Spirit (18 page)

Sam finally got his wits about him and moved in too. His face was warped with worry and fear. He looked as if he couldn’t believe the
things Timmy was doing, Timmy was saying. He scrambled around
trying to catch Timmy’s hands, but the boy’s little fists kept pounding me, pounding me.

I could feel a rivulet of blood dribbling from my nose where Timmy had bopped me a good one. I cried out when one of his hands struck my open eye. I turned away, and Timmy almost ripped my ear off in his anger, crying louder now. Keening in misery and fury and helplessness. Screaming at the top of his voice.
Wailing.

“Shush now. Shush, Timmy. Stop. Stop.” Sam tried to soothe the boy, holding Timmy’s hands in his own now, protecting me from the blows, fighting with Timmy to make him quiet down.

Timmy was no longer cursing; he was simply crying like his heart was broken. He threw his head back as I held him in my arms, and while Sam clutched his hands to keep them still, Timmy bellowed out a scream of frustration and rage that almost broke my heart.

Sam and I were both making soothing noises now. Trying to calm the boy. Trying to bring him down from whatever horrible place he was in. That place no four-year-old should
ever
find himself inhabiting. Filled with a wrath no child should
ever
have to experience. Should never even know
existed.

While Sam still clutched Timmy’s tiny fists, holding them close to his heart, I pulled them both, Timmy and Sam, into my arms, and together Sam and I put our heads against Timmy’s and continued to mutter calming words, make soothing sounds.

Slowly, his fury dwindled. His breathing slowed. His eyes, red and strained from weeping, gradually turned away from his own fury. He seemed to close down upon himself. Like a sheet of paper, crumpling up all by itself, getting smaller and smaller.

In a meek voice, Timmy sputtered, “My hands hurt.”

Sam loosened his grip on the boy’s fists, and looking down, we both realized Timmy’s hands were scratched and torn from wielding the battered hockey stick. Sam didn’t want to hurt him any more than he was already hurt. He kissed each hand gently and blew on them to ease the pain.

Timmy watched Sam minister to his wounded hands. Still trembling in my arms, exhausted, his anger finally spent, Timmy dropped his head to my shoulder and shuddered. All the while, Sam soothingly stroked his back and I kissed his hair and whispered gentle, meaningless phrases into Timmy’s ear. Slowly, the boy relaxed. We held him close and safe between us as his breathing deepened.

When we thought he was asleep, Timmy surprised us both by lifting his head and looking me squarely in the eye.

Sam froze when Timmy uttered the words, “Poor Daddy.”

Sam and I stared into each other’s eyes as Timmy burrowed his face into my neck once again. Slowly, we turned to face the silent wall of bricks behind us.

“O
UCH
,” I
said. And to take my mind off the pain of Sam dabbing at my bloody nose with a fistful of tissues, I observed, “You always seem to be doctoring me up. Wonder why that is?”

“I guess it’s because you never know when to duck.” Sam winced even more than I did when I squeezed my eyes shut at his latest attempt to stem the bleeding from my poor battered honker. “I’m sorry, but he really nailed you. Just think. My boyfriend clocked by a four-year-old. Tilt your head back.”

“Am I?” I asked with a little intake of breath, dutifully tipping my head back.

“Are you what? Clocked?”

“No. Your boyfriend.”

Sam stopped what he was doing and waited for me to open my eyes all the way and look at him.

“Jason, we’ve been sleeping together for three weeks. I like being around you. I dig the hell out of having sex with you. I get a funny feeling inside when I think of you.”

I felt tears coming to my eyes, and this time they weren’t tears of pain. I imagined a wondrous expression crawling across my face. “You get a funny feeling inside when you think of me?”

Judging by the tender way Sam looked at me, my imagined expression of wonder must not have been too far off the mark. “Yes,” he said, dabbing more gently at my nose. “And I don’t think it’s a tapeworm. What do you feel when you think of me?”

