Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

it.
    Lyndie’s arm went around Tate’s shoulder, and she pulled his
    bald, Mohawked head down for a kiss. “I didn’t hear you, baby. Tell
    me again?”
    “Revenge,” he said again, louder this time.
    “Revenge?” But Lyndie sounded speculative—not surprised.
    “Somebody getting back at Brian?” she asked carefully, and Tate
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    lost the same battle Brian had won, and his face crumpled like
    cellophane, and suddenly he was sobbing into Lyndie’s arms.
    “Oh God… did everybody know but me?”
    Sometime as he was losing it, crying as he hadn’t cried since
    the same night Brian had, the police officers tried to come in. He
    never saw the look sweet, fragile-seeming Aunt Lyndie cast over his
    shoulder to make them go away, but he had the feeling that it was
    that sort of danger in Brian that had brought them to this pass in the
    winter as it was.
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    Exc
    x use Me W
    hile I Lose Something

    “SO, TALKER, you were in your date’s home, and what happened
    next?”
    Tate shrugged. “We were sitting on the couch, watching a
    movie, and, you know, suddenly Trev’s all hands. And it’s not like I
    can blame him, right?”
    “I can,” Brian said darkly, and Talker flushed.
    “I told him, you know? Not in so many words, but I tried really
    hard to make it clear that I was looking for….” Talker blushed. “It.
    Sex. A good time. Whatever.”
    “Love,” Brian muttered. “Be honest, dammit.”
    Talker was surprised into looking at him, and his lips pulled up
    into a smile that he’d always hated because his teeth were crooked
    and his canines were prominent and his teeth were crowded, and
    no, foster kids didn’t always get taken to the dentist when their
    wisdom teeth grew in. “Well, if I was, I was looking in the wrong
    place for it, wasn’t I?”

    AUNT LYNDIE’S presence was the right place for love, just like
    Brian’s was.
    Talker calmed down after a while. The dreaded cops had
    backed off, and were waiting outside of Brian’s room with dark
    glances and a way of making anyone who tried to visit the room feel
    unwelcome—even the nurse.
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    The nurse didn’t “bustle”—in fact, a few years older than
    Lyndie, with lovely gray eyes in tanned skin, she seemed to radiate
    a sort of competent serenity, and Talker was grateful.
    “With all of that,” she said, after “hmmming” over the pink fluid
    coming from Brian’s catheter at the foot of the bed, “you’d think this
    guy was the winner of the fight and not the loser.”
    Tate bit his tongue to keep from blurting out, “Yeah, but he won
    the first one.” Instead, he focused on what she was doing with the
    catheter bag.
    “He’s bleeding,” was what he actually did say.
    The nurse turned to him and nodded, keeping her face calm.
    “Yeah—yeah, he is. But it’s not too bad. The kidneys are sort of
    fragile that way. They bleed a little with almost any trauma.
    Sometimes, even putting the catheter in turns the urine pink. So
    we’re not too worried, not yet.”
    Talker nodded. “What are they going to do with his shoulder?”
    The nurse sighed. “That’s a tough one. I think, when he’s
    stabilized a little more, and we’re sure his insides are going to hold
    up, they’re going to have to operate to repair the ligaments and
    some of the torn muscles there. That’s going to be an ongoing thing
    right there—physical therapy, the whole nine yards.”
    “It’s gonna hurt,” Tate said quietly, and the nurse nodded
    sympathetically.
    “No two ways about it,” she confirmed.
    Tate couldn’t seem to stop stroking Brian’s hand. “He’s tough.”
    Brian’s shoulder must have been in agony, that last year on the
    track team. He’d stayed—by his teeth and nails, but he’d stayed on
    and thrown, because he wanted the education. Tate remembered
    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
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    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