Keeping Promise Rock (27 page)

“Crick,” Deacon said faintly. His vision was black. His goddamned vision was black and he couldn’t fucking breathe.

“No—not that kid. Eddy something….”

Deacon took a breath, and it tasted like sour milk. “Eddy Fitzpatrick,” he said, but his vision was still black, and his hands were still shaking, and he wasn’t sure if he could stand.

“Yeah! That’s him—you remember that kid?”

Deacon remembered that he’d once beaten the crap out of Crick, and he thought maybe he was a bad person, because he couldn’t bring himself to give a shit that he was dead. “A little,” he muttered, not sure if he could even talk right. “That’s too bad. If you’ll excuse me, Becca?” He made it to the bathroom in time to throw up. Oh God. He’d thought… of course he’d thought it. The fucker hadn’t called him in three days. Jesus! He cleaned himself up with shaking hands, and when his vision had cleared enough to get him out to the little vestibule in front of the men’s room, he stopped at the payphone and left a message on Jon’s home phone, wondering where the two of them were this time of night.

Crap—that meant he was stuck in the bar. Oh
hell
no, he thought viciously. He was three miles from home. He could fucking walk and at least let the horses out of the stables if the water threatened to get any higher. So he managed his way up to the bar again and smiled gamely at Becca.

She smiled back, and he registered the predatory look on her face just as he raised the glass to his mouth.

He could smell the gin about a fraction of a second before it hit the back of his throat. He tried to tell people that when they told him that the rest of the night wasn’t his fault. He tried to tell Jon, so Jon would know that this was his fuck-up and no one else’s. He tried to tell Benny, so she could get mad at him for breaking his promise. He tried to tell Crick, so he could assure Crick that they were even for Berlin, not that Deacon had been keeping a tally anyway.

He tried to tell them all, but they didn’t believe him. He hadn’t eaten or slept in three days, and he’d just had a nasty scare and lost whatever was in his stomach to keep him going. The alcohol on his tongue was like the goddamned elixir of life, and even as he gulped down the gin and tonic that Becca had substituted for his soda, it slammed through his nervous system like a freight train.

He barely remembered setting the glass down or Becca’s voice, stretching wonkily like taffy in his head as she told him not to worry, she’d get him home just fine.

He woke up before dawn, sitting up like he’d been shot and then groaning as he fell back down.
Christ, please, if I promise to go to church,
maybe once with Parry Angel and Benny all pretty for you, could you
please let my head fall off? Please?

Becca’s low chuckle next to his ear told him that maybe that was more mercy than he deserved, and then his phone started to buzz, and as he scrambled over the edge of the bed for his pants (was he
naked
? Oh
shit.
He was
naked
! And there was a… oh,
ewww
… at least it was a condom, and it was still on his pecker, but it was
used
), all he could think of was that if he’d let himself get hungover the first time he’d ever gotten drunk, it might not have lasted for three months straight.

“Benny?” he mumbled, “I thought you were still at your granny’s!”

“Yeah, well, the visit started with how the baby would be better off with her and ended with how all gay people were going to hell, so I made Keeping Promise Rock

her take us home. Deacon, where the hell are you—it’s four in the morning, and the shit’s hitting the fan outside!”

“The truck broke down in front of Sandy’s….”

“The
bar!
Oh God, Deacon, you didn’t….”

“Yeah, Benny. Yeah, yeah I did. But you don’t have to worry, honey. If you’ll let me tell the story, I swear it was the last goddamned drink I will
ever
have in my fucking miserable life.” He stood up and thunked the condom into the trashcan by Becca’s bed—which was practically in the living room of her tiny apartment—and then reached for his jeans and underwear (still together, actually) and pulled them up while keeping the phone on his ear.

Benny was quiet for a moment, and Deacon prayed for real and sincere that she wouldn’t take that baby to her grandma’s big-assed house in Natomas and never speak to him or Crick again.

“I’m not throwing away all you’ve done for us because of one relapse, Deacon. I swear, man—what kind of ungrateful bitch do you think I am?”

Deacon closed his eyes and thanked God sincerely. “Benny, you’re the best goddamned sister on the entire planet, you hear me? I love you like you were my own kid—and I will never let you down again.”

