Chapter four

Little Shit

LUCAS

The little shit is unconscious on my lawn and honestly I’ve had worse mornings.

I’m crouched beside him when Mrs. Able comes running out with her hands wringing and her voice three octaves above its usual register, and I straighten up and tell her he’s breathing and she responds, saying that is the absolute least helpful thing I could have said.

Fair enough.

We get him inside between the two of us — Mrs. Able directing, me doing the actual lifting because even though Shaw Carter miraculously escaped dwarfism, he’s still a bit bulky—and we deposit him on the living room couch with a blanket and a cold cloth and Mrs. Able hovering like his personal guardian angel.

I stand back and look at him.

Fuck, I need to roll a damn joint.

Shaw is out cold. His chest rises and falls steadily. Face slack in a way it hasn’t been since he arrived, all that careful guardedness dissolved the moment consciousness left the building. Without the jaw tension and the watchful green eyes he looks so young, so innocent for the crimes he’s committed. He’s got a tousled hair that seems to never had a contact with a clipper. His plump lips looks they’re sculpted just for sucking cocks. He’d look almost feminine if it weren’t for all the ink and the fact that his shoulders are the width of a basketball court.

I look away.

I go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water and stand at the counter and drink it slowly.

I would have substituted it for a good old joint, but Mrs. Able would frown at it. She’s like the mom around here. My actual mom is six feet in St. Lious cemetery. The peanut butter was supposed to be funny. That’s the honest truth of it. A prank. The kind of thing that produces coughing and indignation and maybe a bruised ego, not anaphylaxis, not unconsciousness, not Mrs. Able looking at me like I’ve personally disappointed every ancestor she’s ever had.

I didn’t even know the junky had a serious beef with peanut butter.

Okay, okay. The hot sauce juice was unfair. But still—

I set the glass down.

I genuinely did not know about his fucking critcal allergies.

My father arrives home forty minutes later and I know immediately from the sound of the front door that someone called him. Mrs. Able. Had to be. She has his number saved under Richard, Emergency Only and apparently a parolee passing out on the garden lawn qualifies.

My Dad finds me in the living room.

I’m sitting in the armchair across from the couch where Shaw is still sleeping off his ordeal, phone in hand, doing an extremely convincing impression of a man who is unbothered.

My father looks at Shaw. Then at me. He takes in the full picture with the slow and methodical attention of a man who has spent two decades in public office reading rooms for a living. His Mayorship is the apotheosis of his career. So with it came more stoicism.

Then he crosses his arms.

Here we go.

“Lucas Whiston Hale.”

“What have you done?”

“He’s fine,” I say. “His breathing, his colour’s back. Mrs. Able has checked his pulse four times.”

“That is not what I’m about to ask you.”

“I know.”

He looks at me with the expression he reserves for moments when I have done something that requires a controlled response. I can see he is furious and has decided to be architected about it. Every word placed with precision. No raised voice. No theatrics.

Far more effective than shouting. I’ve always hated that about him.

“Shaw Carter is here under my roof,” he says quietly. “Under my supervision and my responsibility. I put my name to his placement.”

“I’m aware—-”

“I’m not finished,” he drawls firmly. “Whatever you think of the arrangement, whatever grievances you’ve decided to perform, it ends here and now. Are we clear?”

I held his gaze for three seconds.

Look away first.

“Clear,” I say.

He nods once. Then, without breaking stride he says, “You’ll apologise when he wakes up.”

I look up. “But Dad—”

“Lucas!”

Saying my name in two syllables leaves zero room for negotiation.

I say nothing.

He takes that as agreement, which is accurate, and goes to speak with Mrs. Able in the kitchen.

I sit in the armchair and look at Shaw sleeping on the couch and think about what an extraordinarily inconvenient person he is.

“You will apologize to that young man when he’s conscious. Is that clear?”

A pause.

“Roger that, boss.”

Little shit wakes up an hour later.

I watch him surface slowly. The way his head twirls, exhibiting the ceiling confusion, the careful sitting up, the throat-clearing that confirms he’s sore but functional. Mrs. Able is ready with water before his eyes are fully open. She fusses. He says he’s fine. She corrects him, because she’s right and he’s wrong and she knows it.

My father delivers his remarks from the fireplace with the composed authority of a man who’s used to addressing the city council in full revolt and kept his voice level the entire time.

I stand in the corner and take it.

I don’t want to be in my Dad’s line of sight. I’m a bad child every expectant father would pray against, and I’ve made peace with that.

I should wrap this up quickly and to my study as quickly as possible.

I’m not done with my thoughts when my Dad looks at me.

The door is open. I am being marched through it.

I push off the wall.

Cross the room.

Come to a stop in front of Shaw Carter who is sitting on my couch wrapped in my blanket looking up at me with eyes that are alert and unimpressed and quietly waiting.

I straighten my tank top.

Clear my throat.

“I apologise,” I say, “for the pancakes.”

It lands exactly as well as I expected.

Shaw blinks. “That was genuinely terrible.”

His words barely audible from his gritted teeth. It’s funny to watch.

“I know.”

“You didn’t even look sorry.”

“I’m aware.”

“Your face actually got worse halfway through.”

From across the room my father makes a sound.

I look at Shaw. Shaw looks at me. And for a fraction of a second—a fraction neither of us acknowledges— a tinge of amusement passes between us. It’s brief and involuntary and immediately dismissed by both parties.

I clear my throat again.

“I didn’t know about the allergy,” I say quietly this time. The performance stripped back just enough to let the actual sentence breathe. “That wasn’t what I intended.”

Shaw studies me for a moment with those careful, cataloguing eyes.

“What did you intend?” he asks.

“Something funny,” I say. “Not that.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

“No,” I say. “It wasn’t.”

The silence that follows sits differently than the ones before. Less hostile architecture. More like two people standing in a room after the furniture’s been moved — disoriented by the unfamiliar space of it.

I don’t like it.

I like knowing exactly what kind of silence I’m standing in.

My father leaves. Mrs. Able disappears back to the kitchen. The room empties down to the two of us and I’m about to make my own exit when Shaw speaks.

“How did you know I was allergic?”

I go still.

The question is precise. It was delivered with the careful aim like it has been sitting at the back of his mind since he woke up and decided now is when he asks.

I look at him.

He looks back, waiting for a response.

I straighten up, smoothen the front of my tank top, arrange my expression back into something comfortable and unreadable.

“Lucky guess,” I say.

I walk out before he can ask anything else.