The thud of Eddie’s body hitting the fender of the truck woke me up.
Where I sat, in the passenger seat of the cab, it was dark and cold. Outside, some kind of light gleamed down over Eddie and a man I’d never seen before, talking. Laughing. Big lacy flakes of snow fell around them, fluttering into and out of the glow like moths.
Whoever this guy was, he took Eddie in his arms and pushed their foreheads together, kissing him softly, and then bringing more passion to the party like he couldn’t help himself. Like he was starving and Eddie was a tree of perfectly ripe peaches and he just had to have some or die.
Eventually, he pinned Eddie against the truck and held his face between big knobby hands. He pressed steamy openmouthed kisses on Eddie’s lips.
Eddie. I’d spent a lot of years trying not to imagine what he looked like horny, but there he was, lit up like a neon sign because of another man. He looked damned good. Handsome and happy. Kind of fierce.
I wished he looked at me like that, or someone would, anyway. Someone not Eddie. Someone else, fierce and fine like Eddie, but not.
I’d lived with him, bunked with him, eaten and camped out, and gone drinking and chasing tail with him—or so I thought—and he never let on he was gay until just recently.
Now, Eddie’s naked hunger made whole my body tighten. He looked alive in a way I’d never seen him before, and damn. The sight of him like that made me think things I had no business thinking and want things I could never have.
But right then, whether I had any business thinking about Eddie didn’t stop me imagining I was on the receiving end of his kisses.
I must be drunker than I thought.
While I watched, Eddie and the stranger changed positions, and Eddie sank to his knees in the snow. He must have been digging into the stranger’s jeans in the shadows where I couldn’t see because seconds later, Eddie tilted his head, diving and pulling back, bobbing up and down, and leaving trails of saliva and steam on the man’s cock.
The stranger’s head tipped back on his shoulders and his hat fell off.
Seemed like a nice face. A lived-in face, the way it was frosted by light and pitted by shadow.
He hung there, mouth slack, blowing billows of fog toward the sky. He looked like a weathered graveyard angel getting serviced by my friend Eddie—a man I’d never known at all.
When the stranger’s climax came, I saw but didn’t hear his shout of joy. He clutched Eddie’s head to his groin, while Eddie worked himself, quaking with whole-body shudders in the shadows. It didn’t take long before he went still. Afterward he stood up, sagging into the stranger’s arms. They rocked against the truck where I sat, mesmerized by them.
They exchanged foggy kisses and whispers that filled the air around their faces and shielded them from prying eyes like mine.
I was ashamed, but for wanting, not for spying.
I’d woken partly from the jolt of Eddie’s body, and partly because it was real strange for me to be there in the first place.
I should have been home in bed. Home anyway, at the J-Bar where I worked. I don’t know why I didn’t wake up in the barn where I’d fallen asleep, wrapped around a bottle of mescal.
I mined my memory for clues, but that was like lowering myself into a cave with a dozen black empty tunnels that led nowhere.
All that should have been more frightening than it was, but I had to take a piss, and I couldn’t think beyond my immediate problem. I opened the door and lurched out.
The cold made my ears burn. I tried to think invisible thoughts as I half strode, half stumbled over the slippery pavement to the back of the truck.
God, it was cold. I had to dance around a little to keep warm while I shook off. My balls scrambled to get back inside my body and my dick about turned inside out.
Eddie and his friend stared at me as I made my way back inside the truck. I acted like everything was copacetic, ’cause it was, wasn’t it? Even though I didn’t know where I was, or why I was there, things would become clear as crystal when Eddie finished whatever the hell he was doing and we got back on the damn road.
I climbed up into the cab and slammed the door shut. The air inside was warmer than the air outside, but cooling fast. I wished Eddie’d left the keys with me. At least I could have turned on the radio or something.
They kissed some more. Laughed some more. I wondered if they were talking about me—if Eddie even thought about me at all while he was out there having fun with his friend. I rubbed my sleeves to bring some warmth to my upper body.
Did they expect me to sit there while they canoodled all night?
When Eddie finally got back in the truck, he keyed the ignition without saying a word, so I pretended to be asleep. I didn’t want to talk anyway. The last thing I needed was some kind of confrontation over what just happened between Eddie and his friend.
Eddie’s lover. What a thought.
The truck rumbled along the deserted stretch of highway while we balanced the frozen silence between us. After a while I got stiff from holding so still. I tried to move natural-like. A yawn, a stretch. A shift from one hip to the other.
