CHAPTER TWELVE Wear the Chains #4
Afterward they remained tangled together, Gideon’s face against Jude’s throat and Jude’s hand moving slowly through his hair. The desert wind passed over the chapel walls, stirring sand across the tiles. Somewhere beyond the stable, the gelding shifted and struck one hoof softly against wood.
Jude drew the blanket higher over Gideon’s shoulder.
Neither spoke for a long time.
Gideon listened to Jude’s heart settle.
“I do not want to die tomorrow,” he said.
Jude’s hand stopped in his hair.
Gideon raised his head. Saying the words felt more exposing than standing naked in daylight had.
“I have spent years believing a good death might balance a cowardly life,” he continued. “I thought if I died protecting someone, it would answer for the man I failed to protect.”
“Samuel.”
“Yes.”
Jude touched his face.
“But I do not want a heroic death,” Gideon said. “Not anymore.”
“What do you want?”
The question frightened him because he finally possessed an answer.
“Mornings.”
Jude waited.
“I want to wake before you and complain when you steal the blanket,” Gideon said. “I want your boots beside mine where I can trip over them. I want to argue about coffee and fences and whether a roof truly needs repairing before the rain arrives.”
“It does.”
“Not every roof.”
“The Calder roof did.”
“You said it would hold another season.”
“I lied because I wanted to see you chopping wood without a shirt.”
Despite everything, a laugh broke from Gideon.
Jude smiled, but his eyes were wet.
Gideon touched the corner of one with his thumb.
“I want work that brings us home,” he said. “I want to know where home is. I want to sit across from you at a table and have the worst thing between us be that you have taken the last biscuit.”
“You would give me the last biscuit.”
“I would resent doing so.”
“Fair.”
“I want the right to grow old without introducing you as my tracker, my deputy, or my friend because the truth makes other men uncomfortable.” Gideon’s voice roughened. “I want to love you where someone might see.”
Jude’s smile disappeared.
He pulled Gideon closer until their foreheads met.
“That life may be hard,” Jude said.
“I know.”
“Some towns will not let us stay.”
“Then we leave.”
“Some men will test whether the marshal’s gun hand is as quick when they insult the man sharing his bed.”
“It will be quicker.”
“Gideon.”
“I know.”
Jude searched his face. “You truly want this.”
“I want things I do not know how to ask for.”
“You just asked.”
“I want years, Jude.”
The confession hung between them.
Jude closed his eyes.
For one terrible instant Gideon thought he had asked for too much. Forever had never been one of their promises. They had refused it at the Calder homestead because promising a lifetime while hunted would have felt like bargaining with fear.
Then Jude opened his eyes.
“We do not promise forever tonight,” he said.
Gideon felt something in him brace for loss.
Jude’s hand slid down his arm and covered Gideon’s damaged palm.
“We promise to survive tomorrow,” Jude continued. “Then we survive the day after that. We keep doing it together until the days become years and the years prove what we meant.”
“Surviving together.”
“That is the promise.”
Gideon closed his fingers around Jude’s.
“Together,” he said.
Jude kissed him once, gently.
They slept for less than three hours.
Gideon woke before dawn with Jude’s head over his heart and one of Jude’s legs thrown across his thighs.
Pale light entered through the broken roof.
For several minutes Gideon did not move.
He memorized the weight of Jude upon him, the warmth of his breath, the hand resting open against Gideon’s ribs.
Boots beside the bed.
The thought hurt more sweetly than any wound.
Jude woke when Gideon touched his hair.
Neither said good morning. The words were too ordinary and too precious.
They washed with the last of the water and dressed in silence.
Jude attended to Gideon first.
He slid Gideon’s shirt over his injured arm, then the other, guiding the cloth across his shoulders without pulling the wound. Standing close, he began at the bottom and fastened each button. His fingers brushed Gideon’s stomach, sternum, and throat as he worked upward.
At the final button, Jude hesitated.
“What?” Gideon asked.
“I like you better with it open.”
“Cutter may find that suspicious.”
“Cutter has poor judgment.”
Jude closed the button.
He helped Gideon into his coat, settled the collar, and smoothed the lapels. Then he lifted the marshal’s badge from the bedroll.
The silver star looked dull in the morning light.
Gideon stared at it.
Jude placed one hand over Gideon’s heart. “What does it mean today?”
“Whatever I make it mean.”
“Good answer.”
He pinned the badge through Gideon’s coat. His knuckles pressed briefly against Gideon’s chest as he secured the clasp.
“There,” Jude said. “Where it belongs.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believe it belongs over the heart of the man you are now. If the law objects, the law can explain itself to me.”
Gideon fitted on his gun belt. Jude tightened it around his waist, then checked the revolver and returned it to the holster.
Last came the restraints.
They had cut strips from the softest leather remaining on the saddle and shaped them into guards for Jude’s wrists and ankles. Gideon wrapped the first strip around Jude’s right wrist, passing the leather beneath it twice so no edge could rub against the old scars.
Jude watched him work.
The cuff key lay flat against his palm.
Gideon had wrapped it beneath a narrow strip of linen, positioned so Jude could work it free with his teeth if his hands were taken from him. A second key rested openly in Gideon’s vest pocket, ready to be surrendered during Cutter’s search.
Gideon picked up the first open cuff.
He lowered himself to one knee.
Jude stood before him in the ruined chapel, the rising sun pouring gold through the doorway behind him. His hands hung free at his sides.
Gideon looked up.
“Do you still choose this?”
“I do.”
“Give me your right hand.”
Jude placed it into Gideon’s palm.
Gideon supported it as carefully as he had in Red Mesa, but nothing about the gesture was the same. Jude’s fingers closed once around his, a deliberate pressure of trust.
“May I fasten this cuff?”
“Yes.”
The steel closed over the leather guard with a single click.
Gideon tested the space. Two fingers fit beneath it. Jude rotated his wrist, then folded his thumb and proved he could draw most of his hand through if necessary.
“Your left,” Gideon said.
Jude offered it.
“May I?”
“Yes.”
The second cuff closed.
The short chain dropped between Jude’s wrists.
Gideon rose. He took the chain loosely in his right hand.
“Test the signal.”
Jude stepped closer and pressed two fingers twice against the inside of Gideon’s left wrist.
Gideon released the chain, drew the hidden key from his vest, and opened the first cuff immediately.
Jude’s eyebrow lifted. “Still no hesitation.”
“Never.”
“Put it back.”
“Are you asking to continue?”
“I am.”
Gideon refastened the cuff.