Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,117

from you, Drew,” Damon bit off. “Might as well take your chance to tell your side of things first.”

Drew scowled, his face purpling in an angry flush; he pulled back his upper lip, baring his teeth, and Damon tensed himself, bracing for backlash, but after a moment Drew snapped, “He told me he was fucking eighteen.” He let out a furious sound of frustration. “He looked it, why the fuck would I figger he wasn’t old enough?”

“Old enough for what, Mr. Drew?” Rian said through his teeth, only to be met with mutinous silence. “Old. Enough. For. What.”

Balling up his fists, Drew put his face through a series of contortions like he was fighting his mouth to either get the words out or keep them inside, before he flared, “Fucking bouncing, aight? I ain’t letting some kid drink in my place, but he said he needed the fuckin’ money so I let him work door security under the table. What’s your fucking problem?”

“My fucking proble—” Damon broke off, cursing up a fucking storm, letting out every iteration and variation of fuck he knew; he had to turn away or he was going to do something immensely fucking regrettable.

“Do you hear yourself?” Rian snapped. “Our problem? You let a child be brutalized by adults. You violated child labor laws so you could save a few pennies paying someone illegally. And lest you forget and need to hear it again, that person you were paying illegally was. A. Child.”

“He fucking wanted it, why the fuck are you getting shitty with me over it?” Drew threw back. “He was fuckin’ begging me. And he was good at the fuckin’ job.” When Damon looked back... Drew had the nerve to be fucking smiling, like he actually had some kind of affection for Chris, or pride in him, but it was all so fucking fake. “Look, he muscled people good, but like...he wouldn’t let ’em start fights with him. Even when they were smashing up on him, he didn’t fight back. Kinda self-sacrificin’ like that. I’m teaching him good life skills, y’know. Whaddya call that? De-escalation?”

“I call it fucking child abuse.” Damon’s blood was rising, feeling like it was about to pop through his fucking veins, his fingers clenching so hard his knuckles ground into his palms.

This fucking explained everything.

The bruises. The sneaking out. The exhaustion, working late nights at a bar.

And why Chris had felt like he’d had to hide, and might get in some kind of legal trouble if he got caught.

Mother fucker.

“Yeah, well, you can fuckin’ rejoice, ’cause it’s over now,” Drew snarled. “Kid ain’t shown up for a week. He’s fucking fired anyway. Not even worth the six bucks an hour if you can’t show up to work.”

“Six dollars an hour isn’t even minimum wage.” Rian spoke with haughty scorn. “You really have no shame, do you? Do you know where your ‘generosity’ landed Chris?”

Drew let out a snort that was more of a barking burp. “Do I fucking care?”

“He’s in the hospital.” Damon tried to take several calming breaths before he just—just—he didn’t fucking know, he just knew he couldn’t, but whipping around to face Drew had been a mistake when he just wanted to rip that fucker’s smug, self-satisfied face off. “He’s fucking on a goddamned IV. Dehydrated, beat to fuck, hasn’t been fucking sleeping. You feeling good about that? You feeling good about those life skills, huh? Teaching him it’s okay to let people abuse him?”

With a look of utter sneering contempt, Drew said, “I just gave him what he wanted. If he’s old enough to wanna work, he’s old enough to take responsibility for his own goddamned deci—”

Damon felt that hard, trembling fury rising to a break point...but before he saw it coming, a pale hand came plowing in from his peripheral vision.

As Rian drove himself forward and, with all his weight, flung himself at Drew and smashed his clenched fist right into the middle of Drew’s face with enough force that he cut off mid-word in a garbled cry, his mouth slewing to one side, his nose flattening, his head rocking back.

Before Drew dropped to the ground, stumbling and crumpling and lying there in a groaning heap, his keys spilling into the dirt, his jaw and the corner of his mouth already puffing with a thick purple bruise, a trickle of red spilling from one reddened, busted nostril.

“Uh.” Damon stared down at Drew, shock knocking the fury right out of him to just leave him confused