I Can See for Miles (8 page)

“Are you okay?” Jason asked, bending his head and speaking softly into Charlie’s ear.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just a little headache. Get everyone back to the house, and get the others to take them all down to the lake. I’ll join you when I’ve got the horses and the tack sorted out,” Charlie replied, leading Aramis into his stall.

“Charlie,” Jason said, his voice filled with concern. “Why don’t you let me stay and help the guys and you can go up to the house?”

“I’ll lend a hand,” Mario said quietly from the stable doorway, his blue eyes gazing into Charlie’s. “Greg and Chad can help you with the others.” Jason looked at Charlie and, at his hesitant nod, turned and left the stable. “I’ll get the others in and unsaddled,” Mario said with an inclination of his head.

Charlie nodded. “Okay, thanks. If we get them all unsaddled, Russ and Pete will rub them down. But I like to take care of Aramis myself.” Charlie gently murmured to Aramis as he rubbed him down. Easing the brush over Aramis in long rhythmic sweeps, Charlie smiled at the gentle puffs of air the horse blew out in appreciation of his ministrations.

“He’s beautiful,” Mario said softly, smiling apologetically when Charlie started at the sound of his voice. “Sorry, didn’t mean to creep up on you. All the others are in their stalls.”

“Thanks for that, Mario.” Charlie replied, acknowledging the older man with a nod of his head. “I haven’t really had a chance to talk with you much since you got here. It’s always busy when we’ve got a full house.”

“Well, it would be pretty hard to get past Davey where you’re concerned,” Mario chuckled. “He’s like your very own four-foot bodyguard.”

“Yeah, he’s quite a kid.” Charlie glanced at Mario leaning casually against the stall door, his gaze narrow as he studied Charlie from beneath lowered lashes. Charlie had to give the other man his due. Mario definitely wasn’t hiding the fact that he was summing him up. When the silence became so heavy Charlie thought it was going to crush him, he sighed. “Are you going to give me the best friend speech?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow….”

“I assume you’re looking at me like you want to pound my face because Josh told you what happened earlier. I thought you came in here to give me the ‘if you hurt him, you’ll have me to deal with’ speech,” Charlie said, wishing his voice had sounded more sarcastic and cocksure than tired and defeated.

“Do I need to?” Mario raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“No… you don’t. He’s a nice guy, and in another lifetime I’d be kicking myself for this, but I’m really not interested.” Charlie resumed his brushing, the softness of Aramis’s hair tickling his palm.

“Ah… so you don’t mind making money from the sightless, but getting saddled with one day in and day out’s a horse of a different color, huh?” Mario drawled sarcastically.

“What?” Charlie spun on his heels and stared at Mario, utterly incredulous. “You’re kidding me, right? You think I care that he’s blind?”

“If the shoe fits….” Mario trailed off.

“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my entire life. How dare you judge me? How dare you put me in a box and tell me how I do and do not feel? You don’t know anything about me,” Charlie said, anger in every syllable.

“Very true,” Mario said, holding up the palm of his hand to stem Charlie’s flow of words. “And you don’t know anything about Josh. Don’t you think you should find out if he’s tarred with the same brush as whoever it is you’re running away from before you judge
him
?”

“Mario—” Charlie sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. “—he’s your friend. I get it, and I know I’m probably being unfair to both of us. But look at me.” He held his hands out to the side. “In a few days, I’ll find out whether or not I’m going to be completely blind myself. What can I offer him if that happens?”

“Jeez, Charlie. You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, don’t you think?” Mario said softly. “I mean, you’ve known each other for almost two days. I was thinking more along the lines of having a beer and getting to know each other a little more, not moving in together. Look,” he said as he crossed the stall and patted Charlie’s shoulder reassuringly, “I’ve been with Josh every step of the way since the accident. I was there when he woke up and found himself in the dark. I was the one holding his hand when they told him it was permanent. It was me who bathed him and washed his hair on those days when he couldn’t push through the fog of despair he was surrounded by. I was the one who told him Alec wasn’t coming back and held him through the tears, night after night. And it was me who thought I’d never again see the light in his eyes I saw the moment he heard your voice.” Mario smiled gently at the man in front of him. “All I’m saying is, if you’re gonna live your life on a whole lot of ‘what ifs’, then that’s not any kind of living at all.”

