His Country

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Aiden disappeared into the hills, checking the cattle for two days longer than necessary. He spent long days riding fence lines he knew were in good repair and making sure the water sources were clean and ready for the upcoming winter.

The pastures closer to the main farm had several thick stands of trees and a couple of barns the cows could retreat into if the weather grew too bad. They’d been lucky the last few years not to lose any, but that was more to Frank having smaller herds than anything else.

He kept waiting for the cold, clear air to chase away his demons. Freeze him from the outside in. Cauterize his wound with the creak of leather and the crunch of dead grass. But even after days in the hills, the buzzing under his skin wasn’t any better. He still expected to look over his shoulder and see Everett looking through him or Billy plaintively searching for the boy he used to know. There was no respite in sleep, either. His dreams were fractured, non-sensical loops of things he didn’t recognize. It didn’t matter that the moment he woke up he couldn’t remember them, the discomfort they brought lingered long past the sun rise.

It was only when his supplies dwindled and he was looking at starvation or hunting a squirrel for food, that he returned. In the cover of night, he rode Eagle into the barn with a weary sigh.

He didn’t turn on any of the lights. He didn’t need them, and he preferred the close press of the dark. With any luck it would be late enough, and Isaac would be fast asleep in his bunk, and he could avoid small talk.

“You did a good job on that colt’s leg.”

Aiden whirled, reaching for the whip at his belt. Someone was leaning against the back wall, fingers playing with something.

“Thought for sure I’d be cutting off proud flesh.”

“Who the fuck?—”

The guy stepped into the moonlight pooling through the barn doors and Aiden swore. Playing with a cheap plastic lighter, it was cigarette guy. Equally as tall and lanky, he had a small smile on his face.

Aiden released the grip on his whip. After years of moving cattle, he was pretty accurate with it. If he tried hard enough, he could probably snap that cigarette right from between his fingers.

“What are you doing here?”

“Complimenting you,” he said slyly, grin deepening. “Seems like there’s something you’re good at besides running.”

Aiden tried to resist the urge to let his whip loose on this asshole. He figured Frank was already pretty salty at him for his performance with Carol, so he held back. For the sake of his job.

Sugar came into the barn, ears perking when she saw the stranger. Her tongue lolled as she approached him, shamelessly rubbing on his legs for pets.

Traitor.

The man stooped and began petting her. Hands running along her flank and even checking in her ear.

“You seem to know who I am,” Aiden snapped.

“I do,” the man replied lazily.

He didn’t feel the need to elaborate, and Aiden wasn’t about to beg. Not when he didn’t care. Locking Eagle’s stall, he whistled for Sugar and made his way out of the barn.

The man followed, smiling down as Sugar wagged her tail at him. “You can’t run from me.”

“I hate to break it to you but you’re not important enough for me to run from.”

He laughed, his voice echoing around the dark farmyard. “I’m Ethan. Dr. Ethan Landry. Frank just hired me as your new vet.”

Aiden’s feet stopped so fast his knees almost snapped off. His throat was dry.

Suddenly it all made sense. Why he was up for forty hours, why he looked at the colt’s leg, why he was fucking examining Sugar.

God played favorites and Aiden was not one of them.

He wanted to scream.

Finding his mouth too dry to speak, he forced his feet to move and continued to the bunk house. Now that he was paying attention, he could see a truck parked with a veterinary logo on the side.

“Why do you hate them?”

Three days of sleeping in the cold wet, one day without food, and the stress of seeing Billy and Everett again had him answering when he normally wouldn’t.

“I don’t hate them. I don’t hate anyone.” Except myself.

He didn’t say that.

“You sure act like it.”

Ethan was so casual. Like he didn’t know exactly what he was doing, and he absolutely did. He might look aloof, but there was a glint in those eyes. A shine of intelligence that he tried to hide behind an easy grin and slumped shoulders. For reasons Aiden couldn’t fathom, Ethan cared about his answer.

“What do you want me to say? It’s none of your business? Because it isn’t. It’s not yours, or Billy’s, or Everett’s. Why I do what I do is my?—”

“He said you were his friend.”

That stopped him like a car crash. His friend. Aiden had been Everett’s friend. Before Billy, before his life went tits up, they had been friends. And it had been enough for Aiden.

The companionable silences, the shared homework, the lunches. All of it. Aiden had felt comfortable with Everett. He’d been the first person Aiden told about the farm, about what it meant to him. They’d gone swimming together in the stock tanks and watched football games, trying to predict the outcome like they could put the ESP in ESPN.

They had meant everything to Aiden. They still did. Just in a different way.

“I…we were.”

“So that wasn’t a lie?”

“Fuck you.”

