Page 8 of Running Scared
Amazing.
He and Marcus had gone into the field at the end of the week, as soon as his injury had healed, and the first night they’d been stuck in a shitty hotel room in Tijuana, doing surveillance on the Russian mobsters trying to sell tech to an absolutely monstrous cartel, Dean had thought of Bailey coming home to a note that read,Don’t forget me.Back soon.
And he’d felt the absurd urge to cry.
He hadn’t cried since the sixth grade, when Val had kicked his ass for telling Chance that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
Chance had cried, and Reg—who didn’t get mad atanybody—had yelled at Dean for being cruel, and Dean had tried to explain that it was ultimately much kinder to realize the lie and misinformation now than it would be to get to the second grade and have all the kids laugh at him.
Chance had cried harder, and Dean had actually welcomed Val paddling him with a shoe.
It hadn’t hurt—or it had, but Dean bore pain stoically, even in the sixth grade—but Val’s words had all but ripped him open.
“You may think you’re above us, Dean Royal, because you’re smarter than us, but you remember that those two kids have as much right to believe in goodness and kindness and magic as anybody.Ofcoursethey would have figured it out sooner or later, but Chance just spent aweekpetitioning Santa to get you your own tablet because he knows you’re trying to move into high school next year, and now you broke his heart.”
And that, of all things, broke Dean’s.
He’d started crying, and then Val had hugged him tight, and then Chance and Reg had run into the room and begged Val not to hurt him, and Dean had cried harder, and, well, his proudest, most masculine moment it had not been.
And in this cramped stucco hotel room, with an ambient temperature of about 90 degrees making Marcus’s foot odor even stenchier and a burrito grabbed from a local taqueria about to make its presence known in a bad way, Dean had felt that same absurd sense of letdown.
On paper, cutting out of Bailey’s apartment as soon as he got Marcus’s text and leaving a note had seemed like the right thing to do.
In practice, it might have been much crueler than Dean had intended.
Of course, that night the Russian mobsters had taken out an office of the cartel as Dean and Marcus watched in horror, and the resulting flight through Tijuana and across the border near San Diego and then debrief to their section chief had taken two weeks.
They’d been left with a single lead about the movements of the Russian mob and a confidential informant who had come out of the woodwork somewhere up north and asked only to be moved to Austin so he could work as a doctor in a nearby hospital.
And Dean had arrived at Bailey’s apartment to a predictably frosty reception.
Bailey had said something like “Dean, we have to talk,” and Dean had been so afraid that meant “Dean, you can’t come here anymore,” he’d promptly seduced Bailey until his eyes rolled back in his head and he forgot his own name.
Dean was good at that.He was well aware it was all he brought to the table.
There had been no more “we have to talk” noises, but Dean had noticed that when he’d showed up on the doorstep since then, the look in Bailey’s eyes was a sort of hurt joy.Yes, he was happy to see Dean, but he knew that maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not the day after, but pretty soon Dean would be going again.
Dean didn’t know what to do with that.
His one play was to fuck away the pain, and he wasn’t sure how long that would last.
But right now, Bailey was warm and pliant in his arms, and the harsh sunlight of an Austin, Texas, summer was trying to penetrate the heavy white drapes across the bedroom windows, and all Dean wanted to do was keep smelling the sweat and sunshine at the nape of Bailey’s neck.
“You always smell so good here,” he mumbled, nuzzling that spot right there.“Why?”
“Baby shampoo,” Bailey mumbled back.“Makes my hair shiny.”
Dean laughed then, wide-awake and very surprised.“God, you’re funny,” he said, his voice full of admiration, and to his horror the look Bailey turned back over his shoulder wasn’t happy or pleased—it was injured.
It was practically bleeding.
“What?”Dean asked, legitimately surprised.“What was that look?”
Bailey just shook his head.“I’ve got a shift in two hours,” he said instead.“I need to shower and do some laundry or I won’t have anything when I get back.”
“I should be able to do that for you,” Dean said promptly.He honestly didn’t mind being at the apartment when Bailey had to work.It may not have beenhishome, but it wassomebody’shome, and Dean’s nerves, used to being stretched taut, appreciated the difference between that and a hotel bed.
To his dismay Bailey shook his head.“No,” he said, sounding miserable.“You can’t promise that, and I’m visiting my dad in Fort Stockton tomorrow, so I need the clothes.Let me out of bed.”