Charlie watched Mario walk out of the stables and leaned his forehead on Aramis’s neck. His eyes ached, and his head was starting to throb. He hadn’t been lying about that part. It seemed like the farther away from Josh he tried to get, the more outside forces, one of them Josh himself, conspired to push them together. After packing away the brushes and combs and closing the stall door behind him, Charlie made his way through the courtyard and up to the house. Maybe they were right. He’d practically been judge, jury, and executioner and already had Josh on the gallows as a complete asshole, without giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw Josh sitting on the porch swing, gently rocking it to and fro with his feet, feet that were bare except for a pair of flip-flops. Charlie swallowed as his gaze slowly drifted up Josh’s bare legs to his long navy shorts, then his bare chest and the towel draped around his neck. He watched as Josh smirked and tilted his head.

“One of these days you’re going to admit you’re checking me out,” Josh said, his Texan drawl more pronounced in his teasing.

“Never,” Charlie snorted inelegantly. “Shouldn’t you be down at the lake with everyone else?”

“I thought I’d better wait here and see if you survived.”

“Huh?”

“I assume you were Mario’d in the stables. I just wanted you to know it wasn’t my doing.” Josh said, a smile curving his lips. “He’s got a lot of muscles for a mother hen, but that’s exactly what he is.”

“He loves you,” Charlie said softly. “And don’t worry; I’ll live to fight another day.”

“So…,” Josh said, holding on to the arm of the swing and pulling himself to his feet. “You going to show me where the lake is? Or do I just keep walking until my feet get wet?”

“Who’s Alec?” Charlie asked and then wished he could take it back when the smile dropped immediately from Josh’s lips and a dark shadow crossed his face.

“No one important,” Josh replied brusquely. “Go on, get your stuff, and I’ll wait here for you.”

“Okay,” Charlie replied. He could tell from the tone of Josh’s voice that the subject had been very firmly closed, so he went into the house and up into his room to quickly change. Grabbing a clean towel and draping it around his shoulders, he slipped his bare feet into his battered sneakers and rejoined Josh on the porch. “Are you ready?” At Josh’s nod, he took Josh’s hand and put it to his elbow, enjoying the warmth of Josh’s fingers on his skin as they walked down the trail leading to the lake. “So, have you been swimming since the accident?” Charlie asked in an attempt to make conversation.

Josh shook his head, and his fingers tightened on Charlie’s elbow when they heard the sound of the children’s laughter and their enthusiastic splashing as they neared the lake. “Um… no. Actually,” Josh said suddenly, turning his head to look at Charlie, “could you get Greg or Mario? I need to go back to the cabin.”

“What? Why?” Charlie asked, a frown creasing his brow when he saw beads of sweat on Josh’s forehead. “Josh? Are you okay?” The tall man had gone decidedly white, and Charlie brought them to a stop, reached up, and wiped the moisture from Josh’s skin. He could feel the tremors that coursed through Josh, and it hit him—the man was on the verge of a panic attack. “Josh.” Charlie said, keeping his voice soft but firm as he reached up to cup Josh’s face in his hands. “Listen to me. I want you to concentrate on my voice. Can you do that?”

“I just… need to… get back,” Josh said, his breath coming in short gasps. “Stupid… to think I… could do it. Fucking idiot. Have to be the big man… have to push… prove I’m not… useless.”

Charlie moved his thumbs across Josh’s cheekbones gently. “Josh, listen to me. Breathe slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do it with me, come on. You don’t want the kids to see you like this. You don’t want Rosie to see her hero has feet of clay, do you?” His tone was teasing, but he was terrified someone would actually come up the trail and find Josh in this state. He knew Josh would be absolutely mortified if any of the kids saw him. Looking around them, he gently guided Josh through the trees off the trail and sat him down on the nearest log he could find.

“Sorry… Charlie,” Josh panted. “The water… shouldn’t have pushed… I can’t….”

“His name was Brian,” Charlie suddenly said, not really knowing what he was doing, just knowing he had to get Josh to concentrate on something besides his own racing heart. “We worked together. You know, typical office romance, after-hours meetings that went on until breakfast. It was great, really great. I mean, I always knew he had a little bit of a temper, and he was a mean-mouthed drunk, but he was always sorry, and I always swept it under the carpet. Stupid, I know… but he wasn’t violent, not at first, and he was always so sorry.” He looked up to see Josh frowning at him, his breathing still fast but his eyes less glazed as he listened to Charlie’s voice.

