Hay and Heartbreak (15 page)

Dan didn’t know what to do or say. Part of him wanted to be hurt, to puff up with righteous indignation—but the other part of him didn’t care for drama, or for games. He took a deep breath and held it when Hector finally looked at him.

He let it out in a rush. “I’m sorry. I was coming to tell you I wanted to talk—”

Hector shook his head. “Not in here. You can bet there are others listening, or trying to.” He crossed over to Dan and stood in front of him. His dark eyes conveyed nothing Dan could interpret. Hector reached out and traced the scar on his forehead, then the one on his cheek. Without another word, he linked hands with Dan. “For now, please, let me apologize and ask if you’ll come sit down in my room and talk with me?”

Talk
with
me.
Dan didn’t miss the significance of those words. “Yeah.” He wanted to take it as a good sign that Hector held his hand all the way to Hector’s room. The truth was, he didn’t know Hector and shouldn’t be trying to assign him reasons for whatever he did.

Hector locked his door and sighed, tipping his head down as if he were worn out. “Shit. I don’t even know what happened.”

Dan pressed his lips together. He tried not to stare at Hector, instead glancing at the framed pictures on the walls and the family photos that lined the frame of the mirror above the dresser.

“Dan, will you look at me, please?” Hector asked.

Dan slowly turned back to face Hector. “Sorry. About…about everything.”

“Everything?” Hector’s eyebrows arched up.

Dan bit his lip. What did Hector want to hear?
No. This isn’t about what he wants to hear, but about my truth.
“Not the sex, or the hanging out and having fun part.”

Hector shook his head and swiped his hands over his face. “No, look, that’s not right.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Though Dan wasn’t sure he agreed. Hector had put him off when he’d offered to talk before. And they weren’t even dating or anything. Yet it did still feel like he should have said something to Hector sooner.

“No, it isn’t what you’re saying.”

“What?” Dan asked. He was going to need a flow chart or something unless things were clarified quickly.

Hector walked over to his bed and sat down. “I mean you have nothing to be sorry about, okay? It’s not as if you lied to me about anything. I didn’t ask questions, either. So why should you be sorry for anything, unless it’s hooking up with me and me being an asshole to you.”

Dan didn’t answer right away. This conversation was very important, he knew it down in his soul. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing but he needed to be honest. If he couldn’t be honest with Hector, then there really was no chance for anything else between them, not even more sex.

He was aware of Hector fidgeting, picking at the seam running down his pant leg. Dan didn’t mean to string him on.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Dan blurted out. He held up a hand when Hector looked like he was going to interrupt. “Just let me finish. I don’t know what you
want
me to say. I can’t try to please you like that. I have to say what
I
think, and here it is. I thought we were just going to fool around at first, even though I…”
Man up, Edmonds.
“Even though I felt like there was a deeper connection between us. I knew I didn’t have the experience to judge whether that was one-sided or even real. For one thing, I was a mess when I was a kid. Did lots of drugs, pissed off a cop who made it his life’s mission to see me in prison. Well, he succeeded there, killing off a dealer and pinning the blame on me. No one was going to take the word of a junkie kid over a detective.”

He ran one hand through his hair. “So to be fair, I’d almost certainly have ended up in prison anyway between the drugs and the stealing so I could buy them. I probably would have been dealing, too, and that’s not something I want to believe about myself, but it’s the truth. Maybe, in a way, prison saved me from that kind of life. Eventually. For almost ten years, though, I had to depend on a convicted murderer and gang leader to keep me safe and alive. After this”—Dan touched his scars—“I’d have done anything to keep the man who did this away from me. I was lucky he only cut me and didn’t rape me. Arlon, that was his name. He enjoyed hurting his bitches, as he called them.”

“Dan, I—” Hector didn’t finish what he’d been about to say, nor did he get up to try to comfort Dan.

Dan marked those two things down in his memory. It hurt, but he was coming to see that Hector was going to pull away and leave him alone.

