New excerpts from Fish & Chips
For all you readers who have stuck with us: here are a couple of short excerpts from the upcoming release Fish & Chips, Book 3 of the Cut & Run series. Abigail and I tried to choose carefully so that between these excerpts and the sneak peek from the back of Sticks & Stones, you should get a pretty good idea of the flavor of the book. Enjoy!
Fish & Chips is now up on the Coming Soon page at Dreamspinner Press! It will be available in paperback and several kinds of eBook on Dec. 6.
Cut & Run Series Book Three: Sequel to Sticks & Stones
==
Excerpt One:
Zane was now doubting his decision to eat a hearty breakfast. It wasn’t that he was scared, per se. He knew he could climb the damn wall and that he’d be fine, especially in a harness strung on a thick, anchored nylon rope. He wasn’t afraid of heights at all. It was just the whole falling thing that sort of scared him shitless.
Jingling caught his attention, and Zane watched Ty shake his shoulders out as he tried to buckle the strap of his helmet under his chin. He had fallen victim to one of the Santa hats and was wearing it over his helmet. Zane snorted and reached over to pluck it off the helmet. He tossed it to the side.
“Ready to go?” Zane asked gamely. He was glad he’d lost the rock-paper-scissors game for who would climb first.
“You look a little green,” Ty responded wryly, although the teasing of his voice lost something with the fake accent. His chin was lifted as he messed with the strap, and he was looking down his nose at Zane with a smile. With the helmet covering his platinum-blond hair, he looked like himself again, even if he didn’t sound like it.
Zane wrinkled his nose and stepped close enough to push Ty’s hands away from the buckle, flipping over the twisted strap on one side so it buckled easily. “We’ll be hooked up to something. I can deal. I’m sure it’s a hell of a view from forty feet up.”
“Yeah,” Ty said with a laugh. His voice was full of sadistic glee. “You don’t get seasick, do you? Even on a ship this size, I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the roll up there.”
“I have no idea,” Zane said honestly, setting his hands on his hips. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Even though they’d been settling into their roles on board quite comfortably for the last two days, it was still a slight surprise when Ty stepped closer and gave him a quick, chaste kiss on the lips before turning toward the gray wall covered with red, yellow, green, and black handholds, marking the varying degrees of climbing difficulty.
Zane stood there smiling like an idiot as Manny made certain the belay device attached to Zane’s harness was operating properly, telling him that he was Ty’s counterweight and instructing him how to use the simple device the rope passed through. It could be easily secured in case of a fall, using Zane’s weight to counter Ty’s if he slipped. Zane looked up the length of the rope to the anchor at the top of the wall and knew he’d need to keep the rope close to taut, just in case. Knowing Ty, he’d fall and swing free like an acrobat just to make Zane’s harness abuse his fun parts.
“Okay, Extreme Sports Ken, go for it,” Zane said after resettling his sunglasses.
Ty looked back at him in exasperation, one hand on a notch in the rock wall. “Here’s where I ask, ‘on belay?’, and if you’re prepared to catch me, if and when I fall to my possible doom, you reply, ‘belay on’,” Ty told him.
“Belay on,” Zane reported dutifully, a few of his academy memories filtering back. He’d had a short course in rappelling way back when, but it hadn’t stuck with him, and it wasn’t quite the same as rock climbing. The commands sounded familiar, though.
Ty cleared his throat against a laugh and said, “Climbing,” before hefting himself up onto the wall. Manny leaned over and murmured to Zane, and Zane obediently announced, “Climb on,” as he watched Ty’s every move.
Ty wore a pair of green athletic shorts and a navy blue sleeveless shirt this morning, both relatively tight to avoid loose clothing getting caught in the ropes or snagging on the wall, and it was easy to see his defined muscles flexing as he deftly moved from one grip to the next. It was obvious he had done this before, and not just on the odd weekend excursion. Force Recon probably got pretty familiar with this kind of thing.
