Forever Promised (4 page)

Deacon
:
The Cosmic Smell of Horse

C
ONTRARY
to popular belief, Deacon’s father had
not
been perfect.

It was easy to idolize him
now
,
because he was dead and, well, because compared to Crick’s stepfather, Parrish really
was
a goddamned saint.

But Parrish had been a silent, moody fucker when it suited him, and although it was easy for Deacon to blame his mother for drinking herself to death, Deacon knew living with Parrish—especially in the early days of The Pulpit, when the hours were longer than the day—that could not have been easy. So as much as Crick gave him grief about being an uncommunicative asshole sometimes, Deacon was pretty sure he’d already beat his father in total words uttered in a lifetime.

But that didn’t mean talking about his feelings was just going to happen overnight.

So when he and Jon returned to the wedding reception, he was well aware that he wasn’t just going to announce Jon’s move to the world—not right now. He needed a few minutes.
Jon
needed a few minutes. Deacon could tell by the way Jon walked over to his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder, even in the stifling heat, that Jon needed time.

Good. Deacon would just as soon pretend that entire conversation had not happened for a while.

Instead, he laughed at Jeff’s favorite PT client, Margie, a newly thin middle-aged woman who gave Jeff grief about being the Marquis de Sade of physical therapy at the same time she fetched Collin another piece of cake. He said a few words to Martin, the little brother of Jeff’s late boyfriend, and asked him if he was ready to help out with the garage. Martin had laughed and shrugged, but Deacon had seen it—the cagey, defiant youngster of nearly three years ago had grown into a thoughtful young man. He’d be fine, and Deacon was glad—Collin and Jeff had more family, and that was almost always a blessing.

After the pleasantries (blissfully short), he helped Drew and Patrick put away chairs. He was not too out of it to notice that Drew was sullen and uncommunicative himself, and although it was a rare mood on his friend and fellow horse-sufferer, it suited his own mood perfectly.

It was Patrick who said something.

“Damn, Deacon—when your daddy was like this, at least he only tormented the horses! Why aren’t you bitching to Crick and getting whatever this is off your chest!”

Deacon was forced to laugh. He couldn’t remember when Patrick had first started working for his father, but he’d been glad that Parrish’s best friend and confidant hadn’t dropped completely out of his life. Maybe he should take a lesson from that—Patrick still stayed in touch and made it to the important stuff even though he’d moved a few hours away. There wasn’t any reason to suspect Jon wouldn’t.

He looked around then, thinking he could actually talk to Crick without losing his composure and pouting now, and realized he was gone.

It took three people before he got to the kid from Promise House who told him that Shane and Mikhail had taken him home, and that he’d needed help. Deacon’s funk abruptly returned, especially when he realized he was going to have to take the kids and the chairs back to their respective places.

He stopped yearning for Crick’s company by then, and felt his father’s gift of uncommunicative bastard slip in place once again. He longed for the silence and the nonverbal company of the horses.

Eventually he got there.

First he had to fix Crick a snack, pausing for a moment to see the lines of pain etched in Crick’s face, the way he closed his eyes in the quiet of the house like he trusted, and the way he managed a smile for Deacon even though he obviously felt like shit.

Deacon owed him. Owed him for sticking with him through all the times Deacon
didn’t
want to talk, owed him for loving Deacon when Deacon had to admit he wasn’t the easiest person to live with. Owed him for smiling all the times he hurt, and owed him for making Deacon laugh all the times Deacon had assumed he would rather chew off his own arm.

Deacon could spend some of this stupid sadness on the damned horses.

Benny had to come get him, and it seemed to be the day for people trying to hide shitty moods, but he let her keep hers to herself.

Sitting in the barn, remembering Crick in there as a kid, remembering the things they’d done in there as adults (those things that made his face heat and had him adjusting his pants) and the way Crick had always loved the horses even though he hadn’t been the best rider or even the best person to put in a pen with a skittish, ornery animal, Deacon was able to get some of his peace back.

Jon would leave, Crick would stay. Deacon could suffer any number of losses, any number of people leaving and coming, any shifts of time and family and friends, as long as Crick would stay.

Crick loved him. It was always enough.

Mikhail
:
Upon Being Put Out

M
IKHAIL
eyed Martin with deep suspicion, especially since the boy had
obviously
not heard a word he’d said two and a half years earlier, and had eaten enough to grow to the size of a house. Any boy who grew
that
big was obviously a person not to be trusted.

“You understand, this is a very special vehicle,” he said sharply.

Martin, to his credit, eyed the giant purple Chevy van with the freehand pink lettering without batting a thick black eyelash.

“I understand,” he said, and his voice was soft and low, but Mikhail still scowled.

“You understand that this is a special vehicle, or you understand how to work on such a thing?” he demanded. “The other boy—”

“Collin?” Martin asked, confused, and Mikhail waved his hand.

“Pfft—yes, he is still a boy. You are all children. I am surrounded by children, and disrespectful ones at that, or that boy would not have gone off and on a holiday when my car chose to break down.”

Martin thrust out a pink-chocolate lip and turned big soulful eyes on Mikhail without the slightest twinge of impatience. Martin had been able to make it out for the wedding, and he’d been a mechanic in a garage down south during his entire junior year of high school. Although he was technically an adult, this was the summer before his final year of high school, and he’d come out to attend the wedding and watch Collin and Jeff’s house and Collin’s business. The two of them were spending a week in Manhattan, seeing plays and museums and generally boring Collin to death (or so Mikhail assumed).

It appeared that Martin had earned enough self-possession in the years to not succumb to Mikhail’s little temper tantrum about his beloved Purple Brick
.
“They’re on their
honeymoon,
” Martin emphasized, “and Collin wouldn’t have left me in charge if he didn’t trust me.”

