Forever Promised (7 page)

They got outside, and Deacon grinned at Parry Angel. “So, Collin drove the Camaro, Angel. Do you want to ride in the back with him or in the extended cab with me?”

Parry Angel grinned, eschewing Collin’s pride and joy, the recently repainted red-and-black vintage Camaro with the tricked-out engine that featured the chrome-plated intake manifold system on the
outside
of the hood, in favor of the battered family pickup truck with the car seat firmly belted in the back.

“Sorry, Uncle Collin!” she called winsomely, and Collin laughed and tapped her nose with a finger that was only now, after almost two weeks off, starting to lose some of the ever-present grease.

“No worries, Angel. I’ll see you at home.” It figured. Nobody, not even fun Uncle Collin, was going to get between that child and her Deek-Deek. Yeah, she called him Deacon
now
,
but Collin could still remember when she was three and she called him Deek-Deek, and everybody thought it was
adorable.
Nobody was going to let either Parry
or
Deacon live that down.

As Collin followed Deacon to The Pulpit, he reflected that it had been a very, very quick two and a half years. Of course, he would have married Jeffy two years ago, after their painful courtship and Deacon’s heart attack and Shane and Mikhail’s wedding, but life just seemed to happen, and since they’d been together and living it that way, a wedding didn’t seem to be all that important.

It wasn’t until Shane’s sister, Kimmy, had celebrated her wedding—on a much smaller scale than her brother, actually—and Collin had watched Jeff sobbing through it that he realized they were long past due.

Well, why not? Collin had been ready to marry him before their first kiss. By the time Shane and Mikhail had stood on a miserably wet February day and said funny, singular vows of their own, he’d already started writing vows of his own. It was just that things—wonderful, exciting things, like sharing lives and living with Jeffy’s cats and giving the kids at Promise House job training and making love on stifling Saturdays when the joys of air conditioning and sex were both free and decadent—
those
things had gotten in the way.

They were wonderful things. Collin wouldn’t trade a moment of them. But traveling in New York, dressed to the nines as they padded around Manhattan and saw plays in Times Square and wandered around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he had felt such a quiet claiming in the words. “I’m waiting for my husband.” “I’m here with my husband.” “Oh yeah, my husband made me get tickets months ago.” When Collin had been in high school, he’d gotten the snot beaten out of him for wearing a rainbow goalie jersey to a soccer game, all in the name of gay pride. Over the past few weeks, he’d discovered nothing exceeded the pride of living a quiet, productive life on his own terms with the person he loved the most.

And part of that belonging and pride was being a part of The Pulpit. Collin had started out as an outsider, and he had to admit it, he’d been mildly resentful. They’d all been so tight, a group of circled wagons against what had been a hostile environment, dry of tolerance or even simple humanity. Collin had wondered, in those first days, what he’d have to do to squeeze his own wagon into the circle. As it turned out, loving Jeffy had given him a pass. He was in, and so was his family, and as the family at The Pulpit had expanded and his own family had merged into that Calistoga circle, the human desert of Levee Oaks had seemed a little less dry and hostile and a little more inhabitable.

And now Deacon Winters, Levee Oaks’ most famous gay resident, had been asked to coach soccer. (Yeah, sure, Crick was a war hero, but in a town like this, having the old valedictorian/football hero/golden boy lit up a far bigger halo than a guy everybody had known was gay in the first place.)

It made the rebel in Collin a little bit proud.

So Collin was riding high when he pulled into the gravel drive of The Pulpit and parked along the wide, flat space of hardpan with the other cars. Judging by the vehicles, Collin could see Shane and Mikhail were there, as was Jeffy, and he was a little relieved. Small. Benny and Drew would be eating, but that was still short a whack of people who could have kept this from being a quiet, easy night he and Jeff could walk away from early.

Excellent.

Deacon had pulled out behind him and gotten stopped at the light, but Collin swung up the long porch and into the front room with the ease of long familiarity. The family was gathered around the big battered wooden table in the kitchen, and Collin didn’t think twice before he called to them.

“Hello, hello! Doesn’t anybody want to come greet the new assistant coach of the Levee Oaks Bunny Fires?”

He was greeted by a wall of tense, blank faces, and then Jeffy turned toward him and wrinkled his nose. “Jebus, Sparky—have you
ever
learned to read a room?”

“Well, yeah,” Collin said, feeling acutely uncomfortable without even knowing why. “But usually I’m not blindsided by this much angst. What in the hell happened when I volunteered Deacon to coach?”

Crick stood up and started moving restlessly around the kitchen, his movements hitching a little like they tended to do at the end of the day. When Deacon had first come out, Collin used to secretly wonder what Deacon—easily the most amazing-looking man Collin had ever met—had seen in gangly, plainly pretty Crick Francis. In the past two and a half years, Collin had seen the town’s most famous hell-raiser devote his life to keeping Deacon Winters alive and their family functioning even if it was just by a tart word that made the recipient think twice about saying anything different. He didn’t wonder anymore, but sometimes he did get uncomfortable watching them look at each other. That was dangerous love right there, and Collin had spent his first eighteen years courting danger with almost more perseverance than he’d courted Jeff, so he should know.

“So,” he said slowly, feeling his way through the high-wire atmosphere, “what in the holy mother of fuck did I miss?”

Benny looked up from the table, which should have surprised him because usually everyone’s favorite little mommy was busy moving and didn’t
sit
at the table, but there she was. Her small heart-shaped face was pale, and her ordinarily full lips were pinched and almost white. Her eyes—Crick’s shape, but wide and blue instead of brown—were shiny, like she’d been fighting tears for a very long time. She was holding onto Drew’s hand so tightly, Drew’s fingertips had lost all circulation, judging by the white of the finger pads, and Collin was suddenly very, very worried.

