God of Pain novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Maeve

His motorcycle was parked in the alley behind the warehouse, under a dead streetlight.

Cormac threw a leg over it with a towel still around his neck and blood in his eyebrow.

"Get on."

"You can't drive like that."

"I can drive like anything."

"You're swaying."

"I'm not swaying. The ground is."

I took the keys out of his hand.

He stared at me, offended, and I stared back.

"Do you know how to ride one of these?" he asked.

"My brother taught me when I was fifteen."

"Of course he did."

"Get on the back, Reardon."

He got on the back.

I felt his arms come around my waist, heavy and slow, and the whole length of him lean against me.

He was burning hot through his damp skin.

Tino's cousin burst out of the steel door behind us, shouting.

I kicked the bike into gear and tore out of the alley.

I took the first left, then a right down a street of triple-deckers, and then onto the highway ramp.

It felt like the first time I had breathed in two days.

"Where?" I shouted over the wind.

"Dorchester," Cormac said into my hair. "Left at the second light."

The house stood on a narrow street of tilted porches and chain-link fences.

Three floors, gray siding, a plastic Virgin Mary in the downstairs window.

A light burned on the second landing.

"My gran sleeps at eight," Cormac said, sliding off the seat. "She won't wake up. Don't make noise on the stairs."

"Who else lives here?"

He hesitated at the gate, one hand on the post.

"My sister."

I looked at him.

"You have a sister?"

"Maeve. She's nine."

"You never said."

"You never asked."

He pushed the gate, and we went up three flights of narrow wooden stairs.

He leaned on the rail, and I kept a hand pressed to his back.

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