I considered that. “I’m not sure. I never seem to be
not
thinking of you.”

Sam smiled and stopped tormenting my poor nose. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. And I like being around you too.”

“What about the sex part?” he asked.

I dragged his hand to my crotch and rested it on the rather substantial (if I say so myself) hard-on residing there. When he felt it beneath his hand, his eyes opened wider. “I have one of those every time you’re within twenty feet of me, Sam. Even when I’m wounded. Like now.”

Sam fought back a smile. “Well, that can’t be normal. Wounded people almost never get erections.”

“Tell me about it.”

We both turned at the sound of a bedspring squeaking. It came through the baby monitor sitting on the kitchen counter. We froze in place, listening for any further noises, but aside from Timmy’s faint breathing and Thumper’s not-so-faint snoring, we heard nothing more. We had treated the cuts on Timmy’s hands with antiseptic and Band-Aids. He had sat through the procedure more stoically than I was doing now. If he could sleep, apparently his hands were no longer hurting. That was a relief to know.

Sam and I slowly turned our attention back to each other.

I waited until our eyes and minds were solely centered one on the other. No Timmy, no Thumper, no annoying ghost gumming up the works.

I cleared my throat. “Do you remember what you told me this afternoon?”

A teeny smile played at his mouth. “Yes, Jason. I remember.”

My heart lurched inside my chest. “I—I wonder if you’d mind saying it again.”

“Would you like me to?” Sam’s look was solicitous and kind. There was no mockery in it. He wasn’t toying with me. He was speaking from the heart. I could see it in the warmth of his eyes, in the considerate tilt of his head.

“Yes,” I muttered, barely able to get the word out. “Please. Say the words again.”

Sam reached out and rested his warm palm against my cheek. With his other hand, he pushed his hair off his face and dragged his chair a couple of inches closer. When he was as close as he could get, he centered every ounce of attention on me. As he spoke, he slid his thumb across my lips. His fingertips lay warm and gentle against my ear.

“I’m crazy about you,” he said. “God help me, I am. I want to be with you all the time. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and just knowing you’re lying there next to me in the bed makes my heart flutter. The first time it happened, I thought I was having a stroke or something. Now I know it’s just… well… love. That’s what being in love feels like. I know that now. And I like the feeling, Jason. I like it a lot. I’ve never really known it before. Not like this.”

I was speechless, watching him, listening to him. I leaned my head into his hand to better feel his palm against my skin. He was so handsome, sitting there across from me, our knees touching, his face all somber and sincere, blurred to within an inch of its life because of the tears floating in my eyes. My pulse was thundering in my head, my poor heart putting in overtime what with all the emotions raging through me. I hoped my heart would survive the surge. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

“Say something,” Sam sighed. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

I leaned forward and scooped him into my arms. I pressed my lips to his neck and closed my eyes as his arms came up to circle me and draw me close.

The words were the easiest I had ever spoken. “I’m crazy about you too, Sam. I think I’ve known it since the day you arrived.” His strong arms pulled me nearer. I could feel his heart hammering next to mine. His breath was sweet and warm on my face. “The first time we made love, I knew I was lost. I’m putty in your hands, you know. Whatever you want me to be, I’ll be. Whatever you ask me to do, I’ll do. I’ve never felt this way before either. I don’t know what I’m going to do when you—”

“When I what?” Sam urged me gently. “When I what, Jason?”

And these were the
hardest
words I’d ever spoken. “When you
leave
.”

I could feel Sam smile against my skin. His hand came up, and he buried his fingers in my hair, holding me close. He pressed his cheek, stubbly for want of a shave, against my own. I could smell the heated scent of him. I breathed it in, never able to get enough. Always wanting more.

Then he said the words I would never forget.

“I’m not going anywhere. I already told my parents I was relocating to San Diego. If you didn’t want me, I figured I would annoy you until you did. You’d have to give in sooner or later. I can be pretty stubborn when I want to be. But maybe I won’t have to do all that. Maybe you’re willing to love me back already.” There was hope in his words, and there was a prayer there too, I think.

