Talker's Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page B

Brian’s last meet. Just picking up the shot had made sweat break out on his brow. He’d run and hefted, his body a sturdy miracle of muscles and grace, and the shot had flown like a shooting star. The throw had actually placed second, but it hadn’t mattered. Brian had fallen to his knees quietly as soon as it left his hand, and then, without fuss, he’d blacked out. It had hurt that much, and Brian hadn’t said a word.
     
    The nurse nodded, and recorded something in the chart by the bed. “Well, I hope you’re tough too,” she said frankly. “It’s going to be a long, long haul.”
     
    Tate swallowed, hard. Tough; he dressed tough. The black half-glove to disguise his disfigurement. The tattoo to hide the scars. The Mohawk to hide the fact that his hair grew patchy and uneven on one side of his head. The clothes and the spiked hair and the spiked collars. All of it, all of it, to hide the damage underneath.
     
    “I’ll have to be,” he said through a raw throat. He didn’t have a choice. This was Brian, and Brian deserved to have his dreamboy there, which meant he needed Talker to hold fast, be steady. To be tough.
     

     

     
    “So I stood up and grabbed my coat.” He left out the part about Trevor’s hand down his pants, and how suddenly he couldn’t stand for Trevor to touch him. “I took two steps toward the door, and Trevor says… you know. ‘Where are you going? I thought we were having fun?’ That sort of thing.”
     
    He was leaving a lot out, and Brian probably knew it. But it was so embarrassing—Trevor was such an ass, and Tate had liked him. But his actual words—“I know you want it, bitch. Where the fuck do you think you’re going? Man, just drop your pants and let me take that sweet little ass!”—they were just too humiliating. They were unnecessary.
     
    Besides, they weren’t the words that mattered.
     

     

     
    Lyndie made a sound by his side, and Tate looked up to the doorway. The detectives were there, and Tate swallowed down a wave of black nausea. “Be tough,” right?
     
    “Mr. Walker, can we talk to you?”
     
    “Some….” It came out as a whisper, and he firmed his voice up a little more. “Somewhere else.”
     
    The dark-haired one nodded, the bitter one who liked to sneer through the window, and Tate looked at him distrustfully. “Right outside here,” was what he said, and Talker stood up and moved toward the door to the little cubicle, wondering why his knees shook so bad.
     
    Suddenly Lyndie was right there behind him, her fragile, long-fingered artist’s hand tucked into his, and Tate thought he might be able to make it outside of Brian’s room after all.
     
    Still, once he got out there, he stood there with his back up against the glass, like he was trying to pass transparently through it to get closer to Brian.
     
    “We’ve talked to Mr. Roberts,” said the dark-haired detective, “and we just want to make sure we have the whole story.”
     
    “Mr. Roberts?” The name was unfamiliar. “Oh yeah. Jed. I forgot.” Talker swallowed and felt his Adam’s apple bob. “Last names don’t come up a lot in restaurant work, you know? I mean, I don’t think half the people there know my real name. So yeah. Jed. You talked to Jed. He was there. He’ll know.”
     
    Talker half waited for Brian’s subtle touch on his shoulder or his hand, but it didn’t come, and… and… thereyago. He twitched hard enough to jerk his hand from Lyndie’s and bang his head against the plexiglass. He had to work hard to focus through the stars to see the detective with the fair hair who was looking at him with more concern than scorn.
     
    “Kid, what are you on?” the dark-haired guy asked, and Talker twitched—less violently, but it was still a twitch.
     
    “Nothing,” he muttered. “They’ll take away my track scholarship if I do drugs.”
     
    “ You got a scholarship? You must run like the fucking wind, do you know that?” The dark-haired