A Bad Bit Nice (19 page)

Today was one of the bad days.

Moira was on edge because she thought that Remy, the current boyfriend, was going to ask her to marry him. Mick shuddered.

Remy was the worst type of boyfriend: a stupid drunk who was prone to violence. Not that Moira was above slapping them around, but she didn’t generally use her fists or that belt with the wicked brass buckle, or at least she hadn’t until she met Remy.

Mick was in the kitchen boiling water for broth. Earlier he had lifted a sleeve of crackers from the corner shop. He suspected that Mr. and Mrs. Callaghan looked the other way at his pilfering, knowing that the stolen packages of crackers and other small foodstuffs were the difference between not eating at all and having some small bit of food in their bellies. Besides, now that he was doing odd jobs for the Doyles, he was going to have money to actually buy food from the shop.

Colin had been running a fever for a couple days, and his color didn’t look good at all. Mick had tried to keep the younger boy out of his mother’s way so she could get ready for her outing. After she left, Mick was planning on calling Rory’s Mam to see what he should do. He figured Colin would be okay for the few minutes it took to run down to the corner pay phone.

Mick stirred the powdered broth into the boiling water.

“What are you cooking there?” Moira’s voice came of the darkened hallway. “What is that smell? I don’t need to smell like a soup kitchen when Remy comes over.” Moira Brennan stepped over to the stove, snatched the pan from the range, and promptly disposed of the contents in the sink.

Mick was livid. That was all the food they had in the house, other than the stolen crackers. He faced his mother in the kitchen, hands balled into fists. Moira eyed his clenched hands.

“What are you going to do, hit your mother?” Moira spat. Mick didn’t answer her, knowing it was for the best.

Colin wandered out from the boys’ shared bedroom.

“Mickey, my belly aches.” It was telling that Colin came to his older brother, not their mother, for soothing.

“Colin, go back in the bedroom and I’ll bring you some crackers to settle your stomach.”

The small boy continued into the living room, stopping between Moira and Mick.

“Mickey, it’s a different kind of ache,” he said, and promptly vomited all over the skirt of his mother’s dress.

The three of them looked at Moira’s dress in horror, the look on the two boys’ faces rapidly turning to fear and on Moira’s to rage. Moira turned to Colin and smacked him with her open hand across his face.

“Don’t you dare! Now will you believe he’s sick? He needs to go to the doctor!” Mick yelled, prompting Colin to burst into noisy tears.

Moira was yelling her response when Remy arrived.

“Christ, I can hear your caterwauling in the hallway. What the fuck is going on?”

Mick silently fumed while Moira played the victim. He knew that no one liked to be thrown up on, but for fuck’s sake, Moira had a closet full of clothes, in contrast to Mick and Colin’s meager two pairs of pants and three shirts each. Mick’s shoes were too small and had holes in the soles, and Colin’s weren’t much better.

Remy turned the full force of his anger on Colin.

“Apologize to your mother, you little fuck,” he screamed in Colin’s face, grabbing the boy by the collar.

“You don’t yell at him,” Mick said. “He’s sick! He couldn’t help it!”

“Wasn’t talking to you,” Remy growled.

“No, but I’m talking to
you
,” Mick said, getting in Remy’s face. He was already taller than the man, though Remy outweighed Mick by a good 50 or 60 pounds.

Colin had begun crying silently. “I’m sorry, Ma,” he said in a small voice.

Remy gave Colin a jerk. “What are you sorry for?”

Colin said, “I really don’t know.”

“Now you’re just being smart. I’ll teach you to smart off to your Ma. She don’t deserve your lip,” and he slapped Colin’s face soundly.

When he began taking off his belt to deliver a beating, Mick stepped in front of the boy.

“Move,” Remy growled.

“No.”

The two faced off in the living room.

