Page 103 of Lone Wolf

Then a voice told Evan that no one gets all the comfort they want in this world, so shut the fuck up and quit whining.

That voice was angry.

That meant it was trying to hide from something.

His OCD was up.

His tongue worked a lopsided bump in his left back molar. He blinked against the grit beneath his eyelids. His—

A crash from inside had him on his feet, even before he heard Tommy’s shout of distress.

He bolted into the shop through the slung-wide rear door, ARES drawn, darting through the looming lathes and mills and munition crates stamped with Cyrillic lettering, tread holding firm on the grease-slicked floor.

More sounds of thrashing across the dungeon-lit den, Evan sourcing it to the bathroom behind the lineup of test-firing tubes. He sprinted over, burst through the door.

There Tommy was, pants slung down around his ankles, toppled over and wedged between the toilet and the wall. He was exposed and the cramped room stank and he was flailing to get back up.

“Get out of here!” he yelled. “Don’t look at me! Don’t you fucking look at me!”

For leverage he grabbed at the toilet-roll holder bolted to the wall, but it ripped out and he tumbled back, legs kicking of a piece like a mermaid tail. His other hand clutched the porcelain edge of the bowl and he was more upside down than horizontal and he was stuck and the sight was well past awful.

“Get the fuck out!”

Confused, Evan pulled back. His heart was pounding. He waited at the other side of the closed door. He was sweating, rivulets pouring down his sides.

He’d never been in a situation like this, not once in his entire life.

Through the thin door he heard Tommy struggle and curse and then fall still.

Evan blinked, tried for four-square breathing but there was no breathing through this.

“Fuck,” Tommy said. And then: “I’m stuck.”

Evan stood paralyzed.

“I said I’m fucking stuck.” Tommy’s voice was laced with anger, but there was brittleness in it, too, just beneath the surface, enough brittleness to crack.

“Do you…” Evan cleared his throat. “Should I come back in?”

“What the fuck you gonna do out there?”

Evan drew in a deep breath. Held it. Kept his head pointed down and angled back. He opened the door. Still looking away, but in his peripheral he sensed Tommy in all his shame and vulnerability.

Facing mostly the other direction, he extended his hand.

Tommy clasped it. Calluses and dry skin, the bite of ragged nails.

The two men almost never touched.

Evan hoisted him up and he came lurchingly, bracing against the wall, and then he was back on the pot and Evan withdrew as fast as he could, shutting the door once more in a futile gesture of privacy.

He walked through the shop, this shop he’d known for so many years. Everything looked different now, imbued with bathos.

He was out the front door, drawing in fresh air, going to his truck, eager to drive away, away, away. He got behind the wheel and skidded out, kicking up clouds of dirt. As the fake auto shop swam into the rearview, an image came at Evan unbidden, that dimple-roofed pink-painted double-wide in Blessing, Texas, as it shrank in the rear windshield, deserving to be left behind.

The Fourth Commandment hammered at the walls of his skull, shouting him into submission—Never make it personal. Never make it personal.

One of Jack’s Commandments.