In the two-and-a-half years since Shane moved in with Marnie on her ranch, he'd lost track of the nights he'd drunkenly stumbled home after dark. Weekends, weeknights; didn't matter. Shane drank on every day that ended in Y.

It was, however, his first time drunkenly limping home.

Gravel dragged beneath the soles of his shoes, every few steps producing a wheeze from his lungs. The cold wet grass was a siren's call. Hell, even the crunchy gravel looked inviting. Shane wanted nothing more than to stop, drop, and pass out on the road. When the twinkling porch light of the ranch finally came into view, he almost collapsed in relief.

Home.

Bed.

Sleep, which was as close to death as he was allowed.

The windows to the kitchen were dark. Shane was sure everyone was asleep by now, so after finagling painfully with his keys and pushing open the front door he was startled to see the light on in the living room.

"Shane?"

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It was Friday night, his lagging brain realized. And according to the glowing red numbers on the microwave, it was almost 11:00 pm—long past the time of 9:30 he was expected to be home. A reasonable request, once a week, for Shane to stay in with his goddaughter while his aunt grabbed a drink at the saloon with her boyfriend.

"I'd say about damn time," came Marnie's irritated voice, floating nearer and flipping on the kitchen light. "But you're already too late for me to…"

Shane had been attempting to kick off his shoes without bending over, and as she entered the room he stumbled into the wall with the coat rack.

"Good heavens," she whispered.

He squinted at her through his good eye—the eye that wasn't swollen over from that first brutal punch. Frizzy auburn hair framed her face, braided to one side for sleep. Her lavender bathrobe was drawn shut, the knuckles of her soft wrinkled hands growing white as she gripped the tails around her plump waist.

She was going to freak out on him. Any second now.

"Shane!" The white-knuckle grip released her robe and she hurried over, knocking into a chair on her way. "What in god's name? Are you okay? How—how did this happen? Are you going to faint? Here—don't bother with your shoes, you need to sit down, let me help—"

…and there it was.

Shane flinched as she reached under his arm to help ease him to the table. "Watch it!" he rasped, her good intentions spiking fresh pain through his shoulder.

Tears pooled in her eyes, her voice now a whisper. "What happened?"

He pushed her hand off. Holding the wall, he walked himself to the kitchen table and sank slowly into one of the chairs.

"Shane Daniels, you tell me what happened!" she insisted, growing frantic.

"Walked into a door," Shane said dully.

"I had a phone call from Lewis when I didn't show, and he said you'd left the saloon after some kind of awful argument with Farmer Bill. An argument, Shane? An argument?"

"A door," Shane repeated, closing his unswollen eye.

Bill, that was right. That was the fucker's name, or at least the name he went by in town. Shane hadn't been able to remember it earlier. He tended to just think of the guy as 'the farmer.'

"A door?" Marnie cried. "You got into a fight!"

"Huh."

Every word. Every word was so damn difficult right now.

"Don't you do that! Don't you act like this is nothing! You look like the living dead and you can barely walk. What in the world happened?"

Fuck talking about this tonight.

With great effort, Shane tried to push back up from the table. It wasn't Marnie's fault he'd been an idiot, but every syllable was pain, every breath making him wish he'd dropped cold in the gravel a half mile back. Except, he realized too late, this motion exposed the bloody gash from the tree on the back of his hand.

"Gracious," she whispered, covering her mouth. She shook her head, eyes wide in disbelief. "Bill did this? Bill who runs The Bowery? Please, please tell me I'm wrong…"

Hearing that name again sent a dart of irritation through Shane. He pushed off the table and slowly began his way down the hall. His legs hadn't been hurt, but that fucking kidney jab had practically collapsed one side of his waist, and he tried to disguise the limp as he walked away.

Why the fuck did they call him Bill? He'd introduced himself as William; William suited the asshole better.

"Shane." Marnie followed him, as he knew she would. "Shane, I jus—"

"I started it," he hissed.

She stepped in front of him, cutting him off. "Why would you start something like this? That doesn't make any sense. It's so unlike you, what could have possibly provoked—"

"Marnie!" he wheezed, the name coming out like air from a leaky balloon. "We were drunk. Okay? Drunk."

