23. Dane
Chapter twenty-three
Dane
The Harbor View Inn gave us a ground-floor room. Through the windows Edgartown Harbor was a black plane, three boat lights moving on it, and beyond those, the Sound.
It was Friday night. I was on my back on the bed in a t-shirt and the loose surgical sweats they’d sent me home in.
They wrapped my thigh from groin to knee, and the painkiller they’d cleared me to take after dinner had taken the edge off without taking me with it.
The mattress was firmer than I’d expected from a December rental on the Vineyard.
Farrow lay on his side facing me, propped on his elbow with his cheek against his hand. He’d showered an hour ago and was in a black thermal and sweats, his hair pushed back wet and showing darker at the roots. He’d been watching me for at least forty seconds without speaking.
A takeout bag sat on the chair by the door. We’d eaten chowder out of paper cups and split a sandwich between us.
“Move closer,” I said.
He slid up next to me and lowered his face close to mine. He was careful to not bump my right thigh. The inside of my left elbow was still purple from the IV. He reached a hand over my stomach and rested it on my t-shirt.
Farrow leaned in and kissed me. His mouth tasted slightly of toothpaste. It was comforting.
When he pulled back, he didn’t go far. His rested his forehead on my shoulder, and his breath moved across my cheek.
“Dane, tell me if anything hurts.”
“It doesn’t.”
He kissed me again, and this time he slipped a hand under the hem of my t-shirt. His palm was warm against my bare stomach.
First night without a comm.
The thought arrived clean. There was no earpiece on the nightstand. Cabot was in the building, but he was down the hall. We had no alarm set or watch schedules to follow.
Farrow’s hand was on me with a locked door protecting us from the rest of the world.
I exhaled.
Farrow raised his head.
“Everything okay?”
“Better than that, well, except for my leg.” I chuckled, and he laughed along with me.
He worked the t-shirt up in stages, past my ribs, and I raised my arms enough for him to pull it the rest of the way over my head. He dropped it off the side of the bed.
Farrow pressed his open mouth against the hollow of my collarbone, and then he exhaled.
I slowly raked my fingers into his damp hair. He hummed lightly as he moved his mouth down over my chest.
“Take these off,” he said, tugging the waistband of my sweats.
“You take them off.”
“You’ll have to lift your hips.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It was a minor battle with me twisting back and forth until Farrow could work the sweats over my bandaged thigh.
When the waistband cleared my knees, he rolled out of bed, stood, and pulled the sweats the rest of the way off.
My boxer briefs were next. I lay naked with the wrap standing out clean and white against my skin.
He grabbed his package as he looked at me. “Can’t help it,” he said. “He’s been waiting all week.”
My cock stiffened. He’d undressed me before, but this was different. I had a hole in my thigh and I was less than six hours out of the hospital.
“Blaise,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Come back up.”
He climbed back onto the bed and kissed me longer this time. His hand slid down over my chest, past my ribs, and across my stomach. His palm rested low on my belly.
He kissed down over my jaw to the side of my throat. The tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders since the hospital began to let go.
“Good,” Farrow said, low.
He kissed the center of my chest. Then he moved down. His mouth tracked my ribs on the right side. The hand on my stomach moved to my good thigh.
When he settled between my legs, he was careful. He angled himself across my left thigh, leaving the wrapped leg clear. He wrapped his fingers around the base of my cock.
“Tell me,” he said. “If anything—“
My breath caught. “I’ll tell you.”
He took me into his mouth and took his time, slowly licking the underside as he moved his mouth forward and back.
I bit back the sound that began escaping my throat.
Farrow stopped. He pulled off and sat back on his heels, mouth wet, with hair falling forward across his forehead.
“No,” he said. “Not tonight.”
I looked at him.
“Tonight you make the sounds.”
He pushed his hair back with his free hand. He wouldn't start again until I followed his request.
“Okay,” I said.
He went back down. His lips and tongue worked me with the same slow patience, and this time I let the sound escape. It was rougher than I’d expected. I reached for the back of his head and held on, fingers tangled in his hair.
Farrow worked me to the edge slowly. Every time I lifted my hips, he pushed back and held me down, keeping the wrapped leg still. I had nowhere to go, and he knew it. He kept sucking, slow and steady, looking up at my face every few breaths to read me.
When I came, it was into his mouth. I wasn’t quiet. He didn’t pull off until I was done.
Then he slid up the bed, careful of the leg, and lay down against my left side with his head on my good shoulder. He placed a hand on my chest, settling flat over my heart.
