Page 112 of The Guy in the Alley

Trace and I both exhaled heavily when I killed the engine.

We’d made it.

He’d directed us to the most perfect beach, way off the beaten tourist path.

The sun was going to rise within the hour, and until then, I wanted Alvin to sleep.

Those meds knocked him out cold, which would’ve been great if that was all they did. But he was going to be drowsy most of today, and that was why he didn’t like taking them.

It was a tricky balance. Lower the dosage and sleep restlessly with chest pains zinging and zapping through him, or…keep it the way it was, get some proper rest, and be tired as fuck the following day.

And still, they beat all the other meds he’d tried over the years. Especially those that gave him stomach problems.

“Say I wanted half an hour with you,” Trace said quietly. “You think he’ll wake up?”

“Not a chance.” A half hour sounded great to me, but we could do better. “Let’s take a whole hour.”

There wasn’t much for Alvin to see now anyway. It was too dark.

“Good, ’cause I bought us something. Grab our coffee.” Trace smirked a little and climbed out of the truck, so I followed suit, and we shut the doors as silently as we could.

The first thing that hit me wasn’t the humidity, but the smell of the ocean.

I drew a deep breath and felt some tension leaving my shoulders.

We’d fucking made it. We were in Florida. Maybe some fifty feet from the ocean.

Trace motioned for me to follow him, and I noticed he had a semi-see-through plastic bag from the most recent stop at another gas station.

Glancing around us, I made the call it was safe to leave the truck—and Alvin—behind for a moment. I knew he wasn’t going to wake up, and the area was dead. A single streetlamp illuminated half the gravel parking lot, and that was that.

We trailed over a sandbank, and then I saw the ocean for myself. The moon poked out from the cloud cover, turning the beach sand a pale blue shade.

“I don’t know why I did it,” he said. “The mood struck, I guess.” He dug out a few items from the bag, and I chuckled. A pack of smokes, a lighter, and two Snickers bars. “A new tradition,” he decided. “Only when we’re on vacation, and we only buy one pack.”

I shifted our cups to one hand and put an arm around his shoulders. “That sounds like a great tradition.”

We didn’t walk much farther. I sat down right there in the sand, and I patted the spot between my legs.

He smiled and sat down where I wanted him, and then he lit up our cigarettes.

After he handed me one, he grabbed his coffee and held it up.

I thumped it with mine.

“To our first of many vacations,” he murmured.

“First of many.”

Fuck, I couldn’t have asked for a better moment to relax my brain.

I took a swig of my coffee. I took a slow drag from the smoke…

Trace coughed.

I grinned and dipped down to kiss his neck. “Okay, so tell me how these weeks are gonna play out. You and Sarah mentioned something about games, and that terrifies me a bit, knowing you two.”

He snorted softly. “You sound like Chris.”

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