"That's no excuse! I know you, Shane, I know you can handle your liquor just fine without resorting to violence. What kind of fool do you take me for? Was it Bill? Oh, I hate that it was Bill. We do business together all the time, and he's always so professional and charming. But then—well, he did have that altercation with Morris a few years back…"

Shane's swollen eye burned. He leaned his head against the nearest doorframe, and through grit teeth said, "It was my fault, okay? Just drop it."

"I won't!" Marnie cried. "We need to clean up that hand, and that eye. We need to get ice on you, and then you need to tell me the truth."

"We. Were. Drunk!" Shane shouted, lifting his head. The words were tight, his jaw unwilling to open very far. "It was a shitty fucking day, and yeah, I picked a fight. You happy now? For fuck's sake, just let me go to be—"

"Aunt Marnie?"

They both stopped talking. Marnie whipped around, while Shane slowly turned his head as far as his neck would allow.

Jas stood at the end of the hallway, holding a ragged stuffed panda by one ear. She was in purple cupcake pajamas, her long dark hair in a side-braid like Marnie's. Haunted eyes were glued to Shane's face.

Her bottom lip began to tremble. "Uncle Shane?"

That look. Oh god, that look. That frightened tone in her voice, ripping through Shane's chest like a strip of barbed wire, more painful than anything William had done with his fists.

Happy birthday, Garrett.

"Jas…" he whispered, dropping his head against the wall once more.

"Uncle Shane will be fine," Marnie said quickly, dabbing her eyes with the sleeve of her bathrobe. "Sweetie, you should be in bed."

"You're hurt," she whispered back.

Then she raced for him, flinging tiny arms around his waist. Shane wheezed like he'd been sucker-punched, catching her and trying not to cuss. Nine years old, less than seventy pounds, and like an anvil socking him in the stomach.

"Sweetie," Marnie repeated, kneeling down, gently prying her off. "He's in a lot of pain right now. Hugging him hurts."

Jas dropped her arms like she'd been burnt.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," she said, her lip trembling again. She backed up, clutching her panda in both hands.

Shane breathed heavily. "You didn't hurt me, kid. It's oka—"

"Jas, you ought to get some sleep. You can see Uncle Shane in the morning."

He glared at Marnie through his unswollen eye, but she was oblivious to his frustration. She smoothed Jas's hair and bent to kiss her forehead—something, Shane realized, he was incapable of right now—and nodded her back down the hall.

Jas paused, looking at Shane a final time.

"I love you," she whispered.

When Shane tried to say it back the words came out silently, just air through his open mouth.

Jas gripped her panda to her chest, turned around, and shuffled stocking feet down the hardwood floor to her room.

"We're cleaning those wounds," Marnie hissed when she was gone, and Shane was all out of energy to argue.

It was a haze, standing with his aunt in the brightly lit bathroom. He squinted against the blinding iridescent bulb above the mirror, watching his battered reflection. His bad eye was a deep berry color, the lid more than triple its normal size. The puffiness matched that of his ballooned lip and swollen jaw, and there was a split above his eyebrow covered in dried blood.

Marnie broke his gaze when she opened the mirror, pulling out the first-aid kit from behind it. She began cleaning the back of his hand, washing it in the sink and then wiping the cuts with something that stung. After laying on a triple-antibiotic ointment, she wound cotton gauze around it. The room was silent but for the buzz of the light bulb and his aunt's soft breathing.

Shane shut his good eye, letting the wash of darkness bring relief. For the first time in over an hour, he realized he was still drunk.

It was good Marnie could only see the marks on his face, and not the bruises that surely covered him under his clothes. Not the shoulder that felt like William had twisted the bones in a circle and left them there. She kept working, focused on his cuts, at last slipping a small bandage over the one on his forehead.

"Now," she said, pressing it down and looking straight into Shane's face. "I'll bring water to your room, and you rest for tonight." She handed him the bottle of ibuprofen from the first-aid kit. "But Shane? This conversation isn't over. And so help me, if you can't lift those arms above your head come Monday you're going to see Dr. Harvey."

