Forever Promised (10 page)

“What about ‘manager of allocations for publicity’?”

“Corrupt bureaucrat.” The oil helped keep the leather supple, but it needed to be wiped from the silver parts. That took a lot of rubbing, and the kids from Promise House didn’t always see the need.

“What about ‘lobbyist for public work allocations for profitable charities’?”

“Ass-raping bureaucrat who needs to be put down,” Deacon said without compromise, and Benny grunted.

“I think he’s winning the election.”

“Yeah, well color me fucking surprised.”

So Benny had grown into politics with Deacon’s own prejudices—but also his quiet belief that some good men made the world better for the rest of them. Deacon knew deep in his heart his friend was one of the best men he’d ever met. If anyone could make the world a better place, it was Jon.

And now Benny looked at him bleakly. “Deacon, was there ever a time you wanted to go somewhere besides Levee Oaks?”

Deacon thought about it carefully. “Yeah,” he said. This was something he’d never told anyone, not his father, not Jon, not even Crick.

“When?”

He smiled a little. “Shorty, when I was eight, Parrish let me watch the Kentucky Derby on television. We’ve watched it sometimes, remember?”

“And the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes and….”

He laughed. He didn’t watch every horse sporting event, but there were some things even people who had never ridden a horse watched, and those were staples. “Yeah. And they did a spotlight on Kentucky, and why it was called the Bluegrass state, and how their fences weren’t made with wire. And they showed pictures, and for a year I would fantasize that I lived in a place where the grass really
was
always greener.”

Benny snickered. “Why’d you stop?”

Deacon sighed and stood up. “That’s not really a good story,” he told her, hating this part of himself.

Benny sighed but stayed seated. “C’mon, Deacon. You can tell me.”

Well, why not? He
was
refusing her gift, after all.

“It was the usual,” he said shortly, thinking that it never
felt
usual. “Spelling bee at school, there I was, in the fucking lead—won too.”

Benny wasn’t getting it—but then, he’d managed to overcome most of that bullshit by the time she came around. “Yeah, so….”

“So I finished the bee, ran outside, got sick behind the classroom, spent the next ten minutes coming down from the adrenaline shakes… you know. Was just fucking
me.
”

“Oh.”

He spared a look up at her. “If I had a desire to do anything else in the world, Shorty—anything, be a lawyer, be a teacher, be a banker—I’d walk to a shrink, dump some Xanax down my throat, and pony up. But the one thing I want to do—
still
the one thing I want to do—doesn’t need me to be anyone but me. ”

Benny nodded. “But you’re coaching soccer,” she said, so matter-of-factly that he felt a bitter smile twist his mouth.

“You notice that Collin’s coming along for the ride?”

“Yeah, Deacon. But I also noticed you didn’t say no. You can meet the challenges you need to. If that’s what you’re worried about, don’t.”

Deacon shrugged and picked up the plate. It was warm in the barn, and he was ready to go shower. “It’s moot anyway, isn’t it, Shorty? I mean, that shit costs money, and horseshit we’ve got, but money—”

He turned and saw Benny had not followed him as he’d expected, and was instead smiling at him with a sort of evil he’d seen a lot in her brother, but not all that often in her.

“What?” he asked flatly.

“Remember how you had me do your taxes for the last two years?” she asked, her smirk growing wider.

Deacon nodded. “Yeah, you did a good job. We didn’t owe anything this year, as I recall… what?” Because that look wasn’t going away.

“You got ten grand back.”

“What?”

“Ten—”

“Oh my God—”

“Thousand—”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Dollars.” And when she finished, her look was implacable and a lot more evil than he’d anticipated.

“Bernice, why would you not tell me a thing like that?” he asked, horrified, and
finally
she had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I didn’t think it would work,” she said, shrugging. “See, since Promise House is a nonprofit organization, and you pay those kids wages, that’s a charity thing. So I declared everything you paid the Promise House kids, and—”

“And the government gave it back?” Deacon wasn’t sure whether to be overjoyed or horrified. “But… but that was… I mean, that was legitimate work, I don’t—”

Benny shrugged. “Yeah, well, all I know was that they sent us the check, and I was sort of freaked out because, you know. Ten grand, right? Anyway, I went to my accounting professor and double-checked, and he said it was good. So I figured I’d try to make you some money, right, so you’re not always dependent on stuff, so I put half in a savings account, and the other half I invested.”

Deacon’s vision was a little floaty to begin with, and now black leviathans started surfacing in the gray fuzz in front of his eyes. “So you lost it?” he asked, because everyone knew the market had been hamster crap
,
but Benny shook her head.

“I invested in e-readers,” she said matter-of-factly. “They sort of took off. That whole industry is one of the few things that’s done well in the past couple of years. The money’s doubled.”

The leviathans in Deacon’s vision threatened to eat his head. He flailed back for a moment and found a hay bale and sat down on it. “That money’s yours,” he said, his throat dry. “Everything you made with it—”

“It’s more than enough,” Benny said frankly. “You would have given it to us anyway, so I’m not counting it or arguing, but we’ve got the money. We could try six, eight times with the money we’ve got, but I’m telling you, I think we only have to do it once.”

Deacon spread his knees and hung his head between them and tried not to look at Benny in betrayal, because she really had been looking out after their best interests.

“You really are just like your brother,” he managed. One of the biggest fights he and Crick had ever gotten into had been over almost this exact thing. “God, Benny. You got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Yep,” she said perkily. “The only thing I don’t know is why you’re putting up such a fuss?”