Ethan shrugged, crossing his arms.

He was pushing him. Pushing for some kind of confession. Like this was some goddamned Hallmark movie. He wanted Aiden to fall into a puddle of tears, scream out his reasons, and have some kind of catharsis.

Fuck that.

Aiden stomped away. He wasn’t even hungry anymore. He slammed open the door of the bunkhouse, ignoring the way it sent Isaac flying off the bunk. Without taking off his boots he grabbed the first thing he saw when he wrenched open the fridge with the burned out bulb.

Fingers wrapped around the moonshine jar, he left the bunkhouse and found his way to the barn. Crawling over the stall, he dropped into the corner. Spinning the lid off the mason jar, he inhaled the fumes and shuddered as they curled the hair in his nose. Smelling a lot like paint thinner, he wasn’t drinking it for the taste.

Putting the wide lip to his lips, he chugged.

Cold. He was cold.

“—damned idiot.”

A hand slapped him across the face, and he inhaled sharply. Had he been forgetting to breathe? Was that a thing? His chest hurt. He breathed deeply as spots peppered his vision. It was dark. No, his eyes were closed. Opening them was hard.

Another slap, and he jerked up, hand flinging out. Someone caught it and flipped him on his side.

“Vomit.”

“Fughouuu.”

“Cute.” Fingers probed his lips, pushing into his mouth. He fought them, elbow flying back. But he was sluggish. Trying to bite down on the fingers but they were too big, and he couldn’t get a strong enough bite.

“Do you not have a gag reflex? Jesus. You could be doing so much with—ah there you go.”

Aiden felt the digits press into his throat and then he was puking. Bile and moonshine poured past his teeth and splattered to the ground by his face. He heaved over and over again, face against the cold ground, gravel digging into his cheek, and hair soaked with sweat despite the chill.

“Were you trying to kill yourself?”

Maybe. “’m not very good at it.”

“No, you’re very good at it,” Ethan assured him, strong hands holding him up out of his own mess. “I’m just better at saving lives than you are at taking them.”

Chest heaving, he realized the twinge of pain was expanding. He reached under his soaked jacket to touch his chest.

“Yeah, jackass. CPR hurts.” Ethan slapped his hands away, sitting him up against what he was realizing was the barn. He probed his ribs. “Don’t think I broke any. Pity.”

Aiden wrinkled his nose, finally opening his eyes fully and breathing through spittle covered lips.

Ethan was kneeling beside him, face serious. He didn’t smell like smoke. He smelled like horses and cows, faintly of antiseptic. Maybe a little like vomit, but that might be himself he was smelling.

He caught Aiden’s eyes staring at him until his eyes cleared. “I found you unconscious in a horse stall. You weren’t breathing.”

Blinking, Aiden suddenly felt too close to Ethan. “Ok.”

“Ok?” Ethan laughed without any humor. He dropped down onto his ass, running a hand through his messy dark hair. He was wearing different clothes—joggers and a sweatshirt. Like he’d gone to bed and then come out looking for Aiden.

“Tell me what the hell is going on or I’m telling Frank you just tried to kill yourself.”

Aiden felt panic sluggishly begin to crawl up his spine. If Frank found out, he’d fire him. He didn’t want to deal with a messed-up farm hand. Didn’t want the liability. He’d kick Aiden out so fast he’d have nothing.

Ethan watched him like he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I wasn’t trying…I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to forget.”

Wanted to quiet the anxiety that had been buzzing under his skin for days. Settle back into his own skin for just a few minutes.

Silence. Ethan wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.

Scrubbing his face, he raked his fingers through the thin stubble that was never enough to age up his baby face. God this wasn’t fair.

“What do you want to know? That Billy and Everett were once the most important people in my life? That they looked at each other like they were soulmates, and I was just…just the guy watching them? That I gave up everything for a farm doomed to fail? That leaving was the only thing I ever did for myself and it fucking hurt. It hurt so bad that I almost couldn’t do it. I stayed there, on the border between Texas and Oklahoma, for three days just staring. But I did it. I put one boot in front of the other and I left. I left, and I never wanted to think about it again until they showed up again and you just…fucking hell, why? Why did you show up?”

Ethan didn’t say anything. He still looked angry.

“Not good enough? Fine.” His lips were numb. That was the only explanation for the words pouring out unchecked. “I loved playing football. It was the only thing that got me off that damn farm, out of that house. But I stopped. I walked away because my family needed me. While everyone else fucked around, got drunk and laid, I watched the farm and my father crumble around me.”

