Chapter 16
I woke up to daylight I didn't deserve and a body that agreed with me.
The motel room came into focus in pieces: the popcorn ceiling, a water stain shaped like a bat, curtains that blocked nothing.
The air conditioner hummed in the wall and pushed stale, cold air across the bed.
My mouth tasted like tequila and regret, and something underneath both that was just Ransom.
He lay face-down beside me, one arm shoved under the pillow, his back bare and brown in the thin light.
Someone had pulled his jeans off at some point.
Probably me. His boots sat side by side at the foot of the bed, lined up straight.
He hadn't moved. His breathing came slow and deep through parted lips, his face turned toward me on the pillow.
He looked younger asleep, with his mouth open and his hair mussed, and one hand curled loose on the sheet between us.
I'd held that hand last night. He'd let me.
It was also the hand he'd put on my throat, on my jaw, on my balls. I knew it by professional instinct, the same way I knew the make of his rifle and the caliber he carried, and I was lying in a motel bed taking inventory of what it had done to me.
I started at the top.
My shoulder ached deep in the joint where his teeth had set in and held.
I rolled it once and felt the bruise wake up under the skin.
There was a half-moon of broken capillaries above the collarbone I could see without a mirror, and another, lower, where his mouth had moved on.
My back stung when I shifted against the sheet.
He'd opened me up with his nails, and the cotton clung in places it shouldn't have.
The mark on my forearm I'd put there myself.
Teeth marks, mine, in the meat below the elbow, dark purple and clean as a brand.
I'd bit down because there was nothing else to bite.
My balls were a low, dull ache that climbed into my stomach if I thought about it too long, and I made the mistake of thinking about it.
He'd held me at the edge until I'd cried into his neck, and he hadn't been there for any of it.
I'd asked for every piece of it.
The recognition wasn't new. I'd had it last night with him asleep on top of me, the comforter half-thrown off, and I'd had it the way a man has a thought in the dark when he knows nobody is going to hear him.
This was the morning version. Daylight on it.
My body keeping the receipts where I could read them, and the knowledge sitting plain in my chest that I would lie down for it again.
I'd lie down for it sober. I'd lie down for it in the cold light of a Tuesday afternoon.
I'd lie down for it knowing he was gone behind the eyes and using me to hold himself together, and I'd thank him for the use.
Winston, I thought, you old selfish bastard.
The thought didn't hurt. That was the part I couldn't get over.
I propped up on one elbow and looked at him.
The marks were on me, and he was the one breathing easy.
His face had gone soft in sleep, and the knight tattoo between his shoulder blades caught the thin light, the scar running through it old and faded.
There were others on his back I'd missed in the dark.
A man could spend his life in bed with another man and still find new scars if he looked hard enough.
I leaned over and kissed the place between his shoulder blades, slow, and meant it.
He didn't stir.
My head pounded. I needed water. No, scratch that. I needed a good, strong coffee. I needed to brush my teeth and find my hat, and figure out how to be a functional human being after the amount of tequila Eduardo had served us.
I kissed lower, down to the dip at the small of his back where his spine curved into his hips. I pressed my tongue flat against his skin. His hips rolled into the mattress, and his breath caught.
"Mornin'," he murmured into the pillow.
His voice was wrecked, thick with sleep and the hangover.
"Mornin', cowboy," I said and kissed him again.
He coughed. "Hold that thought." Then he was up, off the bed, weight slamming into the bathroom door, and the door slammed shut behind him.
A second later, the sound of him being sick came through the bathroom door.
I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling, and laughed once. The man could put a Texas Ranger on his knees and get him to lick a dead man's boot, but he couldn't hold his liquor.
I gave him a minute. Then I sat up, found my jeans on the floor, pulled them on, and went to the bathroom door.
"I'm gonna run down to the drugstore," I said through it. "We need toothbrushes. Maybe a priest."
There was a pause. "Get the cheap toothbrushes."
"Yes, sir."
I picked up his boots from the foot of the bed and set them upright by the door for him. Then I found my hat, found my sunglasses, and walked out into the parking lot in last night's shirt.
The drugstore was two blocks down. I bought two toothbrushes, one tube of toothpaste, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a roll of antacids.
