Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

kept
    believing he was beautiful, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    21

    “AS LONG as he lives, he’ll be fine,” Tate said in the now. The
    memory was snugged securely in Talker’s chest. He looked at
    Brian’s savaged face, stitches over his cheekbones, his forehead,
    along the line of his swollen jaw. There was heavy plaster on his
    newly pinned and bolted arm and shoulder, and bandages around
    his torso, his stomach, and one of his thighs. In that moment, the
    movement of Brian’s chest was the most beautiful thing in the world,
    and the memory became true.
    Lyndie dropped a kiss on the shaved side of his head, and he
    shivered again in her arms. “Why would someone do this, Tate? I
    still don’t understand what happened….”
    Tate looked up in that moment to the glass outside the ICU
    room. There were two cops out there, the kind in the suit and tie and
    not the uniform. For a minute, he wondered why a kid getting beat
    up in a darkened parking lot would rank a detective instead of a
    green beat cop.
    The brown haired one, the older one, looked at him darkly
    through the glass, a corner of his mouth pulled up in a sneer. Aha.
    Brian didn’t rank because he was Brian—he ranked because he
    was gay Brian, and this could be a hate crime.
    Awesome.
    Lyndie made a sound—a distrustful sort of sound—even as
    she kept her arms around his shoulders, and Tate had to appreciate
    her once more. Lyndie was as excited as he was to see the police.
    Maybe artists would know first hand how much fun it was to be an
    outsider dealing with authority.
    “What are they doing here?” she asked, and Talker squeezed
    her hand.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    22

    “Trying to find out who did this,” he said, and then his mouth
    went dry. He swallowed hard and tried to put off the bad for another
    minute. “Where’s Craig?”
    Craig Jeffries, also in his fifties, was a stolid, quiet, pleasant
    man who liked to sit and watch sports on television when he wasn’t
    at work or fixing up Lyndie’s little cabin. He’d moved in with Lyndie
    the year before, and Brian liked him and liked the fact that his
    beloved aunt, the woman who raised him, wasn’t alone.
    “He’s parking the car. Why, is there something you need?”
    Talker nodded. Mostly, he needed to get Lyndie out of here for
    the grilling, but he also really needed a favor. “Sunshine is at home.
    She’s under the heat lamp, Aunt Lyndie, and Brian made her a
    blanket, but shit’s freezing and power is going off. Could you make
    sure she’s okay?”
    Lyndie nodded and pulled out her cell phone, texting pretty
    rapidly for a grown-person, and then she smiled when she got the
    response.
    “He’s got a key too. He’ll check on her and come back with
    some coffee and something to eat. We should know something by
    then, and Craig and I will take you home.”
    Talker swallowed. “Could you just bring me a change of
    clothes? They’ve got little shower cubicles here somewhere. I’ll just
    shower and come back. I don’t want to go.”
    Lyndie “hmmmd” and kissed his cheek—the one with the scars
    and tattoos—and he couldn’t make himself afraid of her if he tried.
    “’Kay, baby. You stay the first shift, but we’ll be back. Don’t worry.
    We’ll take care of you too.”
    She pulled up a chair next to him while they waited, and both
    of them kept a wary eye on the detectives and Jed through the
    glass. Jed had his arms crossed and his lower lip thrust out. He
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    23

    looked the picture of mutiny, and Talker’s stomach roiled. Oh God.
    Jed wasn’t giving Brian up, but… but… oh shit. Letting Trevor go?
    That just hurt. Just fucking rankled and stank to high heaven.
    Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit….
    Talker started shaking, shaking so bad his teeth shook, and
    Lyndie, who had taken out her yarn and a crochet hook from a big
    tapestry bag at her hip, put them down and grabbed his hands.
    “Talker… Tate… baby… you have got to calm down!”
    But it was too late. The detective, the younger one with hair so
    blond it was transparent at the line of his pink and sunburned neck,
    had caught his eye as though he expected Tate to say something.
    Tate was suddenly the object of attention from everybody who had
    been standing outside of Brian’s little room, and he had to fight the
    very real, very immediate urge to urinate. He hated cops. Fucking
    hated them.