“I know you’re awake. You’ve been awake this whole time.” Eddie shot me a sideways glance then turned back to the road. “And I know you were spying on me too.”
“Spying? Like you weren’t getting it on in the spotlight back there in front of God and everyone. I’ve seen peep shows with worse lighting than that.”
Eddie’s shoulders tensed. “You didn’t have to look.”
I eyed him. “I don’t have to look at a highway accident either, but sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me and I just can’t look away.”
“See anything you like?” he asked, all tart.
“You know my policy on dick sucking.” I relaxed back into my seat to prove how unaffected I’d been by the whole thing. “What is there not to like?”
“Don’t be crude.”
“I’m crude?” I wished things were like they used to be between us when we were just hands on the same ranch, because back then I liked needling him a lot. He used to smile at me and laugh at my jokes, but now, all I got was that sour look—like he’d sucked on a lime with no tequila to mellow him out first. “I’m not the guy who got his face fucked in the moonlight back there.”
“What do you know about it anyway?”
I chose to say nothing, for a change. Maybe age was finally working some kind of magic maturity spell. Maybe it was because I still had no idea where I was or how I got there and I didn’t want him to know.
He leaned toward me. “You learned everything you know about sex in a whorehouse.”
“Not true.” I’d paid women for sex. Sure. But everything I know? That was an overstatement. “I learned everything I know about sex on the rodeo circuit.”
“Since when were you ever on the rodeo circuit?”
“I was.”
“In your dreams,” he sneered.
I hated the way he talked to me lately. “I grew up around rodeo.”
“More like your mama was a buckle bunny and once a year you left your trailer park to go to the show.”
I gotta say, that was low, even if he was just joking. “You take that back.”
“I will not. You’re a liar if I ever heard one. How come you never said nothing about rodeo in all those years we been living at the J-Bar?”
“How come you never said you was a queer?”
“I will say this just once more, and you better listen. I am an out and proud gay man who never had no reason to mention who I sleep with because it isn’t any of your business.”
“Seems like that was everybody’s business the way you were sucking off that cowboy back there.”
“You jealous?”
Oh no he didn’t. I turned away. “Hell no.”
“You sure about that?”
I felt the heat creep up the back of my neck, but I was sure as shit never going to let Mr. Eddie dick lips Molina know it. “I am as sure as I can be that if I had to get my knob polished or die, and yours was the very last mouth on earth, I would call the undertaker and pick out my casket.”
“Is that so?”
“It is. I ain’t no queer.”
“You know what?” Eddie shouted at me. “You are the queerest man I ever did meet. You are so queer you don’t even know how queer you are.”
“The hell I don’t.” Wait . . .
I turned away when Eddie busted up laughing. I was that sick of trailer park jokes and him talking trash. Like he was such a man of the world.
I grunted. “You’re just trying to confuse me.”
“It isn’t so hard, if you want to know the truth.”
Big man. Like he knew anything about me. I turned to look back out the window of the truck. There was little to see beyond the wedge lit up by our headlights. They showed snow and sleet hitting the icy tarmac. Mist crept toward the road from the vegetation on the roadside. Miles passed under the wheels before he spoke again.
“Maybe you could tell me about the rodeo.”
Ed always mended fences first. Maybe he was the better man, but he didn’t have to rub my nose in it. “I don’t know why you’d want to know, seeing as how we’re not even close enough friends to tell me you were gay.”
He grimaced. “I’m sure you know why.”
I guess I did know why he never told me. To his mind I was dumb and we weren’t the friends I always believed we were. That hurt, but it wasn’t surprising. “We’ve even hit on girls together.”
“You might have noticed I left early an awful lot.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is”—he didn’t take his eyes off the road to glare at me, but I knew him well enough to know it galled him he couldn’t—“you probably got a lot luckier after I left.”
“Are you saying I got your leftovers? Like, I was last call lucky?” That got my dander up, but it’s not like I cared how it happened, only that I got laid, right? “So what if I did? I still got lucky and you went home alone.”
He laughed softly. “You know that for a fact do you?”
What the hell? “Are you telling me—”
“There are bent cowboys everywhere, Jimmy. You think it’s so far-fetched?”
“I do.” He was laughing at me. I hated that more than anything. Smug bastard. “I think that’s like science-fiction, spiders-from-Mars, zombie-face-eating far-fetched. “
“Why would you think that?”
“’Cause you’re an ugly cuss!” I folded my arms over my chest and shot him a glare. “Ugly and smug. You are smugly.”
His hands tightened on the wheels. “What are you, twelve?”
