Ball & Chain

“Oh God, did I really just say that?” Ty asked, voice hushed.



Kelly cleared his throat, looking indecisive. He finally took a step for the door. “I’ll go after him.”



“No,” Ty held out a hand. “No, I . . . I’ll go talk to him.”



He stood rooted to the spot for a few more seconds before he seemed to work up the courage to head for the door. He closed it gently behind him, leaving Zane and Kelly in the uncomfortable silence left behind.



Kelly glanced at Zane and smiled weakly. “Good times, huh?”



Zane shook his head. “I hope Nick kicks his ass.”



“Me too.” Kelly frowned. “Maybe we should . . .”



“Follow them?” Zane provided. “Yeah, definitely.”



Ty found Nick sitting on the very edge of the cliff, perched on a rocky outcropping that didn’t threaten to shoot him over the edge like the grassy parts did, his feet dangling over the side. Ty hesitated to move closer, finally fighting past his innate fear of falling in order to edge up to the cliff and sit. He settled down beside Nick, gravity pulling at his legs, the cold rock beneath him threatening to pitch him over the edge to the rocky sea below.



“I don’t guess we could have a heart-to-heart somewhere less likely to end in you pushing me off a cliff, could we?” he asked wryly.



Nick didn’t answer. He was gazing past his own feet at the whitecaps glowing in the moonlight.



Ty was finding it hard to breathe against the tightness in his chest. They’d had their fights over the years, some of them just as nasty as the words they’d exchanged minutes ago. Nick always gave as good as he got, though, so him just walking away scared Ty. Truly scared him. Everything about Nick had felt different since they’re returned home from deployment, and Ty didn’t know what to do about it.



“As soon as it came out of my mouth, I tried to take it back,” he whispered.



Nick lifted his head and sighed.



“Your father doesn’t deserve for you to care. I know that, Nick. I know that. And you’ve always been there for me, even when you probably should have told me to go fuck myself.”



Nick didn’t respond. He ducked his head again and swiped his hand over his chin.



“I was wrong,” Ty tried. “I know what you’ve done. I know what you are. I was . . . are you even listening to me?”



“You’re an asshole, Tyler,” Nick said. “But I’ve known that from the start. That’s the reason we’ve stayed friends.”



“Because we’re both assholes?”



“Yep. You really think anything you say can hurt my feelings?”



“Well . . .”



Nick huffed and shook his head.



“I haven’t been a very good friend to you,” Ty said, almost choking on the sentiment. “Not nearly as good as you deserve.”



Nick finally looked at him. “You earned my loyalty when you sat beside me on that bus to Parris Island. And every day after. So the times you want to be a complete cockholster like tonight, I tend to overlook it.”



Ty tried hard not smile. He snorted quietly, then bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. “I appreciate that.”



“Shut up.”



“Okay.”



They sat in silence, both staring out at the water, both knowing the conversation wasn’t done. When Nick spoke again, he didn’t preface it with anything, not even an audible inhalation.



“You need to stop drinking in front of Zane.”



Ty nodded slowly. “I realized that the other night. Did he say something to you?”



“No. But it’s hard for him regardless, and you’re a sloppy drunk.”



Ty nodded again. It wasn’t anything he didn’t already know or hadn’t told himself. He’d needed to hear it from someone else, though. Nick had always been good at that.



The silence threatened to return when Nick chose not to expound on his advice. When he spoke again, he changed tacks faster than Ty usually did.



“My dad is dying.”



Ty glanced at him, struggling with his immediate reaction to the news. Finally, he just went with it. “Good.”



Nick nodded. “That was my first thought, too.”



Understanding finally dawned on Ty. “And you been feeling guilty ever since, right?”



Nick shrugged. “I’ll always feel guilty.”



“Is that what’s been going on with you? I know you have Kelly now, but . . . if you need to talk about it, I’m still here. I’m still here.”



“He needs a new liver,” Nick said, still staring off into the water. “And I’m the only one in the family who might be a match to his blood type and size.”



“He wants a part of your liver?” Ty blurted. “Well, fuck him!”



Nick laughed.



Ty wavered between outrage and fear. “Are you going to do it?”



“I don’t know.”



“Nick . . .”



“If I don’t do it,” Nick started, his voice low and calm like it almost always was, “I might as well be putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. That’ll be on me, not him.”



“No one would blame you.”



Nick didn’t answer. He stared off into the night for several minutes. Both of them were silent. Then Nick lowered his head and brought his hand up to his eyes. His broad shoulders slumped like he was finally bending under a huge weight, and he gasped for air.



Ty scrambled closer to him, the cliff’s edge always in the back of his mind, and put his arm around Nick. Nick collapsed into him, and Ty cradled his head against his chest, beginning the rocking motion that always brought him comfort when he needed it.



It wasn’t the first time one of them had held the other when he broke down like this, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.



Ty patted Nick’s hair and rested his chin on top of his head. Nick had stood like a rock in a tempest his entire life, rain beating at him, the tides trying to carve away his soul, the relentless howl of the wind always at his shores. But Nick was the first to smile, the first to laugh, the first to joke. He was the first to put his shoulder to yours when the storm came calling.



He deserved more than a family who turned their backs on him. More than a lifetime of second best. And he damn well deserved more from Ty than to be merely an afterthought when Ty needed help.



The more Ty thought of it, of the way Nick’s smile could light an entire room despite how broken he had always been, the angrier he became. His body began to tremble and he held Nick tighter. Tears came unbidden to his eyes and he hung his head, ashamed to realize he wasn’t worthy of the loyalty Nick had always given him. He would never be worthy.



“I’m sorry,” he gasped. He ignored the tears and kept talking. “I’m sorry I’ve been a shitty friend. And I’m sorry about Eli. If we’d listened to you, then he’d still be alive. You were right, and I’m so goddamned sorry he’s gone.”