Remy swung the belt, the large brass buckle connecting with Mick’s side. Mick had received a beating a few days before for tracking mud into the house, and the welts were barely healed. These new blows caused blood to bloom through his thin shirt. Mick staggered and Remy looked at Moira in disgust.

“If you can’t control your own kids, I don’t want anything to have to do with you. Call me back when you get these brats sorted. I don’t need this hassle.”

“Now you’ve done it,” Moira snapped.” How do you think I’m going to afford to keep you in the manner you’ve become accustomed to if you’ve driven Remy away?” She scoffed at the two boys. “You just don’t want to share me with him. A woman has to have some enjoyment in life. She can’t just be a servant to her family.” She stood in silent fury for a few moments, while Colin knelt next to Mick’s crouched and bleeding form, trying to comfort the much larger and older boy.

Mick balanced his weight on his hands, trying to push himself to stand up, but Moira stepped on his hand with one sharp-toed shoe, kicking him sharply in the ribs with the other. Mick grabbed Moira by her ankle to halt the barrage of blows, and in doing so, brought her to the ground, her head thumping hollowly on the leg of a table. She lay on the floor very still.

Mick sucked in a breath as he looked at his mother’s motionless form. He checked to make sure she was breathing, then scooped up Colin and ran barefoot for 20 long, snow-covered blocks to the Doyles’ home, only stopping to call emergency services from the corner pay phone.

He stood on the front stoop of Rory and Grace’s house, hoping that their father’s offer of help had been serious. Sheila Doyle opened the door and stared at the pitiful scarecrow standing on her porch with a smaller, shivering blanket-wrapped boy in his thin arms.

“Michael, where’s your coat? Where are your shoes?” she asked, horrified at what she saw on her stoop.

“Mrs. Doyle? I think we need some help,” Mick said quietly before sinking to his knees.

Paddy and Rory managed to get the boys in the house and settled in the guest room. Colin wouldn’t let Mick go, so Paddy wrapped them both in the same quilt as they rested on the bed.

“Ach, he’s skin and bones, this one is.” Sheila Doyle pursed her lips in anger. “The wee one isn’t much better.”

“Mick gives Colin any food he gets. Willie told me that his ma knows Mick nicks food from the shop but she doesn’t say anything. Mick leaves money on the counter to pay whenever he can.” Rory looked at his best friend with worry. “What’s going to happen, Mam? They can’t go back to that shitty apartment.”

“Where is the boy’s father? Do you know?”

“I don’t think Mick knows who his father is. Colin’s dad is a different man. Mick said he doesn’t think the guy knows that Colin exists.”

“Is there no one else?”

“Mick’s mentioned two older brothers that are back in Canada, but I don’t know if they can or would take them in. I think they’re at sea most of the time.”

Sheila sucked in a deep breath. “We’ll figure something out, Rory. We will.”

*****

Em stroked Mick’s chest while he talked.

“So what happened? It obviously wasn’t happily ever after.”

“No, it wasn’t. Moira got Colin back somehow, and she pressed charges against me for assault and battery. I was sent to juvie for six months, and when I got out, there was no one there to pick me up. Family Services tried to call her, but, of course, we didn’t have a phone.”

Mick covered his eyes with a big hand before continuing. “A social worker took me back to our little shitty apartment, and there was nothing there. They had moved out, no forwarding address. Sheila and Paddy tried to get me placed with them, but the judge wasn’t having it, and my two older brothers were at sea, fishing, so they weren’t suitable.”

“How much older were they?”

“Ten and 15 years.”

Em’s mouth fell open.

“Yeah, Moira was only 15 when she had Finn, and 40 when she had Colin. I think that Finn, Sean, and I have the same father, but then, we all look a lot like her. I know Colin’s father is someone else because we were living in Texas then. Moira followed some roughneck down there, hauling me along. The two older ones had already escaped the house.”

“How old were you then, when you lived in Texas?” Em asked.

