26. Anything Except This #2
Ash slipped beneath his boots. Every step pulled at his ribs and sent pain through his hand whenever Jay’s weight shifted, but pain had become information with nowhere important to go.
“Jay.”
Nothing.
Harris hauled him higher, and somewhere in those next few yards New York stopped being a threat.
It was no longer the place Jay would disappear to when this ended or evidence of all the ways Harris could never fit into his life. It became an apartment Harris had never seen, work Harris barely understood, people who knew Jay’s coffee order and expected him back.
Harris wanted all of it.
He wanted Jay to go home. He wanted him on the plane and back in the city, complaining about traffic and bad coffee and whatever else New York gave him to complain about. He wanted Romy calling him, Miles texting him, his family getting irritated because Jay forgot to answer.
Jay could go back and never return to Montana, and Harris would take it.
He would take friendship, production emails every few months, Jay’s name lighting up his phone twice a year.
He would take hearing through somebody else that Jay was happy with another man, that he had moved apartments, that he was filming somewhere Harris would never see.
Harris would take every version of the future in which Jay was alive enough to leave him behind.
Anything except this.
Anything except the terrible looseness of Jay’s body against his back.
The truth arrived with such force that Harris almost mistook it for another injury.
He loved him.
There was no softer word available and no useful argument against it.
Harris loved Jay, and that was what this agony was—not the fear of losing something he owned, not panic at being left alone, but the absolute need for Jay to keep existing even if Harris got nothing from it.
Even if Jay’s life continued somewhere else and Harris was reduced to knowing about it from a distance.
“Jay.”
Still nothing.
Harris climbed faster.
Ahead, the old burn opened into bare granite and short grass where the previous fire had left little fuel for this one to consume. Jay’s arm slipped from around his neck, and Harris dragged it back across his chest.
“Hold on.”
Nothing.
“Jay, come on.”
The words broke on what little breath Harris had left.
Rain flashed through his mind, refusing to leave until Harris struck her and watched her run somewhere he could not follow. Letting her go had been protection because survival had required distance.
This was not that.
They reached the old burn where the ridge opened into stone, low grass, and scattered dead trunks. Smoke crossed in thinner sheets, the wind moving steadily enough that the air felt almost clean after the recess below.
Harris lowered Jay beside a slab of granite and pressed two fingers beneath his jaw.
His pulse was fast. His breathing shallow.
There.
He was there.
Harris tapped his cheek. “Come on, Jay.”
Nothing.
He tried again, harder this time, and felt his own breath break when Jay still did not respond.
“Come on, baby. Open your eyes.”
The word escaped before Harris could think about it. His burned hand closed around Jay’s jaw, and for once the pain barely registered.
For an instant he saw Jay walking through an airport, disappearing toward a gate—the future Harris had spent weeks dreading and would have given anything to guarantee now.
“Don’t leave me.” His hand shook against the back of Jay’s neck. “Please.”
Jay coughed.
The first sound was small. Then his whole body seized around a deep, violent fit that dragged air into him by force. Harris hauled him onto his side and supported him against his chest while the coughing tore through him.
When it finally passed, Jay sagged against him and opened his eyes slightly.
“Harris?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
His gaze slipped away again.
“Where…”
“Ridge. You’re with me.”
Another cough cut him off. Harris held him through it, one hand at the back of his neck until the spasm eased.
“Stay awake.”
Jay’s eyes closed.
“No. Look at me.”
They opened again, barely.
“Tired.”
“I know.”
That was all Jay had, and for the moment it was enough.
Harris gave him a small mouthful of water and settled him against the granite.
The radio produced nothing but static. The first-aid kit held gauze, tape, burn gel, antiseptic wipes, and a handful of things Harris could barely identify in the weak flashlight beam, but he managed the burn one-handed as best he could, wrapping his palm and wrist while keeping one eye on Jay.
Every few minutes, Harris touched his shoulder and said his name. Jay’s eyes opened each time. Harris asked for nothing more.
The cold arrived sometime after midnight.
Neither of them had dressed for a night outside; their jackets smelled of smoke, and part of Jay’s had burned through at the shoulder.
Harris settled with his back against the granite and drew Jay against his chest, closing both sides of his jacket around as much of him as possible.
Jay’s head rested beneath Harris’s chin while Harris kept one hand over his ribs, feeling the shallow but steady rise beneath his palm.
For most of Harris’s life, that had been the bargain he made with the world: watch closely enough and nothing terrible would happen unnoticed. Check the fences. Watch the weather. Learn the first uneven step before a horse went lame. Keep Rain safe because Nell had asked.
He had watched Nell die anyway.
Tonight he had watched Jay disappear against his back despite everything Harris knew how to do.
The lesson should have been that vigilance failed. Harris could understand it intellectually without coming anywhere close to accepting it.
Jay shifted, and Harris’s arms tightened before he had time to stop them.
“You okay?” Jay murmured.
The question was absurd enough that under other circumstances Harris might have laughed. “Not really.”
Jay made a small sound that Harris took for agreement and settled again.
After a while he whispered, “Can I sleep?”
“Not yet.”
No complaint came. Harris touched his cheek until Jay looked at him.
“Little longer.”
Jay’s eyes closed again.
Harris roused him every few minutes, asking nothing harder than his name or making him look up long enough to prove that he still could. He still didn’t know whether the waking itself mattered. What mattered to Harris was that Jay came back every time he touched him.
Between checks, he listened to Jay’s breathing and tried not to hear hospital machines in every pause. Eventually Jay’s focus improved enough that his eyes opened without Harris needing to touch him, and only then did Harris let his own head rest against the granite.
He had no idea what loving Jay changed. New York still existed. The ranch still existed. Jay’s work would take him away, and Harris’s life remained fixed to land that could burn beneath him in a single night. Love solved none of those problems.
It simply made one thing impossible to pretend anymore.
Whatever happened after this, Harris needed Jay alive for it.