Page 24 of Omega’s Forward

Around ten some people in Barons shirts come through from the front bar. Four or five of them come over.

They are fine at first. They always are. Ozzy does the photos because Ozzy loves it, and Linus signs a kid’s sleeve, and I do three pictures and say thanks for coming out.

They’ve got their phones out, filming. Thrilled that they get to show their buddies that they had drinks with the team.

Then one of them says, “Captain. Quick one. How’s the new Rourke?”

I have done a thousand of these. There is a thing you say. You say he is getting up to speed, or you say ask the front office, or you say nothing at all and smile at the phone until they get bored.

I have had five beers and I have been sitting in that room for two hours listening to my own teammates be right about Everett fucking Rourke, dickhead owner.

“At least the old Rourke had our backs,” I say.

JP has his hand round my arm above the elbow. “All right,” he says to them, cheerful as anything. “That’s us. Thanks, boys. Big game Friday.”

He gets me out through the side door into the parking lot. Oh, I have had way too much. I’m staggering.

That’s dumb too. I’m not normally a drinker. But I needed to let off steam.

I leave my truck in the lot and let JP drive me home.

He pulls up at my gate and does the code. He drives me up to the door.

“Go to bed,” he says. “Drink some water.”

“JP, I wanna tell you something.”

“I know, bud. I love you too. Go to bed.”

I let myself in. The hall light is off. There is a line of light under the guest room door at the far end and I stand in my own hallway for a bit, looking at it.

His scent is all through the house.

I get a glass of water and drink half of it. I do not go down that hallway.

I go up to my own room and get my boots off and lie down on the bed in my clothes, and the ceiling moves a bit, and I think about his hands in my hoodie until I go under.

8. Everett

My phone goes off at midnight with an overly loud squawk that has me sitting upright and gasping. I don’t have any apps that make that sound.

I reach for it, still blinking and stuck inside some dream I was having about Callahan.

It’s the Bureau. Check-in time. Fuck’s sake.

I blink again and reach across and turn on the light. We have three minutes.

The fist on my door arrives ninety seconds later.

I open it. The scent of the beer arrives before he does. He’s still dressed from wherever he’s been, shirt untucked, eyes heavy, one hand braced on my door frame.

“Check-in,” he says. “We’ve got three minutes.”

“I’m aware.”

We both have to be in the frame. That is the entire humiliating point of the exercise. He holds the phone up and out, and I step in beside him, and he is a furnace. Beer and woodsmoke, and the woodsmoke is winning.

“Closer,” he says. “You’re cut off.”