She stood on her toes and kissed his forehead, just like she had to Jas, and slipped from the bathroom.

Couldn't just leave him be, could she? Couldn't just let his wounds rot and fester and take him in his sleep, which was what he fucking deserved. No, she had to take care of him. Clean his cuts and kiss his forehead like a mother; a manner he'd gone so long without he still didn't know how to accept it. And she'd had to comfort Jas. Had to pull the mother card on her too, because he certainly wasn't fit to pull the father one.

After she brought his water Shane took the pills, drinking as best he could without being able to tip his head back properly. Then with the precision of laying eggs in a grocery bag, he got into bed, wincing to adjust his pillow.

The images took him before sleep could.

His bed morphed back and forth into damp ground, so real he could smell the dirt. He could see William's face again, those blue eyes pinning him more powerfully than the physical hold. And when his body gave the final jerk of falling into sleep, he felt the shove of an arm on his collarbone—pushing him into that tree.

"William, my word. What on earth happened to your face?"

It was, William thought, a very fair question, if a bit rude. But if anyone had a right to ask rude and nosy questions it was Ma.

"Had a difference of opinion with a bulldozer," he said mildly, sipping the pomegranate sangria.

Ma stared at him as if he'd grown another head.

He regarded her back. Angela Bauer, who was always Angie to anyone who knew her, was no stranger to her son coming home bruised and bloody as a kid. Admittedly, he probably should have grown out of it by now.

So I'm a slow learner.

"William, did you go to a doctor about this?" she asked, her eyes critical.

"Wasn't that bad."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" She held her hand to the side, out of the peripheral vision of his swollen eye. He started to turn his head and she dropped her arm, exasperated.

"I hate to tell you, Will," Gretchen said from the prep station in the kitchen, "but I think the bulldozer won."

He would have rolled his eyes, except that shit hurt too much.

"Nah," he said, putting the empty sangria glass down on the marble countertop. "I totally left the bulldozer in the dirt."

She raised her eyebrows, as if to say mmhmm, and continued piping filling into a deviled egg.

Gretchen was his mother's college roommate, and ran the catering company that supplied labor and food to all Ma's social events. He didn't understand why the head cook to over fourteen teams of catering always personally oversaw Sunday mornings, but she'd been as much of an establishment in his life as any family member.

"William Joseph Bauer," Ma declared, walking over to the freezer and coming out with a bag of peas. "You are the world's biggest idiot."

"Ma, these bruises are two days old. I already iced them. Just gotta let them fade."

She sighed and threw the peas back in the freezer drawer, then kicked it shut before whirling on him, hands on her hips. "I can't believe you showed up here today looking like the wrong end of an eggplant!"

Here was his parent's house on the outskirts of Zuzu City, in their large and fancy mock-estate. Today was Sunday Brunch.

"I dunno," he said, reaching for one of the piped deviled eggs. "I thought it would bring some colorful diversity to your shindig, Ma."

Gretchen bit her lip, holding back a smile at the unamused glare that earned from his mother. William winked at her with his good eye.

"I swear," Ma said, crossing her arms and stomping one heeled foot. "Your father dropped you on your head after birth and just let us all deal with the consequences."

"What's the point of that?" his dad called from the foyer. "He's dropped himself plenty of times."

William chose another deviled egg and took a bite. They were soft enough not to make the entire side of his face bloom into a flare of pain. Shane had smashed it so hard with that first hit, he was still feeling the aches three days later. When he looked up, his dad walked into the kitchen.

Unlike Ma in her pearls and sundress, with perfectly coiffed hair and expertly done make-up, his father, David Bauer, was more casual in a pair of navy shorts and a polo with the logo of Bauer Financial on the breast. He stopped when he saw William and let out a low whistle.

"Son," he said, voice full of censure. "I thought that military boss of yours knocked stupid fights out of your head."

"Don't be ridiculous, that implies he was discharged with a mind," said Ma. "William, go play golf with your father today."

"What?" both William and his dad said at the same time.

"I can't have you here looking like that!" Ma cried. "You're going to scare the children!"

"Angie." His dad placed a hand on her shoulder. "William hates golf."