God, it was pitch-black everywhere and there wasn’t a town in sight. Not a signpost. Whether I’d have recognized where we were or not wasn’t the question. I couldn’t see a thing beyond the headlights. “I’m thirsty is what I am. And hungry. Just how far is it?”
“How far is what?” Ed seemed less interested in telling me where we were than in making me feel stupid for not knowing. “Where do you think we are?”
I bit back a smart remark. “How far is it to the J-Bar?”
“We’re not going to the J-Bar.” He flicked a glance my way, nervous-like. “We’re going to my friend’s place.”
“What friend?” When he didn’t answer, I felt my gut tighten. “Your man friend? That guy you serviced back there?”
Eddie gritted his teeth. “His name is Don and he’s not just some guy I serviced. He’s a good friend of mine. A very good friend.”
“I don’t recall you asking me if we could go visit your boyfr—”
“I didn’t ask you. I’m telling you. We’re going to my friend’s mountain place for a while.”
“Wait.” I turned to face him. “What do you mean by for a while?”
“I mean, we’re going to spend some time at my friend’s place. Boss’s orders.”
That shut me up for a minute. Boss Malloy is ordering us . . . ? What about our chores? What about the animals who depend on us?
“Are we fired?” I asked. All along that’s what I feared, that Emma might be selling the ranch and the new owners would throw us out on our asses. “Don’t we have jobs at the ranch no more?”
“We’re not fired.” He slanted a dark look my way. “Not yet, anyways.”
“Well, what then?” Panic caused my voice to rise. “Are we so unsightly they don’t want us around while they try to unload the place? Crandall Jenkins isn’t even cold in his grave, and Malloy has sent us God knows where to—”
Eddie still wouldn’t look at me. “We’re doing this for you.”
I got really panicked then. “C’mon man. What’s happening? Just tell me. Don’t play like you got all the answers and I don’t deserve any. What the hell is going on here?”
“Let’s get where we were going before we talk about this, Jimmy.” Eddie finally glanced my way. He looked nervous—there were even beads of sweat popping out on his temples. “Please.”
I licked my lips to wet them and swallowed hard because my throat was parched. I sure wished I had a drink. Sweat made my skin prickle. “Am I in some kind of trouble, Eddie?”
“Little bit, Jim,” he admitted
I’d already made a discreet search for something to drink in the front of Eddie’s crew cab, and now I glanced over into the backseat. I admit what I was looking for was a bottle of whiskey or something like that. Even a can of beer would have slaked my thirst at that point. What I saw was a couple of overstuffed duffel bags and my cowboy hat. Not the battered gimme cap I wore most times, but the straw hat I wore into town. And my good boots.
“You packed my things?”
“Yeah.” Eddie nodded. “I brought whatever I thought we might need. Don stocked the cabin with groceries.”
“Did you remember to bring beer? ’Cause I could sure use one right about now.”
“No.”
“Think we could stop?” I asked. I was getting a pretty bad feeling about all this. My hands had started to shake a little. “We could grab some at one of those quick marts? My treat.”
“No.”
“How come?” I began to sense exactly what the trip was about. I don’t know if I understood the extent of Eddie’s determination, but by then I had the feeling we weren’t on some vacation road trip to Vegas. “C’mon. I’m thirsty. Don’t be an asshole.”
“No.”
“Eddie—”
“There’s bottled water in the back. You can grab one out. We won’t be stopping.”
“Are you kidding me?” At some point, I guess I expected him to say, Surprise! Just joking. There’s a case of Bud in the truck bed. We’re camping . . . or . . . I didn’t know what. “Are you really serious about this?”
“As a heart attack.”
A long silence stretched out between us, during which my ticker beat so hard I thought it would rocket right out of my chest.
“Say it plain so even I can understand,” I said, finally. “Say it like I’m stupid. What the hell is going on here?”
Eddie glanced at me once more before turning back to the road, eyes grim, hands tight on the wheel in the ten and two o’clock position.
“Boss says you gotta sober up. He says we might all have to get new jobs somewhere and there isn’t a ranch foreman he knows who would hire you, the way you drink. I’m here to see to it you do what he says. I’m sorry, Jim.”
Sick panic roiled inside me. So many different thoughts went through my mind at that point. Shame for being the object of their pity. Anger they’d planned all this without telling me. Sheer goddamn frustration they weren’t man enough to come to me and tell me to my face but . . . What would I have said?
I wanted to rail at both of them, but only Eddie was there.
“Damn you,” I roared, grabbing for the wheel. “You turn this piece of shit around. You take me back!”
