Winter Solstice in St. Nacho's (St. Nacho's #5) - Z.A. Maxfield Page 0,70

guys like him have to medicate their problems or rip off all their Band-Aids at once? It was fucking exhausting. I was fucking exhausted simply from caring for another human being, and Tug was just the tip of the goddamn iceberg if I went into the field with Echo.

Couldn’t he for once ease into the pain? I groaned his name. “Tug.”

Tug turned to Beck. “I really, really regret what I did to you. I’ll make restitution for the things I stole. I’ll deal with the law if I have to. If I can earn your forgiveness, fine. If not, it’s all right. That’s the best I can do. I’m so sorry I hurt you, Beck.”

Beck wasn’t ready to forgive him. We could all see that.

“I’ll be staying in St. Nacho’s for a while,” Tug added. “I have a job at Miss Independence Pies. I’ll pay you back in installments.”

“Fine.” Beck left to pack up his instrument and collect his dog, who seemed much calmer now that he was nearby. She greeted him with the happiest of doggie smiles and nudged into his legs until he kneeled to bury his face in her fur.

“We’ll be in touch.” Lindy followed Beck.

“Nice to meet you, Luke,” said Shawn. “Will you be staying here too?”

I shook my head and did my best to sign, “I live in the Central Valley. I’m leaving for home tonight.”

“Shame.” Shawn signed something I didn’t recognize to Cooper. Then he said, “You’d like it here.”

I nodded because I already did like it. “I need to get back for work.”

Cooper waved, and together they drifted a little farther away. Tug didn’t approach them again. We watched Beck and Lindy make their way up Main Street together. Tug held my hand as if he couldn’t let go. I glanced at him, then past him out to the west where the sky had blossomed with every shade of red and gold around the setting orange sun.

As if someone turned up the volume, the world around us came back into focus. Mariachi music seeped from behind the closed doors of Nacho’s Bar. The fragrance of coconut sunscreen and roasting meat filled the air.

As for Tug—who had arguably done the hardest thing in his short grim lifetime—the very life seemed to drain out of him. I wondered what he must be thinking, how he must be feeling, after confronting Beck and his friends.

“Do you have to go tonight?” he asked with sudden, almost breathless ferocity.

“What do you mean?”

“Could you stay here just one more night? Leave tomorrow—”

“Don’t you have a curfew?” I asked. “Don’t you work tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but it’s only six. And I was thinking… I need… um. I mean, I just wish—”

“What?” I asked as though I didn’t already know what he was saying.

If he’d said the words out loud, I might have been able to make the sensible choice. The wiser choice. But with our old goddamn habit of talking in code and euphemisms and leaving hard things unspoken, I was just as complicit in any miscommunication we had.

“Could we maybe just go somewhere quiet?” he asked. “Where it’s only us, and we can be together?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Please?” he begged. “It’s… Maybe it’s not a good idea, but it’s the least bad one I have, and right now I’m all out of good ideas.”

It was a bad idea. Maybe not theft bad. Maybe not heroin bad. But it was dragging my feet over the do not cross line bad.

But I wanted to feel something right then too. Anything besides the anxiety and grief that had dogged me since I’d met Tug. I shared the craving to escape my emotions, and Tug was a bad idea made flesh.

I wanted him, and I said yes knowing full well it meant crossing the line.

Even after the meetings, and the books, and the homework, I couldn’t say no to Tug when he looked at me like that. God help me, I wanted him.

Live and learn.

Even knowing Tug, knowing he’d played me in the past, knowing I couldn’t trust him to be stable in the future, I went along because I wanted him just as much as he wanted the distraction I offered.

Chapter Twenty-One

St. Nacho’s, Day 5

In my defense: Luke.

I wouldn’t have started it with anyone else.

I wouldn’t have let it get that far with anyone else.

It could never have happened with anyone else, except it was Luke.

Tug

At the SeaView Motel, the old man at the desk wore a virtual reality headset. He