Keeping Promise Rock (35 page)

The doctor had been backing away as Deacon spoke at first—and looking at the MPs like he expected them to do something. But Deacon wasn’t threatening violence; he wasn’t even angry. His expression was bare and naked, and his eyes were desperate. He stood there, his shyness and embarrassment gone, and nothing left but the raw need to see Carrick etched into every line of his face.

It was like the woman on the phone, Deacon realized. The man hitched a breath, and the bureaucracy fell away, and the humanity returned.

“I’ll get you his care instructions—we’ll be releasing him in about a week. Will you be escorting him home?”

“Damned straight,” Deacon said, closing his eyes in relief.

“Well, before you leave, we’re going to have a long talk about bandages and exercises and—”

“I was an EMT for almost three years—I know the drill. Give me the particulars then. I’ll be good for it.” But for now… right now….

“Then go ahead and follow the girl in.”

Crick was lying back on the pillows when Deacon stepped in, but Benny was holding Parry Angel up on the railing so the baby could coo and drool on him.

His hair was still short, but not regulation short, and he had a bandage taped up on the lower part of his cheek and around his temple.

They’d shaved some of that dark hair so the bandage would stick. His left arm was heavily bandaged, and his leg as well—Deacon thought he could see the lumps of bandages under his hospital gown too. There was some blood seeping through the gown, at any rate.

But his brown eyes were alert, and he smiled at the baby with a hint of awe.

“Look what you did, Benny—she’s so big!”

“She’s fat,” Benny said indulgently, blowing a bubble on the baby’s neck until she giggled. Parry’s giggle was like flowers and sunshine, and it certainly did a number on the rather plain hospital room.

“That baby is perfect,” Deacon said quietly, and Crick looked up so quickly he had to grimace when he strained something in his neck.

Deacon walked up to the hospital bed, and Benny moved without being asked. He took Crick’s hand in his then, figuring, what the hell—it was just a hand. But their flesh touched, and his eyes closed and then Keeping Promise Rock

squeezed tight shut, and when he opened them, his face was a little wet—

but then, so was Crick’s.

“Good to see you stopped slacking and finally got your ass home,” Deacon muttered, and Crick nodded. Their eyes collided, locked, skidded over the words while saying deeper things.

“Well, you know. Real men miss the smell of horseshit.” Crick tried a grin then, and it was… it was Crick’s grin. It was crooked and game, if a little tired and a little hurt. Deacon saw him then—Deacon’s Crick—in the injured man on the bed.

Deacon tried a quiet smile back, and Crick made a little sound in his throat. Then he sighed and hit the button that raised his bed. “Little sister, could you do me a favor?”

“Anything, Crick—for right now. When we get home, you get to clean the house and do all the shit I don’t like to do. You’re low man on the totem pole, buddy!” She said it sharply, but she made Crick laugh, and Crick looked at Deacon—and it was a sly Crick. The Crick who liked to skirt the law a little, and who stayed out of trouble by the skin of his teeth.

“Could you go get Deacon a soda? I’ve got to—” And he blushed, so Deacon knew he was telling the truth. “They took my catheter out about two hours ago, and it’s time…. I was hoping Deacon could help me to the john.”

Crick swung his legs over the bed, his two bare shins pale and hairy in the fluorescent light. Benny made a little “eww” sound and made a laughing escape. Deacon moved in like the professional he’d once been and slid his shoulder under Crick’s good side to help him up.

Crick wrapped an arm around his shoulder, and Deacon turned his head to the side, closed his eyes, and felt his nose brush Crick’s hair, his neck, his jawline.

“Just get me to the bathroom,” Crick murmured, and Deacon made a sound that might have passed for a grunt but felt more like a whimper.

Crick leaned on him pretty heavily on the way there—this wasn’t just a ruse—and when they got into the tiny little room, he parked his IV

at the door, closed the door gently so he didn’t squash the tube, then gave Deacon terse instructions.

“Here, help me turn around—I’m going to lean on you and grab my equipment.”

“Do you want me to put a cheerio in the bowl so you can aim?” Deacon asked dryly, and Crick leaned into his arms and fumbled with his gown, choking on a laugh.

“You bastard—if I piss all over myself, I’m going to blame you.”

“Here.” Deacon reached to the front and pulled the gown to the side for him, and Crick did his thing gratefully.

“I understand taking my first dump’s going to be a community event too,” Crick muttered, and then he leaned forward and dropped the lid down on the seat. “Here—help me sit.”

