Read Online Driftwood by Harper Fox - Free Book Online Page A

hurt?”
    â€œWhat the fuck do you care?”
    â€œThe bare bloody minimum, in your case. But I’m a doctor.”
    â€œOh, yeah.” Tremaine relaxed his grip and fell back, sneering. “Right. I know you too, Doctor. Up in your ivory tower, drinking yourself to death. No girlfriend, no missus. Queer as fuck, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, you chose the wrong night to crawl out and have a grab at my Flynn.”
    â€œOh, for…” Thomas sat back on his heels. He refused to turn and look around the courtyard, which had fallen silent to listen. He couldn’t blame them. He had lived a quiet life, detached. Probably perceived as aloof. Their attention to this total and sudden exposure felt like hammer-blows to bruised skin. Flynn had stumbled over and crouched on Tremaine’s other side, his face ashen. Thomas couldn’t meet his eyes.
    â€œRob, please,” Flynn said unsteadily. “You’re pissed. Thomas hasn’t done anything to you. Let us help you up, and we’ll go home.”
    â€œDon’t need any fucking help,” Tremaine growled, and rolled lithely to his feet. Thomas braced not to take a reflexive step back—or, which he was gathering would have been worse, a step to shield Flynn. He was bemused at the impulse. Tremaine was big, but Flynn’s ability to take care of himself declared itself in every leanly muscled inch.
    The three of them stood staring at one another, a grim impasse Thomas was at a loss to know how to end. He’d just have walked away from it, had not Flynn’s distress latched itself into his heart, exerting an inexplicable steel-cable tug despite all the disasters being with him seemed to attract. “It’s all right,” he said to Flynn softly, and reaching a hand to his shoulder, made his last mistake.
    Tremaine slammed him up against the courtyard wall. If he heard Flynn’s shout or felt his restraining grip, he gave no sign. “Right!” he bellowed, nose an inch from Thomas’s. “I tell you what—you can have the little fucker. Good luck with him. Good luck with the nightmares and the novel fucking ways he comes up with of committing fucking suicide every other fucking week. Ask him why he doesn’t fly anymore. You’ll be a lovely bloody pair, actually—the fuck-up pilot and the alcoholic village quack.”
    He let Thomas go. Turned, and began to walk off. Thomas watched, immobile. Everything had started going very slow, an underwater sensation he recognised. For once he welcomed the symptoms of oncoming fugue. Like Flynn’s wave, the seventh wave, it would carry him out of here, what was left of his dignity intact. He would hear and see little, drive home efficiently, go to bed… Voices came oddly to him, distorting, crackling. He could see Flynn’s face, also near to his now. He felt the warm brush of Flynn’s palm down his cheek, almost heard his shocked, pleading voice. Thomas, don’t listen. I’m so sorry.
    What was he sorry for? Thomas looked at him for a moment. It was almost a shame that in a second’s time the cold would come down on him, extinguishing everything—rage, which he could do without, and even the exquisite pleasure of that soothing touch. He waited.
    It didn’t happen.
    â€œRobert,” he said, low, smooth as silk. Tremaine was nearly at the door, but he turned. Thomas stepped up to him. He drew back his fist, gave the other man time to see it, to know his intention, and belted him as hard as he could in the face.
    Tremaine went down—decisively this time—and this time Dr. Penrose did not care if he cracked his thick skull like a melon.

    He eased the Land Rover carefully out of its space. He was stone-cold sober now, the alcohol metabolised off in the adrenaline still blazing through his system. The knuckles of his left hand were bleeding. He had disgraced himself, absolutely. He felt wonderful. Had he raised