“You can’t miss the ocean if you’ve never seen it.”
“But you can long for it just because you know it exists,” Cole whispered. What if the ocean was just as disappointing as the truth he’d learned about Ned? Murky, dangerous, full of deadly predators, and nothing like the glimmering crystalline water they’d fantasized about so many times.
Ned put his own forearm alongside Cole’s. Mangled with burn scars, it still had ink here and there, but Cole wouldn’t have been able to tell what the tattoo had once depicted if he didn’t know. “You kept yours.”
“I didn’t know Tom had betrayed his own rules. My loyalty, all I’ve done since we parted, is worth nothing.”
“Are you happy to know my truth?” Ned asked as his fingertips moved along the outline of the cleaver, so very gentle on Cole’s flesh. “What would you have done if you knew I was a rat? You wouldn’t have loved me, and I couldn’t have that.”
Cole chuckled. Back in the day, his devotion to Ned had bordered on madness, and if Ned had shared his plans, he’d have done everything in his power to keep him safe regardless. “I’d have tried to stop you from killing him.”
“I wanted to spare you the truth about him. Thought it’d be easier on you to keep your good memories of him unspoilt.” Ned shrugged, and the skin around the old gunshot wound on his shoulder wrinkled.
Cole watched Ned’s hand wander along his leg. The touch was warm and so gentle he wanted it to continue, but he wouldn’t invite more of it either, confused about his own emotions. About Ned. About Tom. About… all of this. “I’m stronger than you judge me to be. I can handle the truth.”
Ned squirmed, rubbing his shoulder, and when he looked toward the fire, Cole couldn’t help but glance at the place where Ned’s earlobe used to be before Cole had bitten it off in a moment of helpless rage. “I didn’t want you to know what I did with my mother. I’m so ashamed of it, but I think you need to know the truth about me as well.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty. You and your mother did what you needed to. There’s no shame in surviving,” Cole said, because he knew that much better than most people.
Ned’s shoulders sagged, and he stilled for a while, frozen and vulnerable in his nakedness. He swallowed and eventually captured Cole’s gaze. “A part of me thought you’d kill me once you got your answer. I’ve lived with this burden for a long time. Some days, going on didn’t feel worth the effort, but if I took my own life, everything I’ve done would have been for nothing. I took revenge to take the weight off my soul, but I ended up losing everything.” Ned grabbed the sides of the tub and rose. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear this. I’ll get us some food.”
Cole’s heart thumped when Ned placed his foot on the floor, and the stub where his little toe used to be gave a little twitch. Despite the shine of the water, and the freckles sprinkled all over his bare skin, it was impossible to miss the difficult history etched in flesh since they’d parted. Perhaps Ned had suffered enough?
“That time you asked me to leave with you… did you believe we’d make it and find a new life in California?” Cole asked, stupidly clinging to questions that had cost him so many sleepless nights.
Would they have stayed together? Would they have been happy? Whatever used to lie at the end of their road, wouldn’t have led them to the state they were in now.
Ned looked into his eyes. “That time in the bathtub? Yes. I was so drunk on you I didn’t think of anything else. I would have jumped on my horse and never looked back as long as you were at my side. No money. No plans. No security. None of that would have mattered.”
Cole nodded but didn’t say anything, because he should have listened to Ned and gone with him instead of staying loyal to people who had rejected him once they’d found out his secret. Perhaps they were both at fault.
There was another thing he should have done that night.
Ned had felt so steady, so warm against his back, and when he had whispered into Cole’s ear about wanting to show him how good it felt to be fucked, a part of Cole had wanted to say yes. It had been the stupid inhibitions of a young boy that had held him back, and for years after, Cole wondered what would have happened if he’d complied. Without a drive to submit to someone else this way, he’d never attempted the deed with any of his later so-called lovers, knowing that unlike Ned, they were strangers and wouldn’t have cared much for his comfort. And Cole knew because he’d bent over a fair share of men whose names he didn’t remember.
Ned had been special to him, and if they’d gotten a bit more time together, he’d have let Ned take him, even if just because it was another experience to share. He glanced to Ned’s powerful form in the nightshirt, the long johns, the woolen socks… The mountains had to be affecting Cole’s sanity too, because in no world should he be finding this traitor and murderer adorable. But Ned was. Like a grizzly bear wearing a knitted sweater—no less deadly, and yet so endearing it was easy to believe that its claws wouldn’t rip him apart.
Ned was cooking a simple meal of meat and vegetable stew, as if life really did go on. When Cole smelled the flatbread baked on a hot griddle he could almost pretend the seven years apart never happened, and they were back at the Gotham Boys camp, awaiting their food by Bertha’s cooking fire.
After the outpouring of words in the tub, neither of them spoke, and that was for the better, because it allowed Cole to indulge in his fantasy of a life he could have had with Ned.
If Tom hadn’t gone mad in Three Stones. If Zeb had accepted them, even if reluctantly, the others in the camp would have followed their example, and with time, Cole would have opened up to the idea of letting Ned on top of him.
Only that had never happened, and by the time Cole had discovered a whole world of men like him living in all the towns, cities, and trading posts of the West, he’d been a different person than the one who’d let Ned O’Leary plant sweet kisses on his neck.
After their meal, Cole washed his teeth, and stood in the open bedroom in his gray union suit. The door had been left open, and as he faced away from the kitchen, a tingle of heat on his nape made him wonder whether Ned watched him prepare for bed. The thick fabric of the underwear clung to Cole’s back, and the back flap was held up only by a pair of buttons. Did Ned imagine coming over and touching Cole? Kissing him like he used to? Cole chewed on his lips, breathing slowly as the cabin sank into perfect silence. He wasn’t certain if he still hated Ned, but he sure as hell hadn’t forgiven him.
Why couldn’t he just seek revenge like any other outlaw and live on simple human needs like: hunger, lust, and anger? If he weren’t such a disastrously indecisive man, he’d have found Ned, shot him dead, and moved on with his life, all the happier.
It was past midnight, but they’d eaten, and talked, and had a fight, and Lars was dead, and this day and night had already turned upside down, so it made sense that when he set his grooming bag on the bedside table and lay down, his eyelids were light as butterfly wings.
Lars’s hat, the one with the fancy pheasant feather, still hung off a nail like a silent reminder that nothing would be the same. The charming Norwegian windbag with a mean streak and a bad temper would never annoy Cole again, and never make him laugh despite better judgement. Once again, O’Leary disrupted his life, but this time Cole had himself to blame as well.