“Have you seen it yet?” Cole asked, absent-mindedly patting Dog.
“Seen what?” Ned asked as he changed into clean denim pants, but his smirk told Cole he knew what the question was about. He was handsome like that—sitting in a chair in their own wagon, enjoying the brisk morning while everyone else chose to sleep in.
“Don’t be an ass,” Cole said, pulling on clothes.
Ned rubbed his smooth face with a grin. “No. I haven’t seen it. I promised to wait for you, didn’t I?” He lifted the backpack filled with food. “I thought we could eat on the beach.”
Cole shoved his feet into boots, put on his hat, and grabbed the coffee mug, ready to venture out. “The best idea you’ve had in a while,” he said and nudged Ned’s side on the way out.
Ned followed him with a laugh and helped Dog down before stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Are you trying to tell me grating cheese over popped corn was not the achievement of the century?”
Cole hummed and locked the door once Ned was out. “Your aunt should take cooking lessons from you,” he said and walked with Ned, keeping himself a step behind him to admire his man’s muscular backside. The second-hand denim pants were slightly small on him, which translated into an enjoyable view for Cole.
“I’m a dead man. There’s only one family I’ve got now. Speaking of which—” Ned pointed to the painting of a man walking the tightrope covering the side of a wagon. “Terje says it’s good to start early. What do you think about allowing Tommy to train in acrobatics?”
Cole chewed on his lip. It made sense for Tommy to learn a trade related to the life they were all living, since Cole wasn’t taking his eyes off the boy until he was sixteen at least. “I suppose. But he should try it all. See what he really likes instead of doing as Judith’s boys do,” he said as the three of them left the camp behind and entered a patch of trees that wasn’t dense enough to obscure the expanse of the sky beyond a mild hill.
“They’re older, so he’s still got time. I just… I don’t wanna coddle him, but the boy’s been through so much already. He deserves joy,” Ned said and tossed a thick stick up the hill, which sent Dog on a wild chase after it.
“Better to die than live unhappy,” Cole muttered and sipped some of the scalding hot coffee. He pushed his hand under Ned’s backpack and kept it there as they ascended toward the brightening sky, breathing in salty air.
“I love you,” Ned said out of the blue, so preoccupied with Cole he didn’t even look to the waves greeting them with their far-off whisper. They’d reached the top of the slope, but Cole only noticed the vastness of the gray ocean on the periphery of his vision, focused on the tension passing through Ned’s features and the warmth of his green eyes.
He kissed Ned’s shoulder and touched the leather jacket where it felt ever-so-slightly thicker. Ned still didn’t know he’d been carrying a part of Cole wherever he went, and Cole liked it that way. He squeezed Ned’s hand and stood closer, resting his chin on his lover’s sturdy shoulder, the view they’d wanted to see together for the past eight years forgotten. There was no place for it in Cole’s heart when it was already so full.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ll never leave your side.”
Ned gave him a hug. “We’ll make up for those lost years.”
Cole smiled and pressed his cheek to Ned’s, applying just enough pressure for them both to finally face the ocean. “There it is. Look at all that water.”
And yet the magnificent view of endless blue waves couldn’t hold a candle to the warm green of Ned’s eyes.
Epilogue 2 – Ned
Seven years later
Los Angeles, 1894
Ned didn’t mind being one of the handful of people who knew how to set up and maintain the steam-powered merry-go-round. It made him feel useful, and while he didn’t work in the spotlight, his job was crucial for smooth operations.
The young ranch hand who’d met Cole Flores so many years ago could have never imagined the kind of life he’d get to live at thirty-seven, touring America with the circus. At that time, he’d had no plans for the future, nor understood what he truly needed, but now he had a man who loved him every day, and a boy who felt like Ned’s own. Uncle Liam might not have called the three of them a family, but his opinion didn’t matter anymore.
The troupe members were a part of it too, all serving as aunts and uncles or cousins to Tommy. While Ned wasn’t close with every single person who rode with them, they remained his home even when the landscape around them changed.
There would likely be a big party tonight, as was customary whenever they settled in a new place. The show would open in a week, and most of his colleagues were in no hurry to work past dinnertime, but this new fancy machine Jan had bought for the sideshow needed extra care. Ned wanted to prove himself to secure better pay, since the arrangement Cole had made seven years back left them always scrambling for additional income.
So as much as he’d wanted to go with their friends to check out the electric streetcars all the way in the city, he was stuck in a hot shed that housed the steam-powered equipment, and oiled the cogs. Sometimes he wondered what his parents would have made of this. Not of his life, as he had no doubt they wouldn’t have approved of the way he’d found happiness, but of how the world was changing. Big cities lit up with electricity at night, and the newest locomotive was said to travel up to a hundred miles per hour. Cole had claimed he’d get them tickets, but Cole’s life savings were already running thin, so Ned wasn’t exactly holding his breath.
He applied more oil to the part of the mechanism he’d just screwed together when the door of the shed swung open, letting in the last of the day’s sun. Cole stepped in. Over time, he had gone back to the black clothing he’d preferred in the past, and the starkness of their shade went wonderfully with his tawny complexion. Tall boots showcased his shapely calves, and the thin duster swung about his legs as the breeze pushed the fabric forward, nudging him inside. But something was different, and Ned found himself stilling in confusion.
Cole looked like on the day they met in Beaver Springs, over fourteen years back, when he tipped his hat with a smile unobscured by a moustache. He was smooth-shaven, and as he stepped closer at an energetic pace, Ned sat back, at a loss for words.
He pushed the hair away from his sweaty forehead, feeling underdressed in his denim overalls, and without a shirt. “Lookin’ dashing. You going into the city with everyone?”
“Just returned. Jan took me with him to protect a big bag of cash. Negotiated some of its contents for myself too. Ta-dah,” Cole said, sinking to his haunches in front of Ned and presenting him with two pieces of paper. Train tickets.
Ned stared at them with a growing smile. “Well, I’ll be damned, Mr. Flores. Fourteen years, and you still astound me. I hope you negotiated some time off too?”
Cole grinned and blew away a silver hair that upset the even blackness of his mane. Ned hadn’t seen him without facial hair in almost a decade and a half, but still remembered the dashing youth he’d fallen in love with as if it had been yesterday. Cole’s features had sharpened since, and there were now lines around his eyes, but he looked as roguish and full of life as ever.