Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (8 page)

swell
advice. But I saw your eyes when you read that letter, and if these people can't see that you're ripped open and bleeding to death, well, that's because they don't care enough about the man to see past all the gay—
fuck!
”
Because that, right there, was when the red curtain went up in front of Jeff's eyes, and his fist connected solidly with Collin's jaw.

Collin: Sweet and Sour Jawbreakers

C
OLLIN
was standing right at the porch rail, and he almost went assover-teakettle over the edge. He didn't, though—he bounced back from a crouch, and his fist, still pretty quick from being voted “most likely to fight on a dime” of his class at Levee Oaks, came back out and caught Jeff square on his own jaw, and Jeff stumbled down the stairs, landed on his knees, and came up spitting like a cat.

And jumping like one.
Collin found himself being pummeled by some solid fists and one furious man who seemed to forget his jokes and his trilling voice and his front to the world in an effort to hammer Collin into the cold, solid ground. Collin took a couple of swings—he didn't want to hurt the guy, but
dayum
, that fist connected to his nose again, and this time he heard a crunch and knew it was broke, and he had to stop this bullshit
somehow.
Jeff swung again, and Collin grabbed his fist, using his momentum to swing around and haul Jeff's arm up behind his back. Jeff just had time to squeal, “Let
go-oooooo
douchebag motherfucker!” when they were both hit by a blast of freezing water from a hosepipe attached to the barn.
Jeff screamed like a bird, and Collin swore like a sailor, and still that relentless blast of water kept at them until they were both on the ground, holding their hands over their heads to keep the nasty, stinging pellets out of their eyes and mouths.
Abruptly the water was shut off, and what was left was a pleasant bass voice calling out, “Jesus, Crick, goddammit, I told you to turn it off!”
“Oops!” Crick sounded completely unrepentant, and Collin squinted past the water running in his eyes to glower at his erstwhile hero. Crick saw the look and rolled his own eyes, fumbling with the lever for the hosepipe with his bad hand and saying, “Don't look so pissed off, Sparky—you want to come over to our place and start shit, you gotta be prepared to be hosed!”
“Oh, ha ha!” Jeff snapped. “And what about me?” He wiped his hands carefully across his red eyes, and blinked rapidly—all that shit he put in his hair must have run into them.
The guy giving the orders harrumphed. “I'd place money on you being the one to throw the first punch.”
Collin snorted painfully, sputtering blood everywhere, and Jeff reached behind his shoulder and smacked him on the back of the head. “See if you get that dinner invite now!” he smirked, at the same time that pleasantly deep voice said, “Andrew, could you go fetch me the first aid kit and disposable sani-gloves I keep in the tack room? We're gonna need a pair for me and one for Crick, okay?”
Collin's nose was pouring blood, and he looked sideways at Jeff and saw that the guy he'd come to seduce had a split lower lip and a cut on his eyebrow. Fan-bloody-tastic. Jesus, Collin could
swear
he was better at the whole pick-up thing than this. Maybe he needed to run his technique by Joshua for some polishing.
“I'b thowwy fow da twouble,” he said, feeling foolish—again.
Deacon—it
had
to be the legendary Deacon Winters, town hero and good boy, until he'd come out as the love of Crick Francis' life— gave a mild smile. “You know, if you'd wanted a dinner invite, all you had to do was ask.”
Jeff huffed behind him. “You're letting him
eat
here?”
“Letting him? Hell, Jeff, I'll spring to pay for your first date. Any asshole who can get under
your
skin is gonna be someone to keep around!”
Collin couldn't help it. He was muddy, wet, and almost as cold as Jeff (whose pouty lips seemed to be tinged a little blue from being wet in the November twilight.) His nose felt like it had exploded with prejudice, and there was blood pouring down his face, but still, Collin felt a smile stretching across his bruised lips.
Apparently, he was in.
In a minute, though, the smile was gone. Deacon was hovering over him, his hands cased in the purple steri-gloves, checking to see if the explosion of pain on the front of his face needed to be set.
“Yup, you got yourself a break, kid.”
“Gollin.”
“'Kay, Collin, we've got two choices here.” Deacon sounded faintly out of breath, and Collin wondered if he'd had to run when the fight broke out. “We can either let this sit, and you'll bleed all night, and it'll hurt like a sonovabitch, or we can realign it right now. The pain'll make you puke, but it'll be over and done with and you can get on with your life.”
“Option B,” Crick said. He was over with Jeff, cleaning up the cuts on his face, and for a minute, Collin was blindly jealous. Damn—all he'd wanted was a soft moment from the guy, and he'd gotten decked. Crick, who apparently had Deacon to come home to, got to spend time staring soulfully into Jeff's eyes. Well, Collin had to concede, except for the fact that Crick was busy casting surreptitious looks of worry at Deacon. Collin blinked and tried to focus his eyes on the guy to see if he was sending any messages back when two strong hands—one with a slightly crooked thumb—set up on either side of his nose.
