The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,102
Jem thought, you probably still wouldn’t get someone age appropriate for Leroy—emerged from the crowd. One of them took Leroy by the elbow, pulling him away from the table. His hand came to rest on her butt, squeezing a few times. The other girl glared at Jem and Tean and said, “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Hasn’t he suffered enough?”
She hurried to join Leroy, passing him another cup full of beer. The girls were taking turns pressing Leroy’s head against their breasts, obviously in some weirdly eroticized fantasy of mothering him. Leroy, for his part, was squeezing their asses hard enough that the poor girls probably wouldn’t sit down for a week. A third girl with dark red hair was watching the whole thing with a weird smile.
“Hey,” Jem said, studying the third girl more closely. He indicated her with a nod of his head and said, “Hey, is that who I think it is?”
“That looks like the girl from the Playmates app. Becca?”
“Yeah. That looks like fucking Becca. What’s she doing here?”
Leroy’s laugh cut through the music again. He was dancing again, grinding against a twiggy blonde, beer slopping out of the cup to run across the back of his hand, dripping off his wrist. And Jem thought about the piece of mail, the name, the woman with a beautiful home and beautiful children and an inflatable swimming pool.
Tean was saying something.
“She was his daughter,” Jem said.
Tean was saying something else, tugging on Jem’s arm.
“She was his daughter. Doesn’t he even care that she’s dead? Don’t you even care that your daughter’s dead, motherfucker? She was your daughter. You were supposed to keep her safe!”
The last half had been directed toward Leroy, Jem moving into the crowd of swaying bodies, getting closer and closer to the old man with each word. He was vaguely aware of resistance, something dragging on him. A woman bumped into him, and her beer went down his front. A young guy, shirtless, still trying to get his locs started, stumbled and fell into Jem’s path. Jem stepped over him. Leroy seemed to have realized something was wrong; he turned, his eyes wide and blank as he stared at Jem. The blonde scampered off. An opening formed in the crowd. On the portable speakers, the banjos played faster and faster.
“She was your daughter,” Jem said again. “You had one job. The only thing you were supposed to do was keep her safe.”
“Wha—”
Jem got the first punch in, landing it hard and fast, his knuckles cracking against Leroy’s teeth.
“You were supposed to make sure she was ok.”
The older man stumbled, twisting away, his hand coming to his mouth. Jem followed. He threw another punch, aiming for the side of Leroy’s head, but this time the man had his arm up. Jem’s punch glanced off.
“You were supposed to watch out for her.”
Jem swung again, but this time, Leroy moved in toward Jem. Jem’s punch caught him on the shoulder, and then Jem was wide open. Leroy got him in the solar plexus. The air whooshed out of Jem’s lungs, and then he was falling. Someone caught him and laid him down, and then Jem couldn’t see anything because a body was in his way, interposed between him and Leroy. More shouting. Jem rolled onto his side, trying to pull in air, his eyes burning, his lungs on fire. Then he managed a breath, then another. Firelight swelled in his vision and then shrank down to embers. Woodsmoke scorched the back of his throat.
Then someone was pulling him upright, and he smelled pine resin and sagebrush as he was maneuvered away from the fire, into the cool darkness. He stumbled the first ten yards, still trying to catch his breath, and then he got his balance and started thinking again. Tean had him in a wrist lock.
“Ok,” Jem said. “I’m ok.”
Tean kept marching him toward the truck, a blur of white farther down the drive.
“Ow,” Jem tried.
“Be quiet.”
When they got to the truck, Tean released him with a half-shove that sent Jem stumbling into the Ford, one side panel flexing under his weight. Massaging his wrist, Jem turned around. He reached out.
Tean slapped his hand away.
“I was just trying to—”
“Be quiet.”
“Your glasses.”
The internal struggle flashed in Tean’s face, and then he shoved the glasses back up his nose. “What the heck was that?”
Jem shook his head, his eyes dropping to his arm, and he pretended to study his wrist as he rubbed it.