“I can just take you back….”

“Shut up,” Crick said thickly, easing his torn body onto the seat and turning around. He reached his good arm around Deacon’s waist and pulled Deacon between his spread thighs.

Deacon went willingly. His hands shook… oh God, his goddamned hands shook, but he buried them in Crick’s short, thick hair anyway and pulled Crick’s head to his middle. Crick fumbled with Deacon’s over shirt and then pulled his T-shirt out of the waistband of his jeans and laid his cheek against the bare skin of Deacon’s stomach. Deacon’s whole body shuddered, trembled, and he shivered convulsively around Crick. He ran his hands over his good shoulder, the middle of his back, anywhere there wasn’t bandaged skin to hurt. He bent his head and dropped kisses in Crick’s hair, and Crick clung to him, held him so tightly his knees almost gave.

There were no words. Not a single thing to say, not a single “I’m sorry” or “I missed you”—it was all there in Deacon’s shaking hands on Crick’s face, in Crick’s convulsive clutching of Deacon’s body.

Deacon’s eyes burned, and he closed them tight against tears, because he couldn’t afford them, and then he remembered if he could cry in front of anyone, it would be Carrick. The tender skin of his stomach was already slick with Crick’s tears.

“Christ you’re skinny,” Crick muttered against him, and Deacon choked back a laugh.

“And your shoulders doubled in size—good God, boy, are steroids Army-issue?”

“I think the shoulders come with growing up,” Crick said, half abashed. His breath tickled Deacon’s tummy, and Deacon found himself chuckling into Crick’s hair.

“You do manage to do things the hard way,” he said after a moment, and Crick laughed a little hysterically into his stomach.

“Yeah? All you had to do was stay home and mind the ranch—

somewhere in there, I think you turned into me!” Deacon laughed some more, a little droplet sputtering out from his lip with his breath. “That there’s a compliment I don’t think I deserve.

God, Carrick… it’s like I can feel my skin for the first time two years.” Crick’s hands pushed under his shirt and rubbed the skin at the small of his back, and Deacon shuddered with electricity and something wild. It wasn’t desire—not with Crick in the shape he was in—it was more like…

like life. Like vitality and reality. Like the world had been a dim, distant, black-and-white, soundless, scentless, emotionless void for the last two years, and all of it was surging back in the blood under his skin, activated by the lightning of Crick’s touch.

Crick heaved and shuddered and clutched him tighter, and Deacon almost prayed for his heart to stop, just thump and cease, right there in his chest, in his throat, because it was threatening to explode out of him, there in the tiny confines of the military hospital bathroom.

“Promise me something,” Deacon rasped, and Crick gave a muffled

“mmm” against him. “Promise me that if you ever leave me again, you’ll shoot me in the head while I sleep before you go.” Crick looked up at him, his shiny, dark, red-rimmed eyes shocked and wide under spiky lashes. “Deacon….”

“Promise, okay?”

“I’ll promise never to leave again,” Crick said, shaken. Deacon could tell the violence of the words got to him, but he couldn’t take them back.

“That’ll do for now,” he muttered, swallowing his fear. “That’ll definitely work for right now.”

They couldn’t stay there forever—time didn’t fold itself into an envelope and just get sent somewhere else while they held each other like lovers in a place that didn’t allow for that sort of thing.

Benny came in to the hospital room at some point and cleared her throat delicately to be heard through the door. “Guys… guys, unless Crick’s made of pee, it’s probably time you came out, okay?” Crick groaned—his body was probably sore and more than sore, and together they hauled him up and walked him slowly into the hospital room 240

and set him down. He lay back down, obviously tired from his short trip, and Deacon pulled the covers over his skinny, vulnerable legs.

“You ready for your nap yet?” Deacon asked. Neither of them could meet the other’s eyes or the waterworks would start again, and they both looked scrupulously away from Benny.

“Just about—but you gotta tell me a story first.” Crick closed his eyes, and Deacon pulled up one of the visitor’s chairs.

“Yeah? What, you want princesses and unicorns?” Crick smiled a little. “With me in a frilly dress and you in shining armor on a fearless charger? Don’t think so.” Deacon shrugged. “My armor’s tarnished and I shot your horse—I think you can skip the dress. What do you want to hear?”