Ty climbed with efficiency and precision of movement, making decisions about which hand- or foothold he would move to quickly and scaling the wall like a spider monkey. It was common sense: the longer he stayed clinging to one spot, the more fatigued his muscles would be and the more difficult it would be to continue upward.
Ty didn’t dally. He was heading steadily toward the middle of the wall and the large outcropping there.
“Great,” Zane muttered. “He would decide to take the toughest route.” As the rope grew taut in Zane’s hands, he carefully let loose some length so Ty could keep moving diagonally. The higher Ty got, the more Zane wished he’d been more insistent about staying in bed this morning, although he knew it was silly. Ty was a highly trained Marine, and a little rock wall like this was amateur hour to him. The thought really didn’t help Zane feel any better, though. Again he thought of Ty swinging around like a circus clown, and he pulled at his harness uncomfortably.
“Your friend’s a good climber,” Manny said appreciatively as he watched Ty’s agile ascent.
Ty slowed to a stop, briefly fussing with the line that had gotten tangled. “Tension!” he called down.
Zane pulled carefully on the line to tighten it up. “Yeah, he loves this kind of stuff,” he replied absently, not taking his eyes off his partner.
As soon as the slack was taken up, Ty started up and over again. He was definitely moving toward the outcropping because it offered a more difficult climb. The outward incline meant the rope would take less of his weight as he went, and it was more taxing on his limbs as he pulled himself higher. Even from twenty-five to thirty feet below, Zane could see the muscles of Ty’s shoulders and forearms bulging as he neared the tip of the outcrop. It then occurred to Zane that he hadn’t even thought about Ty’s fingers. The surgery on Ty’s hand hadn’t been all that long ago, and Zane hadn’t asked if Ty had regained the strength and flexibility he was used to.
As if in answer to his question, Ty gave a short shout of frustration from above as he tried to grip one of the outermost notches with that hand. He pulled it back and shook it, looking down at them as he clung to the underside of the outcropping. He leaned much of his weight on the harness, more hanging in mid-air as he kept his hand on the wall than he relied on the holds. Zane thought he might be grinning.
“Fingers!” Ty called down, shaking them.
Zane snorted. “Try using them!” he yelled back up, just to be annoying.
“I did! They didn’t like it!” Ty called down.
Zane could see him searching for a different hold, probably one that wouldn’t tax those weak fingers quite so much. Ty looked down at his harness suddenly, and at the same time Zane felt the rope lose tension in his hand. Zane pulled down on the rope to take up the slack, figuring Ty was preoccupied enough with his fingers not to call out.
Ty looked down at them in consternation. “Tension!” he shouted down, even as the rope grew slack once again in Zane’s hands. If Ty’s end was slack, Zane’s should have been getting tauter, not the other way around.
“What’s with the rope?” Zane asked Manny as he kept pulling on it without finding any resistance. He saw Ty glance down at him and then look up sharply, his entire body jerking in alarm at some warning that Zane couldn’t hear or see. Ty’s free hand scrabbled at his harness, almost in a panic that was highly uncharacteristic of him.
“Rock!” Ty called out, his voice just as panicked as his actions. The warning that an object was falling confused Zane just as much as realizing Ty was trying to untie the securing knot that bound the rope to his harness. The rope in Zane’s hand suddenly thumped to the ground at his feet, and there was a whipping noise as dozens of feet of the heavy blue nylon rope fell from the heights of the rock wall.
“Hold on!” Zane yelled as he realized the anchor rope had just snapped. There was nothing he could do but watch, shocked and sick and scared as Ty fought to find purchase on the wall more than thirty feet above him.
As the rope fell, Ty was still trying to free himself from it. People waiting in line for their turn at the wall began to scream as they saw the two halves of the rope falling. The shorter end of the broken rope, the one still attached to Ty, fell past him just as he whipped the knot loose and threw it away from his body. But the weight of the heavy, falling rope was enough to pull at him even as he let it go, and Zane watched in horror as it dragged his body away from the outcropping.
