Forever Promised (9 page)

The Crick of seven years ago wouldn’t have been patient. Not even a little. Especially when he didn’t understand.

“Please, Deacon. Can’t you even think about it?”

“We could adopt,” Deacon said shortly, nodding. “People do it all the time. We could adopt. Shane’s got connections, we could fill out paperwork, we could—”

Crick snorted. “Yeah. I know. We could. And don’t think I hadn’t been planning on all that already!”

Deacon blinked, surprised as all hell. “You had? When—”

“Well, I was planning to bring it up after Jon left.” Crick stalked over to hay bales set up between the stalls for the next muckraker. They made convenient benches, and Crick sank down onto the double stack gratefully. He worked a full day’s load, but his leg and his arm were never going to be what they used to, and at the end of the day, they got weak. Deacon knew. He’d spent hours over both of them, rubbing, massaging with the heated wand—anything to help work the nerves and flesh that had been decimated just as Crick had been leaving a Middle East war zone to come home.

With a sigh, he hopped up so he was standing on top of the bale Crick was sitting on, and leaning on the triple stack next to it. Crick was tall enough that Deacon only had to lean a little to pull on his arm.

“Here, rest it on my knees,” he grunted, and Crick did so with the ease of long practice. Deacon had asked Jeff and he’d given Deacon some pointers. Deacon’s favorite was this one move that started at the shoulder and kneaded the heavy muscles up around Crick’s neck, and then worked the tension out and down his bicep, to the heavy scars of his forearm, and then down to his twisted hand and the tips of his fingers. He didn’t spare Crick the pain, and there was nothing sexual about it, but Deacon liked to close his eyes and imagine. He could see all the stress, all the grown-up shit that knotted Crick’s muscles like waxy black thread, and as he worked, he imagined smoothing that out, combing through it with pressure and counterpressure, with the magic softening of touch, and that by the time Deacon got to Crick’s hand, the darkness had been all combed through, and there was nothing left but shining, woven promise, which was all Deacon had seen in Crick from the moment they’d met.

Crick let out an unabashed groan by the time Deacon got to his hand, and Deacon raised the twisted fingers to his mouth and touched lips gently, stroking the tightness of his grip out with the other hand.

Crick leaned his head back against the stall, heedless of Mercury, the gigantic American saddlebred who was broken to carry men in armor on his back as part of the Faire circuit Mikhail still traveled when he danced. Mercury made an effort to lip Crick’s hair up, but Crick swatted him away gently, and Deacon sweetened the pot by giving him a carrot.

“You know, when you do that, you’re just telling him he gets treats for eating my head,” Crick grumbled, eyes still closed.

“Which is why I do it,” Deacon replied mildly, and Crick opened one eye and scowled.

“We’re not done with this conversation, you know!”

And now it was Deacon’s turn to scowl as he dropped Crick’s hand, hopped off his hay bale, and stalked back to Flower’s stall. “You need to tell them no,” he said decisively, looking at Flower and trying to pretend like that didn’t hurt to say.

“I’ll do no such goddamned thing!” Crick didn’t stand up, but he did cross his arms in front of him and glower. Deacon would have told him he looked cute, but that would mean no sex that night, because you didn’t
say
that to a man who stood six feet five inches and had shoulders like a Clydesdale.

“Look, Carrick,” Deacon started, and then added, “no, no, don’t get up—”

“The only way you’ll let me out-stubborn you is if I loom.”

“It didn’t work when you outgrew me at sixteen, it’s not going to work now.”

But this time, when Crick stood behind him, he put his hands on Deacon’s shoulders, and Deacon finally took the invite and leaned back.

God, Crick felt good. Deacon had spent his whole life being a self-contained package, doing as many things right as he could, being the best person he could be to help his father keep the ranch running, help Crick grow up to be a man, and then, after Crick grew up too fast for either of their comfort, helping to keep together a family out of spit and sweat and pure need. People looked to him. He’d had one lapse to alcohol, and one into heart disease, and yes, he counted that as a lapse, and he’d sworn as long as his heart kept pumping, he wasn’t ever going to let anybody down, ever again.

But it sure did feel good to have Crick behind him, shoring him up when he felt all that self-sufficiency like a steel vault resting on his shoulders. With Crick it was bearable, and for this moment, he succumbed.

