Forever Promised (18 page)

“Yeah, sure, good idea. Is that what you’re looking for?” Crick reached over her to the top of the fridge for the plastic bags and put the specimen cup in the first one he found.

“No,” she said, straightening. “I’m
looking
for the specimen cup, which was supposed to be in the fridge—omigod.”

“Well, yeah. If it was going to be more than an hour and a half, it had to be on ice, right?”

“Omigod.”

“Well, it’s what? Twenty minutes to the doctor’s office? Go! It’s fresh! Take it!”

Benny was usually so active, so animated, and she was just
standing
there, her blue eyes big as a lake, her wide mouth gaping slightly. “That’s… that’s his
specimen
? You were just in there collecting his
specimen?
” she protested.

“
Yes
!” Crick danced from one foot to another. “And now it’s time for him to collect
mine
!”

“Omigod!” Benny said after a moment. “Oh my
God!
”

“Benny, we’ve been having sex since I got home from Iraq—I don’t know if that shocks you or not—”

“Jesus, Crick,
shut up
!” She’d turned bright red—so red her forehead was blotchy—and he could see sweat starting at her scalp where her hair was pulled back in a short ponytail.

Crick realized he was having fun. “Sure, sure, sure—take your jizz and go. We know when we’re being used!” He laughed, holding the bag with the specimen cup high and above her head.

She leveled a glare at him meant to shrivel the pubes off his nuts, and if he wasn’t so damned gleeful at having gotten Deacon this far in the process, it might have worked.

“Don’t be a dick,” she snapped.

“I’m not being a dick!” God, let a guy have a little fun! Jesus!

“You are being such a dick as to make a real dick look like a labia minora. Now give me my fucking semen and go get off! We’ve got real shit to talk about when you hit puberty, okay?”

Hell. Crick deflated and lowered his arm. She snatched the bag out of his hand with force, and then, remembering what she had, adjusted its position in her fingers.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling cheated as his joy drained down his spine and into the floor. “I heard. She’s at Promise House. Should we visit?”

Benny grimaced. “No—Mikhail told me she’s being a complete and total—”

“Flaming twat,” Crick muttered, echoing Deacon’s words from when he was in the hospital.

“Yeah—except he said something absolutely vile-sounding in Russian that made a flaming twat sound like a skin condition and whatever Missy is being sound like Ebola virus.”

“
God
, Benny, can you not open your mouth without saying something that turns my stomach?”

“
You
? I have to drive to the doctor’s with semen in my front seat thinking about you having sex! You have this coming on general principle! Now we shouldn’t visit, but should we let her know we give a shit?”

Crick grunted. “I’ll think about it,” he said, knowing it sounded callous but not able to do anything about it. They had tried—for the two years he’d been in Iraq, Benny and Deacon had tried, and for the five years he’d been back, they had
all
tried, to get hold of those girls and make them family. But the… the snake pit of pain and favoritism and abuse and bigotry that Missy came from… well, without Deacon and Parrish to bail Crick out, he wouldn’t have been much to speak of either.

“Yeah, me too,” Benny sighed. “We’ll talk to Shane about it when her probationary period is over. All right, big brother. I gotta motor. I’ve got an ice chest in the front of the car. If I get this jizz to the doc in time, he can freeze it and use it for their holy and sainted purpose as daddy sperm and I don’t ever have to know about you and Deacon having sex again.”

Crick grimaced. “Yeah, well, five years, Benny—you might have figured out by now that nobody washes their sheets
that
often.”

Benny shook her head and shuddered in disgust. “I’m outta here. I’d say tell Deacon hi for me, but I don’t even want to be brought up in conversation when you do what you gotta do!”

Crick watched her go into the August heat—it was only eight in the morning and already eighty degrees outside—and some of his earlier joy came back. The Promise House kids were out there, feeding, watering, brushing, walking, mucking out stalls—all the things that needed to be done with the horses on a daily basis. Drew must have had Parry Angel, which meant Lucas was supervising and, for once, Deacon could sleep in.

But Crick wasn’t going to let him do much sleeping. He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered the way Deacon bit his lower lip when he was coming, and smiled. There was a sudden tingle in his crotch, and an ache, and he thrust his hand down the front placket of his jeans and stroked, hardening and throbbing with just that much pressure.

Oh yes. Oh, oh
yes
!

“Deacon!” he called, heading toward the hallway, “you promised you’d still be naked!”

“I didn’t promise any… thing… of the sort!” Deacon retorted, but his breath was coming short and it had the thready, desperate sound of an aroused man.

“And don’t start without me!” Crick said indignantly. “That’s not….”

He opened the door and saw Deacon, naked, legs spread, hand on himself while his eyes were closed. His cock was fully erect again, and Crick managed to finish his sentence on the jolt of irritation that surged through him.

“Fair,” he said. “That’s not fair.” And he stripped as fast as his hands could accomplish the task. “You couldn’t wait for round two?” he protested, and for a moment, Deacon’s whole body shuddered, and Crick thought he might have seriously misjudged and Deacon was going to finish himself off without Crick’s help. But he relaxed back against the bed with a happy sigh and opened hooded eyes.

“No, Carrick, I was getting myself ready for round two.” With that, he reached under the pillow and pulled out the half-empty tube of lubricant, which he threw at Crick. “Now it’s your turn to get ready.”

Crick almost giggled, he was so happy. His worry about his sister fell away, and even his worry about what they were going to do with the results Benny brought back. Fact was, Deacon Winters was his most favorite person in the world, and they were going to spend some quality time together. Crick would put about anything on the back burner of his mind for quality time.