Ty gave a wordless shout as his legs and one arm swung free from the wall. The rope landed with an anticlimactic thud several yards away from where Zane stood. Thirty feet above, Ty dangled from the outcropping by one hand, body twisting as if buffeted by the ocean breeze.
Excerpt Two:
Zane turned in place where he stood outside a ritzy accessory store and watched Ty finger through a display of sunglasses. Ty turned to look at him, wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses just like the ones he’d left at home, the tag sticking out sideways at his temple. Zane smiled despite his mixed feelings. “Don’t you have a pair like that already?” A legitimate question, Ty or Del.
Ty took them off and looked at them, smirking. “You can never have too much awesome,” he claimed. He set them back down and slid his hands down his sides, where his pockets should have been. He grumbled about the soft linen pants and searched for something else to do with his hands as they continued to stroll. He was getting twitchy, and his mood had steadily declined since dinner.
Whether the cause was the prospect of dealing with Norina Bianchi or the conversation they’d had regarding jealousy was anyone’s guess. Zane had started casting around for something shiny, sweet, or sticky to throw in Ty’s path as an emotional diversion.
“If we want dessert later, there’s no lack of places for snacks,” Zane said as they passed by a bakery kiosk and a soda shoppe. It was just one floor of three on the impressive, very brightly decorated promenade, sort of a high-class carpeted mini-mall and food court with anything from an Orange Julius to a Godiva Chocolatier and a cheap T-shirt shop to a Tiffany & Co. store. All complete with a twenty-foot-tall glittering Christmas tree in the center of it.
“I would kill you for some gummi bears right now,” Ty muttered. He reached out and laced his fingers into Zane’s, apparently deciding that it was the best thing to do with his otherwise idle hands.
“You should have looked when we were in the store,” Zane said, moving them along the walkway. They’d found condoms in a remarkably discreet corner of a mini-grocery, but instead of risking exposure by purchasing them, Ty had palmed a box. When they’d stepped outside the store again, Zane had discovered the box safety tucked away inside his suit jacket. One day Zane was going to find out how Ty had done that, and how he always managed to nab Zane’s cigarettes without Zane knowing. Tonight, though, he was just grateful for his partner’s loose morals. “You want to go back and get some?”
Ty sighed unhappily and turned his head from side to side, cracking his neck. “Let’s go back to the computers and see if there’s news from home. That shot I took of Armen has to have produced something.”
“No,” Zane decided, reaching out to take Ty’s elbow and pull him closer. “We told them we’d check in every morning. We have to stay predictable. And before you suggest it, we’re not sitting in that cabin for days while we wait for some predetermined time to arrive. We need to be out and about, and there’s got to be stuff here to keep us amused.” He started pulling Ty along, though his “husband” was reluctant.
“I hate you a little bit right now,” Ty claimed, though he was conceding to the logic.
“And that’s different than usual, how? Stop pouting, doll,” Zane drawled as he squeezed Ty’s hand. He glanced at his partner. “Surely we can find something to make you smile.”
Ty stepped closer, squeezing Zane’s hand back as he lowered his voice, losing the fake accent. “If you keep patronizing me I’m going to kick your ass when we’re alone. And you won’t have sex for two weeks, just remember that.”
Annoyed, Zane stopped in place, turned Ty toward him, and put one hand on Ty’s face, thumb under his chin, to make him look up. “I’m teasing, and you know it. There’s no reason for you to be this cranky,” Zane said, injecting a tinge of warning into his voice, and it wasn’t Corbin’s influence.
Ty narrowed his eyes, his head tilting slightly in the way it usually did in the ring before Zane ended up on the mat. But he seemed to remain aware of the other passengers on the promenade and the fact that they could always be observed. He said nothing, just exhaling heavily in response. Playing his role, whether he liked it or not. Zane frowned. It wasn’t like Ty to be this difficult, even if he wasn’t thrilled with his part in the case.
Conscious of the people walking around them, he released Ty’s chin, and when Zane spoke, he kept his voice very low, deliberately dropping Corbin’s drawl. “Is there something really wrong I need to know about?”
