“What are you doing?”
“Hiding,” Damon said, as he navigated the Jeep backward around the side of the building, and eased it into a crack in the trees, fallen twigs and brush crackling, the car jouncing as the Jeep scraped by with the branches around them scratched at the doors. Rian winced.
“You’re murdering your paint job.”
“Cars can be repainted,” Damon said. “Not that easy to fix Chris if something out here fucks him up worse.”
“...yeah.”
Rian held his tongue, then, as Damon managed to squeeze the Jeep back into a niche in the trees, mostly hidden by the brush but with enough of a view through the trees to keep an eye out for anyone pulling up to the bar. Damon killed the engine, then unsnapped and loosened his seatbelt, settling to slouch behind the wheel. Rian unbuckled his seatbelt, too, shifting a little toward Damon, propping his shoulder against the seat.
“So what now?” he asked.
“We wait,” Damon answered. “I wanted to get out here early enough that we wouldn’t be spotted pulling in. But it’ll probably be a bit before the owner shows up.”
“You know the owner?”
“Not know him, but...know of him.” Damon grimaced. “Enough that as a kid my parents always told me to stay away from him. Drew. Gordon Drew. Kind of a slimy fucker. The kind of guy a town like this always says ‘ain’t from around here’ even when he’s been here for decades.”
Rian made an amused sound. “Not Hank, then. So where’s he from, then?”
“Dunno. We don’t talk to him, he doesn’t talk to us. Most of his clientele come from out of town. Small towns around this area cut you off before midnight. Even bigger cities mandate one a.m. But state law is actually two a.m., and some people don’t wanna stop until they have to.” Damon shrugged. “So they come out to places like this. And if a few people die ’cause he doesn’t take their keys, a few more get wrecked ’cause he didn’t cut them off past the legal limit...he’ll always find a way to spin it to the cops and the state liquor board.”
“Fine, upstanding citizen, then,” Rian murmured, letting his gaze drift to the bar. “No... I... I guess I wonder what makes people look for that. Makes them need that.”
“Different for everyone, probably.” Damon draped his forearms on the steering wheel, leaning his powerful body against them. “Pain chases some people into that life. Loss. Heartbreak. Bitterness. Disaster. Some people feel like they got nothing else. And some people, well...some people just ain’t very nice people, are they?”
Rian half smiled. “So what kind will we be dealing with tonight?”
“Dunno. Who knows what kind of customers are coming out tonight, but if we’re dealing with Gordon Drew...” Damon’s smile wasn’t particularly pleasant. “We’re dealing with a straight-up asshole.”
“Mm.” Rian lingered on that dirty building, that emblazoned logo. “Stories always romanticize this kind of place. Where the darklings come to find family when everyone else rejects them.”
“Maybe somewhere else. Here, though...it’s just where Gordon Drew makes a few extra pennies off sucking out people’s lives through their livers. And their veins, considering he probably looks the other way about a few more things.”
“I think I dislike him already.”
“I’d say I’m sorry for biasing you against him, but I’m not.”
With a frown, Rian asked, “Isn’t it dangerous, to have a place like this so close to the school? Aren’t the boys easy targets?”
“That’s why we keep such a close eye on them,” Damon said. “And why they’re only allowed off campus on weekends. But at least once every few years, someone’s parents try to get this place shut down. Afraid of their precious baby boys finding trouble. Drugs, booze, sex, whatever.”
Rian winced. “Sounds like it doesn’t go well.”
“All the money in the world can’t get around iffy zoning laws, and Drew just ends up flipping his middle finger every time and walking off laughing.”
“What a...delightful person.”
Damon only scoffed softly, before falling silent, his half-lidded eyes trained forward, distant and thoughtful. Rian watched him for several moments in the stillness that fell between them—not quite strained, no, but in the silence Rian was painfully aware of Damon; of his quiet, even breaths and his warmth and the space he took up and the way the soft-shaded afternoon light seemed to define him in hues of bronze and copper and black. Rian’s thoughts were blank things, vague, but all circling around Damon, around...around...
Just wanting to stay near him.
But he could almost hear that dry tone, that hint of a smile, that You’re staring at me again, and after a few more stolen seconds to just look Rian made himself look away, leaning down to fish in his bag until his fingers brushed up against the soft edges of pages.
He pulled out A Princess in Theory; he’d not even managed to start it when he’d been too restless on sleepless nights, but if they were going to stake out the bar he might as well give it a shot to fill the passing hours.
But as he scrunched down in the seat, propping his knees up against the glove compartment and opening the book against his thighs, Damon glanced over at him with a half laugh, half snort.
“You were serious, huh?”
“I’m curious,” Rian said, chuckling and flipping open to the first page. “It’s something you like. So I want to know about it.”
Damon went still, his laughter fading to a bemused smile. “...yeah?”
Oh God, had Rian said that out loud? He cleared his throat, keeping his gaze trained on the page and a story that...apparently started with a series of emails that read like something from a Western Union scammer. “I, um...well, yeah. I guess you know, it’s...different, that a man likes romance novels.”
“Shouldn’t be,” Damon said simply, and Rian realized...
He was right.
And that was that.
So he settled in to read, and smiled slightly at Naledi’s exasperation...only to pause at the mention of foster care. “Oh,” he said softly.
“Hm?” Damon answered, absent, his gaze fixed on the windshield again.
“I...do you know why I picked this one?”
“Wondered a little.”
“...the cover’s more worn than all the others. Like you read it more.” Rian bit his lip. “The heroine... Naledi. She was in foster care.”
“...yeah.” Damon’s head angled toward him, brown eyes watching him sidelong, thoughtful. “Sometimes you see yourself and the life you lived, the things you want, in places you never expected. I saw me in her. Still do. Every time I read it.”