Finding North (27 page)

When I enter the station, I’m met by a bored woman in uniform tapping away on the computer screen at reception. She sips her coffee without looking up at me and says, “Can I help you?”

I remember this woman—Sonja Baxter. She was in my English class, though she’s a long way from the mousey little teen she was then. She never had tits like that, for one thing.

“I’d like to report a crime.”

“Really?” she says impatiently, still tapping away on her keyboard.

“Yeah. I just beat my father to within an inch of his life.”

Her gaze snaps up, and she takes me in. My face is busted up to all buggery. I got a look at myself in the rear-view mirror on the way over. I look like a demented abattoir employee, fresh from the kill room. One eye is almost completely shut and my hair is stained red from the gash in my forehead. I glance down at my white T-shirt, which has been sprayed with more blood than a piggery floor. I’m not crazy. I know I look like a madman. I feel like one too, so when the officer tells me to slowly put up my hands and lie down flat on my stomach, it takes a beat to register. She pulls a gun on me, barking commands that I can’t understand.

I know she’s speaking English. I know these words, but they mean absolutely nothing as adrenaline courses through my body and my blood whooshes in my ears. Two more officers appear from behind her desk and I’m forced to the ground. My face glances off the laminate floor, piercing my bottom lip with my teeth as a knee is thrust between my shoulder blades and my hands wrenched back behind me. A pair of cuffs is slapped around my wrists. Some strange part of me even relishes that metal zing as the ratchet slides into place.

When they haul me to my feet, Johnson stands in the doorway, his usual look of disappointment written all over his face. We both knew this was inevitable—has been since the day I grew big enough to hit back.

Bloody-mouthed, I smile at him. “Sent a little present to your inbox.”

“Put him in the holding cell.”

The officer at my back yanks me to a halt. “Shouldn’t we question him first, Sarge?”

“Hold him. No questioning. I’ll deal with him in the morning.” Johnson turns his attention to Sonja, whose gun is now safely holstered at her belt. “Check the emergency log. If there hasn’t already been an ambulance dispatched to number thirteen Squall Bay Road, do it now.”

“Yes, sir.” Sonja jumps into action, and Johnson turns his attention to me.

“Fucking Underwoods,” he mutters, and makes a shooing motion to indicate that the officer behind me should remove me from the sergeant’s sight.

I’m shown to a tiny little cell with a metal bed jutting out from the wall and a metal toilet in full view of the hall. There’s no one but me and Officer Wheeler in this corridor of empty cells though. He removes the cuffs and backs out of the room as if I were going to jump him. I just smile, give him a wave and sit on the edge of the bed, waiting for the madness to carry me away.

I went head to head with my father, and I didn’t kill him.

Why don’t I feel better about that fact?

I
don’t know what time it is when I’m woken later by the sounds of my cell door opening, but I sit up and blink bleary eyes at Johnson. Every single one of my muscles aches from the beating of the night before. I don’t need a mirror to see that one whole side of my face is swollen, from my jaw to my temple. It aches like a bitch, and I’ve got a killer headache.

“Rise and shine, son.” He moves closer and runs a hand through his thick grey hair. He looks like shit. “Your father’s stable.”

I laugh. It’s a clamour when compared to the silence of the cell and Johnson flinches. Clearly, I still look a little unhinged. “You couldn’t be further from the truth, Sarge.”

“He’s not pressing charges so I can’t hold you, but I know the two of you. This is just gonna go back and forth until one of you ends up dead.”

“Probably.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I got tired of living life the way he wanted me to.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m fucking Will, and Daddy doesn’t like it.” I stand up to leave. Johnson’s mouth thins into a disapproving line. “Yeah, you heard that right. Been going on for months—years actually.”

“You’re free to go,” he says briskly. “Collect your things from Sonja at the front desk.”

“It’s not fucking catching, Sarge.” I shake my head as I glare at the man who spent more time in my backyard than his own. A man who spent my lifetime ignoring the bruises, the black eyes, and the fact that a kid was waking up every day thanking a god that he didn’t believe in for small mercies like a couple of broken ribs instead of an arm, or a black eye instead of a knife to the gut. “You don’t get to just dismiss me this time. You do something about him. You’re the reason Will’s lying in that hospital bed, and you know it. Dad should have been locked up years ago, and instead you gave him free rein over this town. You let him beat his fucking kid to within an inch of his life and you did jack-shit about it.”

“You were in and out of fights your whole life, North. I didn’t know where the bruises were coming from. You never filed any reports against your father—”

“I was a fucking kid.” I drag my hand through my hair, yanking through the blood-crusted tangles. “I was terrified. You were his closest friend. You were his only friend. You swore to protect the innocent and you turned your back instead, just like every other gutless fuck in this town. You do something about him and his buddies, or I will. And so help me God, I’ll rain down every fucking media outlet on the corrupt cops in this town that the AFP will be so far up your arse you’ll be walking funny for a year. You fix this, Johnson. You owe me that.”

Johnson’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t say a word as I leave. No words will make right the years that he turned a blind eye.