We tussled furiously, and oh my God, the road was a mess—icy and deserted. We couldn’t see thirty feet in front of us, and there I was, grabbing at the wheel, trying to force him to flip a U-turn to take me back home despite the fact I could run us right off the road and we could die there in the cold like that.
Naked panic, that’s what that was. The devil got hold of my heart and I was willing to wreck the truck—willing to get us killed—to stop what they were trying to do to me.
“Knock it off, Jim.” Eddie shoved me back. “Calm the hell down.”
I didn’t. I reached out again, clawing at his arms, his face. I wanted hold of that wheel because there was no way, no way, they were doing this to me.
“Give me that,” I growled out, jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth would break. I used all my strength, but compared to Eddie, I’m nothing. Still, in the confines of the truck, I knew I could cause him some serious trouble, and right then I felt like I had nothing to lose.
He got tired of fighting me awful damn quick, ’cause out of nowhere, he threw a punch. His fist clocked me on the jaw and snapped my head into the passenger window. I don’t know why, but that split second of awful violence—the way he looked at me—about froze my insides. In all our years as friends, I’d never seen that dark side of him.
That kind of cold violence scared the hell out of me. I’d been its plaything as a kid, the object of my pa’s inexplicable fury, and it fair made my blood chill with fear.
While my head spun, I closed my eyes. He didn’t say anything and neither did I.
I pretended to be asleep, and eventually my heart stopped pounding and the motion of the car did its best to pull me under again.
Not long after that I sank into the black emptiness of sleep.
When I woke, I was alone and the truck wasn’t moving.
Who the hell did Eddie think he was, leaving me asleep by myself in a truck outside in the freezing cold? My pa and my older brother, Jonas, used to do that. We’d be on the road, and when I fell asleep, they’d leave me in the parking lot of some dive bar or motel—just leave me asleep outside in the dark. I’d wake up with no clue where I was, no idea if they were coming back or if I should go in and try to find them.
My first useful thought was to look for the keys, because I hadn’t forgotten what Eddie said. I hadn’t forgotten the plans him and boss Malloy made for me behind my back. It would serve them right if I up and hightailed it back to the J-Bar with Eddie’s truck and no Eddie.
No keys.
Not like that was going to stop me. Where the hell did Eddie get the idea I’d go quietly? I slid over and tore the wiring out from under the dash. Found what I needed without hardly even looking.
I hated waking up alone like that. Unwanted. Abandoned.
One twist. Two. Touch the wires together and the engine should . . .
Fuck.
Nothing.
What the hell? I checked I got the proper color-coated strands and tried again. I was frowning down at the mess of tangled wire when someone tapped on the window behind me.
I glanced up and saw Eddie frowning down, no doubt pissed at what I’d done to his truck. Serves you right for leaving me like that, you prick.
“You need a working engine for that,” he told me as he opened the door. “One that has a battery.”
“Fuck you.” I spilled out of the car ready for a fistfight.
“What?” Eddie jumped back.
“Why did you have to leave me like that? What did I ever do to you?”
Eddie shook his head at me. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You were sound asleep and I thought maybe you needed it.”
I took a swing at him. “I hate waking up alone in a car like that.”
Ed plucked my fist from the air and peered at me like he was trying to see through my skin. “I didn’t know.”
“I hate that. Left behind in the car like a damn dog. Like a fucking duffel bag. You can’t be bothered to even wake me up and take me in out of the fucking snow.”
Now Eddie frowned like he was thinking about it. Now, after the fact. “I’m sorry, Jimmy. I didn’t think how you’d feel waking up alone like that. I won’t do it again.”
“Would have served you right if I took your truck and left you up here to walk back to civilization, wherever the hell that is. Would have served you right if I’d died out here.”
“All right, all right. Simmer down now.”
I glared at him. “Fuck you.”
“It’s pretty civilized inside. How about you come in with me.”
“How about you suck my fucking—”
“That’s enough.” He turned and headed toward the cabin’s welcoming front door. “I almost didn’t bother to disable the damn thing, but I thought on the off chance you knew what you were doing and could—”
“Which I did,” I pointed out.
“Come inside.” He jerked his chin toward the cabin like I was a dog and I was supposed to just follow along and yip around at his heels.
I debated making a run at him, but frankly, Eddie was a tough buzzard. He wasn’t too much older than me, just forty-two compared to my thirty-eight. But I was a lover, not a fighter, or at least that’s how I thought of myself. Back there on the road, Eddie had proved he wasn’t above using violence to get his way in this, so I went along.
