Page 2 of Need a Hand?
“What do you want, Mike?” Damian snapped, even though he knew damn well what. And he also knew how much Michael, called Larry for his mop of curly hair, hated it when people shortened his name.
Larry shot Damian the finger and pushed off the door frame, sauntering into the room and dropping onto the bunk across from Damian’s. “The nerd’s okay, you know.”
Damian blinked at him, totally unable to process that. It almost sounded like… “Dude, did you just say somethingnice?”
All he got in response was a smirk.
Fucking Larry and his mind games. Damian tried to wait him out. He failed, the frantic need to know boiling up in him until he thought his head might pop off.
“So? What doesokaymean?” Damian had been sitting there on his bunk, head in his hands, since they got back from the call. His lieutenant had basically shoved him out of the bay, snarling that he’d take care of the rig check himself, and the captain was off dealing with the fallout. They’d been too busy to call Damian on the carpet right away. Instead he’d been left to cool his heels here, listening to the echoing voices and the clangs and thumps of equipment as the rest of the company got everything done without him.
Larry shrugged.
“Dude,” Damian hissed, his blood pressure shooting up through the roof, “I will so tell everyone about that guy you took home from—”
“Fine, fine, fuck, man,” Larry said with a nervous look over his shoulder. “Don’t be an asshole.” Don’t be an asshole, really? Although yeah, threatening to out another guy was kind of an asshole move, even—or especially?—when Damian was so far out of the closet himself he couldn’t find the door anymore if he tried.
“You know I won’t,” Damian said, and meant it, his temper cooling as quickly as it’d boiled over. He even managed to sound a little apologetic, not easy when his default setting with Larry was “fuck you.” “But seriously, what the fuck happened to the guy? No one’s told me anything.”
“Dislocated shoulder, broken wrist. No big.”
A laugh shuddered up through Damian’s chest and came out more of a weird gurgling noise. “Fuck you. Seriously? He could have a scraped knee and it would still be—” Damian broke off, his chest too tight to go on. The end of his career. And that meant his whole future, because what else did he have in his life? No spouse and kids, and not going to be either. He couldn’t muster enough interest in women to really date one, and no guy ever seemed to want more than a night or two.
And his family’s reaction…Jesus fucking Christ, imagining it made his blood run cold. He could run away to Venezuela, maybe. He remembered reading somewhere that they didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. His parents and brother and sister already thought he was one step up from an idiot.
A small step.
Maybe they weren’t wrong. It wasn’t like he was going to law school or teaching at the university like his intellectually over-achieving siblings. He was a firefighter, and he patched drywall and fixed broken windows and leaky faucets on the side on his days off. If he couldn’t be a firefighter anymore, what would that leave him with? Part-time handyman—super, super part-time, given how often he picked up a client—at twenty-eight. Fucking impressive. He might as well move back in with his folks and get a World of Warcraft account and call it a fucking day.
“Yeah, whatever,” Larry drawled. “You fucked up. Guy’s alive, you won’t be driving for a while, kiss that salary bump goodbye. Move on.”
For Larry, that almost passed for sympathy. Bile rose up in Damian’s esophagus. “Thanks for the pep talk, asshole.”
“Welcome. Now go see the captain. He sent me to get you.”
Damian popped to his feet, his adrenaline spiking. “You couldn’t’ve led with that?”
Larry just shrugged again, his dark eyes gleaming. “What fun would that be?”
At a loss for words, Damian shook his head and strode out of the dorm. Fuck his life sideways and upside down.
Chapter Two
“Why can’t youget me out of here?” The guy had a nice enough voice, light and pleasant. A little whiny, maybe, but getting run over by a rig could probably do that to anyone.
Damian stopped short right outside room 226, where the hospital receptionist had told him he’d find—he pulled the crumpled scrap of paper out of his pocket and checked it again. The last thing he needed was to call the guy by the wrong name. Peter Parks. Okay. Peter. And if he was talking, that meant someone else was there to talk to. Fuck. Parents? Oh, Jesus. If they were anything like Damian’s overprotective mom and dad, they might not leave enough of him to bury.
“Because they did surgery on your wrist this morning, dumbfuck.” Okay, probably not parents—Damian hoped so, anyway. The female voice added, “And I’m not helping you get out of here against medical advice, so don’t push it.” Her tone gentled. “I know you want to be home, babe. Just wait another day.”
Girlfriend, then. Damian winced. Captain Marsh had talked to this guy Peter earlier in the afternoon and gathered that he wasn’t planning to sue the department for everything down to Damian’s underwear. Which meant that Damian had been sent over here to grovel and “use his goddamn puppy eyes” (thanks a lot, Cap) and keep it that way—but a pissed-off, vengeful girlfriend was a different deal. Maybe even worse than parents.
Swallowing hard, he forced himself to take that last step and stand in the doorway. He rapped lightly on the open door.
The guy in the bed looked up, and the woman standing next to him turned her head. Two sets of identical deep-brown long-lashed eyes fixed on him at the same time, both set in pale, heart-shaped faces framed by wavy dark hair.
So, sister, not girlfriend. Those two looked so much alike they could have been identical twins. Except identical twins had to be the same sex, right? Or not. High school biology, and Damian’s free period before it he’d used to get stoned under the bleachers, had been a long time ago. Damian honestly had no idea. But he did know they looked familiar as hell, which was weird, because he was sure he would’ve remembered anyone with eyes that pretty, male or female.
“Hi,” he said, and then shuffled his feet. “Um, I’m Rosetti. Damian Rosetti. From the, uh, SRFD.”