"Geez, I can see when I'm not wanted." William reached for his jacket. "I'll just go home, guys."

"No," they both said at once.

He sighed and scowled.

"Check-in Sundays are sacred," his dad said, frowning. "You know that."

He did know that.

They'd been a tradition ever since he'd moved onto Pops's old farm and rebranded it 'The Bowery'—an organic powerhouse of produce, dairy, and canned goods that fed the demand for premium quality groceries in a practical food desert. His mother had demanded the check-ins after she came to see him three months into building the farm, and realized he'd been living off of MREs and pizza from Gus's Saloon. He'd quit going to NA meetings years ago, so they used the weekly check-ins as a replacement.

Four years clean wasn't enough of a security to them.

"You still have some clothes downstairs," Ma said. "Go change so your father isn't late for his first tee."

William gave his dad an incredulous look. "Is she for real?"

His parents exchanged a silent look, the telepathic communication they'd used since he could remember. "Yup. Best go change, son."

"I swear," William grumbled, turning towards the stairs. "You two act like I'm thirteen instead of thirty."

His mother didn't bother dignifying that with a response, instead giving a sniff that said in no uncertain terms that if he was dumb enough to come home the way he had, he should've expected it.

Fifteen minutes later William, wearing khaki shorts and one of the spare company polos, was sitting with his leg twitching in the passenger seat of his father's red sports car. The purchase had been a sign that he was 'losing his middle-aged mind' if you asked Ma. William just thought he was tired of puttering out in the slow eco-cars he'd always driven when William had been growing up.

"So," his dad said, starting them up the drive towards the country club. "Who'd you fight?"

"No one," William said, the lie a familiar taste in his mouth. It reminded him of his school days.

"So no one beat your face, and probably your ribs?"

William tried not to replay the fight for the five-hundredth time in his head. Tried not to remember the excitement and rush of Shane's dark and furious eyes. Tried not to remember how fucking hot it had been to be so close to another person in a similar state of violence. He hadn't let himself get into that sort of struggle in over four years. Any bar fight or shoving match he'd had between now and then…well, fuck if he could remember what those had been like.

"William," his dad said, pulling him out of reminiscing and back into the tiny car. "I mean it. This sort of reckless behavior is troubling."

"It was a blip," William said, crossing his arms and then regretting it. He'd not gotten a really deep breath since Friday, because his back still ached where Shane had slammed his fucking bowling ball of a hit between the shoulder blades.

"Hmm," said his dad.

William turned to look at him with his good eye. He was slimmer than he'd been when William was a kid, age thinning him out. His hair was silver, and unlike his son, his face was shaven. William wondered what the boys at the club were going to think when his clean-cut and proper father showed up with his tattooed and bruised-to-fuck son.

Just another piece of fodder to add to the fuck-up mystique.

"Look," he said, trying to sooth the distrust in his dad's grunt. "I was drunk. I picked a fight. I got what was coming to me."

"Any broken bones?" his dad asked, suspicious. "Because it's been five years since your last assault charge and Tony retired. I dunno if the new girl they've got on retainer could wiggle you out of trouble—"

"Dad," William said, irritated. "I'm not being charged with assault. God. I look like I went one-on-one with a damn meat grinder, and you think that—"

"The other guy has to look worse." His dad stared grimly at the road. "They always look worse."

William looked out the window, feeling a pang of guilt.

Can't argue with facts…

"You'd think at the age of thirty, you'd have started to grow the hell up, son," his dad said.

William didn't comment. There was no point.

"Who we playing with?" he asked, electing to change the subject.

"The Marshalls." His dad turned through the metal gates of the club. "Probably the other reason your mother wanted you to come with me today."

That's ominous.

It didn't take William long to realize what his dad meant though. The Marshalls, it turned out, were a gay couple who were meeting David to discuss their new bakery empire.

"Ooooh, David!" Nico Marshall greeted. "I didn't know you had a body guard."

William took the two of them in and sighed internally.

They were, he decided, definitely a bit on the camp spectrum of the rainbow.

