another job, noodle casserole sounded perfect.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Freeman. Let me get the door for you too.”

  They reached the top landing.

  “Oh, sweet Lord Jesus, I’m sorry, hon.”

  Scott followed her gaze to the bright yellow note taped to his door. He dragged Mrs. Freeman’s groceries with him as he read.

  Three-day notice to terminate tenancy… rent outstanding in the amount of two-thousand eight hundred dollars.

  He leaned against the shittily plastered wall and let his head thunk back against it. Guess Galvez was going to get the Mustang after all.

  “C’mon in, hon,” Mrs. Freeman called from her open door. “No point in fretting on an empty stomach.”

  GALVEZ’S SHOP was a wet dream—minus the mouth on Scott’s dick. Three bays, one with a lift where his Mustang was sitting, and gleaming racks of parts and tools. Scott walked next to Galvez as he shone a flashlight up into the Mustang’s belly.

  Scott pointed out what was original and what he’d replaced. He and Jamie had overhauled the exhaust last fall and smoothed out the dings in the body from that motherfucking hailstorm.

  “Thirty-two, like I promised.” Galvez had coppery-brown skin and a distracting pair of bristling black eyebrows.

  Thirty grand would pay off his back rent and the rest of his debts, but it wouldn’t be a drop of what he’d need to open his own place.

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  Galvez’s brows joined up across his nose like a fuzzy caterpillar. “Her?”

  “The car.”

  “Ah. Brighter paint, new rims, then send it California and sell it to some studio guy for fifty.”

 
The fuck. Scott could do that himself. Screw the rent. For fifty he might actually be able to find a place to start his own garage.

  Scott put a hand up on the Mustang’s solid axle. She’d been the best thing about his life since Liam left him. She could take him farther than back rent.

  “I’ll think about it,” Scott told Galvez.

  The caterpillar looked like it was about to jump off Galvez’s face. “Last spot on the trailer. Deal might not be there later.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Scott always had.

  THREE DAYS later, Scott was hoping he had enough chances left to just catch a few hours of sleep. The lights in the parking lot almost blinded his tired eyes. Towson Campus Security had just swept this lot five minutes ago, so maybe he could sneak in and pass out for a while.

  He and the Mustang were running on fumes. He’d dropped his last twenty getting her to a quarter of a tank and himself enough cigarettes to stay sane. He’d have stolen one or the other, except the Mustang got noticed. He had the anticamera cover on his plate, but there just weren’t many dark blue ’68 Shelbys out there.

  He should have just used his cash to start out for somewhere else. He had nothing to keep him here. No apartment. No friends. Sure as fuck no family.

  And here he was crawling around Towson as if, what, Liam was going to come jogging up with that smile he only gave Scott? The one that made his heart kick and his insides defrost because for once in his life Scott mattered.

  That was gone. Liam wasn’t jogging anywhere these days, and he was saving his smiles for fucking Deon.

  Scott rolled down the windows to catch what breeze there was on a humid August night and crawled into the back seat. Not that he could really stretch out back there, but it beat getting the pattern on the leather bucket in front etched any deeper into his ass.