Collin, in fact, had told Mikhail that this boy was planning to come to California
permanently
once he’d graduated, where he would live in Collin’s old flat above his mother’s garage and assist Collin and Joshua with the business. Next June, he would be a high school graduate as well as an adult, and right now, he was practicing for the job. Mikhail had trouble believing that—the boy had been the next best thing to a delinquent when he’d first arrived at Levee Oaks, and he had certainly hated Jeff’s queer ass with everything inside him. But still, Mikhail was walking, irritated proof that people could indeed change.

“This van is very special,” he conceded. “When I brought it home, my cop took one look at it and called everybody we know to come out and fix it. It took them four days.”

Martin’s eyes got a little wider, and he looked under the hood of the van again. “You got off lucky, little man. If you’d brought that thing to me in any worse condition than it’s already in, I would have gotten Collin’s gun out of the safe and shot it dead.”

Mikhail grunted and narrowed his eyes. “You say that, but you? You do not have the guts. It takes a Russian to make a mercy killing, but only on a good day. I have no mercy in me. You’d better fix it, or the damned thing is going to haunt you like whatever small city you ate for breakfast.”

Martin grinned. “I frickin’ missed you, you grumpy Russian bastard.” He straightened up and wiped his hands with one of the cloths he and Collin seemed to sprout from their pockets. “Do you have a ride, or do I have to send you into the garage to make Joshua’s life a living hell?” Joshua was Collin’s other “employee,” who had started working in Collin’s garage mostly for the challenge.

Mikhail pulled a corner of his mouth up in a sneer so he didn’t have to smile. “No. My cop is coming to pick me up after he is done grocery shopping.” Costco. They had ten lost children at Promise House now, as well as four other employees, and those kids each ate more in a day than Mikhail
and
Kimmy ate in a month. The dance circuit for the fairs didn’t start up again until late August, so Mikhail’s only workout was the one he did each morning in the little studio Shane had made out of their spare room now that Kimmy had moved out. Mikhail had always been aware of his own vanity, but he’d never realized how well it had served him until he’d been faced with eating Pizza Bites for lunch and pizza Hot Pockets for dinner, when he was taking his turn supervising at Promise House. He would
not
get fat for his cop!

Martin shook his head. “You know, someday, you will have to tell me why you call him your ‘cop’”—and Mikhail frowned.

“Because he was on the police force when we met. What a stupid question!”

Martin frowned, obviously thinking hard. Mikhail knew his brother had been killed in the service—had
chosen
to be killed when he’d discovered he was HIV positive in a DADT corp. It had taken Jeff almost six years to get over Kevin, and part of that had been making peace with Kevin’s little brother. Of course Martin knew all about the ins and outs of strong men in a homophobic world.

“How’d that go over?” he asked carefully, and Mikhail looked at him with distaste.

“He was hurt a lot,” he said after a painful moment. “Why is it you ask?”

Martin sighed. “Because Jon’s going to Washington to fight the good fight for you guys. I keep thinking I want to help like that—make the world a better place for people I….” He stopped and grimaced. Eighteen and mature, yes, but saying you loved a bunch of gay men when you were not gay, well, that was a stretch for eighteen at all. “My uncles here,” he finished, looking wryly at Mikhail. “I tell my family about my uncles here in California, and they start asking if I’m gay.”

“What do you say?” Mikhail asked, curious.

Martin shrugged, and his smile was fierce and grim. Mikhail had not seen many black people before he’d moved to America as a teenager. He figured if he’d seen that smile when he’d been fifteen, he’d have run the other way.

“Last time, I said yes, then I leveled the guy,” Martin said with satisfaction. His face fell a little. “Not the way to pick up women in the South, though.”

Mikhail grimaced, feeling for him. Eighteen and not able to fuck? That
was
a crying shame! “Well, is a good thing you moved out here. From what I understand, the women here are much more promiscuous. You will not be a virgin for long.”

Martin straightened up so fast he knocked his head on the edge of the hood and yelped. “Jesus, little man! I’m not a… a… a… you know!”

Mikhail lifted a shoulder. “If you weren’t one, you’d be able to say it. Besides. Virginity is not a crime. Unlike being gay in some countries, it is actually considered a virtue.” Mikhail nodded sincerely. “You can use it as a selling point when you see a woman who may or may not be worthy of you.”

“May not be worthy…?”

The boy did not look stupid. Mikhail sighed. “Well, you are obviously a boy of great worth. If you can fix my van, you are your own weight in gold.” Mikhail looked up again at his tastelessly imposing height. “And that is saying something. Who’s that?”

Martin didn’t even look behind him. “That is who I wanted to talk to you about. Is she going through the trash cans?”

“Yes. There is not much trash… oh, good for her. She has found french fries.” It was appalling. She was a pretty thing, probably taller than he was, with skin not quite as dark as Martin’s. Her hair was coarse and black and brushed back into a soiled terrycloth band, and her face was a strong oval, with a small broadened nose and dramatically almond-shaped brown eyes. So a potpourri of genetics, one Mikhail had become accustomed to in Northern California. And in order to be like his beloved cop, he had learned to look beyond skin color and even gender, and to look to the more important things. Like the fact she was wearing two shirts, a sweatshirt, and a pair of jeans on this interminably hot summer day, and the fact she was scrounging in the trash for food.

“Martin?” he said, wondering how feral she was. He and Shane had set the children at Promise House on the daunting task of catching the stray cats in the surrounding property so they could take them to the spay and neuter clinic and effectively cut down on the population. Would this cat scratch his hand and bite? Would she bolt? Or was she sufficiently tame enough to be lured to safety with a little bit of food?