Aiden waited for a response but still, nothing. A little curl of pettiness tugged at him and he gave into it. “Oh, ok. You really want to get into it. How about the fact that somewhere around the time I gave up football I realized I didn’t like girls? The all American, good ol’ boy farm raised on corn bread and Jesus, really, really liked thinking about dicks. But I was a coward and I-I thought no one would accept a gay boy.”

“But I was wrong,” he hissed. “Because Billy, brand new to town, no one knew him from Adam, but he walks in and proudly announces he is, in fact, a homosexual! And he was going to date the star quarterback. And you know what? No one gave a fuck. Not a single, solitary fuck. No, that was reserved for me. I had to hear about how I was going to hell. How I was going to drown in a lake of fire and brimstone—which doesn’t even make sense but hell if it didn’t scare the shit out of me anyway!”

Tears were streaming down his face, and he hated them so much he wanted to punch himself in the face. But his mouth was moving. It was vomiting up all the sickness he couldn’t get out before, all the hate and anger that festered inside him. The infection he didn’t treat because he was fine.

“Or how about how Everett was my best friend, the only thing keeping me sane for years, but he never once looked at me. Not the way he looked at Billy. Not that way I looked at him.” His voice was thick, words slurring as he tasted his own tears. “I was right there. For years. But I wasn’t him.”

His throat was hot, and everything hurt. Ethan didn’t look angry anymore. Aiden couldn’t really see what he looked like—his face was blurred by tears.

“So thank you,” Aiden used the wall for support, pushing himself to feet he couldn’t feel. “Thank you for saving me. Hope you got what you wanted.”

He teetered away, one hand on the wall and the other curled around his chest defensively. Aiden had no idea where he was going. He just needed to go.

A hand grabbed his wrist, dragging him back. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I’m fine.”

“This is your definition of fine?”

“You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Fuck your doctorate and your whole family. Fuck your stupid face and your nosy ass attitude.”

He shoved Ethan back. It didn’t do much, but he released his wrist. Why didn’t he leave? He got what he wanted. Everett and Billy are innocent. They can continue their beautiful love story, get married with all the goddamn lace, and live happily ever after.

Aiden was fine. He will always be fine.

Ethan watched him stumble away, he didn’t say a word, but when Aiden got far enough, he started following him. Which only enraged Aiden more because he didn’t have a destination in mind.

“You want a cigarette?”

He paused, chest heaving and face cold with tears.

“Yeah.”

Aiden ended up in the bed of Ethan’s truck. Thick plastic lock boxes full of medical supplies dug into his back, and there was hay down his pants. A crescent moon darted out from between fast moving clouds, bathing the pre-winter night in a soft ethereal glow. Shadows crept along the tree line, and wind whistled through the lot. He shivered.

The lit cigarette stubbornly clung to his lips. He didn’t inhale.

Ethan was sprawled out beside him, long legs dwarfing his. There was a weird kind of comforting silence between them. He dragged on his cigarette, and Aiden found he was grateful for the soft inhales. The crumbling embers that drifted down to his damp jeans. Their shoulders brushed; tiny pinpricks of heat felt under layers of clothes too thin for the night.

Sugar snored somewhere under the truck, unconcerned with the incoming chill. Her legs twitched as she chased rabbits in her dreams.

He didn’t know what time it was. It didn’t feel like it mattered. Tomorrow, if it came, would be hell. A long day with no sleep and his ribs aching like a grown man had gone to war with the reaper and dragged him back to the land of the living. Kicking and screaming, Aiden had come back. Dragged in a breath of frosty air and vomited out the sickness he didn’t know how to live without.

Empty. That’s what it felt like. A body without a spine, drifting listlessly in gravity that suddenly felt too heavy. Ethan had saved him from death, but the things that he had built himself around didn’t come with him. Now he was a ghost, a shell without anything inside. And what good was a shell? Peanut shells were discarded on the floor. A corn husk tossed into the compost.

Left to rot. The sustenance left behind used to bring life to something greater. Something whole.

His fingers shook as he withdrew the cigarette, flicking the ash over the truck onto the gravel. He let his wrist rest on the truck, burning cigarette hanging between frozen fingers. Watching it burn, he wondered if he would even feel the embers.

“You know what I think?” Ethan said into the night, not looking at him.

“I’m positive I don’t.”

His lips parted, huffing an indulgent smile that didn’t belong. Not here. But it worked for Ethan because, he too, didn’t belong. He was all angles. Contrasts of light and dark. Tanned skin, and hair dark as the skies over the mountains. An air of wilderness that had never seen the light of man, and the experience of a man who’d seen the world. His eyes held a spark of light that hadn’t yet been smothered by time, even though it should have been by his age. Ravages of his life seemed to add to his fire rather than detract. The crinkled lines around his eyes weren’t from squinting, but from laughing. From smiling. A life lived and enjoyed.