“I was about nine or ten. She bounced from man to man, always looking for an upgrade. But then she met Duke. He was the only man who acted like I wasn’t a nuisance. It made Moira really angry to not be the center of attention. He was the one who encouraged me, got me interested in percussion and engineering. And then suddenly, we moved back to St. John’s and then she had Colin.”

Mick wiped his eyes impatiently.

“So, anyway, after that night I spent the next four years dealing with the kinds of homes that would accept giant teenage boys with violent tendencies.”

“Is that where you got the burns?”

“Yeah, that was the last home. I was nothing but a check to those people. The day I turned 18, I came home to find what little I had out on the porch and the locks changed. I had already gotten a little apartment above the fight club and was going to move out that night anyway.” Mick shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal to be kicked out his home.

“What about Colin?”

Mick gulped some air and licked his lips.

“I saw Colin the day before I went to juvie. I stopped by his school and talked to him through the fence, gave him my Saint Rita medallion and a Jerusalem cross. When I got out, he was gone.”

Em gasped. This was so much worse than she had ever imagined.

“What happened to your older brothers?”

“They went down in a storm at sea about six months after Grace and I got married. It was the last catch of the season, and a big storm blew in and smashed the boat to smithereens. There weren’t many survivors.”

“Oh Mick,” Em said, huddling up against his chest. “Bless your heart.”

Mick stroked her back absentmindedly, taking comfort in just feeling her next to him, knowing there was someone that he could hold on to.

“Rory’s been looking for him for years, since we got out of college.” Mick’s grim face told how devastated he was that the younger boy couldn’t be found.

“What if I took a crack at it? Would you let me do that for you? Rory is a brilliant developer, but I’m a much better snoop.”

Mick chuckled at that. "Yeah, you can look into it. I’m not holding my breath though. Okay?”

“Okay.” Em leaned her head on Mick’s chest, listening to his heart thump and petting his neck. She was tempted to confess that she was already looking for him, but Rory was adamant about not telling Mick about their search. Hopefully something would pop soon.

“So, are you ready to meet the Doyles?” Mick asked, frantically trying to get his mind off the past.

Em sat up in the bed. “Truthfully? I’m terrified. What if they don’t like me, Mick?” Em answered honestly. “What if they resent me? What if they think I’m an interloper? I want them to know how much I care about you.”

“They’ll love you as much as I do,” Mick said. Em’s eyes got big for a second, but she quickly hid her shock at Mick’s words.

Shit
.
Did he just use the L-word? He did.

Mick didn’t seem to realize what he’d said, so Em acted accordingly, but inside, she was hysterically screaming with both excitement and fear.

Okay, get a grip on yourself, girl. He didn’t mean capital L-Love, he meant little-l love, like when he calls me “love.” Hell, Rory calls me “love” all the time.

Mick began to kiss her neck, distracting her from her internal monologue. Em kissed his forehead and smoothed his hair down around his neck. He made his way down her body, kissing and nipping along the smooth curves of her belly and hips. He nuzzled the dip of her pelvis, worshipping the swirling designs that decorated her hips and belly, peppering open-mouthed kisses along their colorful borders. He ran his nose down the curve of her hip and continued along the length of her thigh.

He slid off the bed, resting his knees on the floor, pulling her down to the bed’s edge.

“One thing good about your bed, it’s easy to slide off the end to I can get to you,” Mick said as he pressed his hands on the inside of Em’s thighs, pushing them open so he could gaze at her softness. Mick ran his fingers lightly over her lower lips, the tips dancing across her folds. He placed a sweet kiss on her, dipping his tongue into her core and flicking it against her nub. Mick slipped in his thick middle finger and rubbed her clit while he used his tongue to flick around the nub. He added another finger and curled them inside Em, making her explode around them.

“That was fast,” he chuffed. He lay with his head on her mound, her legs over his shoulders. He kissed the inside of her thigh.
I used the damn L-word. She didn’t say anything. What the hell am I doing?