It’s an Em chord. You know that one.
Really? Cause it looks more like you wrote Murphy.
Fuck you. I didn’t.
Did you write Missus Sionn Murphy all over my notebook too? Draw little hearts maybe?
Oh fucking hell. Screw you, Sinjun. Shit. Give me that.
Nuh-uh, I’m going to go through and see if you drew me a unicorn too.
—Living Room, Recording 61
FORTY bucks and an autograph scored Damien a pack of Djarum Blacks from a kohl-eyed Goth boy visiting his grandmother. Driven out by the noise and smell of the hospital, Damien was barely outside of the fifty-yard perimeter when he lit up, sucking in a large mouthful of the fragrant smoke. When he heard the soft tread of footsteps coming up behind him, he turned, expecting Sionn.
Nothing could have shocked him more than seeing Kane’s father, Donal, approaching him with two steaming cups of coffee.
“Ye heard the doctor, didn’t you, boy? He’s fine. Just some stitches and a foul mood. Although they might keep him overnight. That knee of his looks blown out, but it’ll be fine. Just swollen some.”
The man loomed over him. When he sat down on a bench, Damien felt a little bit better. At least the shift in their height difference meant he could look Donal in the eyes instead of his chest. Damien took one of the cups and sniffed at the coffee, catching a whiff of cream and sugar in it.
“Don’t tell my bride about the brew.” Donal winked at him. “She’ll have my hide for lacing that up with fatty milk. She seems to think my heart can’t take the posh of it.”
Damien knew he was being a coward. The shivering pangs along his spine were enough of a shame. Seeing the shifting glances between the Morgans when he tossed his stomach into a nearby garbage can only drove that point home. He couldn’t imagine what they were saying about him hitting the glass doors to run for air.
The medical center looked and sounded nothing like Skywood. The bustle of nurses and orderlies were a stream of interested and focused professionals, not glorified babysitters looking to score a few hundred bucks for smuggling in a cheeseburger. Doctors hurried around them, some drifting off to stalk clusters of people gathered around each other in the waiting room, bringing with them either sorrow or relief.
One such white-coated harbinger swooped down on the stern-faced clan of Irish giants and fey with news of their precious feral rescue, waving a flag of good omens to protect himself from their intense wrath. Kane broke from the pack, the fire in his eyes turning their blue a hard steel, and the doctor’s clipboard did little to ward off the tall, angry cop barreling down on him.
It was the calming hand of the man sitting next to him that stayed Kane in his tracks, and his soft murmurs for his son to follow the doctor to the back to sit with Miki as they scanned for damage to his knee. Damien felt the walls close in on him and broke, heading for the open air and someplace he could break down without anyone seeing.
Donal Morgan proved to be a complication to his scheduled breakdown, especially since Damien hadn’t planned on any witnesses.
Eyeing the massive amount of sinew and muscle Donal seemed to be made of, Damien immediately dismissed any chance of taking the man out. The fact that he was a captain on the police force probably meant he had a gun on him someplace, and the last thing he wanted was a bullet hole in him, since he’d been avoiding that very scenario over the past few months.
He had no intention of spilling his guts to the man. If anything, Damien felt shoved out when he should have been the one at Miki’s side. For the first time since he’d hugged his friend tight to his broken body, he resented having to share Sinjun with Kane.
Even if he was too much of a coward to stand in the stink of his insanity to hold Miki’s hand.
“Fuck.” The word didn’t seem hard enough, not caustic enough to put his disgust behind. Taking another drag, he tilted his head back and tried again. “Fucking son of a bitch.”
If only he knew who he was swearing at, Kane or himself.
Donal said nothing, watching him with those Irish wolf eyes, and waited, patient and stoic. Sipping his own coffee, he shifted and stared out into the nearly empty parking lot, a light misting rain sparkling over the convoy of SUV tanks the Morgans drove to the hospital.
Damien longed to close his hand and punch the man in the face, knocking his smug, wise expression clean off. If only he didn’t need his hand to play the guitar. And, he thought as he eyed the man, Donal wasn’t able to take him apart with his pinkies.
“He talks about ye, our Miki does,” Donal said to the rain, loud enough for Damien to hear him, but the man’s gaze never wavered from the encroaching torrent.