“Look at me!” Ty hissed. “Do I look like I’m having a good time here? Stop enjoying yourself so much, you prick.”
It was difficult to decide between a huff and a laugh, but regardless, Zane rolled his eyes. “Suck it up,” he answered. “You’ve had a hell of a lot worse.” He slid his arm around Ty’s waist and got him walking again. “What you need is a drink,” he announced.
“Damn straight,” Ty said almost angrily. “But I can’t drink because who’s an alcoholic?” he asked sarcastically. He was obviously frustrated, both by the role he had to play and by the lack of outlet for the frustration. He was tense despite all the “relaxing” he’d been doing, and Zane knew he’d be spoiling for a fight by the time they got to the cabin if he didn’t find something for him to get into first.
But this Ty not drinking thing? Zane needed to put a stop to that thought right now. He caught Ty by both shoulders, met his eyes, and spoke clearly but quietly. “Listen to me. You don’t have to quit drinking just because I have. Seriously.”
“I’m not that cruel,” Ty told him frankly. “I’ve seen the look in your eyes when alcohol is mentioned. It’s the same look you give me, so I know what you’re thinking.”
“It’s not cruel. And what do you mean, the same look I give you?” Zane asked, frowning a little. “Whatever look you’re seeing in my eyes isn’t anything other than me wondering if you’re wondering if I’m gonna ditch the wagon and drink up.”
Ty shook his head patiently. “It’s the look of an addict seeing something he wants,” he said without malice. He spoke with an almost kind frankness that was rare for Ty, made even more surreal by the British accent he was again employing. He held up three fingers. “Alcohol, drugs, me. You think of all of those things in the same way. I’m the only one that won’t hurt you to indulge, and I’m not cruel enough to combine two of them in front of you.”
The surprise kept Zane quiet for a few moments, and he had to gather his thoughts before he could reply. Why he was constantly surprised by how observant and insightful Ty could be, he didn’t know. “I do appreciate the thought. But really, I can honestly tell you that as long as you’re around, it’s no contest.”
Ty snorted and looked away, his eyes darting back and forth over the sparse crowd of passengers shopping along the promenade. He came to some sort of decision, though, and he nodded and glanced back at Zane uncomfortably. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Fish & Chips is now up on the Coming Soon page at Dreamspinner Press! It will be available in paperback and several kinds of eBook on Dec. 6.
Cut & Run Series Book Three: Sequel to Sticks & Stones
==
Excerpt One:
Zane was now doubting his decision to eat a hearty breakfast. It wasn’t that he was scared, per se. He knew he could climb the damn wall and that he’d be fine, especially in a harness strung on a thick, anchored nylon rope. He wasn’t afraid of heights at all. It was just the whole falling thing that sort of scared him shitless.
Jingling caught his attention, and Zane watched Ty shake his shoulders out as he tried to buckle the strap of his helmet under his chin. He had fallen victim to one of the Santa hats and was wearing it over his helmet. Zane snorted and reached over to pluck it off the helmet. He tossed it to the side.
“Ready to go?” Zane asked gamely. He was glad he’d lost the rock-paper-scissors game for who would climb first.
“You look a little green,” Ty responded wryly, although the teasing of his voice lost something with the fake accent. His chin was lifted as he messed with the strap, and he was looking down his nose at Zane with a smile. With the helmet covering his platinum-blond hair, he looked like himself again, even if he didn’t sound like it.
Zane wrinkled his nose and stepped close enough to push Ty’s hands away from the buckle, flipping over the twisted strap on one side so it buckled easily. “We’ll be hooked up to something. I can deal. I’m sure it’s a hell of a view from forty feet up.”
“Yeah,” Ty said with a laugh. His voice was full of sadistic glee. “You don’t get seasick, do you? Even on a ship this size, I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the roll up there.”
“I have no idea,” Zane said honestly, setting his hands on his hips. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Even though they’d been settling into their roles on board quite comfortably for the last two days, it was still a slight surprise when Ty stepped closer and gave him a quick, chaste kiss on the lips before turning toward the gray wall covered with red, yellow, green, and black handholds, marking the varying degrees of climbing difficulty.