“Damn you, Ty,” Nick said, his voice muffled by his own tears and Ty’s chest.



“You were right then, and you’re right now about talking to Burns. I’ll go with you, okay? We’ll talk to him together.”



Nick huffed a breath and sniffed. “You better not be getting snot in my hair,” he finally said.



Their laughter was a pitiful mixture of sniffles and snickers. It was the only way either of them knew to combat the pain and sadness.



“Listen, your dad . . . I don’t want you to do it because you’re my brother, and I love you, and you deserve to live your own life.” Ty cupped Nick’s face between both hands. His voice was stronger when he spoke again. “You’ve spent your whole life trying to prove to yourself that you’re a good man. Well, you are. I may not be one, but I know one when I see him, and you’re the best there is. So don’t you dare go off and risk yourself for him if you’re just trying to prove that to yourself again, you understand? I don’t want you to do it. But if you do, I’ll be right there with you. I promise.”



Nick gave a single nod.



“I’ll be there.” Ty met his eyes for a few more seconds, then released him and sat straighter. He wiped at his face, still sniffing. “Damn you.”



“Ty,” Nick grunted, smacking Ty’s chest with the back of his hand. “Is that a boat?”



Ty wiped his eyes again. “I don’t know, I can’t see anything ’cause I’m crying like a little bitch!”



“It’s a boat,” Nick insisted.



Ty squinted out over the water. He heard footsteps coming up behind them and turned to see Zane and Kelly approaching carefully. Nick scrambled to his feet and put his hand under his nose, shielding his night vision from the reflection of the moon off the waves.



“I think it’s one of the bigger launches. The tides are pushing it back in.”



Ty finally made out the flashing, bobbing emergency beacon of the boat Nick had spotted. “That’s a long way out, dude.”



“Can you swim that?” Zane asked as he came to stand beside Ty.



“We sure as fuck can. We’ll need wet suits,” Nick answered.



“Oh, hell no,” Kelly said. Nick peered at him. Kelly crossed his arms. “Fuck no. You wait until daylight to swim that shit or I’m not patching you up from the hypothermia.”



“Less than thirty hours before the ferry’s due,” Zane reminded them. “No need for drastic measures yet, okay?”



They all nodded, though Nick seemed reluctant. He stared off at the blinking lights until Kelly grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “Come on. They’ll be getting dinner together soon. We need to eat or we might start getting pissy with each other. We wouldn’t want that.”



Nick snorted and let Kelly pull him. Ty and Zane watched them walk away. They both had their heads down, watching their footing, and Kelly soon snaked his hand around Nick’s waist. Nick threw an arm over his shoulders, and it was like the most natural thing in the world for both of them. Ty still wasn’t quite processing the two of them as a couple, but nothing about them felt wrong when he watched them like this.



Zane tapped his shoulder. “Can we please move the fuck away from this cliff?”



Ty scooted backward, then crawled until he felt he was a safe distance away before taking to his feet. Zane laughed at him the whole time.



“Bastard knows I’m scared of heights,” Ty mumbled. He brushed at his knees and then his ass, but the wet grass had soaked through his jeans. They started off toward the gardens and the mansion beyond.



“What did he mean when he said you earned his loyalty on the bus to Parris Island?” Zane asked quietly.



Ty sighed in the darkness. “You heard the whole thing?”



Zane shrugged apologetically. “We were afraid someone would get tossed off the cliff.”



“Valid.” They walked in silence for a few seconds before Ty cleared his throat. “When we were loaded onto the bus for Basic, we were all pretty much young and stupid and scared, you know? Kids from all different places, all different backgrounds. Some of them were nervous and chatty, some of them were too scared to talk. There were a couple loners who we all kind of pegged as guys who wouldn’t make the psych cut.”



Zane snorted.



“I remember the first time I saw Nick. Big kid, you know? I mean he’s a big guy now, but he was already almost that size to start with. Most of us at seventeen or eighteen, we could fit three to a fucking bus seat. The red hair and the green eyes, he was kind of hard to miss. He was sitting on a bench, ramrod straight. A couple guys were kind of poking fun at him for trying to pretend he was already a Marine with the posture. And a bunch of us had noticed he had a black eye, but his knuckles weren’t bruised. They were on him because he’d obviously been in a fight but hadn’t fought back or even defended himself.”



Ty had to stop and shake the memory a little before he could continue. It still made him angry. Zane was silent, letting him gather his thoughts.



“Through all that shit they were talking, Nick never said a word. He just sat there and watched them. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look amused. He was just . . . sitting there, blank. And for some reason I was fascinated by it, so I watched him. I mean, one look at him and you could tell Nick was a hardass. I remember thinking, this is someone with restraint. This is someone who’ll take a punch to the face and walk away instead of brawling. This is someone I need to know, because I knew I’d never be that kind of person. And the more shit he took, the angrier I got for him. So when we loaded onto the bus, I made sure I sat beside him.” He began to laugh with the memory. “I had to shove a kid and tell him to keep moving to get to the seat, and I just plopped my happy ass next to him.”



Zane smirked. “I can imagine what that looked like.”



“I remember the look he gave me when I sat, like, ‘Oh my God, who is this idiot and why is he smiling?’ I introduced myself, shook his hand. And I realized, the way he reached for my hand, that the reason he’d been sitting like he had was because his ribs were hurt.”



“Jesus Christ.” Zane sounded as angry as Ty had been back then. “His dad?”



Ty nodded. “A parting gift for abandoning the family to go play hero when he should have been going to work and earning money.”



“I hope Nick lets him rot,” Zane said under his breath.



Ty nodded his agreement. He knew it probably wouldn’t happen, though, because Nick wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t do what he could to save someone, even someone as evil as his own father.