Free Ex's and O'S by Bailey Bradford Page A

one of those petty assholes! And he could rationalise it however he wanted—he was an only child, he’d had his mother to himself since his father had split when Adam was eight, etc. etc.—but the truth was, he was an adult and maybe… Adam ran
    through the past week. Maybe giving the woman someone else to nag and manipulate would be a good thing. He loved his mom, he really did, but how many times had he bitched about her needing a project other than him? She meant well, and her manipulations were never done with ill intent, but there was a reason he’d had his own place back in Billings.
    But, no sense in making it easy on her. If Adam didn’t put up some resistance, she’d become suspicious and start poking and prodding at him some more. And he still couldn’t get over the little knot of jealousy that his mother wanted to mother someone else. It stung just a bit, like he wasn’t enough of a son for her, or a good enough one, anyway.
    “Oh, now get that look off your face.”
    Adam brought his vision back into focus just in time to open his arms up for his
    mother’s hug. “You will always be my baby boy, always,” she said as she slipped her arms EX’S AND O’S
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    around his torso, carefully keeping her hands higher up on his back. “But I’m telling you, there was something about that man that made me hurt just looking at him, especially when he went all stone cold like he did. I’m not sure, but I bet he clams up like that when he gets scared.”
    He couldn’t help it, Adam laughed, ignoring the twinge of pain it caused all the way to his ribs. “I don’t think Stanton is scared of anything,” Adam began, then shut up when the memory of the cop trying to run out of the hospital flitted through his mind. The man hadn’t gone all stoic then. If Adam remembered right, Stanton had looked terrified. Or pissed, hard to tell—it wasn’t like he knew the man.
    Charlene patted his shoulder before releasing him. “Everyone’s scared of something.
    He’s no exception, and neither are you.”
    Yeah, that point had been hammered into Adam, literally, with fists and kicks, but somehow he doubted his mother was talking about him being afraid for their lives.
    “I know,” seemed like the best answer. Adam was glad his mother let him get away
    with just that admission. He didn’t have the time to dwell on or debate what she really meant.
     

     
    Josh sniffed like he was offended and tipped his nose up in the air. Maybe he was offended, how the hell would Les know? “Well, I just thought you might like to know, so excuse the hell out of me.”
    Les wanted to glare, yes he did, but he managed not to, barely. The idea of Adam
    working at the Xxchange didn’t sit well with him at all, but he had no grounds for his anger over it. The man had to make a living, and jobs were scarce. Wouldn’t be right to take it out on Josh, either. Instead he kept his attention on the ER doors as a small child darted back and forth in front of them, making them open, halt, start to close, halt—where the hell was this kid’s mother, anyway? Les spotted the woman sitting in the waiting room, one leg crossed over the other, her top foot bouncing as she flipped the pages of a ratty magazine.
    “He starts tonight, eight until the club closes,” Josh muttered. He nodded at the kid.
    “Does he look sick to you?”
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    Les watched the boy run back and forth, giggling as the doors whooshed. His stomach tensed and felt jittery at the same time as he batted back thoughts of his own childhood. He darted a glance to the mother, still more interested in the magazine than her kid. There was none of the dramatic tears and fussing like his own mother would have kicked up. What did that mean?
    Josh huffed, his breath causing the fringe on his brow to flutter up. “Oh well, it’s better to bring him in even if it’s a false alarm. You can never tell with the little ones how