William didn't mind flamboyant guys, he really didn't. Sometimes that's just who a fucker was, and if being loud and cheerful while declaring things 'fierce' and 'fabulous' was what floated your boat, go on with your bad self. But the flirty, over-the-top ridiculousness was uncomfortable for anyone who wasn't on the same wavelength.

"William, this is Nico and Tyrell Marshall. They are behind Marshmallow Baked Goods."

William shook hands, noticing Tyrell's flash of jealousy when Nico looked him over.

Great. One of those insecure couples.

"Nice to meet you both," he said, not bothering with a smile. If he did that, it would split his lip back open for the hundredth time that weekend.

"William is my son," his dad explained, as their caddies started to load the four sets of golf clubs into the cart.

There was a pause, then Tyrell blurted, "Cameron's Will?"

Fuck.

Cameron.

Of-fucking-course these bitches knew Cameron.

Cameron, his ex-fiance, who his parents had kept in the damn divorce.

"Yup," William said, grim.

"Oh!" said Nico in excitement. "Oh, we love Cam! We met him at the pride meeting last March! Oh my…" He looked William over again, much to the irritation of his partner. "Wow, we didn't realize you'd be so—"

"William? You want to drive the golf cart?" his dad interrupted, holding out the keys.

"Sure thing." William snatched the subject change like the life preserver it was, and privately vowed bloody revenge on his mother for putting him through this.

Despite Nico's enamored flirtations and Tyrell's curt responses, William managed, somehow, to help his dad steer them off the subject of him and Cameron's disastrous engagement, and onto the accounting software and support that David's company provided. It helped that they were both much better golfers than William, and after beating the Bauers, they seemed very sure of the work Bauer Financial could give them.

William endured it.

That's what he did for these check-ins.

He endured.

It helped that he had something to distract his thoughts with. There was no need to do more than grunt and nod to the concerns of the company, while privately thinking about furious green eyes, and the way his blood had tasted when face-to-face against that tree. He spaced out during long discussions of market shares, replaying the way Shane's hair had felt between his fingers, how hot his scalp had been…the sounds of his excited breathing matching William's own pants.

"Well," his dad was saying, pulling him back to the present. "Why don't you boys come back over to the office this week, and we'll finish up that paperwork?"

"It would be a pleasure," Tyrell said, shaking his hand. Nico followed suit and finally, mercifully, they parted ways.

William didn't bother speaking, just watched his dad's cheerful step.

"Good work, Dad," he said as they got to the sports car a few minutes later.

His dad turned and grinned, a wide smile that deepened the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth—lines of long laughter and cheer.

"You know, you don't always have to go to your Mom's brunches for Sunday check-in," he pointed out.

"Ain't no good at playing whack-and-chase, Dad," William said, sinking down into the car. He waited until his father had ignited the engine and turned them back to the house. "And, you two could just…I don't know, schedule a dinner or something at my place. I could grill some steaks. You could see the farm."

His dad lost some of the jovial expression, his face pained. "Son, you know how busy we are. Your mother comes down when she can."

"Yeah, I'm just saying, it wouldn't kill you two to cancel brunch and golf one Sunday. I got cows that need feeding and care. It's not good to leave them alone for so long."

"So hire someone," his dad said promptly.

William rolled his eyes. The ghost of needing help on the farm was a constant shadow since he'd expanded operations last season.

"Yeah," he said, looking back out the window. "Because farmhands just grow on trees."

Three weeks until the JojaMart doors closed, and it didn't matter that the health inspector would never again darken their doorstep; Morris had a sudden, urgent need for the store to pass all non-existent inspections. Shane splashed bleach down the produce cooler drain. It was fucking busy work, but whatever. His boss seemed to believe his grisly appearance wasn't fit for customer service, and if he thought the backroom of Joja was a punishment, Shane wasn't about to correct him.

The bleach stung his eyes, and he wondered how badly it would burn going down his throat. What it would do to his insides once there, and how long it would take. Wondered what would hurt more—swallowing bleach or being crushed in the cardboard baler. He could hide at the bottom, waiting for someone to come around, close the metal door, and press the compact button. His body would be squished like a papaya before anyone noticed.

Just some of the many fantasies Shane had during his time in this godforsaken store.