Next door there was a little place that did coffee and pastries for the truckers coming off the interstate.
I got two large coffees, mine with honey, his black, and grabbed a fistful of every flavored creamer they had on the counter and dumped them in the bag.
He could pick. I'd ask him to teach me which one once and never forget.
The doughnut case was right at the register. I stood there with my coffees, looked at the doughnuts, thought about being a Ranger and about every joke that had ever been made at my expense, and bought a half dozen anyway. I am, among other things, a man who knows what the bit is.
I added a cinnamon roll on the way out. The thing was the size of my fist, which was almost as big as they made them in Texas, but not quite.
The walk back, the sun was high and mean. It was barely ten o'clock and you could already cook an egg on the sidewalk. My head still hurt, but the coffee helped just by being warm in my hand.
Ransom was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his boots on when I came in.
He'd washed his face. His hair was wet at the temples, jeans on, shirt on, the man putting himself back inside the man.
He glanced up when I shouldered the door closed, and for half a second he just looked at me, and something crossed his face that wasn't on the menu of expressions Ransom Lanza usually offered the world.
Then he went back to his boot.
"Coffee," I said, and held it out.
He took it. "Black?"
"Black. Got you a bouquet of creamers." I tossed the bag of packets onto the bed beside him.
He looked at the pile. "Christ, Ranger."
"Couldn't remember which one you took."
"Vanilla."
"I'll never forget." I sat down on the bed next to him and dug a doughnut out of the bag. "I bought doughnuts."
"You know…" he started.
"Yes, I know what people say about cops and doughnuts. I bought them anyway. I committed to the bit." I held one out to him. "Eat something. You look like hell."
He took it and ate it standing up while I dug my flask out of my back pocket. I unscrewed it and tipped a healthy slug into my coffee, recapped it, and held it out to him.
He looked at the flask. He looked at me.
I shrugged.
He held out his cup.
I tipped some into his. He took a drink, swallowed, looked at the cup, and took another drink.
"That'll do," he said.
"Mm-hmm."
He sat back down on the bed beside me. We drank our coffees, ate doughnuts, and didn't say anything for a minute. The room was quiet except for the wall unit pushing cold air around. I tore the cinnamon roll in half, handed him the bigger piece, and he ate it without comment.
"You ever come down to Texas, I'll buy you a real cinnamon roll," I said. "There's this little Mexican grandma in El Paso. Runs a bakery down by the Chinese grocery. She makes 'em as big as newborn. Hand to God."
"You can't eat a cinnamon roll that big. Nobody can."
I shrugged. "Somebody must. Otherwise, why would she make it?"
"Bragging rights."
I tipped my sunglasses down and raised an eyebrow at him. "Bragging rights?"
Now it was his turn to shrug. "Texas has got to have something to brag about. Might as well be the cinnamon rolls. Y'all don't have a lot else goin' for you down there."
"Bullshit," I said and cleaned the powdered sugar from my hands. "We got steak. Good steaks, too. Bigger than your head, Ransom, and that's saying something."
"Size ain't everything, you know."
"Ransom, there are two places in this world where size absolutely counts. One of 'em's in Texas. Other's in the bedroom, so you best count yourself lucky I put up with you."
"Not what you were saying last night," he muttered and smirked at me over his coffee.
I gave him a light shove.
He grinned to himself and went on drinking his coffee.
A phone rang. I reached for mine, but it was dead.
Ransom set the coffee on the nightstand and fished the phone out.
He looked at the screen and his jaw tightened. "Rafe." He took the call sitting on the edge of the bed with his boots on. "What's up?"
I set my own coffee down on the nightstand, slid off the bed onto my knees in front of him, and got my hands on his belt buckle. He cut his eyes down at me and shook his head once sharply. I ignored it. He'd known what he was getting into when he climbed into bed with me.
"What time?" His voice held steady, just barely. I worked the buckle open, dragged the leather back through the loop, and popped the button on his jeans. His knuckles went white on the phone. "Yeah, sorry. We went to the hospital after and…"
I pulled the zipper down a tooth at a time. He was already half-hard. I ran my palm over him through his boxers, and he jumped under my hand.
He swallowed. "Yes, as far as I know."