Deacon
:
Truth in Fiction

B
Y
F
RIDAY
, Deacon was back to shoveling horseshit and riding the perpetrators—and just like when he’d recovered from his heart attack, he was happy enough to be back on his feet that shoveling horseshit looked good.

Sunday dinner seemed especially poignant—it was Martin’s last dinner before he flew back home to his last year of high school, and Benny’s last dinner before her last year of college started. And, of course, every dinner with Jon and Amy felt precious to the lot of them.

Everybody’s favorite deserters spent this last dinner bickering over whether they were going to sell their house at Levee Oaks or keep it and use it when they came for vacations. The table conversation grew loud enough for Deacon to override the both of them and say of course they were keeping the house, but maybe, since it was damned huge, they could let someone move in and watch it for them and pay a minimal rent.

That seemed the perfect solution, and Deacon was able to finish his broiled chicken in peace. (It did not escape his notice that there were two kinds of chicken on the table, and that the fried kind was on the
other
side of the table. But he was replete with sex and well rested for once, and he wasn’t going to argue with having to eat broiled, tender marinated chicken. Crick had done his job well.)

And not a soul—not one—mentioned anything about the baby.

Deacon’s relief could have been written in fireworks and set to a big brass band.

God. Just a minute, a breath, for this idea to sink in.

And here, as he shoveled horseshit and straw, it was doing just that.

He’d been there when Parry Angel had been born. He’d held her first, as soon as the nurses had cleaned her up. She’d been ugly—all babies were ugly—and pink and wrinkled, but she hadn’t cried a lot like most babies, and her blue eyes had actually seemed to focus. He’d handed her to a sweating, exhausted Benny and watched Benny become beautiful and grown all in one smile.

Next to seeing himself through Crick’s eyes, or riding a horse hell-for-leather as fast as they both could go, it was about the closest thing to magic he could possibly imagine.

Since Crick wasn’t going to sprout a uterus anytime soon, the idea of Benny having Deacon’s child, with those little pieces of Crick—and even the pieces of Benny, whom he loved almost as much—made his chest hurt, made his breath come short.

He’d had a real heart attack before—this feeling was nothing like it.

There was only sweetness here.

He wanted it. He wanted it so badly. He knew what having a baby was like—the getting up early, the constant shift for child care, the worry that was so omnipresent you forgot it was there until it flared up. He, Parry, and Benny had gotten hit with the flu when Crick was gone, and had all ended up in the hospital. He’d held Parry when Benny couldn’t, sung to her when his own throat was on fire,
willing
that little body to recover, to fight.

He knew that fear for the worst.

He’d lived through it.

That night, the worry, the fear—it had all been worth it. Every breath Parry had taken before or since had made it so.

He’d known it would be like this. It was one of the reasons he’d fought it so badly. He couldn’t make Benny go through with it. He wouldn’t beg her to give up a baby. But he wanted… oh, hells… he
yearned
for this baby.

The idea of telling Benny no was getting harder and harder to embrace.

So he welcomed this time in his own head, the quiet, the peace to align his thoughts and get his arguments in order. He could do this. He could live without this one thing he wanted most in the world besides Crick, if it meant Benny didn’t have to break her heart.

He had that all firmed up in his head when Benny poked her head into the close yellow air of the stables.

He looked up and smiled. “Heya, Shorty! How’s school?”

Benny made a face. “I’m taking a poetry class. I love it. It makes me want to go back and take all English classes and start all over again.”

Deacon laughed. “Well, what’s wrong with that? You got time!”

Benny shook her head. “Naw—I’m ready to be done. I’ll take a few classes now and then read when I’ve got a sec.” She came in wearing cargo shorts and a tank top and made herself comfortable on top of a bale of hay. She’d just gotten her hair cut shorter, so it was tousled and fluffy all over her head, and she didn’t look much older than she had nearly seven years earlier, when Deacon had first taken her in.

“People say they’re going to do that…,” he cautioned, but she was ready for him.

“Yeah, well, I’ve watched you do it, Deacon. I can follow that example. Don’t worry about it. I’m ready to be out of there, you know?”

Deacon shrugged and grinned at her. “I’m not ready for you to grow up, but you never seem to listen to me on that score.”

She didn’t smile back. “But you listen to me, right?”

Her face was earnest and calm, and his stomach sank.

“Yeah,” he said, not wanting this conversation quite yet. “Every time. You know that, right?”

Benny nodded. “I do,” she said, and her voice got rough, and he looked around in alarm for a cloth. Benny’s heart sat on her sleeve every minute of every day. She would cry through this conversation if it was happy or sad, and….

She pulled a little minipack of Kleenex out of her pocket, and he smiled against the tightness in his throat. She knew herself too, apparently. And she was clever to boot.

“Look,” he said, knowing his voice was portentous but not able to stop it. “Benny, I know you mean well—”

She held up a hand. “You need to hear me out,” she said gently. “Please. Don’t talk for this, okay, Deacon? Because I’m only going to say this once, and then you have to pretend we never had this conversation, all right?”

Deacon nodded seriously and leaned his weight on his pitchfork. “It’ll be the secret conversation,” he promised, trying to get her to smile.

She wiped her eyes and shook her head. “We can’t laugh through this,” she said, her voice surprisingly even. “Not even a little.”

“Benny?” His stomach gave a tentative roil, and his chest started to ache even more. “Is this about the baby?”

She shook her head. “Only sort of.” And in spite of her earlier words, she smiled at him, looking him full in the eyes. “Deacon, I’m in love with Drew, do you doubt that?”

He shook his head. He’d seen them together, seen them flirt, seen them kiss even. He’d seen that sweet, secret hope on Benny’s face on the night she’d oh-so-casually mentioned she was going to Drew’s cottage that evening and might not be back until morning.