Some people called them intrusive thoughts, but intrusive implied they were unwelcome. To Shane, this morbid little game helped the long retail hours pass. Walking by the roll of industrial-strength plastic wrap, he imagined looping it around his neck and hanging himself from the attic above the meat cooler. Or standing in the blind spot of a delivery truck on the loading dock, bones crunching beneath tires before the driver even realized they'd hit a bump.

He unrolled the hose from the rack by the sink, turning the nozzle on high to spray down the floors. Bleach and soap foamed together in waves across the blue tile.

When he'd shown up Monday for work, Morris had sent his ass home for three whole days. Said Shane looked like death and would be a liability, working in his—admittedly still painful—condition. But Shane knew the store was slowing, there was little left to do, and that Morris would've latched onto any excuse to cut hours. Three days pay, gone like that.

Not that the loss had stopped him from spending his measly savings on bottles of whiskey. If ever there was a time to self-medicate, it was after your body had been beaten to hell.

But still.

It was Friday now, exactly one week from the fight. He and William were both banned from the Stardrop Saloon, but that part wasn't so bad; it just meant drinking by himself at the dock, which he often did anyway. And what he probably should've done last Friday night. He'd been so worried about doing something stupid if left alone, but what about in public? What about when his drunken brain decided it was a good idea to flick a tattooed and muscled stranger in the forehead?

Garrett hadn't liked violence. Sure, he threw a game controller at the wall now and then, when the system froze up in the middle of a save. And yeah, he'd enjoyed splitting a pizza in front of the theatrics of a good WWE match, or cheering on a hockey brawl.

But real brutality?

Booze and fistfights. Great fucking way to celebrate his life, you drunk asshole.

Shane himself wasn't unacquainted with violence. He'd thrown and received punches. He'd dealt with black eyes, and his nose had healed bumpy from a break when he was fifteen. But he'd never in his life been pummeled into a pile of dirt, left to limp home in the dark. Fuck, he'd never tasted true violence before. That other stuff was horseplay. Friday night had been one wrong thump to the temple, one wrong jab in the organs away from ending up on Harvey's exam table.

It'd been so fucking stupid.

And dangerous.

And painful.

Shane couldn't stop thinking about it.

He didn't wantto. It felt like fucking betrayal. To his best friend, to everything he stood for. But when the fuck had he ever felt so alive? Overcome by such adrenaline in the moment that William's punches felt like angry slaps, merely turning his head while his energy barreled on; while his brain drifted up somewhere in the sky, to watch from afar as he robotically kicked into survival.

Until the stupid fucker had to go and end it, all that pain and consciousness crashing back into Shane's body like a big gay meteorite.

He tried not to imagine how William's fingers felt in his hair when he'd been pinned to the ground. Tried not to hear the timbre of his voice when he'd leaned over, and in that bone-chilling whisper told Shane he liked it.

Of course he hadn't liked it.

…had he?

Shane rolled his shoulders, still out of whack, stiff and sore this morning when he'd had to unload all the heavy boxes from the truck.

Yeah, fine, okay. So he had liked it—big fucking deal. Not like Garrett's ghost could look into his brain and see what a sick fuck he was. And considering he still cringed to recall the painful walk home, it wasn't like it'd been some pleasant stroll through the trees. No, this was about someone finally giving Shane his rightful punishment. No undeserved sympathy. No feigned ignorance, looking the other way or excusing his behavior. Just some asshole wailing on him, serving up penance for all the things he'd ever done wrong.

Like getting drunk on the birthday of the one person who cared to see you sober.

Shane grabbed the floor squeegee, attempting to pull his thoughts from the fight.

It was fucking hard—fucking hard when the brute contact of his fist with William's jaw had been the first thing in years to jolt the straight, dead line of his heart into something resembling the spikes of the living.

Should thank the guy, really.

He squeezed the water across the tile, stopping to stare as it spun in a cyclone down the grates of the drain.