“Wai'!” Collin sputtered, aware that Crick had chosen option B but that it might not necessarily have been
his
first choice, but Deacon was nothing if not fast and efficient.
Deacon said, “I'm gonna count to three, right?” And then he said “One, two—”
And Collin's entire face crunched, exploded, and trickled out his eyeballs.
“
What in the fuck happened to three
?!!” His vision was black, and he felt a powerful need to void his lunch, right there between his knees.
“Three's the scary number. We don't linger on three.”
Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths…
holy shit! He could breathe!
Collin squinted up into Deacon's face in the lavender darkness as Deacon held an insta-ice cold pack to his nose. “Thanks,” he muttered, meaning it both sarcastically and sincerely.
“Any time. As long as you don't spook the horses.” Deacon put Collin's hand on the ice pack and got heavily to his feet. “Okay, you two. Into the mudroom. It's colder than an ice-monkey's third nut out here. Crick and I will get you some clothes.” Deacon looked up then and addressed what Collin realized was a porch full of people—the little blond diva and the pretty woman from the diner, a big, burly guy with dark, curly hair carrying a blue-eyed toddler, and a mid-sized black guy who was in the process of taking said toddler into his arms for a warm hug.
“Alright, everyone, show's over. Does Crick need to start dinner?”
“We're covered, Deacon,” said the really big guy. “Mikhail cooked.”
It wasn't Collin's imagination—everybody let out a big sigh of relief.
“We're much obliged, Mikhail. Let's get these guys washed up, and we can sit down.”
Which was how he managed to get naked with Jeff. Granted, they were both huddling in the mudroom at The Pulpit, each wrapped in a big towel and a horse blanket, but, well, yeah, they were both naked.
Jeff was beautiful. He must have used a tanning booth or something—not to extreme, because that would have been dangerous— but his skin was pale gold all over. And he was quite fit, too, because for all its angular lines, his body had obviously been worked on. They were gym muscles, meant to be pretty, and they worked. His waist was long, but not as long as his legs, and Collin had gotten a glimpse of pert, taut ass as Jeff had wrapped a towel around his waist before retreating sulkily to a corner with his blanket. That was okay. Collin could still see some rangy, muscular chest and get a glimpse of pretty rose nipples, and all in all, Collin was enchanted.
He was even more enchanted when he realized that the guy had been checking him out under lowered, sculpted eyebrows.
He couldn't help the smirk that stretched his face, and Jeff couldn't help noticing it.
“Don't get all excited, Ramjet, I never said you weren't pretty,” Jeff snapped, and Collin's smirk became a full-fledged grin.
“I was prettier before you broke my nose!” he said, but he said it happily, because while it still hurt and his eyes still watered, it had gotten him an invite to dinner, and it was so totally worth it.
“Yeah, well, I'm sorry about that,” Jeff muttered. With a sigh, he held up his manicure to check, and the glower he sent Collin should have shriveled pubic hairs if Collin had any shame at all, but he was pretty sure he was past that. “Mostly because I just had that done, dammit! My stylist will never forgive me!”
“Oh, princess, you have other assets, believe me.” Collin made sure his gaze lingered on the exposed patches of Jeff's chest and his trim stomach and the faint trail of dark hair that disappeared underneath the SpongeBob SquarePants beach towel.
Jeff rolled his eyes. “For the last time. Shut. The fuck. Up. You and me, Skippy? It ain't happening, you hear?” Jeff sighed, and some of his 'tude leached out of his spine, and he was left, a tired man, slouched in front of a beat-to-shit top-loading washing machine. “Man, and you know what? In all of this weird funky bullshit you brought, we
still
haven't heard from Kevin's little brother.”
“What freaked him out so bad?” Collin asked, and maybe by now he'd earned the right to know, or maybe Jeff was just tired and worried, because the tired man stayed.
“His brother stepped in front of enemy fire so he didn't have to get shipped home with HIV,” Jeff said quietly. “His parents knew, I guess, but Martin just found out. So, you know. He just sat on a bus for a week so I could tell him it wasn't true—his brother wasn't gay, and he wasn't….” Jeff's voice broke, and his hand made fluttery motions, and then he was just still. He turned his head and looked outside the mudroom window into darkness that looked like a dropped velvet stage veil. “He wouldn't rather die than come home to me.”
“That's not true.” Oh God. Now Collin really
did
feel like a first class heel. Jeff had been right—he'd totally stepped in some serious shit, and Collin knew why he hadn't wanted anyone without emotional backstage passes to venture near.
