Slow Shift by Nazarea Andrews (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📗

After he watches Tyler for a few minutes, Chase drags his bookbag around and starts his homework. He hears Tyler make another hum of approval from the roof.

When he’s finished his homework, he twitches, anxious and restless. He gets up and hesitates for a moment, expecting some dismissal from the roof, but when nothing comes, he grins to himself and sets about gathering the discarded shingles with real intent.

“You don’t have to do that,” Tyler calls from above him, sounding almost angry.

Chase shrugs and gathers up a few more shingles, tossing them into the back of the pickup with a grunt. “Might as well.”

Tyler falls quiet and then goes back to work, careful to avoid where Chase is picking up shingles when he tosses them down.

Later, when he climbs down from the roof, Chase collapses near Lucas, panting, and he grins a thank you when Tyler hands him an orange and a bottle of water.

“Gonna be dark soon,” Tyler says eventually.

Chase gives him sidelong look. “That your way of telling me to go home?”

Tyler nods and Chase blinks hard. He dusts his hands off and stands up.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” Tyler asks. “I’m gonna keep working on the roof, then.”

Chase blinks at him again, then nods, a tiny pleased smile on his lips.

~*~

When he gets there the next day, there’s a small pair of gloves and a sandwich waiting near Lucas.

“Do your homework,” Tyler calls from the roof, “then you can get started.”

“Bossy,” Chase grumbles, and Tyler pauses, scowling down at him. Chase smirks and opens his backpack.

~*~

“Are you gonna fix the whole thing?”

They’re almost finished with the roof. It’s been two weeks of working on it. Chase thinks Tyler only gets a few hours a day, most of it when he’s there, to work on the house, and that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

Tyler grunts and Chase sucks on an orange slice speculatively.

“Why?”

“Because if we live here, I want it to be nice for him,” Tyler answers.

Chase glances at Lucas. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink or acknowledge them at all. But like he so often feels around the scarred, silent man—Chase thinks he’s listening.

He’s curious—of course he’s curious, he was born curious, something his mother used to laugh about, even when his curiosity led him and Ben head first into trouble—but he hasn’t asked about Lucas yet. He hasn’t pushed to find out what happened, or why they’re out here in the woods.

Tyler seems to relax more and more, the longer he goes without asking.

~*~

“You weren’t here yesterday,” Tyler says, about a week later. The roof is finally done and the three of them are sitting under Lucas’s tree. Chase is scowling at his homework and Tyler is—

Chase frowns.

The man looks strangely tense, but he hasn’t worked on the house today, just sat close to them, muscles tight and jumping beneath his skin.

“My Dad got in an accident at work. I was at the hospital with him.”

Tyler’s gaze is sharp and assessing. “Is he—”

“Fine,” Chase says shortly. He shoves his papers into his bag with sticky fingers and scrambles to stand up. “I’m gonna go.”

“Chase,” Tyler says.

Chase pauses, looking back at Tyler and Lucas, both sitting too still in the fading light.

“I’m gonna start gutting the inside tomorrow. It’ll be dirty—bring something to change into.”

Chase huffs and shifts his bag higher on his shoulder. “Ok,” he says softly and calls over his shoulder. “Bye, Tyler. Bye, Lucas.”

~*~

A week later, an RV appears next to the house and Lucas vanishes from under his tree.

“It’s too cold,” Tyler says. “His fingers were blue when I got back to the hotel.”

He sounds truly baffled, in a way that Chase finds amusing. Tyler is older than him, in his twenties if Chase is any judge, but sometimes Tyler’s so confused by simple things like the cold and working in the dark that Chase wonders how he actually functions.

“It’s ok,” he tells Lucas as they sit in the RV while Tyler goes back to work, “I won’t let you freeze, buddy.”

Lucas is quiet, just like he always is.

“I waited for you to read today’s homework,” he continues.

The thing about Lucas is that Chase knows he can’t respond. Tyler told him that Lucas probably doesn’t even hear him, but it feels wrong to sit next to the man for hours and not speak, especially when he’s learning.

Tyler doesn’t talk about his brother much, and never about what led him to the wheelchair and the scars on his face, even when he’s carefully tending the older man, always aware of where he is and what he’s doing. But when Chase sits next to him, he doesn’t feel alone, like he is sitting next to an empty shell.

Lucas feels present, like behind that blank stare and still expression, something is alive and desperate for interaction.

“Ok, so we’re on chapter three,” he says, opening up Number the Stars.

Chase glances at Lucas once more, then starts reading.

~*~

“Don’t your parents worry?” Tyler asks.

They’re sitting at the little table in the RV. Lucas’s blank gaze is on the wall while Chase does his math homework. It’s not unusual for Tyler to take a little time to get out of the work and come into the RV, lingering while Chase pulls out his school work.

“Dad doesn’t get home until after I do,” Chase says, flicking a look at the older man from under his lashes.

Tyler frowns.

Chase huffs. “He’s—he’s the chief of police. So he works long hours, you know?”

Tyler makes a sharp, wounded noise and Chase scowls harder at his papers. He adjusts them needlessly and waits for Tyler to say something—that he’s sorry, that she was too young, that he reminded them of her, that his mother was a wonderful woman, and he was lucky.

It’s all the useless shit people say when someone dies, all that shit that doesn’t mean anything, that he’s been hearing at school and in the grocery store and everywhere he goes since his mother’s funeral.

He waits for Tyler to kick him out.

Tyler