Page 67 of Walking Wounded

Then.

He wished, in those first terrible weeks after it happened, that he hadn’t been sixteen, that he hadn’t understood words likesexualassault,asphyxiation,spermicide.

The perp wore a condom. The DNA beneath Sadie’s fingernails didn’t match anyone questioned. Luke had opened his mouth for the swab willingly, not caring the cops looked at him like he might be a suspect. He just wanted the fucker caught, whatever it took.

But he never was. And there was no closure. Someone snatched his baby sister from the bus stop, raped her, and killed her. Threw her down on the side of the road like garbage. And hegot away with it.

Mom was never the same after that. Nothing was.

~*~

He knows it’s a dream, but he reaches for his sister anyway. She laughs, and dances away, and shoots him a smile over her shoulder.

“Sadie, quit. Come here.” And she comes, ducking into his arms and wrapping her own around his waist, the light patter of her heart skipping against his stomach.

It’s a dream, because she’s thirteen, and his own breath is short from too much smoking, but he drops his face into her dark hair and inhales as deep as he can.

The smell isn’t her coconut shampoo, though. It’s low and crisp, something masculine. Sandalwood.

Hal.

He surfaces slowly, clawing his way up through the layers of heavy, suppressive sleep. It takes an age to open his eyes. Another for his nervous system to come back online.

He’s hungover; his head throbs; his tongue tastes like sewage. But he’s warm, and he’s in bed, and there’s a person in his arms who is definitely not his dead sister.

He’s in bed with Hal. Their heads nestled together on the same pillow. Luke’s arm flung across his chest, a handful of his t-shirt gripped tight. And the heartbeat is a steady strong throb, alive and real.

If he wasn’t hungover like this, he’d roll away immediately. But he is, so he lies still, desperately trying to remember what happened last night. He remembers Hal kneeling by the chair. Remembers calling him “honey,” and then it’s all black.

“Shit.” It hurts to talk.

Hal’s massive chest swells beneath Luke’s arm as he inhales. “How bad does your head hurt?”

“Shit,” he repeats, and Hal chuckles. Quietly. “Wha’ time is it?”

“Just after ten.”

“Shit, why aren’t you at work?”

“Matt said to take the morning off. Lee’s filling in until I can get there.”

Luke wants to ask why Hal was given the morning off when he wasn’t the one who’d gotten blackout drunk last night. But instead he presses his face more deeply into Hal’s tousled hair. “Did we have sex?”

“Very much no,” Hal says with another quiet laugh. “I had to carry you in from the car.”

Oh dear God. Kill him now. “Why am I in your bed?” Thewith youis implied.

“This mattress is ten times comfier than the couch. Also, I thought I might have to stop you from choking on your own vomit in the middle of the night.”

“DidI vomit?”

“Nope. There was no puking whatsoever.” Hal wriggles, which somehow presses them even closer together, Luke’s hip digging into Hal’s ribs. “Yet, anyway.”

“Asshole,” Luke accuses, without heat.

“Lush,” Hal fires back.

Luke takes a deep, deep breath, nosing against Hal’s temple. “It’s Sadie,” he whispers. “It’s like I opened the floodgates, and now she’s just there.”

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