“Benny?” Collin said gently. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” she snapped, glaring at Crick. “My stupid brother made a big deal out of something, and then the whole world walked in for dinner and heard us fighting, and now this entire thing is going to go down in front of the entire free world, and that’s fine, because it’s a family matter anyway.”

“No.” Mikhail spoke up decisively, and Collin watched as Shane nodded gravely behind him. Well, they read each other’s minds more often than not.

“No?” Benny said, her eyes wide and a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

“No,” Mikhail repeated. “We shall leave, and we shall take Parry Angel to Jon and Amy’s, and Shane is calling them even as I speak.”

“Of course I am,” Shane muttered, fumbling for his phone.

“That’s news to me,” Benny said and Crick spoke up, his voice a lot more tense than Collin had expected.

“It’s a good idea. There’s school tomorrow, but she can still get in some time with Lila before they have to leave.”

Collin felt a small pang of loss, and he was aware that the rest of the family felt it more like a fist through the gut. Deacon’s best friend was going away to DC to lobby for gay rights—it was a tremendous opportunity, actually, but it was no secret Deacon was fighting against being crushed by the news.

“That would make things easier,” Benny murmured, her relief palpable. “But I hate to chase all of you out—”

“Nonsense.” Mikhail shrugged, cutting her off in his abrupt way. He walked forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Just remember tomorrow, when you are calling Jeff to dish, that I thought of it, and call me instead.” Mikhail arched a smug blond eyebrow at Jeff, who stuck his tongue out back. “That way I can have the news for once, instead of finding out from
him
!”

Benny reached up her arms and hugged him tight, much to the little Russian’s discomfort. “Of course,” she said and kissed his cheek. “You get first rights of the phone tree, Mickey, I promise.”

Besides Shane, Benny was the only other person on the planet who got to call him Mickey—and that included Shane’s sister, who had known him first.

Shane finished his conversation with Jon abruptly and walked forward and hugged Benny too, and then patted Drew’s shoulder before following Mikhail out of the house. Jeff and Collin repeated the ritual, and besides feeling a little bit cheated, Collin was also
burning
with curiosity at what could have caused the lead wagon to sit in confab with itself.

He didn’t have to look at Jeff (although he
liked
looking at him, because in spite of what could have been an awkward face with a long chin and a slightly hooked nose, Jeff’s animation and almost constant snarky smile made him a joy to look at) to know that that same willingness to dish was just vibrating out of his little Jeffy heart.

Collin hugged Benny and kissed her on the cheek, and she said quietly, “You’ll be a great assistant coach, Collin. I didn’t mean to shit all over your news, but that other guy was a douchecanoe. I’m so glad you and Deacon are taking over.”

Collin pulled back then and grinned, because leave it to Benny to think about him and not herself when whatever was going on was obviously huge, and then he followed Jeff out to the car.

Mikhail was in the middle of securing the car seat into the back of the GTO, and Uncle Shane was in the middle of swinging Parry Angel high up in the air. He was probably the only one of them still big enough to make that sort of thing not awkward for Parry, whose sturdy little limbs were getting longer every day. Parry squealed when he put her down to kiss Deacon good-bye, and Deacon waved to all of them before he wandered inside the house. Collin paused in the middle of sliding into his car and locked eyes with Jeff.

Jeff practically ran from his Mini Cooper over to Collin’s side, where Collin was greeted with a quick kiss and then what they both
really
wanted.

“Oh holy Jebus, Sparky, you will
never
guess what is going down in there!”

“Oh thank God,” Collin breathed. “The curiosity was fucking killing me. Spill!”

Jeff looked up at the house and grimaced. “Here. Give me a ride. You can drop me off at my car tomorrow, or, better yet, drop Martin off. He’s home right now and needs to get out of the house so you and I can get loud again. Anyway.” Jeff trotted around the car and they both got in. He ran a hand through his gelled dark hair, which was a good sign his agitation was true and not just dramatic, and then gestured frantically for Collin to turn the engine over and get the hell out of there.

“Jesus, Jeff, what’s the hurry!” Collin grumbled, and Jeff shook his head and looked behind him as Collin pulled back out of the driveway. “It’s not something bad, is it?”

Jeff shook his head. “No—it’s going to be a good thing, I think, after they get their shit sorted over there in drama central. But in the meantime….” Jeff shook his head again, but more slowly this time. “Oh, Sparky, Deacon is not going to take this well.”

Deacon
:
Shit Sorting at Drama Central

“I’
M
SORRY
,”
Deacon said blankly. “Could you repeat that?”

Deacon was having the
weirdest
day.

Of all the things, he would
not
have predicted that group of parents following him and Collin off the field. He’d been sure
the only thing that was going to hunt him down was a restraining order, but holy fuckin’ damn. Apparently all those nice people who’d watched him deck that ignorant asshole had thought that shit was
cool.
Deacon wasn’t sure he approved of a group of people who would condone that behavior, but seeing as it meant he wasn’t going to have to deal with the police (and apparently Ness had been convinced it would be in his best interest not to contact the authorities either), he found himself having to deal with
them.

They weren’t so bad, actually, and thank God Megan and her stalwart companion could do most of the talking. (Of course Collin did his share—it was no wonder he and Jeff made such a great couple. They could keep the entire town fueled with chatter if they tried.) Coaching the soccer team actually sounded
fun
, and it would be a chance to spend more time with Parry.

Deacon was well aware his time with her was running out.

In spite of the way everybody tended to coddle him, he was not deluded into thinking Jon and Amy hadn’t needed to move on for quite some time, and he had
always
known Benny and Parry were only his on loan. No. Carrick he’d cling to until his fingers snapped off, but staying in Levee Oaks had been a choice for him, not a lack of options. He was well aware the rest of the world wasn’t always going to make that choice.