“Then I got the first cataracts, and he was supportive. Of course he was, until the operation failed for the third time. He used to move the furniture around while I was asleep, so he could sit and watch me fall over when I bumped into it. Then he’d laugh at me and tell me how useless I was. He’d go on and on about how was he supposed to spend the rest of his life chained to someone who couldn’t even walk around the apartment without bumping into things. That’s when it got physical. He’d go out to clubs, refusing to take me with him, said I cramped his style and he wanted to have a good time, not be some glorified seeing-eye dog. He’d… he’d come home and wake me up—I could smell the alcohol on him, and the other men. Sometimes he’d… anyway.” Charlie looked down at their linked hands as Josh’s thumbs began to move softly across his knuckles.

“I told him it was over, that I needed to go home to my folks and decide what to do with the rest of my life, and he lost it. He lashed out, and I ended up with stitches in my head. Of course, he ended up with a broken nose after Maggie finished with him.” He chuckled and looked up into Josh’s face, breathing a sigh of relief. Josh’s color was better, and his breathing had evened out. “I swore I would never let anyone get close enough to hurt me like that again and I haven’t… until now.” Reaching up, he brushed Josh’s bangs from his clammy forehead. “Feeling better?”

Josh nodded, leaning in to Charlie’s fingers as they trailed down his cheek, and he said softly, “Alec was my boyfriend. We’d been dating for about seven months when we went white water rafting. I’d always been such an adrenaline junkie, you know. I was always the first to shout ‘Hell yeah!’ when anyone mentioned bungee jumping or parachuting, although skydiving was my mother’s personal favorite. She always said I was at my happiest when I was doing something that could possibly end my life.” He huffed out a joyless laugh. “Well, it kinda did end my life—certainly the life I knew.”

“Alec was with you when you had the accident?” Charlie asked quietly.

“Yeah. We’d been down the rapids already earlier that day. Oh, Charlie… you should have seen it, what a rush.” Josh’s smile was wistful. “The water just looked like foam on a beer. It was tumbling so fast it made you dizzy just to look at it for more than a few minutes at a time. Going down the rapids in that little kayak… I remember thinking to myself that this must be what it feels like to fly. Anyway”—he ran a hand through his hair—“later that night we’d had quite a few beers, and we’d slipped off into the woods to have some fun and… well, after… he talked me into going down the rapids again, just the two of us. To be honest, I didn’t take much persuading. I don’t blame him for the accident. I know Mario does, but how can I? I’m a big boy. I make my own choices. Not even Tavella can force me into doing something I don’t want to do, and believe me, over the last eight months he’s tried on more than one occasion.”

“Josh….”

“I know, I know. It was stupid. I knew it was stupid even as I climbed into the kayak. I knew it was stupid when I hit that rock and it threw me out into the water.” Josh closed his eyes against the memory. “They say I must have hit my head real hard. I was in a coma for two days. And then when I woke up, someone had turned off the lights. They thought at first it was just hysterical blindness, you know, or that once the swelling on the brain had gone down it would relieve pressure on the optic nerve and my sight would come back. But when it didn’t after three weeks, they did another scan, and the doctors said I had permanently damaged the sight center in my brain, and I would never see again.”

“And Alec?”

Josh shrugged. “He couldn’t handle it. Said he couldn’t handle the constant reminder of what he’d done. He said he blamed himself, that if he hadn’t talked me into it, I would still see. But I knew they were just platitudes to try and protect me from the real reason he didn’t want me anymore.”

Frowning, Charlie shifted to sit beside Josh on the log. “What real reason?”

“I was damaged goods.” Josh hung his head, and his voice was small, so small Charlie had to lean in to hear him. “He didn’t want to be saddled with a blind boyfriend. Didn’t want to bear that cross for the rest of his life.”

Charlie could feel the pain in Josh’s voice as it washed over him, and he felt a surge of anger in his gut at this Alec, this idiot who had been lucky enough to call this beautiful man his and then just walked away.
Pretty much like you’re going to
?
Charlie ignored the ramblings of his inner voice, lifted his hand to grip Josh’s chin, and turned Josh to face him. “Now you listen to me. I don’t ever want to hear you say that again, do you understand me? You’re
not
damaged goods. Have you looked in the mirror lately? Okay”—he flushed at Josh’s raised eyebrows—“bad analogy. But you know what I mean. Even half-blind I can see how beautiful you are Josh—inside and out.
Anyone
who knows you wouldn’t see you as a cross to bear, but would be proud to walk through life beside you.”