Zane stood there smiling like an idiot as Manny made certain the belay device attached to Zane’s harness was operating properly, telling him that he was Ty’s counterweight and instructing him how to use the simple device the rope passed through. It could be easily secured in case of a fall, using Zane’s weight to counter Ty’s if he slipped. Zane looked up the length of the rope to the anchor at the top of the wall and knew he’d need to keep the rope close to taut, just in case. Knowing Ty, he’d fall and swing free like an acrobat just to make Zane’s harness abuse his fun parts.
“Okay, Extreme Sports Ken, go for it,” Zane said after resettling his sunglasses.
Ty looked back at him in exasperation, one hand on a notch in the rock wall. “Here’s where I ask, ‘on belay?’, and if you’re prepared to catch me, if and when I fall to my possible doom, you reply, ‘belay on’,” Ty told him.
“Belay on,” Zane reported dutifully, a few of his academy memories filtering back. He’d had a short course in rappelling way back when, but it hadn’t stuck with him, and it wasn’t quite the same as rock climbing. The commands sounded familiar, though.
Ty cleared his throat against a laugh and said, “Climbing,” before hefting himself up onto the wall. Manny leaned over and murmured to Zane, and Zane obediently announced, “Climb on,” as he watched Ty’s every move.
Ty wore a pair of green athletic shorts and a navy blue sleeveless shirt this morning, both relatively tight to avoid loose clothing getting caught in the ropes or snagging on the wall, and it was easy to see his defined muscles flexing as he deftly moved from one grip to the next. It was obvious he had done this before, and not just on the odd weekend excursion. Force Recon probably got pretty familiar with this kind of thing.
Ty climbed with efficiency and precision of movement, making decisions about which hand- or foothold he would move to quickly and scaling the wall like a spider monkey. It was common sense: the longer he stayed clinging to one spot, the more fatigued his muscles would be and the more difficult it would be to continue upward.
Ty didn’t dally. He was heading steadily toward the middle of the wall and the large outcropping there.
“Great,” Zane muttered. “He would decide to take the toughest route.” As the rope grew taut in Zane’s hands, he carefully let loose some length so Ty could keep moving diagonally. The higher Ty got, the more Zane wished he’d been more insistent about staying in bed this morning, although he knew it was silly. Ty was a highly trained Marine, and a little rock wall like this was amateur hour to him. The thought really didn’t help Zane feel any better, though. Again he thought of Ty swinging around like a circus clown, and he pulled at his harness uncomfortably.
“Your friend’s a good climber,” Manny said appreciatively as he watched Ty’s agile ascent.
Ty slowed to a stop, briefly fussing with the line that had gotten tangled. “Tension!” he called down.
Zane pulled carefully on the line to tighten it up. “Yeah, he loves this kind of stuff,” he replied absently, not taking his eyes off his partner.
As soon as the slack was taken up, Ty started up and over again. He was definitely moving toward the outcropping because it offered a more difficult climb. The outward incline meant the rope would take less of his weight as he went, and it was more taxing on his limbs as he pulled himself higher. Even from twenty-five to thirty feet below, Zane could see the muscles of Ty’s shoulders and forearms bulging as he neared the tip of the outcrop. It then occurred to Zane that he hadn’t even thought about Ty’s fingers. The surgery on Ty’s hand hadn’t been all that long ago, and Zane hadn’t asked if Ty had regained the strength and flexibility he was used to.
As if in answer to his question, Ty gave a short shout of frustration from above as he tried to grip one of the outermost notches with that hand. He pulled it back and shook it, looking down at them as he clung to the underside of the outcropping. He leaned much of his weight on the harness, more hanging in mid-air as he kept his hand on the wall than he relied on the holds. Zane thought he might be grinning.
“Fingers!” Ty called down, shaking them.
Zane snorted. “Try using them!” he yelled back up, just to be annoying.
“I did! They didn’t like it!” Ty called down.