Crick lowered his head and nuzzled Deacon’s ear, and Deacon smiled and ducked his head, feeling shy, which was something he’d never be able to completely conquer, not even in front of Crick, no matter how many soccer teams he coached.

“Deacon?”

“Hm?”

“How come you don’t want my sister to have this baby?”

Deacon stiffened, but Crick pulled him right back into the cradle of his shoulders, chest, groin, and thighs, and Deacon had to fight not to relax completely. There was some shit Crick just didn’t need to think about.

“I told you,” Deacon muttered, keeping that core of iron rigid in his spine, even when Crick was licking the back of his neck. “She needs to live her own life, raise her baby—”

“You love that baby,” Crick reminded him, but Deacon knew that, he was prepared for that spike of pain.

“So do you. But we had our time with her in our house. It’s time for them to go be a family. It’s only healthy—”

“C’mon, Deacon. You’ve said this before. That’s not your reason, or not”—because he must have felt Deacon stiffen to protest—“your whole reason.”

“My whole reason is my own,” Deacon said. He made to turn around, to walk away, from the haven of Crick’s body, from the comfort he was offering, but Crick held him in place.

“You want to know why I want this baby?” Crick asked conversationally.

Deacon twisted his mouth. “So you can tell people your sister had your husband’s baby, and watch them lose their fucking minds?”

Crick chuckled evilly. “Yeah, well there is that, but the more important reason?”

Oh God. Yes. Of course Deacon wanted to know. Seven and a half years ago, they’d made love at Promise Rock for the first time, and Deacon had thought he’d seen everything to see about the boy he’d grown up with. But he’d been wrong—there was a strength and a resolve he’d missed at that moment, and since then, there wasn’t a damned thing about Crick that Deacon didn’t want to see.

“Thrill me,” Deacon muttered, thinking he really was thrilled, and that was damned embarrassing.

“I want to see if he’ll have your eyes—”

“It could be a girl.”

“—or the shape of your nose—which is unfairly small, you know.”

“That’s not unfair on a girl.”

“Shut up, I’m on a roll. I want to know if he’ll have your voice—because you’ve got this really amazing, unexpectedly deep voice—and be as smart as you, and if he—”

“Or she!”

“You’re being a pain in the ass!”

“I’m stating a fifty-fifty chance!” Deacon was laughing now, though, which may or may not have been an improvement.

“Yeah, well, let me finish. I want to know if he
or
she has your ability on a horse or your smile—” Crick started to get choked up, because he was a lot like Benny in that they both wore their hearts on their sleeve. Either way, it was a time to put a stop to this.

“Or my shyness,” Deacon interrupted, his voice serious, “or my alcoholism, or my goddamned heart defect. Don’t get romantic about my gene pool, Crick, it’s more like a pig wallow, and you know it!”

Crick stepped back and gasped like he’d been struck.

“That’s
it
!” he screeched, loud enough to make the horses grunt and shift and stamp in their stalls. “
That’s
the reason you don’t want this baby, isn’t it?”

Deacon stepped sideways and kept his vision firmly fixed on Flower Princess. “Go tell Benny no, okay? She didn’t seem to want to hear it from me.”

“Deacon, turn around, goddammit, and face this like a man!”

Deacon did, and met Crick’s furious gaze with his own. He wasn’t sure what Crick saw there, although he knew his eyes burned from things he didn’t want to say and history he didn’t want to rehash, and he knew he was dying, just dying, to unload all his fears, his insecurity, on the love of his life, but he couldn’t, because Crick didn’t want to hear it and would probably never see it.

Crick took a step back in what seemed to be honest surprise, and then he took two steps forward, and Deacon was suddenly pressed back against the partition between the stalls while Crick held his shoulders and ravaged his mouth.

Oh.

Deacon’s surprise gave way to need, just that quickly. He’d needed his friend, his partner, his lover, oh so damned badly, it had cramped his stomach and stopped his words. He’d wanted to lay this down at Crick’s feet and let him talk it all better, but talking wasn’t Crick’s strong point, and now Crick’s mouth was over his, rough, invading, taking, and Deacon badly needed him to submit.

And Crick kept kissing, wrapping his arms around Deacon’s shoulders, then reaching down, cupping Deacon’s ass with his hands. Deacon knotted his hands in Crick’s long hair and brought him closer.