If it was a prayer, it was my own. And Sam had just answered it.

“I am willing, Sam. In fact, I’m already lost. I don’t want you to just live in the same city I live in. I couldn’t stand it. I want you to live here with me.”

For the first time, a troubled look dimmed his eyes. He pulled away just enough to be able to gaze into my face.

“I didn’t come here to fall in love, you know. I came to do something else.”

I nodded. “You came to find out what happened to your brother.”

“Yes. And now I think I know.”

“No, you don’t. You’re wrong. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong.”

Sam offered up a sad smile. “I hope I am. Will you let me at least try to learn the truth? Will you not stand in my way while I try to do that?”

Was
I willing to let Sam learn the truth about his brother’s disappearance? No matter what the truth might end up being? I had to think about that for a second. But only a second. For Timmy’s sake, there was really only one decision I could make. In my heart I knew that much to be true. Come what may, it was Timmy who mattered above everything—and everyone—else.

“Of course,” I said. “We owe it to that boy upstairs to find out what really happened to his dad. We owe him… the truth. Whatever it turns out to be.”

Sam’s eyes drifted to the ceiling, up to where Timmy lay sleeping, peaceful and serene with his best friend, Thumper, snoozing at his side. Ten feet above our heads. After the day he’d had, I was astounded he could sleep at all. But the recuperative powers of a four-year-old must be infinitely greater than those of an adult.

Sam continued to stare at the ceiling. When he spoke, his voice was sad. “I think Timmy already knows what happened, Jason.”

I followed where Sam was looking. And what had been a heart full of love and happiness, turned in an instant to a heart full of fear. And dread.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid he does.”

E
VEN
WITH
everything else going on around us, Sam and I found a way to slip away into our own private moment. We had to.

Naked and hard, we lay in each other’s arms on my bed. The bedroom door was locked. The lights were on. Timmy and Thumper were still sleeping soundly in Timmy’s bedroom down the hall. I could hear their gentle nighttime noises coming through the monitor on the nightstand. I was growing used to that sound. I liked falling asleep with Timmy’s soft, childlike snore as a backdrop. I wondered how I would be able to sleep without it once Timmy was gone.

But maybe Sam would take my mind off that.

Sam’s warm hands stroked my back as he pulled me ever closer into his arms. I felt his fingers playing with the little patch of man-fuzz situated at the base of my spine, just above my ass. He seemed to like that spot.

My hands were similarly occupied, one kneading Sam’s lean hip, the other resting snugly on his firm little butt. My index finger was tucked innocently into the crack of his ass, just lying there, all comfy and cozy. I was too wrapped up in the words we were speaking to really get any more invasive than that. Sometimes words mean more than actions.

Although the action was coming up, and we both knew it. I smiled at the thought.

“Have you quit your job back in Tucson?” I asked.

Sam sighed. “Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Our foreheads touched. His lips brushed my nose in a gentle kiss.

“Ouch,” I said, making him grin.

“Your sister’s going to be furious that you let me in.”

I groaned. “I know. She’ll just have to get over it.” I saw my sister’s face in my mind. Remembered how she had looked as a child. How we fought. Continually. “You can’t really believe Sally hurt your brother, can you, Sam? You can’t really believe she—” But I couldn’t finish the sentence. I just couldn’t. The words sounded too alien in my mouth. Too… ridiculous.

Sam didn’t seem overly fond of hearing them either. “I don’t know what to think. No, I guess I don’t really believe it. But I haven’t heard any other theories, have you?” Sam pulled back from my arms just a couple of inches, just enough to be able to focus on my face and for me to focus on his. “But I do know one thing, Jason. Paul would not have walked away from his family. His wife, his son. Our parents. Me. He wouldn’t have done it. That sort of cold cruelty wasn’t in him. It just wasn’t.”