Out of the Blues (22 page)

“He wouldn’t mind.”

“I have his guitars and I have his music. I have him…” I touched my chest.

“That’s a good place to have him.”

“I think I’m in love with a man.”

“He’s a fine man.”

I nodded. Something had broken inside me. I felt all used up.

“Can we go to a hotel or something? I can’t stay here anymore.”

I saw him heave a heavy sigh.

“Oh thank you god, I was not looking forward to sleeping on the fucking floor just in case you decided to go cliff diving in the middle of the fucking night.”

“And that’s the Doug, I know and…well, tolerate, some.”

“Back at you kid.”

He hooked his arm around my neck and dragged me in out of the rain. An hour later he pulled into the only five-star hotel anywhere near the house, and that’s all I remember, for a very long time.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kilby and the life of pie.

Life went on and I went on. The farm went on. Autumn turned to winter, and I did what I did. We put the last of the fields to rest the week after I got home. The livestock were moved to closer pastures where we could keep better track of them and keep them fed and watered easier. It wasn’t an easy life, but it was what I knew.

I spent my nights reading just about anything I could get my hands on. How-to manuals mostly. The old tractor my grandfather had bought back in the 1950’s was on its last legs, I couldn’t let the old girl go. She was a workhorse and a link to a man who died when I was still in diapers, the last of the Kilbournes. This was his grandfather’s farm. We’d owned this land for more than a hundred fifty years, through war and depression and hard times of all types. I was named for my mother’s family. This was mine and I was all that was left.

I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t sell. I did what I was born to do even though I fought the idea of coming back and being just a farmer for eight years. I fought my heritage long after my stepfather was gone and there was no one here to carry on. I’d almost let my people down. I’d almost lost the only thing that mattered: land.

I sounded like fucking Scarlett O’Hara.

Maybe I was Scarlett.

Maybe that’s what I was forever going to be, going from man to man without ever knowing what love was. The only thing in my life was these fucking rolling hills and a couple hundred head of cattle and an old tractor.

Because I was pathetic.

Hunter called when he and Harper had returned from Hawai’i. For some reason they thought Mason had followed me home. I have no idea why they would have thought that. He’d disappeared, no one knew where he was. He didn’t answer his phone, hadn’t shown up at his office, and his landlord said he hadn’t returned.

I tried not to think about him, tried not to think the worst.

I thought the worst.

I buried myself in my work. I taught myself how to work on the tractor from the old owner’s manual and I even assisted the vet in delivering a breach calf. My arm was bruised for a month after sticking it into a cow’s hooha up to my shoulder.

Life went on.

I didn’t want to answer the phone. I feared they’d found him and there would be another note. I was terrified I’d driven another man to end his life.

I didn’t go to town often. I went with Darlene to the single-mingles. I started to wonder if she was looking for an escort, or trying to get me to meet someone.

Not many gay guys showed up at the mingles. I say many meaning none. I was the only one. Several straight guys caught my eye, men who’d fuck me in the dark if I let them, and god, I needed my head examined. I was on the verge of doing something totally fucking insane like driving down to Nashville to one of the gay cowboy bars. I didn’t even know if there was a gay cowboy bar in Nashville. I figured there had to be something there somewhere because where the fuck did the gay cowboys go to line dance and pick up a boyfriend for the night if there wasn’t?

I’d order a sex toy before I went to a gay cowboy bar. I wasn’t putting on chaps for no damned body, and I didn’t own a fucking hat. Well, baseball caps, those I wore. I liked my faded red Semper Fi hat for rounding up the cows. The horses didn’t give a shit if I wore jeans with a thread bare ass.

The call never came.

I called Hunter a couple times a month to check on him, and his bride and my future little heir. Because, well, who else was I going to leave this place to? And it was as much Hunters as it was mine. He’d put in the sweat equity when we were young. Maybe one day, when he got tired of the hotel business, he’d come back home.

The baby was doing fine. Harper was terrified for her brother. They’d done everything they could to find him.

Fucker deserved his ass kicked for scaring his family.

I tried to be angry.

I was scared.

I couldn’t shake the fear.

I’d told him I was falling in love with him and he’d gone missing right after.

