Talker

straight roomie!” Trevor cal ed as Brian strode up to him.
    The smile dropped off his face as Brian twisted his arm around his
    back and hauled him behind the club. They were halfway there
    when Brian realized he had company.
    “Uhm, Brian?” Jed, one of the club’s two bouncers, was a six-
    foot-four-inch black man built like a Panzer tank on steroids. He
    was one of the few straight men who worked at Nick, but he was
    very protective of his guys.
    “Hey, Jed,” Brian panted.
    Trevor said, “Man, you gotta help me… this guy just went…
    ouuu!”
    “Shut up!” Brian snapped, giving Trevor’s arm another yank.
    Possibly for the first time in his life he threw those words at
    someone and meant it. “Shut the fuck up!” They’d reached the back
    of the club by now, and Brian shoved Trevor into the wal , giving
    him a chance to stumble against it and recover.
    “Any chance you want to tel me what you’re doing?” Jed
    asked, rubbing his hand over the back of his bald head.
    Brian saw Trevor trying to make a run for it, and feinted in that
    direction. Trevor subsided and stood, panting, waiting for the
    answer too. His carefully wisped “man-do” was a mess, and he had
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    53
    a smear of dust across his white clubbing shirt, but the arrogance
    was still there.
    “He hurt Tate.” Brian said it and then he glared and settled into
    a crouch. He’d never looked forward to hurting another human
    being in his life—but he did now.
    “Hurt?” Jed said, careful y neutral.
    “Hurt.” Brian emphasized the word and made sure the piece of
    shit responsible for wrecking the guy he loved was making eye
    contact and on the same page.
    O ne corner of Trevor’s mouth curled up. “That sweet little
    bitch? Man, he liked it….”
    Brian’s first punch across Trevor’s pretty mouth sent him back
    into the wal of the club, his head making an audible “thunk” on the
    wooden siding. Trevor rebounded, fists out, and Brian took him
    down in two punches, and then followed him down, straddling his
    chest and proceeding to work him over like a boxer doing exercises
    on a heavy pummeling bag. He’d thought he was terribly
    dispassionate and reasonable about the whole thing, until Jed
    wrapped strong, thick arms around his shoulders and hefted him
    bodily off an unconscious asshole who was missing three teeth and
    could barely make out a moan.
    “Brother, the cops are coming. You’d better go.”
    F uck. C ops? “He hurt Tate!” Brian snarled—and until he tasted
    salt on his mouth, he hadn’t been aware of his own tears.
    “Wel , you paid him back,” Jed said reasonably. “And I’ve got
    to do some quick talking, and some faster lying, okay? Just get in
    your car and go.”
    “He hurt Tate….” Brian’s voice trailed off and he went to wipe
    his face when he saw the blood on his hands. It was thick, and
    some of it came from his own knuckles, which were ripped and
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    54
    bleeding, but a lot of it came from the useless sack of shit lying on
    the sidewalk in back of the club. “O h G od,” he said thickly, “I’m
    going to throw up.”
    Jed made an exasperated grunt—he was still practically lifting
    Brian bodily into his car. “If you could go home and do that, I’d be
    really grateful. And I wouldn’t show back up here for a couple of
    days.” He let out an “oomph” here as he fished through Brian’s
    pockets and came up with his keys.
    “I need to pick Tate up,” Brian said. It was the only thing he
    could think of as Jed opened his car door and shoved him in.
    “Wel , how about I drop him off tonight, and you can drop him
    off tomorrow? I can pick up some of the slack, man, but you’ve got
    to get out of here, and I’ve got to cover your lily-white ass, okay?”
    F inally, Jed’s sacrifice penetrated Brian’s fog. “Why you doing
    this?” he asked hazily, remembering to turn the key in his ignition
    and roll down his window while he was waiting for an answer. His
    adrenaline was pumping big time, and he had a shake in his hands
    and his knees that he couldn’t seem to get rid of.
    “Tate’s good people,” Jed said quietly from the window. “I can’t
    count the number of hysterical kids he’s talked out of the bathroom
    come closing. I’m sorry he got hurt.”
    Brian sniffed and tried to get control of himself. He had to work
    tonight, and he had to be there for Tate when he got home, and he
    couldn’t be a sniveling weenie because