Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

Hated the way they asked questions like they were your
    friends, hated the way they judged you. All those foster homes, all
    those cops—they’d come, they’d asked questions, they’d looked at
    Tate like he was the reason they were there, he was the reason the
    fucking people he’d ended up with had been more interested in their
    check from the government than in Tate. And then, in high school, it
    had been constant.

    “WHAT’RE you doing here, skater boy?” The hands shoving Tate
    against the dusty brick of the school were hard and indifferent.
    Tate’s scarred cheek would sting for the rest of the day.
    “Gonna steal something?”
    “Just skating.” The skateboard was his ticket to freedom in
    those days—before he found out that in order to fly, all he needed
    was his own two feet.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
    24

    “Don’t you got no place to go? C’mon, freak, get your ass
    home.”
    Home was a foster family who wanted to help, but that he was
    too tired to talk to. It was just so much easier to take that board
    down the pipe rail of the stairs and pretend he never had to land.

    HE’D had no home to get his ass to, not until Brian. Having the
    track coach single him out and tell him he was going to join the
    track team because, dammit, that way he just might live to
    adulthood, had been one of the few positive defining moments of
    his existence.
    And, well, it had lead to Brian.
    Brian grunted, the sound yanking Tate out of his fugue so
    violently he bumped Lyndie’s jaw. She didn’t move, but she did look
    up at Brian’s ruined face and say, “Baby?”
    “Hey, Aunt Lyndie.” Brian’s voice, usually low in his throat
    anyway, was just a rumble of gravel, slurred through swollen lips.
    Lyndie moved up to the side of the bed, but she didn’t let go of
    Tate’s hand. “Hey, Baby, you gonna live?” Her voice trembled, and
    Talker squeezed her hand, since he had it. He remembered that
    Lyndie raised Brian because her only other family had been killed in
    a car crash when Brian was six. As strong as she was trying to be,
    even Lyndie needed some faith.
    The thought propelled Tate up, because he couldn’t give back
    to Lyndie if he was a pathetic, sniveling mess on a hospital chair.
    He gave the cop, still studying them through the window, a defiant,
    fuck-you glare, and moved up next to Lyndie, so Brian could see
    him.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
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    “Talker,” Brian murmured. His face relaxed, and it was like
    knowing Tate was there let him feel better.
    “God, Brian! Who did you think you were there, Matt Damon?”
    Talker tried to make his voice light, because heaven knew, what he
    wanted to do was howl.
    “More like… Nathan Fillion,” Brian croaked and Talker had to
    laugh a little. Captain Mal on Serenity had fought an epic battle and
    had come out looking… well, not quite as bad as Brian did right
    now.
    “Well,” Tate said bitterly, “you should have been trying to be
    more like Shaggy and Scooby and just bailed when the bad guys
    showed up.”
    Brian’s swollen lips turned upwards and then sobered. “I
    wouldn’t let them get ya, Scoob,” he said, and then he seemed to
    relax some more, and as they watched, he faded out into the happy
    oblivion offered him by the clear tube in his arm.
    Talker swallowed. “That’s not very Shaggy-like of you,” he
    whispered, knowing Brian wouldn’t answer. Of course it wasn’t.
    Brian may have had longish blond hair, but he’d never been a
    coward.
    Lyndie bumped his shoulder and then looked up to where the
    cop stood, his attention taken for a minute by something Jed was
    saying.
    “Who were the bad guys, Tate?” she asked softly, and Talker’s
    knees went weak. He teetered as he stood and held on to the rail of
    Brian’s bed to keep from falling. Lyndie let go of Brian’s hand and
    helped him back to the chair, then crouched next to him and rubbed
    his back repeatedly while Talker stared at the whirling lights in his
    vision. God, he hated this. Hated the fear. Hated the feeling of being
    a small black hole in the big gray vortex of a winter sky.
    Talker’s Redemption | Amy Lane
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    “SO, IF it wasn’t that bad, Tate, tell me about it.”
    “The Worst. Date. Ever.? What’s to tell?”
    Dr. Sutherland arched an eyebrow and Tate wondered if his
    scarred cheek washed unevenly with color, or if it was all lost in the
    tangle of tattoo and twisted skin. But it wasn’t the flush that bothered
    him.