Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

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.
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    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
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    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 cop sneered, and Tate felt his face
    twist into a grimace in return.
    “I had to dodge a lot of foster parents to get this fast,” he
    snapped, and it was only partly a lie. He’d really only needed to run
    from the one.
    But the anger was good—the anger kept him from wilting like a
    limp dick, letting down Brian, letting down Lyndie—hell, letting down
    Jed and even the nurse who’d seemed to feel like he’d be there for
    Brian when he was needed.
    The cop rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, cry me a river. You want
    me to feel bad for you, or you want me to feel bad for the poor meat
    sack hoping his kidneys didn’t pulp when he got beaten?”
    The idea that Tate was responsible for Brian’s still body in the
    next room sucked all the marrow right out of Talker’s spine. “I want
    you to make sure that never happens again,” Tate said hollowly, and
    his vision went gray around the edges. He remembered what it felt
    like to be the boy in the hospital bed. He’d been