I was batting 0 for 2.

Thanksgiving came and Christmas went. Darlene cooked for me and did my bookkeeping and thought she owned me. She was a nice girl. If I was straight, I’d marry her just for her pumpkin pies. I could marry her and we could have children. I was obviously never going to have a happy ever after with a…with anyone. I didn’t believe in happy ever after. I didn’t want to believe in love. I’d fallen in love twice, or so I thought, but the second time seemed so much different than the first.

“Why don’t you call him?” Darlene asked over pie late one evening in January. She had a small house out behind my house, but she pretty much lived in mine. Tonight she sat in the chair across from me wearing a worn out sweatshirt with her hair pulled up in a bun that reminded me a bit too much of…

“Who? What?” I was startled. Besides Hunter and that guy from bible school there was no one around here that could possibly know.

“The guy you’re brooding over.” She licked whip cream off her fork.

“I have no idea where you get that idea.” I was going to take that lie to the grave and I had no idea why.

“You came back from Georgia with a hitch in your get-a-long and a sparkle in your eye. I knew you’d gotten laid because you sure as hell never tried anything with me, or any other woman in this community and that’s the first time you’ve gone away for as long as I’ve known you. So doing the math, and watching you become even broodier than you were before you left, I’d come up with Kilby is in the closet.”

I pushed the pie away and started to leave. I was ashamed and I was pissed that I was ashamed. “I don’t have his number,” I said without taking my eyes off the table. I couldn’t look her in the eye.

“Why the fuck not?” There was outrage in her voice so I looked up to see her giving me this look that said I was the stupidest of the stupids. “You obviously had a good time with him. You obviously maybe felt something for him. Why the fuck didn’t you get his number?”

I had no answer for that because I really was stupid. “He’s Hunter’s brother-in-law.”

She smiled a knowing smile. “That pretty one in the wedding pictures. I can see why you fell for him. He’s got haunted eyes, sort of like someone else I know. I don’t know about guys, but women love a man with haunted eyes.”

“Even when it means the guy might be fucked up in a way that isn’t good for them?” I was in supposition territory.

She shrugged. “It’s the idea that you can make him happy, that you can fix what broke him.”

“What if you’re the one who broke him?” I didn’t know if I’d broken Mason. I think I found him broken and his broken called out to my broken and that’s why I fell for him.

“Did you? In the three days you knew him…I mean that looks like a lifetime of broken in his eyes. You didn’t do that.” Darlene got up and brought the coffee pot to the table. She topped us both off and turned on the radio. “It’s going to be a hard freeze tonight.”

“It’s January, that’s to be expected.” I stirred cream into my cup. I passed on the sugar.

“So why do you think you broke him?”

I tried not to wish she’d go on home and leave me alone. The nights were long now and I didn’t have anyone to talk to, but I didn’t want to have her sit across from me and try to country psychoanalyze me either. I had enough people trying to do that, my own brother included.

“Because I’ve broken men before.”

She smiled at me. “You do have heartbreaker written all over you. I always thought you had a deep dark secret. Gay wasn’t my first thought, but after a couple of years of watching you go to bed alone…I figured, even tried to get my friend Greg to come to one of the mingles. He’s gay.”

I smiled. “I don’t need to be hooked up.”

“That’s what he says. He says it’s just not his thing. He’ll find the right guy when he’s ready. He’s twenty so it could be a while. He’s busy going through all of the jocks down at Vandy.”

I nearly spewed my coffee. “Fuck, Darlene, he’s a kid. Do I look like I’d let a kid in my bed just to get laid?”

She grinned at me and winked. “Gotcha.”

“Bitch.” I thought about throwing my spoon at her but the phone rang and I think I went pale. The house phone only rang when there was bad news.

“I’ll get it.” She lost the laughter and was at the ancient black box on the wall before I could make my brain work. “Kilbourne Farms. Oh hey, Hunter, yeah, he’s right here.”

She pulled the long cord across the kitchen and handed me the receiver. I was aware that my heart was beating too fast and I felt dizzy like I had that day when the MPs came for me to escort me to my commanding officer.

“Is it the baby?” was the first words out of my mouth, though my first thought was that they’d found Mason.