I wrapped an arm around him and kissed the top of his head.
Farrow breathed against my collarbone.
“I worried I was going to lose you.”
“You didn’t.”
His breathing evened out against me, and his hand remained in place on my chest.
I closed my eyes and went to sleep with him on me.
***
The seven o’clock ferry was running on time. That was the first thing Cabot told me when he picked us up at six-twenty in a navy blue rental Camry that smelled like overly-aggressive air freshener.
“On time means on time,” he said. “Not Vineyard on time. Actual seven.”
“Good morning to you too, Stanley.”
“Good morning. Get in.”
He held the passenger door. Farrow stood at my left elbow without crowding. I lowered myself in stages—bad leg first, hand on the doorframe, hand on the dash, weight onto the good leg, pivot, and sit. Farrow handed me the crutches once I was down.
He got in the back. Cabot put my duffel and Farrow’s in the trunk.
“Coffee in the cup holders,” Cabot said as he pulled out. “Yours is the one with one sugar. Farrow’s is black. You can hand it back to him.”
“You remembered.”
“I’m a society reporter. We remember coffee orders. It’s eighty percent of the job.”
The streets of Edgartown were still dark. A single delivery van idled outside a bakery on Main with its hazards on. The white clapboard houses showed yellow rectangles of kitchen light in the upper windows. A man in a parka was scraping frost off a station wagon at the curb.
I sipped the coffee. It was hot. Cabot had stopped somewhere on the way and gotten it fresh.
“How’s the leg?” he asked.
“Sore, but the painkillers are helping.”
He drove well within the speed limit. I watched the dark road run under the headlights while the harbor passed by on the left.
“Eleanor sent me a note,” Cabot said.
“Already?”
“Yesterday afternoon. It was hand-written. One of the agents dropped it at my hotel for me on their way off the island."
“What did it say?”
Come back in March. I’ll be ready.
“That’s the entire note?” I asked.
“Signed E.H. No envelope. Just folded once and slid under my hotel room door.”
I drank some more of the coffee.
“She’ll have you back.”
“In March. I’ll do the long piece then.”
“Will Maria be in it?”
“Maria is the piece.”
The terminal came up on the right. Cabot took the staging lane and rolled past the booth with a nod to the attendant, who’d already raised the gate. He pulled into a spot near the gangway and killed the engine.
“Nineteen minutes,” he said. “I’ll get the bags.”
I worked my way out the same way I’d worked my way in, except in reverse. Farrow was already at the passenger door before I’d swung my good leg out. He held one crutch while I set the other. Then he handed me the second.
The gangway was longer than I remembered. The ferry crew had a kid in a high-visibility vest at the bottom. He looked at me, at the crutches, and at the bag Cabot was carrying.
“Sir, we have an elevator if you’d prefer.”
“Gangway’s fine.”
“Sir—”
“He’s fine,” Farrow said in a calm voice. “Give him room.”
The kid stepped back.
I took the gangway at my own pace. The metal flexed under my crutch tips.
My right thigh throbbed once at the third stair and quieted.
I kept my eyes on the deck plate ahead of me and let the cold off the harbor blow across my face.
The crutches weren’t the problem. The problem was that moving through space used to be the thing I didn’t have to think about, and now I had to think about it constantly.
Eight weeks, the surgeon had said. Ten at the outside. After twelve, I’d be running again.
“There’s a spot on the main deck, port side, sheltered behind the bulkhead. The wind’s coming from the north. Crew uses it. You’re welcome to it,” said the kid.
“Thanks,” Farrow said.
Cabot came up behind us with the bags. The three of us followed the crew member.
We had a molded plastic bench. The wind broke around us. The crew member produced a blanket from a steel cabinet. Cabot took it and said nothing when he draped it across my legs after I sat.
“Coffee?” Cabot asked.
“Still have mine.”
“Farrow?”
“I’m good.”
Cabot moved to the rail. Farrow sat beside me on the bench, his hip against mine. The horn sounded twice over our heads, and the engines growled.
The ferry pulled away from the dock. The water went from black to slate to a deeper gray as we cleared the harbor mouth. Edgartown receded from view: the white houses and the lighthouse.
A gull landed on the rail four feet from Cabot’s elbow, looked at us, and lifted off.
I drank my coffee.
“Farrow,” Cabot said without turning around. “What’s the plan when you reach Brattle?”
“Kohler ships out at noon. Then we figure out the rest of the day.”
“And after that?”
“Brattle for a few more days while Dane heals. Then home.”