Page 22 of The Bright Lands

15...y???

Jesus Christ. Joel tappedBLOCK. The profile vanished from his screen without a sound.

Another cross awaited Joel over the toilet in the master suite’s bathroom. As he relieved himself, he wondered what sort of life he had escaped in his exile from this town.

He almost didn’t feel his watch tremble with a message on his wrist.

It was Dylan.

im sorry, came first. Then, after a pause:

i loved you too.

Why did this bring Joel no comfort? He flushed the toilet, splashed water on his face, fumbled with a branded Bison hand towel—he’d somehow gotten hammered on a glass of whiskey. Or was it three?

call me D. Lets fixx this.

A metallic glint caught his eye on the dresser as he made his way back across the bedroom: a gold medal embossed with a footballer. Joel, drunk as he was, could just make out the words MOST VALUABLE PLAYER on the back.

“I’m still repping,” Wesley said from the bedroom door, nodding at the medal and sounding abashed.

“I didn’t know you were MVP.”

“Oh, you know me.” Wesley stepped close. He took hold of the medal still dangling between Joel’s fingers on its crisp blue ribbon. “Mister Glory Days.”

Something curious happened: Wesley let the motion of grabbing the little gold disk carry him forward, like he’d drunkenly lost his balance, and a moment later his head had come to rest on Joel’s shoulder, his chest against Joel’s chest, his free hand—calloused and dry and very hot—cupped loosely around Joel’s bicep.

Their faces were close. Joel, somehow, always forgot just how shockingly right another man’s body felt against his own, even when it was this unwelcome. He always forgot the heat of another man’s throat.

“We’ve had more of that the last few years.”

Joel’s stomach turned. He stepped away quickly. Wesley gave him a pained pout, smoothed his shirt and tucked the golden medal in his pocket with a chuckle. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Whiskey’s too much of a blessing sometimes. Do you like mayonnaise with your burger?”

“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Joel replied. He fumbled for his keys, though he knew he shouldn’t be driving with all the booze in his blood. A car wreck would still be better than whatever sad accidents Wesley had in store for him here.

But as he reached the front door, the fog of alcohol lifted long enough for him to notice the obvious.

i loved u too, his brother’s message had read.

Loved.Past tense.

MONDAY

BLOOD

CLARK

When the call finally came, the one she had been dreading all weekend, Clark had been dreaming (like she had all weekend) of Dylan Whitley.

She was asleep in her childhood bedroom—the room down the hall, in fact, the one which she now used to lodge exercise equipment—and while her dream-self knew that she had come to bed alone a few hours before, she had stirred, in the deep dark, and realized abruptly that there was a man standing just past the corner of her bed, dripping water onto her floor.

“Troy?”

A silence. In the far distance, beyond the man in the dark, she heard a thick insect drone, the faint rumble of a large engine.

“No,” the man said, and she recognized the voice as Dylan Whitley’s, though it lacked all of his Friday swagger. Instead he spoke almost in a whisper. “There’s not much time. You need to be ready, Officer. Both of you need to be ready.”

Odd, she thought—her eyes refused to adjust to the blackness that surrounded her.