He closed his eyes, doing exactly that.
“Are they going to feed me?” he asked pitifully.
“No. You nicked your lower intestine, sweet boy, on a giant tree branch from hell. Fluids for at least three more days.”
God.
He sighed, awake and irritated and uncertain. And definitely not in the mood for the kind of talk that would reveal his feelings for the sleeping man in the corner.
“Whatcha reading?” he asked.
“Murder mystery with lots of bodies and a priest who won’t stop fucking around.”
“Sounds gothic. Count me in.”
They’d done this while deployed. Yeah, sometimes when the boredom set in, you had long meaningful talks that bared your soul. Sometimes you bickered at each other for entertainment. But he and Elsie had taken to reading to each other, because it was like television or the movies, but they each took joy in the drama, doing the voices, building up the suspense, injecting their own editorial into the proceedings. Elsie started reading to him, and he settled back into the pillows, comforted in ways he didn’t let himself be with regular human interaction, and for a moment he let his gaze drift to the sleeping man in the corner.
Who was partially awake and staring right back at Spencer. Spencer opened his mouth to say something, anything, to take away that sort of golden, happy admiration that he saw in Theo’s eyes, but Theo quirked up one side of his mouth, held his finger to his lips, and looked at Elsie, and Spencer fell under her spell once again.
TWO days later, he was trying to explain to Glen why Theo had to go.
“You don’t understand,” he muttered feverishly. “Gecko, I am not good for that boy.”
“I can see that,” Glen said. “You jumped out of a helicopter to save his life, and you pretty much succeeded.”
“I fell out of a helicopter because fuck my luck, and you and Elsie and Damien saved his life, so you can see my confusion.”
Glen chuckled. “I can see that you’re confused, that is a certainty. What I can’t see is that you did not at least help keep that kid from getting blown out of the canyon before we could get to him. A team effort still counts, Spencer. There’s no law that says you can’t have help.”
“Ha!” Spencer cried hoarsely—and then coughed, because dammit, the infection was back and they had him on all the antibiotics in the world and pneumonia was still a real threat. “See? You said kid!”
“That kid is only a little younger than Cash, and you are younger than me, so I think you need to rethink your logic,” Glen said mildly. “And you know what I also think you need to rethink?”
“You’re gonna tell me anyway,” Spencer muttered because God forbid Gecko didn’t get his say.
“Whatever is inside you that thinks you’ve got a goddamned thing more to earn or prove. You seem to be an intelligent guy, Spencer. I try not to work with fools. Where did you get this notion that you aren’t good enough? That your maximum enjoyment out of life is one-nut hookups and your dog?”
Spencer snorted. “You think a redneck like me can aspire to one-nut hookups and a dog without some hard work? I figure I hit the jackpot with Elsie. I don’t want to push my luck.”
Glen leaned forward, his bright Caribbean blue eyes sharp and not missing a thing. “No bullshit now, Spence. Tell me, and when I don’t hate you, maybe you can work up the courage to tell Woodchuck, the guy who is currently back at the hotel room, ordering everything you’re going to need so we can do this at home and you can have dogs and sunsets as your reward for getting better.”
Dogs and sunsets? Spencer’s eyes burned at the thought of being outside on the dog farm in Napa, watching the sun drop gold in the west, Colonel by his side.
“It’s like he can read my mind,” he said gruffly.
“Not a brain trust, Spence,” Glen told him. “Talk to me.”
“Told you,” Spencer said, undone by that promise, outside on camp chairs, Theo at his side, Colonel between them, maybe a beer apiece as they watched the sunset. “Redneck boy. Just like his daddy. Did and said everything Daddy told him to. Was a little junior Nazi right up until I kissed my first boy and caught Daddy’s fist in my face and learned a new junior Nazi word.” He swallowed against the burn of that, the surprise at learning that of all those people he’d been brought up to hate, he himself was one of them. The absolute shock at the age of thirteen when he’d learned that if you hated everybody but yourself, eventually you’d hate yourself most of all. “Regular piece of shit, right? Doesn’t take a saint to change your tune when you realize you’re one of the hunted, right?”
“That depends,” Glen said gently. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“What happened to the boy you kissed?”
Spencer snorted, because he knew this one. “Knocked up a girl at seventeen. Has a job, four kids, a private porn stash and is the terror of every glory hole for a fifty-mile radius.”
Glen grunted. “That’s a lot of anonymous dick to suck to prove you’re not gay. How’d you find that out?”
Spencer gave him a rather wicked grin. “I had to drive through that part of the country and stopped to pee. Saw him go in ahead of me and was going to call his name, ask him about the kids, tell him I was in the Air Force, that sort of thing. Then I watched another guy go in and decided to hang back a minute. The other guy came out, looking all happy, and he leans into me and says, ‘That guy gives the best head for fifty miles. Only time I’m unfaithful to my wife.’”
“Ew,” Glen said.
“I’m saying.”
“You didn’t… uhm….”
Spencer was affronted. “Jesus, no! God, Gecko, I’ve got standards!”
Glen nodded. “Yeah. You do. Look, you’re exhausted, so I’m going to say this and let you sleep. My brother got sent home in high school because his best friend swung on him and gave him a black eye.”
“Oscar?” Spencer asked, shocked—truly shocked—to his core. Having lived on Preston’s property for a while, he’d gotten to know Oscar and Belinda well, and he loved them both. They were like Preston—they could have worn T-shirts that said Dyslexic or Cognitively Delayed, but what they were, really, were nice people who put their heart and soul into Preston’s dog ranch and loved each other with stars in their eyes. “But… Oscar’s like the brother he wished he’d gotten instead of you!”
“Yes, sir,” Glen said. “But in school, Preston had a crush, and he thought he’d give it a shot, and he surprised the hell out of Oscar. Damie and Preston had a little talk about consent, and Preston apologized, and Oscar apologized, and they’re friends for life, as you know. But the thing is, both of them acted badly because they were stupid kids, and there’s a learning curve with good behavior. Someone’s got to teach you right from wrong. You wanted to make your daddy proud, and there’s no shame in that. The shame’s his for being a rotten human being who taught his kid to hate. You had to teach yourself, Spencer, and as far as I can see, you got one hard lesson and did the rest on your own.”