When his shift ended Shane exited the double-doors of JojaMart, yanking off his hat and stuffing the unflattering thing in his pocket. He scrubbed his hands through his hair to loosen it, walking with his head down as usual. It was a gorgeous summer day. While Stardew Valley had been going through a heatwave lately, the current temperature was pleasant with a warm breeze, seagulls cawing as they circled overhead in the late afternoon sun. There was a low rumble on one side of the store where a delivery truck waited in neutral, then the slam of metal as its door closed. The sound was oddly comforting; a signal Shane's workday was over.

"Ey, Sadsack."

Speaking of comforting sounds.

Shane froze, heart beating fast.

Hadn't he just been in the produce room thinking about how much he'd enjoyed the fight? How he should thank the guy, even? So why the fuck were his lungs seizing up just to hear William's voice?

Ignore him. Just ignore him.

Shane could feel him approaching from behind, though not looking back to confirm it. He just heard the slow footsteps, steady on the sidewalk, and when he finally remembered how to move his feet it was clear William continued to follow him.

Just as slow.

Just as fucking steady.

Shane's heart raced even harder. Why couldn't this fucker just say what he had to say? Why did he have to slink behind like some kind of apex predator, in no fucking hurry yet clearly with his sights on Shane as the particular target?

Right as his mounting anxiety couldn't take it anymore, William fell into step at his side.

Shane focused hard on the passing lines in the sidewalk, wondering if William could hear his pounding heart through the sleepy afternoon air. "Whatever it is, don't care" he said, eyes on the ground.

William's voice was confident and smooth. "Thought you might be open to a peace talk."

They walked in silence for a spell, until Shane finally braved looking over.

William's right eye was yellow and green, a mirror image of Shane's bruise, but the rest of him looked well put-together. Today, the long hair that had fallen over his face during the fight was pulled back in a sleek topknot. He wore a tight black t-shirt, and Shane did a double-take at the colorfully inked arms stretching taut the sleeves. Had he really taken a punch to the face from those things?

William was also, he realized, carrying a cooler in one hand. He opened the lid and tilted it toward Shane, revealing twelve dark bottles nestled on a bed of ice.

Shane almost snorted in relief. So this was the asshole's catch. Taunt him into getting drunk again, then wait around to see what other idiotic behavior he'd pull out of the forehead-flick box. He faced forward, ignoring the beer.

"If you're gonna pound my face again, wait till I'm out of uniform. Only get two more paychecks as it is."

William didn't look bothered. He closed the cooler and dropped it to his side again. "So with Joja closing, you're losing your gig, huh? Sucks man, but can't say I'm sad to see the backside of that eyesore."

This time Shane snorted for real. As if some farmer cared about him losing his job.

"Listen," William said. "About last week, I was outta line." He looked at Shane sideways. "Bad headspace. Shouldn't have been like, an asshole about it."

Shane picked up the pace. "Don't care."

"Oh please." Now it was William's turn to snort. "Running like a fuckin' rabbit. You kicked my ass too, man. You ain't a little proud of this shiner? Besides, it's free beer. Why you running from free beer?"

Shane stopped in his tracks. "Look," he said, voice shaking. "Told you. Not interested, okay?"

William stopped too.

"Not interested," he repeated, raising a brow. "Well that's a shame. Because, hate to break it to you—I am." He shoved the beer into Shane's chest. "Bring back the cooler."

Then he turned and started to walk away.

Paranoid, Shane looked around from where he stood in the middle of the sidewalk. The road was empty, no one to witness whatever had just gone down. He clutched the plastic container to his chest.

Bring back the cooler?

He was caught, and he hadn't even known it was a trap.

His heart pounded harder.

"Fine!" he called, after William had gone only a few steps. "Gimme your peace talk or whatever, then take this shit home yourself."

William turned, smirking. "Glad you came around to diplomacy." He lost the smile and rolled his head on his neck, rubbing the shoulder where Shane had driven into him. "How's your arm and stuff?"

Shane hugged the cooler. "It's fine."

Still rubbing the shoulder, William looked him up and down. He shrugged. "Let's go to the docks. I've got to check some traps out there anyway."

Without waiting for Shane's agreement, he took off walking again.

Shane glanced once more down the road. It was still deserted; still silent but for sleepy summer sounds. Hefting the cooler into a better grip in his arms he followed William, a doubtful feeling creeping into his heart.