Almost as a punishment to himself, Dan went into deeper detail, exposing all the humiliating things he could force out. “At least I didn’t lose my virginity in prison, if that’s what you’re worried about. I knew what sex was, well, the basics of it. I don’t think I
really
understood it until you and I—” Dan shook his head. “That’s off track. Mosh, he protected me while I was in prison. When I was getting out, he wished me luck and already had another guy in his sights. It wasn’t love, or even like most of the time. I don’t know, but at least I got something out of making a deal with him.”

Hector blanched and averted his gaze.

Dan could see just how much he disgusted Hector now. “So I traded my ass and mouth, whatever Mosh wanted from me, for protection. He wasn’t concerned with me getting off, not after the first time. That time, he made me jack off. Wouldn’t stop fucking me until I came, he said, and it hurt, when he pushed into me. I thought I was going to die, but I got through it. I got through all of it, and Warren, the detective who put me away, he’s going be going to prison for longer than I was. And I’m not…” Dan tried to hold the words back, but they burst free from his traitorous tongue. “I’m not your brother or sister, I’m not like them, I mean.”

Dan tapped his own chest. “I
know
how lucky I am to be standing here, clean and sober, healthy, and maybe, eventually, happy like I want to be. Now that I’m beginning to believe I can do more and have more than a past that I hate.”

There was more he could say, more details he could share about his life in prison or before it, but Dan didn’t. It’d serve no purpose except to garner him pity from Hector and possibly disgust as well. “Not once did anyone in my family contact me after I was arrested. Then they died, all but Duke. I got out of there, and had no one. When Duke started calling the halfway house I was at, I didn’t want anything to do with him. He just wouldn’t…he wouldn’t quit. Wouldn’t give up on me like I kept expecting him to.” Dan swiped at his cheek since it itched, and was surprised to feel moisture there. He didn’t know when he’d started crying, but it was suddenly on him—a deluge of grief and fear he’d held in for too long.

Dan didn’t want to share that with anyone. He couldn’t be weak. He had to be strong and keep himself together.

“Dan.” This time his name was said like a plea, and he was pulled into a familiar embrace that would have, at any other time, set his heart to racing.

Now it only fed the panic welling in him. “No!” Dan pushed and stumbled back. “Don’t. Not now. Not when you couldn’t be there in front of everyone else.”

Then Dan spun around and ran, pausing only long enough to unlock the door and open it.

And he couldn’t help but hurt even more because Hector let him go.

Chapter Eleven

Sleep was impossible. Dan didn’t toss and turn. He lay staring up at the ceiling all night, wondering what he should do. Running away and going back to Birmingham seemed the easiest solution.

And the most cowardly. After Duke had reappeared in his life, Dan had lived with the fear that his brother would only let him down by vanishing again. How could he do that same thing to Duke? Duke needed him, or at least wanted him there. Dan wasn’t going to let some guy he’d barely even been around ruin the relationship Dan was building with Duke.
Frankie, too. They’re getting in, under my skin, and I’m starting to believe in them. Strange how Hector got under my skin so quick when it’s taken me longer to have some faith in my brother.

But Hector hadn’t written Dan off for a decade like Duke had, and Dan understood his brother’s actions even though he’d been hurt by them. Duke had had to get out of Alabama and be who he was.

In the small town they’d lived in, being gay would have gotten Duke a beating at the very least. The same went for Dan, which was part of why he’d turned to drugs, too. He’d hated not being like everyone else.

Dan had handled it all wrong back then. He’d taken the easy way out, but it wasn’t really a way out. Drugs didn’t solve a damn thing, and they only made more problems.

There were other things in life that could make him soar higher than any drug ever had, too. His thoughts flashed to Hector and his stupid cock started to harden.

Rather than flinch away from the truth, Dan accepted it. For whatever reason, Hector did things to him, with him, for him, that no one else had.

Then again, Dan hadn’t exactly had a lot of partners to experiment with. For all he knew, a hundred other men out there in the world could make him feel the same way Hector had, or even better.

He ignored the ignorant little voice in head that said he didn’t want a hundred other men. He only wanted Hector.

Dan rubbed his sore eyes. His nose was stuffy, and he had to look like shit. If Hector were to see him now, well, the man would run away screaming.

A thump outside in the hall startled Dan. He propped himself up on his elbows and waited. The bedroom wasn’t pitch-black in darkness—he had his blinds and curtains open.

