AllFreeNovel
Share Us
North’s color was up, and his smile was bigger. “Say something to him again.”
“North,” Shaw said. “No.”
“What’d you say? Say it again.”
Cassidy shifted his weight. The belt creaked again, and the chorus of crickets swelled until the sound seemed to swallow everything else. His eyes cut away from North, and he seemed to be speaking past him when he said, “Here’s how this is going to go: you’re going to walk to that piece of shit you left parked on the side of the road, and you’re going to leave. You’re not ever going to come back to Auburn again. You’re not going to bother the Mosses. As far as I’m concerned, you’re going to cease to exist. Otherwise, I’m going to take you in. And we’re going to go the long way back to the station. It might be a while before the twenty-four hours start counting down, and that’s just how long I can hold you without charging you. Then, when the twenty-four hours are up, I’m going to slap you with trespassing, and we’ll put you in a cruiser to county. You know what, though? You might get lost again. It might be Monday next week before you even stand in front of a judge, much less post bail. How do you feel about that?” The light from the carriage house lanterns turned his white-blond hair gold. Shadows filled the laugh lines of his smile. “We could get to know each other real well in a week.”
North’s breathing was fast and ragged.
Wrapping a hand around North’s arm, Shaw said, “We’re leaving.”
Cassidy nodded, and Shaw towed North down the steps. The smell of bleach was thicker, cloying, an invisible cloud they had to fight their way through. North sounded like he was panting.
“I’ll tell you what, son: put a bag over his face, and he wouldn’t be half bad.”
North made a wild sound and tried to turn, but Shaw yanked so hard that North staggered, and that must have shocked him or woken him or something, because he shook his head and let Shaw lead him into the night.
8
They found a truck stop on the outskirts of Auburn—convenience store hot dogs, energy drinks, dingy bathrooms—and then they went back. They parked behind a strip mall constructed of cinderblock and peeling white paint. It was just up the road from the Epiphany of Light campus, so they sat in the dark, with the GTO off and the windows down, and waited. The summer evening lay over them, a pall of dense air and sweat and the stink of rotting grass clippings. North’s phone buzzed, but he kept his hands tight around the steering wheel, not trusting himself. The options were: stay completely still; break something; or say fuck it all and go for his emergency smokes. He was committed to option one, but option two and, particularly, option three were tempting.
“They were lying,” Shaw said.
North let himself say it in his head:No fucking shit. But he reminded himself it wasn’t Shaw’s fault, and he finally managed to offer a neutral-ish grunt.
To his surprise, Shaw laughed quietly. He shifted around in his seat, and then his head came to rest on North’s shoulder—a fresh patch of heat on a hot night, and the smell of his hair, his body. Then, for some reason, North felt all right again, and some of the ache in his jaw relaxed. He found Shaw’s face and cupped his cheek.
“I don’t care what he said about me,” Shaw said.
“Fantastic.”
“I don’t want you to beat him up for me.”
“Great.”
“North Cassidy McKinney.”
“What? I heard you.”
“And you’re still thinking vengeful thoughts.”
“I’m thinking which bones I’m going to break and in which order. The order part is the most fun.”
Shaw turned his head to kiss North’s hand. Then he settled back, and the sound of their breathing mingled.
Their new position behind the strip mall offered a degree of concealment while still allowing them a line of sight down the main road in front of the Epiphany of Light campus. It was too dark—and they were too far—to make out details, but it would be impossible to miss a pair of headlights.
“Why?” Shaw said.
“Because nobody—and I mean nobody—talks about you like that. I don’t care if he’s chief of police or—or Elon fucking Musk—”
“Elon Musk?”
“I don’t know,” North mumbled. “I choked.”
“I meant, why would Philip Welch go there?”
“Because the Mosses are tied up in this shit somehow. They’re involved.”