After I’ve collected my belongings from a very wary-looking Sonja, I jump in the truck, desperate for a shower and bed, but instead I find myself in the Reef’s parking lot, staring up at the looming pub as the waves crash on the shore behind me. The front door has been boarded up. Trev must be recovering at Sal’s place because it looks as though no one has been back here since the incident. Well, no one but the perpetrators that is. Spray painted in big red letters across the boarded up doors is the word FAG.

My blood boils. I take out my tool box and remove a hammer, attempting to yank the nails from the wood, but my hands shake. I return to the ute, tossing the hammer into the tray, and grab the axe I always keep in the back. I stalk up to the door and swing, splitting the particle board straight down the middle. I swing until there’s nothing left of that vicious word, until my muscles scream for mercy and my joints stiffen with each blow, and then I take a deep fucking breath, pull out my phone and call a tradie I went to school with who since moved to Newcastle. His wife Annie is friends with Tammy, so there’s every chance she’ll hang up on me, but to my relief Greg answers the phone and we make arrangements.

I limp inside. The smell of a hundred different boozes hits me like a battering ram. There are bottles everywhere—smashed glass, broken chairs, tables knocked on their end. Everywhere there’s evidence of what happened here, and yet it’s been swept under the rug by Red Maine police, as if nothing happened. As if the man I love wasn’t almost beaten to death right here in his own pub.

The bar is empty, but I still see Will in that spot where the bloodstains are, lying there with his face all busted in. I can’t stand here any longer. I go to work cleaning, sweeping up bits of glass and then mopping litres of alcohol that hasn’t soaked through the floorboards. Every move I make hurts like a motherfucker, but I think of Will lying in that hospital bed and I know my injuries are nothing compared to what he’s going through right now.

I almost lost him
.

If things had gone differently—another boot to the face, a harder blow to his ribs—he might have died right here on this spot. All because of that one little word painted on the door. Because he had the courage to be himself, and someone else had the cowardice to fear it.

I steady my shaking breath and get back to work, but the more I try not to think about what my father did, what
they
did, the more I wish I hadn’t been the bigger man last night. I close my eyes and imagine what that looks like—what it would have felt like to sink that knife in his belly and open him up, to pay him back for all the years of belittling and beatings as he screamed for me to stop. The idea makes me sick, and I don’t know if that makes me a pussy or not, but I do know there wouldn’t be any coming back from that moment. I wouldn’t be North Underwood. I’d have lost myself to guilt, to revenge. I’d be someone else, and even though I’ve spent my life aiming for just that, I don’t wanna be a different man. For better or worse, I am who I am, and Will loves me for it.

That fucker’s as crazy as I am
.

Around noon, I bust open a packet of chips and wash it down with a beer while wiping the sweat from my brow. I smell like a fucking distillery. I rinse my cup and shove the chip packet into a garbage bag filled with glass and debris. I pull the ties together and glance up when a kid fills the doorway. He looks a lot like Will did at that age—black hair, slumped shoulders, nervous glances and gangly limbs. For a beat I think I’ve walked into a fucking time warp, and then he opens his mouth and I know I haven’t completely lost my shit.

“Hey.” He shoves long fingers into the pockets of his skinny jeans, his eyes roaming over the destruction.

“Hey,” I say, tilting my chin towards him. “You’re Brooker’s kid, right? Brandon?”

“Yeah,” he says, gnawing on his bottom lip the way Will does. Jesus, if I wasn’t sure he’d never been with a woman, I might have questioned this kid’s parentage. I knew he belonged to Brooker though, because the guy was home for about two months and then gone again on another tour of Afghanistan when Lesley started showing.

“I live next door,” he says.

I go back to tying off the bag. “Well, listen, the bar’s not open now, not that you’d be able to buy anything if it was, but—”

“Is he okay?”

“Will?” I study the kid’s face.

“Yeah. I heard what happened. Living next door, I hear lots of things I’m not supposed to. I see lots of things, too.”

I fold my arms over my chest and step closer. “Do you now?”

The kid’s eyes bounce around off of every possible surface. He’s nervous as hell. “My mum says it’s unnatural … what you … what he is, but—”

“It’s not unnatural,” I say, blowing out a huge breath and reminding myself to calm the hell down because he’s just a kid. “Will’s the best guy I know.”

“Yeah.” He glances around furtively before saying, “He sneaks me chips and soft drinks sometimes.”

“He does, huh?”

He nods. “And … we talk. When my mum’s not home and he’s out the back having a smoke.”

That surprises me because Will’s never mentioned anything about this kid, but I can see it so clearly in the way Brandon dresses, the way he speaks. Seems I’m not the only bloke in town sporting a boner for Will.

Brandon dips his head and smiles. “One time he even gave me some.” I raise a brow and Brandon’s cheeks turn pink as a newborn baby’s bum. “Pot, I mean. Nothing happened. My mum was out of town and he only gave me a few puffs. I was totalled after that so I went home to bed.” His eyes widen. “Alone.”

I laugh. “I’m glad to hear it, kid.”