The vet took two more drags, letting the smoke swirl around the hands he’d used to save Aiden’s life. “I think you didn’t want to forget.”

Aiden groaned, head dropping back onto the back window of the cab. His hat had fallen off somewhere between life, death, and the barn and his hair fell into his eyes. It tickled uncomfortably.

“You know the polite thing would be to forget this ever happened.”

“Seems like a big ask when I’ve got your vomit on my pants.”

He winced. “You going to hold that over me?”

Ethan grinned, teeth flashing. “Definitely.”

Aiden didn’t answer. He didn’t know how. This was the most he’d spent thinking about this. Normally it was able to be pushed aside. Locked away into a corner until the pain lessened to a dull throb and he could move, go about his day. When it got too bad, he drank until it stopped hurting. Until he stopped feeling anything. Or he worked until he was too tired to think at all.

But here, in the bed of this truck, he wondered. He wondered if it wasn’t about forgetting at all, but about trying desperately to understand. To let the things he knew were true equalize with the things he felt. Because that was the thing about feelings—they didn’t care about logic. His heart didn’t care that Everett and Billy didn’t do anything wrong. That they never meant to hurt him. Hell, if they’d known they never would have gotten together. And that would have hurt too. It would have been what he wanted, but seeing two people who looked at each other like that not getting everything they deserved? Because of his feelings? That was somehow worse.

People fall in love. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. They look at each other across a bonfire and their whole world tilts on its axis. Damn the people on the periphery, the ones who had nothing to grab onto and tumbled away into the ether.

Collateral damage is inevitable.

Aiden just never stopped tumbling.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Ethan offered, his voice faraway. “But I think we should.”

“I don’t,” he answered automatically. A knee jerk reaction he didn’t want to think about. He was tired of thinking. Tired of everything.

Mostly though, he was tired of himself.

“What do you grow in winter?”

“We’ve got some hoop houses on the back twenty. Grow some onions and kale. Trying to expand but Frank is the green thumb. Rest of us just kill ‘em.”

Ethan found that amusing. “Our parents grew up together, you know. When he was ten, he was massive. Biggest kid anyone had ever seen. People were scared of him, and he was no good with animals. Found comfort in plants. They didn’t give a damn about his size.”

Aiden didn’t know that.

“My grandparents had a big place just down the way,” Ethan sounded wistful. “Nothing big, just ten acres or so. But Grams loved to plant. Flowers mostly. Sold them at markets and stuff.” He was looking out over the horizon, eyes unfocused like he could see the place through the craggy granite of a mountain range.

“I was in vet school when she and Pops died. Someone built a strip mall over her garden.”

He grunted. “Sorry.”

Ethan shrugged. “They were dead.”

Aiden wasn’t sure if he meant the flowers or his grandparents.

They talked like that. About nothing, mostly. Aiden learned that Ethan broke his arm when he fell out of a rotten tree when he was a kid, and that he lost his childhood dog just before he went to college. Ethan liked cats and thought goats were cool. He had a bunch of brothers and grew up south of Billings. Graduated top of his class but surprised everyone when he took a large animal internship rather than go into research. Scholarships helped, but he worked his way through college by delivering pizzas. He had some crazy stories from that.

And he met Everett and Billy while he was in vet school. They were baby freshman, wide eyed and nervous. Ethan welcomed them into the school’s LGBTQ+ club and they formed a fast friendship. It was his idea they get married at Frank’s farm. He was Everett’s best man.

Just as the eastern sky began to lighten, tendrils of light creeping over the horizon and promising to chase the chill of the day away, Aiden finally asked.

“Why did you come for me?”

Ethan’s cigarette had long since burnt itself out, but he kept the filter between his fingers, rolling it between the pads like he was trying to sear his fingerprints into the paper.

“Thought the polite thing to do would be to for?—”

“Ethan.”

He stilled at his name coming from lips that were far more comfortable clucking to animals than talking to people. For the first time since they sat down, he turned to look at him. Russet irises bright despite the fact that the sun was rising behind him. His eyelashes were so long the very tips caught the red tinge from the waking sun, little ember tips that reminded Aiden of the cigarettes Ethan swore he didn’t smoke.

“Because I pushed,” he admitted softly, eyes tracing over every inch of Aiden’s face. “I wanted to know. I started something.”

He swallowed. His breath fogged out in front of him, dissipating between them.

“That’s the thing about me, Aiden, I always finish what I start.” His words were dripping in something Aiden didn’t recognize. Closer to a threat than a promise, but it made his heart flutter against his bruised chest.

“So the chances of you going away after this are…?”

“Zero.”