Making Promises (45 page)

He tried to school his expression, to not give anything away, but Shane’s face split into a grin, and he crowded his way into the apartment, forcing Mikhail back and back and back. “You can’t take it back, Mickey—I won’t let you!”

“What can’t I take back? My apology? I won’t take it back—”

“Good, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oolf….” Because Mikhail had hit his back on the apartment wall.

“What are you talking about?” he asked helplessly, looking up at Shane and drinking him in like water. He looked weary—and tough in his khaki uniform—and irritated and windblown. But mostly, he looked dear and kind, and Mikhail wondered what he’d been pulling into his lungs for the last two weeks, because it certainly hadn’t been oxygen—not when air tasted so much purer now that Shane was there.

Mikhail’s face was framed by two big, warm, rough hands, and an expression of peace stole across Shane’s expression. “The look on your face,” he said softly, now that they were there, chest to chest, their hearts pattering against each other in confusion. “You can’t take that look back, 276

Mickey—you meant it. You were glad to see me—you looked at me like you’d never been happier. You can’t take that back. I won’t fucking let you. You can’t.”

“I won’t,” Mikhail whispered gruffly. He closed his eyes and rubbed his nose along a roughly stubbled jaw. “I won’t take any of it back. Oh, God,
lubime
, I don’t think my heart could beat another minute without you.”

Shane kissed him then, thoroughly and without apology and without reserve, and Mikhail returned the kiss eagerly, groaning and reaching for more. His hands found the buttons of Shane’s shirt, and suddenly Shane was swearing and backing away.

“God… we can’t do that. Not now,” he muttered. “Mickey—I’m on shift. Or lunch break is more like it. I… I got your message, and I had to come see you. Now, here.” He knew Mikhail’s apartment intimately after those weeks with Ylena, and now he went to the little closet in the hall and started rooting around with purpose. He came up with a suitcase that he shoved into Mikhail’s hands. “Now go fill that thing up—and get a move on, they know I’m off duty and I’ve got another hour, but I don’t want to leave Calvin without backup. There’s only two of us on tonight, and I’ve got to get back to Levee Oaks, okay?”

Mikhail looked at the suitcase, confused. “Then why are you here?

What is this for?”

Shane wrinkled his nose in irritation. “I’m here to take you home, dammit. You’re not spending another goddamned night alone. Now would you get a move on?”

A slow smile spread across Mikhail’s face, one he could not control and did not want to. “Of course,” he said simply, trotting down the hall at record speed. “You do not think I would leave the cats alone with that monster dog of yours if I could help it, do you?”

And I’d give up forever to touch you.

“Iris”—Goo Goo Dolls

SHANE got home from his shift around six in the morning feeling like he’d been hit by a tractor. They had talked a little in the drive from Citrus Heights to Levee Oaks—Mikhail had nagged him about being too thin and too tired, and Shane had replied mildly that he thought he was too fat, and there had been an electric silence in the car for a moment.

“You must forget that, please.” Mikhail’s voice had been taut and hurt, and Shane had only been kidding, so he was surprised.

“I was just trying to lighten the mood….”

“Stop it.” Mikhail sniffed, and Shane cursed the lack of time because dammit, he wanted to hash this out and get it behind them.

“Okay, I’ll—”

“I mean it!” Mikhail snapped. Shane glanced at him and saw his throat working even as the shifting lights passed over his face in the dark.

“I said horrible things. I will have to live with that. But you mustn’t believe them. You can’t. If you believe them or even pretend to remember them, I can’t do this. I called you fat because I knew other lovers had done so, and it was easy to drive you away. I didn’t believe it. I’ve never believed it. I’ve never even thought it. Everything else I said, it was to push you away. I know you know that—but you need to believe it. I cannot face you if you think I look at you and see anything less than the man you are. I am not settling for you, I am reaching for you, and there is a difference, and you are that man.”

Shane had nodded and then tried some honesty himself. “I’m not that strong,” he apologized. “I… I can do this once. Those things you said—I even saw them coming, and they still hurt. I… you’ve got to be honest with me, Mickey. You can tell me to leave you alone or that you’ve got to sleep at your place for a little or that you feel an attack of the nasties coming on and I’ve got to clear out. But I can’t hear that again. I can’t
do
that again, okay? If you want me to forget, to truly forget, I….” He swallowed, because he knew this was the part where he might have to turn the car around and take Mikhail back and the whole thing would be over.

“I need a promise, I guess.” Mikhail jerked his head, and Shane sighed and went on. “I just need to know that you won’t break up with me like that. Not again. The other way is fine—you know, ‘This isn’t working, I don’t love you anymore, you really are too weird for words, your lack of ambition is killing me’—you know, whatever. But… not that way.”

Mikhail made a sound then—sort of a horrified laugh. “My God, your choices in lovers are horrific. Yes. Yes, I will promise never to do that again, if only to keep you from ending up with another horrible person even worse than myself.”

Shane had taken a deep, shuddering breath. “Hey, Mickey?” He saw Mikhail turn toward him and wondered if the other man could see the pulse jumping in his throat from nerves and excitement and just sheer stinking joy to have him back in the GTO on the way to his home.

“Da?”

“Just remember that I’m reaching too.”

“That you can say that now—”

“Is just proof that my taste is improving.”

BUT that was hours ago, and he’d installed Mikhail in his house, kissed him fiercely (and God didn’t Shane’s blood still boil from the taste of him, the desperate tingle of his fingers as they dug into Shane’s arms, the terrible intoxication of having him close and warm and hard in his arms) Making Promises

and then left, signing back on and letting Calvin know his time off register was over even as he pulled out of his driveway.

