Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,105

wriggled his arm out...and came up with a battered gym bag, one Damon recognized as Chris’s when he sometimes used it to bring his gear or a change of clothes to and from practice. The bag looked filthy and beat to shit; rather clumsily, Rian plunked down on his bottom next to Damon, only now sandwiched between him and the headboard until they were forced to press in close to each other.

Only to both recoil as Rian unzipped the bag, and a wave of that stink rolled out, like a thousand bar bathrooms confined into a small space.

Choking, gagging, Rian turned his face aside, while Damon covered his mouth with one hand and reached in gingerly for the wadded up fabric bristling past the opening. He didn’t want to touch it, but someone had to, and he carefully plucked out what looked like a plain black T-shirt, shaking it out.

“What is that?” Rian rasped, muffled as he pressed his face against his arm. “Why does it smell like that?”

“Good question,” Damon grunted against his palm—then bit off a “Fuck” as the shirt unfurled a little more and he caught the logo on the breast of it.

Hank’s Roadhouse.

Styled to look so much like the Harley-Davidson logo it was a miracle it wasn’t a copyright violation, but...goddammit.

Damon knew that place.

And while Omen might not have much of a gang presence or even a criminal element, anyone who wanted to get drunk and skirt the law a little went to Hank’s Roadhouse—strategically placed right across the Mystic on the other side of the town line, so specific town laws about liquor licensing and other restrictions didn’t apply; only state, and that made it damned harder for the rich families who sent their kids out here to use town laws to try to get rid of the place, too.

“Oh,” Damon said, followed by Rian’s strangled,

“Fuck.”

“Whoa,” Luke echoed.

Rian stared at Damon. “Why does Chris have that? Isn’t that that—that—not nice place across the river?”

“It’s sure as hell not somewhere you want your sixteen-year-old kid,” Damon growled, letting the shirt drop atop the bag and then nudging it aside to peer in, but all he saw was a pair of dirty jeans, stained in grit. “What the hell is he doing? He going out there to get drunk and fuck around with people he has no business with?”

“Luke said he’s never drunk,” Rian murmured, then lifted his head, looking at Luke. “You said he’s never drunk, right?”

“I mean I’m not making him burp into a tube or any shit, but he doesn’t seem drunk,” Luke said, shrugging. “Maybe he can like, really hold it. I’unno.”

Rian looked at Damon helplessly. “So what do we do?”

Damon frowned, then cocked his head. “Stakeout?”

“Stakeout,” Rian confirmed, only for Luke to roll his eyes.

“You’re not fucking cops,” he said. “Why the fuck are teachers so weird?”

“Because we gotta be, to deal with you little heathens.” Damon stuffed the shirt back into the bag fully and stood, trying to keep his fucking cool when goddammit, this just kept getting worse with every new turn. “Bring that. C’mon. We can take my car.”

Rian rose—but he and Damon both froze as Luke moved to bar the door, folding his hands over his chest and glaring at them.

“Not yet,” he said, and pointed one skinny brown finger at the mess on the floor. “Which one of you is gonna clean that up?”

* * *

It turned out, in fact, that they both cleaned it up.

Rian didn’t mind, when it was just barely past five p.m. and he doubted Hank’s Roadhouse would be opening before sunset, and even then only for the earliest barflies. That, and he was quickly finding that he enjoyed doing anything with Damon, whether it was discussing what to do about Chris or cleaning up the fountain of pure chaos that had spilled out of Luke’s and Chris’s closet.

They hadn’t said a word to each other, as they’d worked side by side and handed things off to each other to try to recreate that Tetris mess that had somehow held in delicate balance inside the closet, wedging things in here and there and just...trying to impart some kind of organization.

It had just been easy.

Simple.

That was all it needed to be.

And all it needed to be was quiet and calm and wordless, as they split up to change into something warmer for the evening, then met up at Damon’s car—an older model Jeep Cherokee, the kind that still had the square edges instead of