Broken (2 page)

Because he hadn’t thrown that card away, his mom had found out about the shelter where he went almost every day. Because he hadn’t thrown that card out, a nice lady had gotten the shit beat out of her by his psycho mother. While he watched, scared, mad, and confused.

It had been two years since that happened, and it left a mark on him, one that wouldn’t ever fade. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t ever stumbled past the threshold of Calumet Christian Church, and at the same time, he wished he hadn’t taken off the few times the people there had tried to help him. If he’d let them help, if he hadn’t run when he’d suspected they were calling Social Services on him, he might have gotten away from his mother. Then again if he hadn’t ever gone there, a nice lady wouldn’t have gotten beaten just for trying to help him.

God, his mother had been mad that day.

About as mad as she sounded now, he thought. He swallowed and wished there was another way out of here. The only way, though, was through the front door. Even as he eyed the windows, he knew he wouldn’t get them open without her hearing. He was pretty fast, but still . . . he wasn’t going to risk trying to climb out on the fire escape when she was that mad. She just might try to push him.

He was going to have to risk the door. He could hear the sounds of breaking glass, her voice rising as she ranted and cussed.

Slipping out of the bathroom, he kept his back pressed to the wall and inched down the short hallway. She was in the kitchen. If he was quiet enough . . .

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Quinn froze. He swallowed the bile boiling up his throat and made himself look at his mother. “Nowhere.”

“Fucking liar. Worthless fucking liar.” She sneered at him, curling her lip and revealing teeth that were past the yellow stage and edging toward gray. Some were already close to black. “You taking off to that damned library again? Or are you sneaking off to one of those stupid shelters?”

He didn’t respond.

“You ain’t nothing but trash. They don’t want your kind there,” she muttered, shaking her head. Then she frowned and turned back to the mostly empty cabinets, looking at them as though she couldn’t quite understand how they’d come to be empty. “What did you do with my drinks?”

“Nothing.” He jammed his hands into the grubby pockets of his jeans and stared at the floor. He watched her from under his lashes, though. Watched. Waited.

Part of him wanted to tell her that she’d finished up the rest of her tequila the night before and she’d run out of whiskey a few days earlier. But he wasn’t going to do that. He liked keeping his teeth in his mouth, and the last time he’d reminded her she’d finished all of her booze, she’d tried to knock a few out. Or least it had felt that way.

“Bullshit. Somebody had to go and drink it.”

Somebody did—you.
Still, as much as he wanted to say that, Quinn kept quiet.

She glared at him. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, he could feel that angry gaze, all but burning through him. “Fucking useless brat,” she muttered. “So worthless. Why in the hell did I ever have you?”

He kept an eye on her as she lit a cigarette, watched the way her hands were shaking. Fuck. That was bad. When she got the shakes, it was always bad.

His mind raced furiously. He needed to get out of there. He could almost hear her ticking, a time bomb ready to go off. He swallowed the bile that burned in his throat and looked up, shoving his long hair back from his face. “I thought maybe you had stashed something under the sink in the bathroom the last time that Sam guy was here.”

She had . . . but then she’d drunk it the next day. But she never remembered drinking the booze.

Just like he’d hoped, she took off down the narrow hallway, making a beeline for the bathroom. The second her back was turned, he headed for the door, pausing only long enough to grab the backpack he always kept tucked behind the ragged couch. She yelled from the bathroom, but he didn’t wait.

No way. No how.

HIS belly was full, pleasantly so, and he was wearing some clothes that were the closest to new that he’d had in a good long while. The youth center had sponsored a clothing drive, and one of the ladies had pushed some clothes into his hands when he showed up at the shelter two days earlier.

Although they’d offered him a bed, Quinn hadn’t slept there. He’d gone back each day for a meal and a shower before walking to school. He didn’t always like going to school, but that was mostly because of the idiots there, not because of school itself.

If it wasn’t for the idiots, he’d actually like school a lot—learning shit was definitely better than hanging around anywhere close to his mother. There were times when he found himself staring at some of the kids, enviously listening to them talk about their parents, seeing a movie on the weekend, taking vacations.

Normal stuff.

Or at least he guessed it was normal. For Quinn, normal was sleeping with one eye open. Wearing clothes he’d either stolen from someplace or hand-me-down stuff he picked up at shelters. Going to bed hungry and waking up cold because she didn’t think about food or heating bills, not when she could use the money on booze or drugs.

For Quinn, normal sucked.

Standing in front of the door to their apartment, he listened to the noises coming through and wished he had headed back to the shelter instead of coming here. But he’d already spent too much time at that one—the past two days, and then a few weeks earlier, he’d been there another couple of days. If he hung around any one place too long, somebody almost always made a call to Social Services, and he wasn’t doing that shit again.