Crick moved his hands up to Deacon’s shoulders, then to his neck, pinning him in place like his hands alone would keep Deacon from sailing off into space.

Crick’s hands stayed, even as Crick pulled away, and their groins were still mashed together, and Deacon wasn’t the only one bucking his hips, trying to get closer.

Crick leaned his forehead against Deacon’s and caught his wind, his chest crushing Deacon back against the partition with every suspiration.

“I’ll tell her we’ll think about it,” Crick growled and then turned around and started walking away.

“Carrick James—”

“Dinner’s in five.”

“I don’t want dinner, dammit!”

“I knew you wouldn’t—that’s why I’m sending Benny out with a pity plate. Nobody walks away from my beans!” Crick was moving damned fast for a guy with a game leg, and he was almost at the entrance of the barn by now.

Deacon tried one last sally before he sent in the reserves. “I’ll tell her no!” he threatened, and Crick turned back around and shook his head.

“The hell you will!” His face twisted in something
very
like hurt. “Because if you do, you’ll have to say to her what you just said to me, and you won’t do that, I know you won’t do that, because it’ll break her heart.”

And then he was out of the barn and Deacon was left, wishing the fans were stronger because he was sweating now in his jeans and his T-shirt.

“I was
trying
not to tell him that in the first place,” he muttered to Flower, feeling like shit.

Flower munched at the hay in her hayrack and ignored him. Deacon wished the whole rest of the world would just follow her damned example.

B
ENNY
gave him ten minutes.

“He gave me extra pork,” Deacon noticed grimly, looking at the plate she’d brought out. Crick’s beans were in a little bowl balanced on the top, and the pulled pork sandwich was right next to it, along with a cucumber vinaigrette salad. “He’s really serious about this.”

Benny threw an old kitchen towel on top of a hay bale and set the plate down, then patted the hay bale next to it. “I put the extra pork on the sandwich,” she said tartly, “because I know you skipped lunch, but I didn’t want to tell him because he’s all fucking moody and shit.”

Deacon sighed. “Well, Shorty, you did sort of throw a spoke in our wheels, you know?”

“I know,” she said quietly. “Sit down and eat. Don’t worry. I won’t mention the big scary baby machine problem until you’re done.”

Deacon straddled the hay bale and picked up the sandwich. God, could Crick cook. He chewed, slowing down enough to savor, and then swallowed and grimaced at her. “Do you think if you and your brother stop cooking for me, I’d learn to cook like this?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes.

“No. You’d live on crackers and soup in a can. That’s why we’re the ones who cook.”

He smiled at her, loving how much she’d grown and how pretty she’d become. God, if he had done one thing right, it had been taking this child in and making a home for her and her baby.

“Yeah, well, if I pass this up for tinned soup, I deserve to starve,” he said and tucked in to the food.

Benny talked to him while he was eating, mostly about Parry and soccer, and first grade.

“I feel so bad,” Benny said. “We’ve been promising her that Lila was going to get to go to her school, and now we have to remind her that it’s only for a little while.” Benny swallowed and looked away, and Deacon tried hard to soldier through his sandwich. “I’m really going to hate to see them go.”

“Yeah,” Deacon said, deciding the last bite could go to the dog Shane had talked them into adopting. Half cairn terrier and half buffalo, Mumford tended to sleep under the porch for most of the day before busting out around twilight and tearing up the joint. Deacon wiped his mouth with the towel and looked up at Benny, trying to keep the bittersweet out of his smile. “It’s a great opportunity, though. You know, I’ll miss the holy fuck out of them, but think about it.” He relaxed for a moment, because he believed this, and it felt so much better when you were being honest. “He’s getting to go out and change the world. He lived some hard times with us here. Don’t you wish all the people in government had actually lived some sort of real life?” His mouth twisted. “God, it sure would make the country easier to live in.”

Benny nodded. She’d been disgusted when she’d first started to vote—he remembered that. She’d asked questions continuously, “Deacon, this guy’s been an administrator for human resources in some sort of management company. What does that do?”

“Bureaucrat,” Deacon had said shortly—she’d been studying her ballot information while he’d been polishing the horse’s tack. Usually this was a meditative time for him, but that day, it was American Government 101.