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I wanted to fit in here. I wanted to be good and pure and never think about a woman in the way I thought about Lyric. No good came from thoughts as dark and disturbed as mine. My parents had told me that. The therapists had told me that. So had the priests. Over and over again. The shame I’d felt confessing the things I’d done with Annie.
There was a reason I’d blocked out my needs for so long. The urges. The desires.
I was older. No longer a teenager with no idea what he was doing and barely through puberty. I should have been able to control the needs I had. Yet every time I looked at Lyric, I wanted them all the more.
My phone rang, rattling around on my bedside table. I rocked back onto my heels and pushed up onto bare feet, padding across the room in only an old pair of jeans, ripped and stained with the evidence of various artworks I’d created over the years. “Hello?”
“Zepherin. Liam. Sorry to disturb.”
My friend from the homeless shelter we both volunteered at was a surprise call. We were friendly during our shifts, chatting about my life with the church, and his life with multiple partners and a couple of kids, all of them living in one house. We were as different as night and day, and yet we got along like we had everything in common. But we didn’t hang out. As far as I could remember, I’d never given him my number. But it would have been easy enough for him to get from the staff records.
“Is something wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Good. But I’m at the shelter tonight…a woman came in asking for you. Said her name was Tammie? Had a couple of small boys with her.”
“I remember her.” I gripped the phone tighter.
“Anyway, she got quite distressed when we said you weren’t here—”
“Did she need another inhaler for her little boy? Was he coughing a lot?”
“Yeah, he was. He didn’t look very well. I offered to drive her to Emergency Care, but she said she doesn’t have insurance.”
“Is she still there?”
“We have no extra beds tonight. I found her some food, but it’s curfew soon, and I’m going to have to turn them out once it hits ten.”
I knew the rules. They were there to keep people safe. The center could only take a certain amount of people each night, and each night it was first in, first served. If Tammie and her boys were too late, they couldn’t be allowed to stay. I didn’t even know if they needed a place, but I was sure she did need a new inhaler for her boy. The one I’d given them was half used. If he’d burned through that in the week or so since I’d seen them last, he must be really struggling.
I yanked on a T-shirt and shoved my feet into a pair of Converse. “Don’t let them leave, Liam. Not ’til I get there, okay?”
There was a late-night pharmacy attached to Saint View Hospital. I could get him another inhaler there and be over at the shelter in fifteen minutes.
“I’ll do what I can.”
Despite Liam’s assurances, I was sure I’d be too late to catch them. It was five past ten, and Liam should have by all rights cleared the center of anyone who hadn’t been assigned a bed. But when I barged my way in through the security doors, new inhaler still nestled in its packaging clutched in my hand, I found him sitting with the family in the office.
Tammie patted her son’s back as he coughed, each one shuddering through his skinny body.
I thrust the package in her direction. “Here.”
She took it without a word, but her eyes held all the thank-yous I didn’t need.
The boy sucked on the inhaler, his relief near instant.
“He needs to be in the hospital,” I said quietly.
Tammie only nodded.
“Can I take you? They can send me the bill.”
She raised big eyes in my direction. “You can’t pay all his bills, Zepherin. He needs ongoing care. I think we both know that.”
I’d vowed to live in poverty, so I didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t really need it, since the church paid for my accommodations, my car, and food. Anything else was considered a luxury I probably didn’t need, and apart from sculpting supplies, my wage generally sat untouched in my bank account. I would give that up to them in a heartbeat, but Tammie was right. It probably wouldn’t be enough. “He needs to go anyway. We’ll have to work out what to do about paying the bills later.”
She nodded wearily, tucking her toddler into the flap of her jacket. “I know. Let’s go. At least it will be somewhere warm to sleep tonight.”
My heart sank. “You’ve been sleeping on the streets?”