It was almost worst than home.

Besides, it was the middle of the month and that meant at some point, his mom’s caseworker would be by. Quinn needed to make sure the rattrap was as clean as he could make it, and do what he could with the drugs and stuff that she might have picked up over the past few days—and figure out how to remind her about what time of month it was without her belting him.

As much as he hated being here, going back into the system was one thing he had no desire to do.

He swallowed against the knot in his throat and rested a hand on the doorknob. She was in there screwing somebody. Quinn could hear them, grunting and groaning, sounding more like a couple of animals than two people.

He didn’t want to go in there. He shot a nervous look up and down the hall and then retreated back against the wall and slid down, settling there with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around them.

The food in his belly suddenly felt like a lead weight, and blood stained his cheeks red as the noises from the room got louder and louder.

HE’D read a book once where one of the characters said, “
Be careful what you wish for
.”

Quinn now understood that statement.

He sat in the middle of the police station, a young woman with an overly bright smile on her plump face at his side, chattering away animatedly, despite the fact that he was ignoring her.

His mother was dead.

Sometime after he’d slipped inside that night and hidden himself away in the closet where he slept, she’d overdosed. They hadn’t told him that, but he’d seen her body—he knew what dead was. Since he’d seen the drugs and the booze last night, it wasn’t a hard leap to make.

“Ms. Groman, I’d like to speak with you for a minute.” Quinn watched from under the fringe of his hair, eying the tired-looking cop standing in the doorway. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and big eyes that drooped at the corners. Those sad eyes flicked Quinn’s way and then back to study the social worker.

He barely registered her reply, just the fact that she was moving away from him, following the cop into an office. Quinn’s heart beat a little faster and he clutched the strap of his backpack with sweaty hands.

As the door shut, he sprang up and took off running.

He never even made it halfway. A burly bastard caught him, moving a lot quicker than Quinn would have guessed.

“Come on, kid . . . just relax. Nothing bad is going to happen to you here,” the cop said, his voice soft and gentle. His big dark eyes said,
Trust me
.

But Quinn knew better.

Trusting people was dangerous.

Quinn stared at the face of the boy in front of him and had to fight the urge to rub his eyes. It had been two days since he’d first met Luke, and he was still pretty sure he was hallucinating. But on the off chance that he wasn’t, he couldn’t let them know he was surprised. Or even interested.

Part of him wanted to think it was all real.

The boy had Quinn’s face, although his hair was cut neat and short, and clean. Clean, just like the clothes he wore. A dark blue sweater, a pair of jeans, and a pair of shoes that Quinn knew cost close to a hundred dollars—he knew because he’d stolen a couple and sold them for thirty bucks a pair.

His name was Luke Rafferty.

And according to the man who’d shown up in Dayton a few days ago, Luke Rafferty was his twin brother.

Twins . . . Quinn had a twin. Apparently, right after they were born, his mother had disappeared with Quinn, taken him right out of the hospital, leaving Luke behind. Quinn had no idea why—it wasn’t like she’d wanted him. She hated him. Maybe she’d done it because of this man, this quiet, soft-spoken man who claimed to be his father.

He’d said his name was Patrick, and he’d also told Quinn, “You can call me Patrick if you want—or Pat. I realize this seems strange to you, so you don’t have to call me Dad if you don’t want to.”

But there was a wistful look in his gray eyes—gray . . . just like Quinn’s—that made Quinn think the old man
wanted
Quinn to call him Dad.

Quinn wouldn’t ever admit that some part of him wanted the same thing. Earlier that day, right after they’d gotten home from the airport, Patrick had laid a hand on Luke’s shoulder, and the kid had looked up at his dad and smiled, said something that made the older guy laugh.

Patrick had hugged Luke. Hugged him and then tugged on his hair.

Quinn couldn’t remember a time when his mother had hugged him.

Not once.

Something knotted up in his throat. He blinked his eyes and tried to figure out why in the hell he felt like crying.

“I’ll be driving you into town tomorrow so you can get some clothes, some shoes. Maybe get a haircut,” Patrick said.

Quinn shoved his hair out of his eyes and sneered at Patrick. “I don’t want a haircut.”

“Fine,” Patrick said, giving him a conciliatory smile. “We’ll just stick with getting you some clothes and shoes.”

There was a hole in the bottom of Quinn’s left shoe that was bigger than his thumb and he’d been covering it with duct tape. Still, he didn’t let that keep him from glaring at Patrick and snapping, “I don’t want no damn clothes, no damn shoes, either.”