“It’s Mason.”

I dropped the phone. I didn’t want to know. I could hear Hunter shouting my name and Darlene picked up the receiver and handed it back to me. She wiped up the coffee I spilt as I put the phone back to my ear. I had to swallow twice to clear my throat. “I’m here,” I told him, hoping it would be fast, that he hadn’t suffered, that he hadn’t killed himself. A car accident. Something.

“He’s at Cody’s house in California. Doug is with him now. He’s in bad shape, but…”

“He’s alive?” I think all the blood rushed back to my head in that instant.

“He’s alive and he’s a wreck. Doug says he hasn’t bathed in god knows how long and he’s been living on whiskey and coffee, but he’s okay. He’s going to get him help. He’s pretty messed up.”

I nodded even though I knew Hunter couldn’t see me. “Because of me.”

“Because of Cody and Arden and Doug. And he’s never had to face his demons, Kilby. Harper has been talking more and more about some of the shit they went through as kids. She’s…” I could hear him swallow on the other end of the line as if he, too, were trying not to cry. “She’s been in therapy for years. She broke down in college and went to Doug for help. Mason never did…” he paused for a while and I couldn’t ask what could have been so bad about growing up with celebrity parents. Because I was an asshole. “One of Cody’s bass players raped her when she was twelve. He convinced her they were lovers and she says he molested Mace and, well, other things that she won’t confirm. I…I’ve known about Harper for a while now. I didn’t know about Mace.”

“He hates to be called Mace,” I told my brother because I didn’t know what else to say.

“I didn’t know,” Hunter said quietly. “You’re in love with him?”

“I…” I couldn’t deny my feelings. Hunter had known before I did. “Yeah.”

I wasn’t going to fight the truth anymore. “I worry that…I sent him over the edge…like I did Jon.”

“Mason isn’t Jon,” Hunter said, there was anger in his voice. “Mason isn’t married with kids who can’t give up his lies to live with his truths and he isn’t the one who fucked you over. You need to stop letting what the prick did control you. That was him, not you. He couldn’t be who he was and he wanted you to accept his shit so he could…” he stopped speaking and I tried not to throw the phone. “I’m sorry, Kilby. I just, man, I hated knowing you were letting some asshole use you and I hate that he’s still messing with your head all these years later.”

“I know.” I squeezed the phone as if I could kill it. “I let him…that’s on me.”

“Mason isn’t Jon. Mason’s demons aren’t your fault. They’re from a shitty childhood. He’s got to deal with his past. If he wants a future…with you.”

“He’s straight, Hunter. It was just a fling.”

“A fling that has you both hiding and licking your fucking wounded hearts. That’s not a fling, Kilby, that’s heartbreak.”

I tried not to nod, I tried not to agree. I wouldn’t say anything where he could hear me, but he heard everything in my silence. “Give him time to work his shit out. Maybe…maybe he feels the same about you. Maybe then you can—”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” I said, knowing that there would never be anything between Mason and myself. “But you’re right about Jon. I let his ghost live in my soul too long.”

I heard my brother sigh on the other end of the line. “Well, that’s something at least.”

I let the silence drag on for a moment. “Let me know…” what? If he finally offs himself, or if he gets on with his life and marries some cute little lawyer girl out in Cali? “Just you know…if there’s anything…and I’m sorry about Harper and I don’t know, but the baby?”

“Baby is fine and Harper is doing well. She’s getting excited. The house is not going to be ready before the baby comes. We’re going to try, but it needs a lot of work. She’s already picking out names and we don’t even know what it is yet. Just four months along and we still have five more to go. But the morning sickness is going away and she’s craving watermelon. Do you know how hard it is to find watermelon in January?”

“Not a clue.” I smiled because I could hear my brother’s happiness. “I’m so happy that I have no idea where to find watermelon in January.”

“Yeah. I had to special order and then she wanted kimchee. I have no idea where to get Korean food in the middle of nowhere Georgia. The cook even looked at me like I was crazy, but, well, it’s all good. We’re going to have a baby. I’m going to be a daddy, and you’re going to an uncle. It’s all…I’m scared to death.”