“We can’t have that.” Scrubbing at his buzzed hair, Linc closed his eyes.
“Says who?” Screw Linc’s obvious discomfort. Jacob was done taking his fast denials. “Your conscience? Your fears? Some ancient promises?”
“I don’t expect you to understand.” Linc’s long-suffering tone torched Jacob’s last shred of patience.
“Oh, I understand. A little too well. Like I said yesterday, everyone else comes first for you.” And probably always would, a realization that left Jacob breathless and more than a little dizzy, world shifting on him despite his best efforts at denial the last few months.
“That’s not fair.” Stopping his pacing, Linc actually had the gall to sound offended.
“Oh? How about you try making me some promises then? Or yourself? Why did Wyatt get the best of you? He’s gone. Not coming back. Not here to spew his hateful positions and theories.”
“You don’t get to talk like that.” Angry Linc was back, the mad, hard man who had banished Jacob after the funeral. Guess that answered where his loyalties lay.
“No? He was my goddamn brother.” Jacob could meet anger with anger if that was what Linc wanted. “And he’s been between us for years now. I sure as hell think I get an opinion on you hiding behind some promise you made a homophobic bigot—who yeah, had a nice side too—but you’ve used him as an excuse for years instead of admitting what’s right in front of your face. What’s in your heart.”
“What do you want me to say? That I care? You know that.” Linc made it sound so obvious when it was anything but, Jacob relying far more on his actions than his words. “But it’s not simply Wyatt. I’ve been wrestling all damn summer with letting him down, but it’s not just that promise. There’s the rest of your family. I can’t risk losing them too. Not with everything else gone. Not if it might mean them mad at you too. I promised your mom to keep you safe. You and me shacking up on something approaching a permanent basis isn’t what she or any of them want for you.”
Despite everything, hope flared, a little hot spot in a cold forest of lost chances. Linc even thinking permanent was a start.
“So why not test it and see? God knows I love my family, but if they want to follow Wyatt’s stupid theories or get mad about something minor like an age gap—”
“Ten years isn’t minor—”
“It is too. Screw them. If they cut us off, at least we’d have each other. Or am I not enough?” The flicker of hope faded as quickly as it had arisen. His anger was an almost palpable, prickly thing because he was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that question, and it pierced every soft part he had left. Linc had considered a future together and found it lacking in some fundamental way, had decided that others were worth more than Jacob, had determined that old promises trumped any fresh potential.
“It’s not that—”
“Save it.” Turning away from Linc, he rested heavily on the porch rail, fighting the urge to simply pack it all in right then, head for his truck.
“It’s that you deserve more than me. You do.” Linc’s voice was pained, but Jacob couldn’t bear to discover if his face matched.
“These are tired, tired reasons, Linc.” He spoke to the scrubby little bushes on the side of the porch. “Truth is that you just don’t want me as much as I want you, and I’m the stupid fuck who took six years to figure that out. You care, but not enough. You like what we have, but not enough. You trust me, but not enough. Whatever this is, it’s not enough to keep you. And that fucking hurts.”
“I’m sorry.” It was the worst two words Linc could have chosen. Not a quick denial. Not an explanation. Not a fumble. Just a quiet apology. “I’m a bastard—”
“No shit. You know what you really are?” He didn’t wait for Linc to answer. “A coward. We could have...so much. But you refuse to choose it, and your reasons all fucking suck. Which leads me to think that you’re a cowardly bastard. And I’m an idiot.”
“Jacob—” Linc reached for him then, placing a warm hand on Jacob’s chilled arm, but he shrugged it off.
“Unless you’re about to tell me that I’m all wrong, don’t Jacob me.” Please tell me I’ve got things wrong. Unspoken wish clogging his throat, he stared off into the cold, dark night.
Not surprisingly, Linc said nothing. Still, though, his silence sliced through Jacob, made it hard to take his next breath.
“About what I figured. I’m done here.” With that, he jumped the porch rail, not even wanting to brush by Linc to use the steps, not caring as he stumbled on his way to the truck. He heard the sound of his name, but he didn’t turn around. Couldn’t.
Once in his truck, he spent several long minutes with his head resting on the steering wheel. Long minutes where Linc could have come after him but didn’t. Instead, when he finally looked up, the porch was empty. Fuck. How had this gone so south so fast?
As he drove home, his brain kept churning with that question, replaying their last two arguments, trying to figure out how they went from sneaky and happy to...nothing at all. Shattered pieces of an illusion. The only real conclusion was that it had all been fake. He’d seen what he’d wanted to see, believed Linc capable of more than he was, read more into things than was real. And even if it wasn’t fake, it didn’t matter. If Linc didn’t care enough to fight for them, it didn’t really matter what he felt about Jacob. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. And that meant that all Jacob’s certainty for years that there was something potent and important between them was now a lie. It wasn’t simply a matter of getting Linc to give in to their attraction. Not enough. It all came back to that. Jacob and what they had together wasn’t enough for Linc and fuck all what the reasons were.
His insides had been sandblasted, everything dry and crackly, one stiff breeze away from turning to dust. His eyes, too, burned, and only muscle memory ensured that his truck actually made it to his trailer in one piece. The clock flashed an absurd hour, a reminder of how they were supposed to be sleeping so they could—
Work. Damn it. Somehow he was going to have to drag himself and his half a heart into work in the morning, face Linc again, and try to not crumble with the force of wanting someone who had never been his to begin with.
Chapter Eighteen
Sunrise was a little after five, a lightness to the sky that Linc took as permission to give up pretending sleep would come and to go check on his plants. The garden would produce most of its bounty in August, when the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers came on, but there was still watering to be done, weeds to pull, herb seedlings to coax along. It was mindless, methodical work, the sort he could do in his sleep. Or in his sleep-deprived, grief-riddled state with only the faint light for company, as the case might be.