Zane could see him searching for a different hold, probably one that wouldn’t tax those weak fingers quite so much. Ty looked down at his harness suddenly, and at the same time Zane felt the rope lose tension in his hand. Zane pulled down on the rope to take up the slack, figuring Ty was preoccupied enough with his fingers not to call out.
Ty looked down at them in consternation. “Tension!” he shouted down, even as the rope grew slack once again in Zane’s hands. If Ty’s end was slack, Zane’s should have been getting tauter, not the other way around.
“What’s with the rope?” Zane asked Manny as he kept pulling on it without finding any resistance. He saw Ty glance down at him and then look up sharply, his entire body jerking in alarm at some warning that Zane couldn’t hear or see. Ty’s free hand scrabbled at his harness, almost in a panic that was highly uncharacteristic of him.
“Rock!” Ty called out, his voice just as panicked as his actions. The warning that an object was falling confused Zane just as much as realizing Ty was trying to untie the securing knot that bound the rope to his harness. The rope in Zane’s hand suddenly thumped to the ground at his feet, and there was a whipping noise as dozens of feet of the heavy blue nylon rope fell from the heights of the rock wall.
“Hold on!” Zane yelled as he realized the anchor rope had just snapped. There was nothing he could do but watch, shocked and sick and scared as Ty fought to find purchase on the wall more than thirty feet above him.
As the rope fell, Ty was still trying to free himself from it. People waiting in line for their turn at the wall began to scream as they saw the two halves of the rope falling. The shorter end of the broken rope, the one still attached to Ty, fell past him just as he whipped the knot loose and threw it away from his body. But the weight of the heavy, falling rope was enough to pull at him even as he let it go, and Zane watched in horror as it dragged his body away from the outcropping.
Ty gave a wordless shout as his legs and one arm swung free from the wall. The rope landed with an anticlimactic thud several yards away from where Zane stood. Thirty feet above, Ty dangled from the outcropping by one hand, body twisting as if buffeted by the ocean breeze.
Excerpt Two:
Zane turned in place where he stood outside a ritzy accessory store and watched Ty finger through a display of sunglasses. Ty turned to look at him, wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses just like the ones he’d left at home, the tag sticking out sideways at his temple. Zane smiled despite his mixed feelings. “Don’t you have a pair like that already?” A legitimate question, Ty or Del.
Ty took them off and looked at them, smirking. “You can never have too much awesome,” he claimed. He set them back down and slid his hands down his sides, where his pockets should have been. He grumbled about the soft linen pants and searched for something else to do with his hands as they continued to stroll. He was getting twitchy, and his mood had steadily declined since dinner.
Whether the cause was the prospect of dealing with Norina Bianchi or the conversation they’d had regarding jealousy was anyone’s guess. Zane had started casting around for something shiny, sweet, or sticky to throw in Ty’s path as an emotional diversion.
“If we want dessert later, there’s no lack of places for snacks,” Zane said as they passed by a bakery kiosk and a soda shoppe. It was just one floor of three on the impressive, very brightly decorated promenade, sort of a high-class carpeted mini-mall and food court with anything from an Orange Julius to a Godiva Chocolatier and a cheap T-shirt shop to a Tiffany & Co. store. All complete with a twenty-foot-tall glittering Christmas tree in the center of it.
“I would kill you for some gummi bears right now,” Ty muttered. He reached out and laced his fingers into Zane’s, apparently deciding that it was the best thing to do with his otherwise idle hands.
“You should have looked when we were in the store,” Zane said, moving them along the walkway. They’d found condoms in a remarkably discreet corner of a mini-grocery, but instead of risking exposure by purchasing them, Ty had palmed a box. When they’d stepped outside the store again, Zane had discovered the box safety tucked away inside his suit jacket. One day Zane was going to find out how Ty had done that, and how he always managed to nab Zane’s cigarettes without Zane knowing. Tonight, though, he was just grateful for his partner’s loose morals. “You want to go back and get some?”
Ty sighed unhappily and turned his head from side to side, cracking his neck. “Let’s go back to the computers and see if there’s news from home. That shot I took of Armen has to have produced something.”