It had been an interesting night. A bar fight, a couple of domestic moments, a pretty horrible car wreck—all in all, more action than Levee Oaks usually saw in an evening, and Shane was still recovering. He was tired enough to be weak and a little trembly as he opened the gate and drove the GTO across the cattle guard, and it was easy to tiptoe into the house when you were too tired to move with much force. He got to his room and saw Mikhail asleep on his side in Shane’s bed with the dark purple and brown coverlet pulled up to his bare shoulders, and he felt good enough to take off his shoes, put his gun in the safe, and undress for a shower.

It was an improvement over falling face down on the bed in his clothes and waking up with a bruise from his gun belt, which had happened a couple of times in the last week.

He had gone back too early—he knew it. But he hadn’t wanted to stay at home and worry, fret about Mikhail alone and grieving, contemplate a future without him if his plan should completely blow up in his face.

So he had faked a few responses to his doctor for questions like

“How do you feel?” or “Does it hurt when I do this?” and had shown up for work asking for his old assignment. His captain had made noises about the incident, and Shane had looked at him blankly.

“Are you going to write me up?”

“No.”

“Fire me?”

“No.”

“Send me to some other training that may or may not make me not do the same thing again when there are children in danger?”

“If you haven’t learned by now….”

“Then since my doc cleared me, how about I sit down and start the paperwork for shift? I know nobody’s got my cruiser. We’re all good.”

“All good” this night had gotten him a slug in the jaw when he hadn’t been paying attention and an elbow in his bad side. Calvin had looked at him in concern as he’d been checking out to go home.

“Jesus, Perkins—you look like hell. I was sort of hoping you took that hour off to sleep, but it’s not looking like it.” Shane shrugged. “Had to go pick up Mickey,” he said roughly, and Calvin’s response had been surprising.

“Oh, thank God,” he’d said with a relieved smile. “Damn—I can’t say I get where you’re coming from there, but if you’ve got someone to take care of you, I’ll be a hell of a lot easier about seeing you back to work.”

Shane had thrust out his lip a little, knowing he sounded sulky and not able to stop it. “I take care of
him
,” he said, trying to make this clear.

Calvin had raised his eyebrows and smiled gently. Shane wondered when his scrawny, half-grown partner had suddenly grown up—he was almost a real man now, and definitely a friend. “I think you take care of each other—but you can’t do that when you’re not home. Now go. I can talk to the captain—get tomorrow off for you….” Shane shook his head and blinked. “He thinks I came back too early to start with.”

“You did.”

“Yeah, but I like my job.”

“Why?” Calvin asked sincerely. They were walking out of the office now and heading for their own cars in the parking lot. “I mean, you’re good at it—when you’re not doing something to get you hurt—but I don’t think you really love it.”

“I love helping people,” Shane said earnestly, and Calvin had to concede this was the truth.

“You’re good at that—getting homeless to shelters, helping the runaways find a place to stay—that kid you got a job for at the mechanic’s, he’s doing really good. But there are other jobs that do that besides this one. This one is dirty and mean, and you get hurt—and me, I like it. But I don’t think it’s where your heart is, Perkins. You’re a good guy—you got a good heart. But I hate to see it wasted here.” They’d gotten in their cars then and taken off before Shane could protest or argue or even think about what he’d said. But it haunted him now as he stood under the spray of the shower and hoped he’d have the Making Promises

strength to climb into bed and do justice to the good man who was waiting for him there.

The light was on when he got out, and Mikhail was sitting up in bed, surrounded by cats. The bottle of lubricant from his drawer was optimistically out on the end table, and Shane smiled. Geez, he
really
hoped to get some use out of that!

“You look tired,
lubime
,” Mikhail said now, concerned. “And you have bruises all over your stomach and your chest.” Shane grunted and started rooting through his drawers for his boxers, pulling them out with hands that held a fine tremble, and Mikhail noticed that too. He was up out of bed in a moment, his hands—warm from bed—rubbing over Shane’s, which were still soft from the shower. “What is wrong with you? Have you even eaten?”

“Oh yeah,” Shane mumbled. “That would have been a good idea.” Mikhail’s hand on his shoulder felt soooooo good, so strong and warm, and he held Shane up and sort of steered him to the bed. “Here—

you stay here, you silly man. I’ll get you something to eat.” Shane mumbled a protest as he took Mikhail’s spot in the bed—it was still cozy from his body heat—and then nodded off. He nodded awake—surrounded by purring cats—when Mikhail came in with a bowl of freshly microwaved canned soup and some toast.

The soup was clam chowder, his favorite, and he perked up enough to take the bowl on the towel from Mickey and dig in. The toast gave it some body, and he felt almost alert and happy as he ate.

“You realize there is nothing in your kitchen but cans of cat food, don’t you?” Mikhail asked unhappily, and Shane nodded and swallowed.

“I’ve been on back-to-back eights—you know, eight hours off between two eight-hour shifts? Makes it hard to go shopping—and on your day off, all you want to do is sleep.”

“Well, that is a stupid way to run a schedule—you did not do this before you got knifed in the side. Why the change?” Shane shrugged, not wanting to go into it. He was pretty sure the change had to do with the fact that Deacon’s family had been damned obvious at the hospital when he’d been there. “What sucks is that Calvin’s signing on for my shifts too,” he said, telling it sideways. “It’s hard on 282