And some pitifully hopeful part of him had kept him from locking the bedroom door.

When a few more thumps sounded, Dan knew it wasn’t Hector outside. There was a slight tap on the door, and he called out, “Come in.”

Duke entered, with Frankie behind him.

“I’ll leave now,” Frankie said. “I just wanted to make sure he got in here okay. He’s had a pain pill.”

“You can stay. It’s okay.” Dan sat up and turned on the lamp.

Frankie shook his head. “No, you two need to spend more time together. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get the rocking chair, and Duke can prop his foot up on the bed.”

“I’ll sit in the chair,” Dan offered.

“Like hell.” Duke propped himself against the wall. “I got dibs on it. Your scrawny bed ain’t as comfortable as my chair.”

Dan was inclined to agree. “I guess Frankie told you.”

“Curt’s an idiot,” Duke grumbled. “He ain’t necessarily a bad guy, but a goat has more sense. It’s cuter too. Smells better.”

Dan got up to help Frankie with the chair.

“Thanks. I am ready to drop. Tomorrow’s my day off, so I’m sleeping in unless y’all need me.” Frankie gave Duke a kiss and Dan a hug, then left the room, closing the door on his way out.

Duke sat down and got his leg propped up with Dan’s help. Dan put the crutch he’d used against the wall where Duke could reach it.

Duke patted his shirt pocket. “Good. Got my phone in case Frankie needs me. Or I need him.” Duke’s lopsided grin would have made anyone smile in return. Dan was no exception. “I always need him,” Duke added. “Love that man so much it hurts sometimes.”

Dan settled back on the bed and stretched his legs out. “You don’t worry he’ll leave you?” He’d have taken the question back if he could have. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”

Duke didn’t look like he bought that at all. “You mean like I’m old and he’s a young stud, and he might leave for tighter asses and bigger cocks?”

That startled a laugh out of Dan even as he said, “No!”

Duke nodded once. “Okay then. You mean like all our family, includin’ me, left you?”

Dan bit his bottom lip.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere this time,” Duke reassured him. “I told you that and I mean it. We might live several states away from each other, but I’m here, there, whatever. You can depend on me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Dan agreed. “Same goes.”

“I know it. Now let’s get some rest.” Duke closed his eyes.

Dan reached for the lamp but stopped. “You didn’t come in here to talk?”

“We can if you want. I don’t mind. I just wanted to be in here with you. Figured you needed someone, and here I am.” He waved his uninjured arm around. “Because I am made of awesome.”

“You are,” Dan said, even though he knew Duke was joking. He considered telling Duke that he was fine, being a grown man and all. Only the idea that this might be something Duke
needed
to do for him kept Dan from saying any such thing.

He left the lamp on in case Duke woke up and needed his crutches.

Dan fell into a welcoming sense of security as he watched Duke’s chest rise and fall. Before he knew it, his eyelids grew heavy. Dan’s mind quit tormenting him, and he finally went to sleep with the sound of his brother’s snores a soothing lullaby.

* * * *

“I am plumb fuckin’ sick of bein’ broken,” Duke groused, breathing heavy as he buckled his seatbelt. “Plumb sick of it. Another four weeks of this—” He waved his casted arm. “I don’t know how in the hell I’m gonna survive it. And the leg, fuck.” The disgust in his voice was unmistakable.

Dan sympathized with his brother, he really did. He couldn’t imagine being ‘broken’ like Duke was, unable to get around well, relying on others for help, and bored out of his mind.

Not that Duke griped about any of that, except the bored part, but Dan thought he understood what Duke meant.

“I just want to know what’s going on with those tracks.” Frankie started the truck. “If someone was skulking around here and spooked your horse, Duke, I’m going to have a hard time being reasonable about that.”

“Your horse was fine. It was a snake,” Duke said. “Had to be.”

“Did you see a snake?” Dan asked.

Duke turned around enough to glare at him since Dan was in the back seat. “No, I didn’t see a damned snake. I was busy lookin’ at this one’s ass since he was ahead of me.” He’d pointed at Frankie. “God damn, you oughta see him in the saddle.”

Frankie swiped at his eyes. “So it’s my fault, like I thought.”