“No,” Zane decided, reaching out to take Ty’s elbow and pull him closer. “We told them we’d check in every morning. We have to stay predictable. And before you suggest it, we’re not sitting in that cabin for days while we wait for some predetermined time to arrive. We need to be out and about, and there’s got to be stuff here to keep us amused.” He started pulling Ty along, though his “husband” was reluctant.
“I hate you a little bit right now,” Ty claimed, though he was conceding to the logic.
“And that’s different than usual, how? Stop pouting, doll,” Zane drawled as he squeezed Ty’s hand. He glanced at his partner. “Surely we can find something to make you smile.”
Ty stepped closer, squeezing Zane’s hand back as he lowered his voice, losing the fake accent. “If you keep patronizing me I’m going to kick your ass when we’re alone. And you won’t have sex for two weeks, just remember that.”
Annoyed, Zane stopped in place, turned Ty toward him, and put one hand on Ty’s face, thumb under his chin, to make him look up. “I’m teasing, and you know it. There’s no reason for you to be this cranky,” Zane said, injecting a tinge of warning into his voice, and it wasn’t Corbin’s influence.
Ty narrowed his eyes, his head tilting slightly in the way it usually did in the ring before Zane ended up on the mat. But he seemed to remain aware of the other passengers on the promenade and the fact that they could always be observed. He said nothing, just exhaling heavily in response. Playing his role, whether he liked it or not. Zane frowned. It wasn’t like Ty to be this difficult, even if he wasn’t thrilled with his part in the case.
Conscious of the people walking around them, he released Ty’s chin, and when Zane spoke, he kept his voice very low, deliberately dropping Corbin’s drawl. “Is there something really wrong I need to know about?”
“Look at me!” Ty hissed. “Do I look like I’m having a good time here? Stop enjoying yourself so much, you prick.”
It was difficult to decide between a huff and a laugh, but regardless, Zane rolled his eyes. “Suck it up,” he answered. “You’ve had a hell of a lot worse.” He slid his arm around Ty’s waist and got him walking again. “What you need is a drink,” he announced.
“Damn straight,” Ty said almost angrily. “But I can’t drink because who’s an alcoholic?” he asked sarcastically. He was obviously frustrated, both by the role he had to play and by the lack of outlet for the frustration. He was tense despite all the “relaxing” he’d been doing, and Zane knew he’d be spoiling for a fight by the time they got to the cabin if he didn’t find something for him to get into first.
But this Ty not drinking thing? Zane needed to put a stop to that thought right now. He caught Ty by both shoulders, met his eyes, and spoke clearly but quietly. “Listen to me. You don’t have to quit drinking just because I have. Seriously.”
“I’m not that cruel,” Ty told him frankly. “I’ve seen the look in your eyes when alcohol is mentioned. It’s the same look you give me, so I know what you’re thinking.”
“It’s not cruel. And what do you mean, the same look I give you?” Zane asked, frowning a little. “Whatever look you’re seeing in my eyes isn’t anything other than me wondering if you’re wondering if I’m gonna ditch the wagon and drink up.”
Ty shook his head patiently. “It’s the look of an addict seeing something he wants,” he said without malice. He spoke with an almost kind frankness that was rare for Ty, made even more surreal by the British accent he was again employing. He held up three fingers. “Alcohol, drugs, me. You think of all of those things in the same way. I’m the only one that won’t hurt you to indulge, and I’m not cruel enough to combine two of them in front of you.”
The surprise kept Zane quiet for a few moments, and he had to gather his thoughts before he could reply. Why he was constantly surprised by how observant and insightful Ty could be, he didn’t know. “I do appreciate the thought. But really, I can honestly tell you that as long as you’re around, it’s no contest.”
Ty snorted and looked away, his eyes darting back and forth over the sparse crowd of passengers shopping along the promenade. He came to some sort of decision, though, and he nodded and glanced back at Zane uncomfortably. “I’ll keep that in mind.”