Page 88 of Hold

Anyway. This wasn’t about him. This was about what was good for Thea.

A couple of blocks away, he could hear the sounds of Friday night coming from Main Street. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to a bar and just hung out with friends. The people he’d gone to college with were scattered across the state, and his cousins were busy with their own lives. His plumbing colleagues had always kept their distance from him because of his father. He’d never minded because he was an only child, used to his own company, and if he wanted more, he always had his cousins.

It occurred to him that he could have called Seth and David if he wanted to hang out, but their friendship was still new. Plus, they knew Thea. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was going on midnight. Too late for starting a night out, even for a man who’d only just said goodbye to his twenties.

His phone was still in his hand when it rang, making him jump and drop it into his lap. He almost dropped it again when he saw it was Jake. This could mean nothing good.

“Jake?”

“Liam. Can you come get me?”

“Sure.” The response was automatic. Liam looked at his beer, which he’d finished hours ago and been too dispirited to replace. Then he was on his feet with his hands on his keys. “Where?”

Jake gave him an address of a neighborhood between his town and Thea’s, where big houses backed onto an industrial park.

“Okay. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes. Can you go somewhere safe?” He couldn’t even spare the time to ask what was making Jake feel unsafe.

“Uh-huh. I think so. Just come, okay?”

“That was my front door slamming,” Liam said, suiting action to words. “Hang tight. I’ll be right there.”

He started the blue monster baby and let the engine roar as he dodged the center of town to reach the highway.

The address was a perfect spot for clandestine parties because it wasn’t in town proper, and some of the unscrupulous kids made use of this fact. Hell, Liam had been to some parties like that in his time. Though when everyone knew your dad, it was less fun. As a teacher, he knew the best and worst of what high school kids could do, and he kept his foot on the gas as hard as he dared, hoping that Jake hadn’t fallen victim to the worst. He hadn’t sounded drunk, just scared, a thin voice straining to stay cool.

But before Liam even got to the house, the flashing lights made his heart plummet into his shoes. He parked as quickly as he could and ran to the nearest police car. There were only two or three of them, and the house looked like it was still in one piece. He could smell pot and sour beer, and a couple of the lumps he’d taken for bushes groaned in the shadows. Liam took a breath and waited for the cop in the car to get off the radio.

“What happened?” he said as soon as the man looked at him.

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Are you a parent?”

“I—yes.” What else was he going to say?

“Noise complaint. And then evidence of drugs.”

“Crap.” He looked at the house. Was Jake in there? What safe place had he found? Was he one of the drunken piles on the ground? “Are they inside?”

“No. They got arrested. There were minors in there.”

Shit. This was getting worse by the second. “Everyone got arrested?”

“They’re at the station.” The officer was unperturbed by the panic in Liam’s voice.

“But Jake… but my kid was sober. He called me.”

The officer gave a disbelieving shrug but seemed to take pity on him. “They’ll evaluate him there. You can go along and see him.”

Liam turned on his heel and was several steps away before he remembered to shout “thanks” over his shoulder. He punched “police station” into his phone and got the address, then pulled up into a surprisingly empty parking lot. But he could hear the commotion inside from where he sat.

He called Thea. It was now well past midnight, and he expected to have to wait a few rings for her to pick up, but she did right away. “Liam! Is Jake with you?” she said.

Right. She would have been expecting him home. “In a manner of speaking,” he said, hoping he sounded like the voice of calm. He still didn’t know what had made Jake call him in the first place. And now that he thought about it, why had Jake called him and not his mother?

“He was at a party,” he explained, “and he called me to get him out. But when I got there, they’d arrested everyone.”

“Oh my God!” Her voice rose. “Is he okay? Is he drunk? Oh, God, I told him just this evening—”

“He didn’t sound drunk. Or high.” Liam walked to the building, giving her the address.

---