Page 62 of Ransom
"Well," he said. "That went alright."
The hallway was too bright after the storage closet. My hands shook. I shoved them in my pockets and kept walking. Winston fell into step beside me, and the space between us hummed like a wire pulled taut.
The sunlight hit us in the parking lot. The truck sat where we'd left it, the key scratch from Rex's boys dull and ugly. I climbed in the passenger side and pulled the door shut.
Winston got behind the wheel.
He didn't reach for the ignition. He sat there with both hands on top of it, staring straight ahead. The air in the cab had changed. Whatever had carried him through the closet, the easy hat, the smirk, the bandana, wasn't carrying him here. He didn't move long enough that I started to count it.
"Winston."
He turned, caught the front of my shirt in one fist, and hauled me across the center console.
His mouth was hot, and he tasted like the coffee he'd had that morning. He put his hand on my jaw to hold me where he wanted me and kissed me through the answer he hadn't gotten to give in front of Rafe. I made a sound against his mouth and he kissed me harder.
His hand slid down my chest. When he pressed his palm flat against the front of my jeans, I was already so hard it hurt. He squeezed. I bucked up into his hand and groaned. His lips went to my throat while his hand worked against me through the denim until my hips chased his palm. A sound came out of me I didn't recognize.
Then he let go.
He sat back behind the wheel. I stayed where he'd left me, slumped half across the console, my mouth wet and my handsfisted in the bench seat. He looked at me with his hat still straight and his breathing barely off. He hadn't lost control of any of it.
Winston started the engine.
"Drive me to Albuquerque," I said, righting my hat. "I want to see my brother."
I hated this building.Hated the smell of it, hated the color of the walls, hated how the automatic doors opened like they were welcoming you somewhere you wanted to be. Ten years of walking through those doors and they still opened the same way, cheerful and slow, like they had all the time in the world.
Winston walked beside me. He'd been quiet since we left the prison, sincethat man's minehad come out of his mouth like it was nothing, like he said that kind of thing every day. Maybe he did. Maybe Texas Rangers went around claiming people in prison storage closets all the time. I didn't know what to do with him.
I signed us in at the front desk and walked to the elevator, hands in my pockets.
Fourth floor, room 455. I could walk it blind. I could walk it dead. Someday I probably would, and Chance would still be lying there, and nothing would have changed except me being in the ground instead of him.
Cheerful thoughts, real productive. Keep it up, Lanza.
The elevator doors opened, and I walked through the hall without thinking past the nurses' station, past the room where an old man had died last spring. He'd slipped away between one breath and the next while I sat with Chance, holding my brother's hand and wondering if that was what it looked like.
The door stood open, blinds drawn back to let the sun in.
I stopped in the doorway.
The smell hit first, antiseptic and the faint sweet rot underneath, the smell of a body that lived without doing any of the work of living. I'd never gotten used to it. I'd never wanted to.
Chance was on his back, same as last month. Same as the month before that. Same as the ninety-some months before that. His arms were at his sides, chest rising and falling like he was asleep. They'd given him a haircut recently, and trimmed his nails and his beard. I wondered if Chance would've worn his hair like that, parted down the middle like a proper citizen instead of the hustler he was.
Don't think about it too hard.
He was twenty-six now. Somewhere in the years since the lightning, his jaw had squared out and his shoulders had broadened, and his arms had wasted to nothing under the blanket because muscles needed a man inside them to stay. The feeding tube ran into his nose. The IV ran into his arm. The catheter line ran out from under the sheet, taped to his thigh, and somebody had emptied the bag this morning.
There was a paperback on the windowsill, dog-eared three-quarters through. Maria, the day nurse, read to him on her breaks. I didn't ask what she read. I was grateful, and I didn't want to know.
I crossed to my chair. The vinyl was cracked, and the armrests were worn smooth. It was the same chair I'd been sitting in since I was eighteen years old and too stupid to know this was going to be the rest of my life.
"Hey," I said.
The room was quiet. Chance's chest rose and fell.
"I missed your birthday. I'm sorry."