But Collin knew a little bit about harboring a sad little man behind the big happy curtain, and he knew that sometimes, that sad little man just needed to be held.
“Where you going, Skippy?” Jeff asked, backing up so hard his ass must have been bruised by the washer by now. “I didn't tell you to get all up in my schnozz, you know!”
“It's a very nice schnozz,” Collin soothed, “but that's not why I'm here.” And here he was. Six inches away from the sweetheart of his dreams—and not planning to even cop a feel.
“Yeah?” And there was a thread of need in Jeff's voice that Collin couldn't have turned down or betrayed if he'd tried.
“Yeah.”
It was awkward at first. Jeff held his body stiff, and Collin tended to engulf anything he was near, but they managed. Eventually, Jeff was flush against him, his head tender on Collin's shoulder, and Collin relaxed his chest enough to be soft and to yield, and there they were. Holding each other in the mudroom at The Pulpit, and Collin shivered with how sweetly that taut body fit against his. Nice… so very, very nice.
Then Jeff relaxed just that last fraction of his body, and Collin gave a soft sigh and held him just a little tighter, and it ceased to be just nice and became amazing.
“Ewww.” Crick's voice behind them made Jeff jump, but Collin managed to stay exactly where he was, keeping Jeff pushed up against him. “If I'd known you two were going to be making out, I would have let you eat naked!”
Collin maintained his self-possession—for one thing, just giving someone a hug didn't qualify as being busted in the least. “Thanks,” he said over his shoulder. “We'll be dressed in a sec.”
“Yeah, whatever. Just don't make too much noise or Parry's gonna come in and see what her uncle Jeffy's doing during the spin cycle, 'kay, Sparky?” And with that, Crick was gone, and Jeff was making a show of moving up and out of Collin's arms. He was smirking even as he put his hand across his eyes.
“Crick….” Jeff shook his head. “Sorry, man. Crick's just Crick.” Jeff tried to pull away some more, but Collin's arms grew hard around his shoulders.
“That's okay,” Collin murmured, inexorably. Jeff must have been truly needy, because he allowed himself to be held some more. “I'm sorry, you know.”
“For what?” Jeff's voice rumbled against his chest.
“For whatever I said to make you sock me in the nose.”
Jeff sighed and tried one more time to pull away. Collin didn't let him. There they were, at détente, when Jeff said, “This family is everything to me, you understand?”
Collin heard him—really heard him—and said, “Got it.”
With that, Jeff straightened finally, saying, “I'm getting a crick in my neck, Sparky—you do know I'm as tall as you, right?”
And there they were, face to face, and Collin directed a very level look directly into Jeff's brown eyes. “Yeah, Jeff. I do.”
Jeff flushed and looked away, making a show out of going to the stack of clothes that Crick had left. “Oh, Jeebus!” he mock swore. “Crick, really?” He shook his head, dropped the blanket from his shoulders, and pulled up a flannel shirt and pair of wranglers.
“What's wrong with flannel?” Collin asked curiously. “Flannel and jeans are warm and sturdy.”
Jeff's glare was decidedly sour. “Warm and sturdy is warm and sturdy. Armani is fan
tabulous!
”
Collin felt his lips curve into what even he knew was a besotted smile. “You do know that you make a gay pride parade look like a KKK rally, don't you?”
Jeff smirked again. “You get extra points if you get the guy in the super-spiffy white PJs to blow you, right?”
Collin laughed outright then, and Jeff shook his head, letting out a sigh that sounded like it had held up the world.
“Collin?”
“Yeah?”
“I'm sorry I was such a shit. I mean… I wanted you gone, I won't lie, but I try not to be mean, you know? I was cruel. I….” He sighed and tilted his head back toward an imaginary rain. “I should have taken you seriously from the get go. You deserved that, okay?”
Oh wow. It was like Christmas, but better, because he was about to see Jeff's ass.
“Okay,” he conceded, trying not to sound like a little kid. Jeff probably didn't notice anyway. He was too busy trying to fit his skinny ass into another man's boxers and figure out the intricacies of an honestto-God button fly.
D
INNER
at The Pulpit was a lot like dinner at his mother's house, except with more swearing. The people eating there were like family—maybe even tighter, because while Collin adored his oldest sister, he could have lived without his uptight, prissy youngest sister, Paige, and Charlene, the one just older than Paige, pissed
everybody
off on a systematic, malicious basis, but they were stuck with her. In contrast, the people at this table had picked each other. Yeah, there was some clashing of personalities (Jeff's snotty little diva friend could have really rubbed everyone raw if he didn't try so hard to be nice to them) but mostly, he got the feeling that what locked them there and made them help with dishes after dinner and offer to get dessert and fetch each other sodas from the fridge in the mudroom was that they