13. Dalton #4
We waited till our breaths grew even and the sweat dried on our skin. The rain kept coming down, a steady hush beyond the windows. If allowed, I could fall asleep inside of two seconds. If Jake wanted more, I’d be ready and willing for that, too.
Then a knock came at the door. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Jake was on his feet in a second, pulling on his briefs. I curled up in the bed and made myself small as he opened the door.
“Jake,” a voice said. It was Jesse, the foreman. “The pasture above the main house is flooding.”
“The one I’ve not yet dug drainage for?” Jake asked.
“It’s not your fault, Jake,” Jesse said sternly, for which I was glad. “We were going to get to it next week. You and me both. We just need to move those cattle to the pasture away from the river before something happens.”
“Give me five minutes.” Jake closed the door. “Damn it.”
I heard rummaging and imagined he was looking for his clothes. I needed my clothes as well. Needed to recover them from wherever we’d thrown them with abandon.
I got up and reached around him for the light switch.
The lamps along the wall were like spotlights.
I was fully naked until I found my boxer briefs and pulled them on, then looked up.
Jake had his jeans in his hands, his body turned from me, and along the backs of his thighs were white lines.
Red lines. Both thighs. Up and down at an angle.
“What are those from?” I asked, blinking.
He lowered his head and slid his jeans on, buttoning the fly. Buckling the belt.
I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, and I spied my crumpled jeans beneath the two-person table. When I was busy pulling them on rather than looking at him, though, he said, “The mother. Or maybe the father.”
“They look like they hurt,” I said, thinking about the odd way he referred to his foster parents. Not Mom and Dad or anything else. But the mother. The father.
“Not anymore,” he said.
That was a lie, though, I could tell. They hurt deep inside him, even after all the years he’d been out of the system. And they were the reason he’d turned off the light before removing his jeans. Certainly he’d not wanted me to see them. But I had.
He had another scar across his shoulder blade, but he covered that up with a dry t-shirt and a flannel shirt. Then he sat down to pull on socks and boots. Grabbed a jean jacket and his new hat.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, looking at me and doubtless assessing the fact that I’d just stood there while he got dressed.
“Okay,” I said.
He held out my t-shirt. “Can you make your way to your bunkhouse?” he asked.
I had a feeling it was killing him to have to go off like he was, in the rain to herd cattle away from danger. I had a feeling he would have liked me to stay all night. I had a feeling he would rather I’d not seen those scars on his legs.
“Yes,” I said. “With luck, I’ll get back before Dillon and Cameron come tramping in.”
“Okay,” he said.
I went to him for another kiss, a touch, a connection. Anything. But he pulled himself out of reach and stepped into the rain, head bowed, water running off the brim of his hat, limned in the light from the staff building.
Pulling on my boots without socks, because I couldn’t find them.
I looked at the rumpled bed, then straightened it.
Put the two chairs in order. Then picked up Jake’s still-damp t-shirt and laid it across the back of the chair with his boot-polishing kit so it could dry.
After that, I turned off the lights and slunk through the rain to my own bunkhouse, which was dark and quiet and dry.
I’d get a little bit of sleep, and in the morning, I’d make sure Jake knew—
Knew what? Everything.
A simple walk to see bats in the rain had turned into something more. Something I never wanted to forget. Something I wanted to relive, over and over again.
I wanted Jake to know what that meant to me. To be the one he looked at. The one he kissed. The one he touched. To finally see his smile. That was pure gold.
As for his past, from everything I’d heard and seen, it had been more than rocky. Would he accept my support? Would he want to continue what we had started?
If he wanted it, whatever he wanted, I’d give it to him with both hands. With everything I had. With my heart.
I just hoped he’d give me a chance so I could see that smile again.
Brushing my teeth, I couldn’t quite focus on my own reflection in the mirror.
Instead I saw Jake. The way he’d looked when he’d asked me to go on that walk with him.
Shy but confident in what he wanted. And on the walk, the feel of his hand.
The way we’d gone beneath that cottonwood tree, that enormous cottonwood tree, and the bit of a smile I’d seen there.
The laugh in his throat. The way his body felt when I’d moved close, my head on his shoulder.
His fingers in my hair. Those amazing eyes looking at me as though I was worth looking at. Someone worth being with.
Could what we had turn into more than one night together?
I wanted it to. My feelings had done a complete one-eighty since my first impression of Jake Colter, when I’d arrived at the ranch three short days ago, my ears ringing from over two hours of teenage mirth.
But that was all right. I was a man fully grown, and I could change my mind.
I had changed it. For the better. For Jake.
I could convince him that this was a good thing, and I would. A quiet moment was all I needed.