“You haven’t let me down now, Deacon,” she muttered, her voice cracking a little. “Just how do we get you home so I can hear that story?” He sighted his shirt at the foot of the bed and looked down at his skinny body to see Becca had left hickeys on his stomach on the way down to his…
God
… he closed his eyes against the nausea and hoped to hell that Crick had a better moment waking up in Germany than he was having right now.

“Call Jon again—he might have been taking Amy to her folks’

house, but if he’s still there, have him meet me outside of Sandy’s with some jumper cables and some faith. If he can’t make it, send Andrew if you can—he’s in the house, right?” It was a hell of a night to sleep in the stables.

“Yeah, he’s here. And so’re Jon and Amy—their house has about two feet of water right now. The Pulpit’s still good.” Hey, speaking of good—he’d left his socks in his boots. Even in the dimness of the tiny, crappy apartment, he could see them at the entryway.

Well, good to know his mudroom manners didn’t desert him when he was drunk enough to sleep with Becca Daniels.

“Well, I want you and Amy to get the baby ready to travel—call Patrick’s sister in El Dorado Hills, and I’ll have Andrew take you both.”

“We’re not leaving—”

“The hell you’re not. You’ve got babies, both of you, even if Amy hasn’t had hers yet. You’ve got bigger things to think about than the horse ranch, so you just man up and get ready to get yourself someplace safe, okay?”

“Fine,” she snapped, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay, Shorty—you get someone to the truck with some jumper cables, and I’ll get back and tell you the story before I go. It’s a side-ripper, trust me.”

“How’re you going to get to the bar?” she asked suspiciously, and he looked at Becca, who was looking at him bemusedly from her side of the bed.

“I’m going to run like hell,” he told her, meaning it, and hung up.

“Oh come on, Deacon,” Becca said, laughing in that sultry way that had made her so very popular in high school. “You had yourself a good time. I mean, the sex was over pretty quickly—you must have been damned hard-up—but you enjoyed yourself!”

Deacon blinked at her as he was shrugging on his denim jacket. It was still sopping from four days sandbagging, but it was better than nothing, and he sure as shit wasn’t leaving it here.

“How in the hell would you know that?” Oh God, where was…

okay. His Stetson, hanging on the edge of the chair. He snagged it while he was waiting for her answer.

“Well, sugar, you told me you loved me!”

Deacon blinked. “That’s unlikely,” he said, like his inner eyeball wasn’t looking for some cortex bleach with the very thought.

Becca was so outraged she dropped the sheet, and Deacon held his hand up in front of his face out of sheer instinct. “You sure as shit did!” she shrieked. “I had your dick in my mouth and you said ‘I love you, Bek’, plain as day.”

The world went so still it was almost like the storm stopped. “Crick,” he said through a sandpaper throat. “I said ‘I love you, Crick’.”

“You did not!” She gathered the sheet up, which was a pure relief, and Deacon nodded, because this was maybe the one thing he
did
remember from the night before.

“I did too—how drunk you gotta be, Becca, to think I said Bec instead of Crick?”

“Crick? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

Deacon nodded and tried not to laugh hysterically. “Oh yeah.”

“Crick? Seriously, isn’t Crick that gay Mexican kid who used to shovel horseshit?”

Deacon knew the truth in the pit of his stomach, and he wasn’t going to sugarcoat it for Becca Daniels. “That ‘gay Mexican kid’ is serving our country right now, you rank whoring bitch—and he’s a better human being than you’ve ever been.”

“Oh my God!” Her scream followed him as he turned and stalked out the door. “You’re
gay
? Does that mean I’ve got AIDS now?”

“Only if you gave it to me!” he yelled back as he slammed her door.

She lived about two miles from the bar, and Jon was waiting there, his blue Mercedes giving off steam as its motor purred and Deacon trotted up in the wet, rainy dawn.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” Jon asked. Deacon grunted and lifted the hood of the battered truck, hooking up the jumper cables that Jon handed him before he answered.

“Not particularly, but if you want to pull up a chair and some popcorn, I’ll give you the whole show when I ’fess up to Benny.” He looked at the truck with a sigh and turned his back on it, leaning against the fender for a minute while it charged.

“How about you give me the unabridged version,” Jon suggested inexorably, and Deacon tipped back his head, letting the rain wash his face clean, because it wasn’t like he wasn’t wet through anyway.

