9. The Last Useful Excuse #2
Tessa’s mouth moved to his jaw. Harris put his lips against the side of her neck and tried to stay with the pressure of her hand, the familiar heat of her body against his.
Stay the fuck here, Harris.
Instead he saw olive skin, Navarro’s stomach, and the dark line of hair disappearing beneath his jeans. His mind followed it lower before he could stop it.
“Shit.”
He stepped back, and Tessa’s hand fell away immediately. For a second, she only looked at him, breathing a little harder than before.
“You okay?”
“Yup.”
Poor lie, even by his standards.
Harris fastened the button she had opened and turned toward the window. Neon from the vacancy sign laid a dull red bar across the curtain. The air conditioner rattled hard enough to suggest it might shake loose from the wall.
“Long day,” he said.
“Okay.”
She waited only a moment. Tessa knew the difference between Harris being quiet because he had nothing to say and Harris being quiet because there was something he refused to say.
“We don’t have to do this.”
Relief came fast enough to embarrass him, not because he did not want her—his body had made that clear—but because wanting her had done nothing to remove Navarro.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I drove you over here.”
“You didn’t kidnap me. Stop standing there like you owe me a settlement.”
A breath of laughter escaped him despite everything.
Tessa sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on one boot. She did not invite him to sit beside her or promise not to judge whatever he said. She seemed to have decided the evening was over and saw no benefit in making the end ceremonial.
The air conditioner and the muted television next door handled the silence.
“You back with Claire?” she asked.
“No.”
That answer came cleanly.
“Somebody else?”
“No.”
Less cleanly.
Her hands paused at the laces. Harris heard the difference.
So did she.
“There isn’t,” he said.
“Okay.”
She tied the boot, leaving the lie technically possible. Harris disliked how grateful he was that she did not test it.
“I’ll pay for the room.”
“No.”
“Tess.”
“I booked it.”
“Then I’ll—”
“Harris.”
He stopped.
She stood and picked up her purse. “I open tomorrow. You don’t owe me an explanation, but don’t make me stand here while you invent one.”
Fair.
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“You rarely are.”
That got another short laugh from him.
Tessa had every right to be angry. Instead, she adjusted the strap of her purse and told him to drive safely before leaving.
Harris remained long enough to look at the crooked bedspread and his jacket on the floor, evidence of a plan that had worked for perhaps thirty seconds. Then he picked up the jacket and switched off the light.
He had drunk enough that driving immediately would have been stupid, so he stayed put.
There was an all-night gas station a short walk down the highway; Harris bought two coffees there and carried them back to the motel lot, where he sat in his truck with the windows down while enough time passed for the second to go cold.
Semis crossed the parking lot at long intervals, their headlights sweeping over the pumps and motel. Somewhere beyond the highway, sprinklers clicked across a narrow strip of landscaping, and wet dirt briefly cut through the smells of fuel, hot asphalt, and cigarettes.
Harris lit another one.
The attraction to men was not new. He had known about that part of himself for most of his life, and nobody else knew.
Nobody still alive, at least.
A boy changing shirts when Harris was sixteen. A ranch hand one summer who watched him long enough that Harris spent weeks making sure he never watched back. A man in a Billings bar who bought him a drink and rested one hand on Harris’s arm in a way that left no room for misunderstanding.
Nothing had happened. Harris had continued with his life, and then there had been Claire.
He had chosen her without hesitation, loved her, and wanted her. There had never been anything false about the way he felt when she climbed into his lap or caught his hand and pulled him toward their bedroom. He had not spent twelve years wishing she were somebody else.
Men had existed beyond the life he chose, roads visible from a distance that led somewhere he had no reason to go. Harris knew they were there and kept driving the direction he had already picked.
Until Navarro.
If the problem had simply been that Harris wanted a man, there were ways to solve that without involving Navarro at all.
He could have driven farther—to Bozeman, another county, somewhere nobody knew his family or cared where he lived. There were bars. Apps, probably. Places where men went specifically to find what Harris had spent his life avoiding.
He could make it anonymous and contained. Something physical. Something that happened once and remained wherever he left it.
Except tonight had removed the last useful excuse.
This was not pressure that needed somewhere to go. It was not novelty, or proximity, or Harris finally noticing a part of himself strongly enough that any available man would have done.
Tessa had made that clear.
Harris did not want an anonymous man.
He wanted the fucking filmmaker.
Not only the body he had stared at in the equipment room, though that remained a problem all its own.
He wanted Navarro’s mouth when he tried not to smile, the movement of his hands whenever an explanation interested him enough to involve his whole body, his laugh in the truck with his head dropping because Harris had caught him unprepared, the way he danced with Della and briefly forgot anybody might be watching.
He wanted the irritation, the questions, the jokes Harris pretended not to enjoy and remembered anyway.
Most of all, he wanted that unnerving attention Navarro gave him when he stopped performing for everybody else and looked directly at Harris as though the silences were not empty.
That was the distinction, and it held Harris motionless while another semi turned through the lot.
Wanting a man had never been the real problem. Harris could have managed wanting; he had been managing it most of his life.
Wanting Navarro was different because Navarro was not abstract and he was not somewhere else.
He lived several hundred yards from Harris’s cabin.
He crossed Harris’s yard every day. He laughed where Harris could hear him and asked questions Harris sometimes found himself answering before remembering that he had meant not to.
People left. Harris stayed.
That had always made attraction manageable eventually. Nothing fed it forever.
Navarro would leave too. Harris knew that, and the thought did not help nearly as much as it should have.
He crushed the cigarette into the sand-filled cup beside the truck and checked the ember twice.
Going to town had not fixed anything.
It had only removed the last useful excuse.