جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 210

Rooster felt awkward walking up to a teenage boy's bedroom with Tyler following close behind. If this had been a year ago, he'd think that Drew was luring him in for a beat down. Bad analogy, he knew, but he had to do something to keep from thinking too heavily about the situation at hand. The three of them made their way inside. Rooster stood with his back to the door while Tyler had a seat next to Drew on the bed. The silence was deafening as they waited for him to tell them why he had called them in on this and not his parents."You're gonna need to give us something here," Tyler told him quietly. "What the fuck is going on?"Rooster tried to look at this subjectively. Back when all this had happened with him and Liam, they were almost a full two years older than the boy who sat before them. But he couldn't deny the fact that Drew had grown up on them. His face had thinned out the last couple of months, losing the baby fat that had made him look boyish. He'd had a growth spurt a

Roni was afraid to move. Sunlight was shining in her eyes between the curtain and the blind, but she didn't want to ruin the romantic haze she'd been in since she'd convinced Rooster to take her on the bed of his truck. She lay in the arms of the one man who'd had her heart her whole life. She didn't want to wake him up and then have him regret everything they'd done the night before. That was her biggest fear, that they had both been blinded by the need to forget the crazy stuff that was going on in their lives. That she had been a warm body, any warm body. She was almost afraid to breathe."You don't have to worry about waking me up."The male voice was rough and full of sleep. It was what she had imagined for years it would be like. Was this how their lives would have gone? Would they have woken up like this each and every morning? Their arms and legs entwined with one another, both naked, her sore from what they had done the night before? It was almost enough to make her cry, t

Two hours later, the little room was hosting its own throw-down. Liam glanced around and saw that not only Roni had joined them, but so had Jagger, B, Steele, and Christine. It was melancholy for the most part, but at the same time, it seemed to be something they all needed. Layne and Jessica were watching Steele's cave as the others relaxed for the night. Rooster had explained as best he could to everybody what he thought was going down at the school. Bianca had been shocked."I can't believe Coach Thistle has a hand in this," Bianca mumbled as she poured another shot. "Out of anybody at that school, I wouldn't have ever thought him. Even though he's the football coach, he's quiet, almost a loner. He doesn't have many friends, and when I do see or hear him talk to people besides the kids, he stumbles over his words and seems to have a hard time making sense. For him to be some sort of bad-ass steroid dealer? I just don't see where he would have the guts to pull it off.""It's beca

"You think he's going to leave anytime soon?" Rooster asked Layne as the two of them sat in his truck waiting for an opening. They had been sitting there for almost two hours. As luck would have it, the coach did lead them to what they assumed was his home. It was in a middle-class neighborhood, not far from the school, adjacent to the neighborhood that Denise had lived in once upon a time."I hope so, I need to stretch out. I think it's gonna rain today." Layne's leg had been injured when he served in Iraq, and sometimes it was the best rain detector that any of them had ever seen.They lapsed back into silence, and Rooster couldn't help it, they'd been there for hours and there was one thing that kept playing in the back of his mind. He had to ask a question. "Why do you hate me?"Layne glanced over at the other man. "I knew that shit was coming."It hadn't been blatant, but the two of them hadn't seen eye to eye on a lot of things since Rooster had been hanging around the cl

Roni was worried. Not thirty minutes ago she'd gotten a call from Rooster, and he'd not sounded like himself. It had been a long time since she'd heard his voice take the tone it'd taken while she was on the phone with him. He'd specifically asked to meet her out at their swimming hole. He'd asked her to bring a case of beer and a change of clothes.She parked her car next to the pool of water and wondered whether she should get out and wait for him or stay there. It was late August, but in south central Kentucky they had just hit their stride. What had started out as a cool summer for the most part had turned hot and humid. It was hard to breathe, and she'd heard more than one person at the shop refer to it as feeling like the armpit of Satan.Oh hell, she was going to be swimming anyway, what did it matter if she got a little sweaty before that happened? She got out, thinking of the last time they had been here. It seemed like so much had happened in such a short amount of time.