When he was done talking, Jon actually had the balls to laugh. “I love you, Crick,” he chuckled. “Damn, Deacon—that’s just fucking precious.”

“Shut up,” Deacon growled, and Jon just kept chuckling.

“How drunk did she have to be to think you said ‘Bec’ instead of

‘Crick’?

“Did I mention the shutting up?”

“Yeah, but I’m ignoring you. Dude, it’s just good to see you can still fuck up like the rest of us.”

“Oh, and three months of being drunk didn’t count?” Deacon reached inside and turned the ignition, relaxing just a little when the engine caught. He had two tons of sandbags under a tarp over the back that would do him no good at all if the fucking truck wouldn’t at least get him home.

“Yeah, but you’ve been living the last eighteen months like you’re trying to atone for killing somebody.” Jon stopped talking when Deacon glowered at him.

“Can we stop talking about this?” he growled, and Jon shrugged, looked at the sky in the grey light, and sighed.

“Yeah, man—for right now, I’ll let you slide.” There was a crack of thunder overhead, and both of them shuddered. Over the sound of the rain and the truck’s engine, the roar of the river could be heard as it danced a disastrous can-can with the levee banks.

Deacon unhooked the jumper cables and held his breath. After a few moments, it looked like the alternator was on good behavior, and he gave the cables back to Jon with a grateful nod.

“I’ll meet you at home. Are you and Amy ready to drive up to El Dorado Hills?”

“We were thinking a hotel in Rocklin’s closer—Amy’ll spring, so don’t worry ’bout that—but she’s driving Benny and I’m staying at The Pulpit.” Jon slammed his own hood shut and rolled his eyes at Deacon’s scowl.

“What are you going to do at home?” he asked, hesitating at his open door. “You should be with Amy.”

“Instead of defending your home? Screw that, Deacon. You’re going to need help, and I’m tired of waiting for you to ask for it. I’ll follow you to make sure you get back okay.” Jon slammed his door with unnecessary force and waited for Deacon to pull onto the main thoroughfare and drive to the levee road that would take him home.

And it was a damned good thing too, Deacon later agreed, because Jon was a witness when Deacon got pulled over.

Deacon saw the lights and sighed, hand-rolling down the window as the officer approached. Oh. Oh shit. “Morning, Jason,” he muttered, fighting the temptation to bang his head against the steering wheel. “You got nothing better to do right now when the river’s threatening to cut loose?”

Jason Gresham—school bully, local sheriff, and Becca’s on-again, off-again boyfriend since Jon had cut her loose.

“Morning, faggot,” Jason said with a sneer, and Deacon’s eyes actually crossed.

“So, Becca gets me drunk, takes me home and fucks me, and then calls you when it goes wrong?” In retrospect, it was probably not the most diplomatic thing he’d ever said—in fact, he had to admit it was downright Crick-worthy. And so were the consequences. Jason’s hand, slamming Deacon’s head into his own steering wheel, was particularly merciless—

and so was his baton as he started to bash in the headlights on the truck.

“Hey, Jason!” Jon called, just when that little extendable billy club was going for Deacon’s front window. “Smile for me before I send this photo to my wife!”

Deacon looked up blearily and wiped the blood out of his eyes.

“What took you so goddamned long!” he snapped, opening the door so Jason didn’t think about going after Jon.

“I was making sure we had satellite feed,” Jon apologized. Then he focused his iPhone square on Jason. From Deacon’s angle, he got a nice moving shot of Jason folding up the baton and stalking right at Levee Oaks’s premiere defense attorney before Deacon kicked the back of his left foot over the back of his right and sent him sprawling.

“You two fuckers are under arrest!” Jason growled as he hauled himself furiously from the mud, but Deacon and Jon were already behind the wheels of their vehicles.

“You want to arrest me, asshole, you know where to find me!” Deacon snapped, and then the two of them pulled away, gunning as fast as they could in the pissing rain for safety.

Benny tended to the cut on his head when he got home, and he told the story again—the abridged version this time, without the icky condom and the pathetic fact that he’d called out Crick’s name when he came.

Benny was still young enough to think the world was fair—at least to grown-ups—and she didn’t deal with the story well.

“So she switched your drink?” she said, throwing the first-aid kit back together with unnecessary force. “That cunt-whore switched your drink, and you’re talking like it was
your
fuck-up?”