You’re going to have to sleep sometime.
Eddie led me into a rustic-looking cabin that seemed awful nice for the middle of nowhere. There was a place for us to hang our hats just inside the door, over a table with a passel of pictures on it. There were old time black-and-whites of families and framed pictures of a good-looking man, a pretty woman, and some kids. There were some of the kids alone, and holy cow, there were probably a dozen pictures of Ed. He looked so young in a couple of them, they must have been from before we met.
One of Ed and the unknown man caught my eye. Something about the difference in height, the casual way they leaned together, the way they looked at each other, made me think this was Ed’s friend from the road, Don. Even though they’d both aged some since it was taken, I was almost sure of it.
No knobby hands, no weathered angel, this Don was good looking, without a doubt. He was lanky and chiseled. He had an intelligent face and a smile that drew the eye. He seemed sure of himself and charming. Whatever I’d seen in the darkness outside the car had to be a trick of the light.
Ed looked so young and earnest next to him it took my breath away. Brawny and tan, he wore a yoked Western shirt with the sleeves rolled up past well-muscled forearms and he eyed Don like he would follow him anywhere.
And that Don, he looked like he could appreciate a guy like Ed, as well.
Hadn’t I seen firsthand how much he did appreciate him?
I followed Ed’s example and hung my hat up before I looked around further.
From all appearances, the cabin was rustic with a cowboy theme, but it seemed certain whoever did the place up was more interested in creature comforts than cost or authenticity.
The room I could see was full of Hollywood cowboy furniture—rough-hewn wooden pieces with soft leather cushions surrounded a wagon wheel table. The air was comfortable—warm even—since I still had my coat on.
Navajo blankets covered the back of the couch. Vintage tack and oil paintings of Western scenes and weathered cowboy faces were artfully arranged on the walls. I walked past the entry to look around because it was easier than facing Eddie just then.
That’s when I noticed an honest-to-God bronze statue of a bull rider on a special table with a light in it. It was a great little statue—a real work of art. Whoever made it had captured the bull’s bunching muscles, making it seem like he was going to spring up into the air. They’d sculpted the perfection of the moment on the rider’s face, in his body language. He had his arm in the air, his legs gripping for all he was worth. He had one hand clenched in a death grip on the bull rope. His face was a marvel of concentration and fear and I don’t know what else. Every emotion a man faces when he looks death in the eye. That had to cost a pretty penny, something like that.
I didn’t have a lot of good memories of those old rodeo days, but when my pa was riding bulls, he’d looked just like that, like some half-man, half-bull beast. Like he could do anything. My older brother, Jonas, when he was riding, had been even better. Jonas was a bull-riding god among mortals.
I glanced around some more. It was going to be a damn comfortable prison.
Rehab. Lockdown. Whatever.
“I can hear the wheels turning in your head,” Eddie said as he took my jacket and hung it up in a closet by the door.
“How’s that?”
“This isn’t going to be complicated. Boss says you have to stop drinking. That’s why I brought you here.”
I swallowed around the fact all my so-called friends were deciding my fate behind my back. “Where’s here?”
Eddie flushed. “My friend’s place.”
“Where, exactly is that?”
“You don’t need to know right now.” He folded his arms all stubborn-like and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “All you have to know is it’s no use you trying the truck because it won’t run. There’s no use trying to set out on foot because it’s freezing out there and you’ll die, and it’s no use you trying to talk me out of this because what we’re doing is in your best interest.”
Well. We’d have to see about that. I knew better than to try right then, while he was dissecting me with his most irritated glare. “I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. I’m the one being kidnapped.”
“For your own good,” he replied stubbornly.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, how’s the air up there, Mr. High and Mighty?”
Eddie ignored that. “Are you hungry?”
“I guess.” I toed the weathered wood floor. “I could eat.”
“I could make some eggs.”
Eddie and eggs. You could count on that like roadkill on a Texas highway, and they tasted just about as good. “No thanks. Got any cold cereal?”
“I don’t know.” Eddie scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Let’s take a look what we got.”
“Okay.” There’s a saying—you don’t shoot the messenger. Maybe I was being a little hard on him. I followed him to a real nice kitchen. It actually made the one in the ranch house where Crandall and Emma Jenkins lived look shabby. This one seemed rustic, but some of those nice wood cabinets hid appliances. Even the refrigerator was out of view behind big doors and drawers. It was stocked full of so much stuff . . . I didn’t even know what. Eggs and meat and milk. “Holy shit.”
For the hell of it I started opening drawers and doors. All the upper cabinets held pla
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