“Tell me about the horses,” Crick said. “Tell me about home.” Deacon swallowed past the lump in his throat. Home was an iffy thing right now—home was a stack of bills he could barely pay, selling horses he’d rather not sell, and Even working the wonder-cock so much it was a shock that the horse didn’t just topple over in exhaustion. Home was disapproving neighbors pulling out of contracts and angry clients spitting on him as they took their horses to someplace smaller and dirtier because they were afraid Deacon would give them “horse-aids.” Home was an endless parade of horseshit because the last muckraker’s mother left the crack house and dragged her kid away by the ear about two weeks after the Driving While Gay trial and Deacon didn’t have the heart to try to find another one.

Home was a constant, panicky, breathless anxiety riding Deacon’s chest and shoulders, a bitter, self-recriminating fear that he would let down all the people who depended on him to succeed and betray the memory of his father who had never, not once, betrayed Deacon’s trust in him.

“The mustard flowers were out when we left,” he said, remembering how they looked over Comet’s grave. “And the rains went on for so long that the cherry blossoms are out too—you know that evening smell? Hay and wildflowers and water? There’s some poppies out this year in some of the fields—they make it sweeter. We bred Sugar to Even again, as soon as she came in season. I’m not saying they’ll make another Comet, but their temper is so sweet, I’m thinking we couldn’t hate whoever they put out.

The stream by Promise Rock is pretty deep; when the snow melts some Keeping Promise Rock

more it’ll be pretty cold. We haven’t” —he glanced up and saw Benny looking at him with poignant eyes; she knew all he wasn’t saying, but she didn’t interrupt—“we haven’t taken the baby yet. Last year we just set her in her car seat on the stream bank and let her look at the leaves. She’d nap or gurgle—Crick, they make the best noises when they’re that small. This year, we’ll have to get her a little life jacket and some floaty things. You can take her swimming, we’ll call it physical therapy, right? She’s fun, Crick. She can sit for hours with the same four toys, making noises, moving them around. You just wonder what she’s thinking when she does it….”

“Benny was like that,” Crick said dreamily, but his eyes were half-open and he was already mostly asleep.

“Yeah? Well Parry Angel must have gotten that from her…. She’ll sit and play in the mud with a little plastic doll for hours and hours and….”

Deacon talked until Crick was asleep, and when he was done, he looked up and saw Benny sitting on the edge of Crick’s bed and stroking his hand. The baby had fallen asleep with Crick, lulled by her Deek-deek’s voice, and was snoring unselfconsciously in her green-and-pink-flowered stroller.

Benny turned her own tears towards Deacon and shook her head.

“That was the nicest lie in the history of lying, Deacon. I don’t know how you did it.”

“It was all the truth,” Deacon said with some dignity, and Benny shook her head and wiped her face on the shoulder of her lime-green Tshirt.

“Deacon, when he gets home he’s going to see the truth—and he’ll know that’s not it.”

“I’ll make it the truth,” Deacon told her with quiet ferocity. “I swear, Benny—I won’t lose our home.”

Benny nodded. “We’d still love you if you did, Deacon. Your armor’s not tarnished at all, you know—that was a lie too.”

“Shut up, Shorty. Let’s get back to the hotel room. You guys can take a nap, and I’ll get a book and come back. Look quick, is anybody out there?”

Benny hopped off the bed and looked through the observation glass to the room. “You’re clear.”

Deacon stood and leaned over the bed, kissing Crick softly on the temple without the bandage. “Love you, Carrick James—we’ll be back later today, all right?”

Crick stirred and muttered, “Won’t leave you, Deacon. Promise.” Deacon closed his eyes, and four months worth of guilt hit him on the head. He trusted that promise and hoped he hadn’t just paid it back with lies.

Seven days later, Crick was ready to go, and Deacon needed to be home. Their third day in Virginia, Andrew had called in a panic—a lawyer had come by with a certified letter from the bank, asking for the all the payments on the ranch within thirty days or they’d lose it. Deacon had called Jon in the same panic, and Jon said yes, it was illegal, they couldn’t do that, and then had hung up and called back and told them what had brought the notice on.

“Melanie and step-Bob are apparently big churchgoers,” Jon said in disgust. “And they know the president of the bank personally. Look, Deacon—you put me in charge of your affairs, so I’m going to move your loan to another bank. Your credit is excellent, and you’re being discriminated against, and it’s illegal. You tell me how far to take this, and Amy and I will take it two hits further for revenge, okay?” Deacon had clutched his cell phone to his ear and looked out of the bathroom at Benny and Parry Angel, both of them sitting on the floor while the baby watched her favorite Disney show, excited that something so familiar would be seen in such an exotic locale.