Deacon shook his head and cleared the spots from his vision. “That was a real nice offer,” he said firmly, “but I’m going to have to say—”

Benny’s next smile was all predatory. “Oh, come on, Deacon. Don’t you even want to know if it’s possible? Let’s just go get the blood test done, you can squirt in a bottle, and we can see if maybe this is possible at all.” She batted her lashes, and he glared at her.

“I know you think you’re special,” he said through half a scowl, “but I
have
said no to you before.”

“But you’re not going to now,” she said, all pretense of flirting gone.

“Why’s that?” he asked, thinking he might be able to stand up now.

“Because you know how bad I want this,” she said honestly. “And I know how bad you want it too.”

Deacon hopped to his feet and shook his head, smiling, because he thought he might have this temptation thing licked. “I want it, Shorty, but it’s not your place to give it.”

Benny used to dye her hair all these outrageous colors—purple, green, stoplight red. But she hadn’t done that in a long time. It was a pretty brown, fine and flyaway, so she cut it layered, making it look like all those sixty directions it went flying were on purpose. She ran her hand through it now and shook her head.

“It’s exactly my place,” she said, her voice steady. “Who else loves you guys like I do? Who else has the same shape eyes as Crick as well as his stubborn temper? I’m the one person out there who can give you a baby just like Crick—”

Deacon was about to state the obvious, the same way he’d said it to Crick. But when all was said and done, Crick was his, and he trusted Crick with the parts of himself he didn’t let anyone else see. He didn’t want Benny to see that part, the part that had seen Deacon Parrish Winters at his worst and who loathed the bastard. Crick loved him anyway. He was pretty sure Benny didn’t love him quite like that.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling trapped. “I squirt in the cup, they count my swimmers. Seriously, what’s the harm?”

He didn’t like that look of triumph on her face, mostly because he couldn’t explain it. But she
did
know him well enough to talk about other things as they left Deacon’s place of comfort and walked back up to the house.

Crick
:
The Whole of You

C
RICK
didn’t get philosophical much, but when he did, it was about Deacon. He’d thought a lot over the years about his early hero worship of the man he loved, and about the surprisingly strong, if sometimes frail, man who was the whole of the person. Deacon seemed to think it was a big deal, that separation, but about the only thing Crick would have done different in his life (besides not running off to Iraq like a complete fucking moron) would have been to seduce Deacon sooner.

Crick didn’t like to think about Deacon—the real Deacon, with the human weaknesses and everything—being alone.

Crick feared—a lot—that he would leave Deacon alone. Not through choice, because the last thing Crick would ever do again willingly would be to leave that man’s side, but through the fragility of his own human body, which often gave him a kick in the ass to remind him how close it had come to death, and how some wounds didn’t heal.

The day of Jeff’s wedding, Crick had been humiliated enough when Shane and Mikhail needed to bring him home because his sister had apparently forgotten him. His arm and leg ached, and he was decent with putting up with pain, but they were actually giving up on him. When he found he was not only in danger of dropping Jeff’s specialty-made banana-cream wedding cake all over the thin grass under the oak trees, but also in danger of going pitching down after it, he’d needed help, and he’d gotten as stubborn as Deacon about asking for it.

So yeah, that had been bad, even though Shane, man-mountain that he was, had a way of just wrapping his arm around a person’s waist and holding steady so that leaning against him while he helped you into the house didn’t feel like a big deal. Crick had no idea that the worst was yet to come.

Deacon arrived a few hours later, tired and subdued, and at first Crick had thought it was because he’d been around all those people, even though they were family. In later years, as their family had expanded, Deacon had gotten better with people in general. Since the heart attack especially, he seemed to have lost some of his fear, which was nice, because Crick got to see him smiling a lot more often when it wasn’t just the two of them, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his moments. He and Deacon had gone to Parry Angel’s first Back To School Night when she’d started kindergarten. They arrived home, and Crick was going on and on about how no one in their right mind should give a five-year-old
homework
,
for sweet Christ’s sake, and he was
damned
if they were going to make Parry do it if it wasn’t going on her mythical “permanent record.” He looked up from the bed where he’d been worrying off his boots with one hand to find Deacon had slid down the wall to the floor. His face had gone white, his hands were shaking, and he was apparently in the throes of an anxiety attack that he’d hidden for most of the evening. So, better, yes, but that terror Deacon had always had of groups of strangers was never really going to go away. Deacon was just strong enough never to let it stop him from the things he felt needed doing.

So the night of the wedding, Deacon got home and Crick smiled at him tiredly and asked him what he’d missed. And Deacon shrugged and talked about Jeff’s best story, and about how Kimmy had made Shane dance the two-step with her, and how Parry and Lila had both gone into the creek fully clothed, and no one had blamed them, because August? What in the hell had Jeff been thinking? While he spoke, he went quietly about the business of pulling out bread and leftover cold cuts and making Crick a sandwich with avocado and tomato and only the tiniest bit of mayo. There was leftover potato salad, and that was nice too. Deacon brought it into the living room and set up the TV tray. When he was done, he fetched a glass of milk and set it down in front of Crick efficiently, along with the remote. After that, he said, “I’m going to go out and check the horses.”

And that had been Crick’s first hint that something was wrong.

His second was when Deacon didn’t come back for an hour.

Crick fell asleep in front of an empty plate and a rerun of
The Closer
,
actually, and when he woke up, he blinked against the long shadows of early evening, feeling a sort of ache and chill of loneliness he was not accustomed to having in his own home. He and Deacon had replaced the couch and recliner, because the old plaid ones were hell on the back and they both had enough physical shit to worry about. The new stuff was navy fabric, and it was soothing
and
comfortable, just the way they liked it. They’d redone the carpeting to fake hardwood and a brown area rug when they did the furniture, and Crick had painted the walls sort of a gentle cream color. It was a nice room—masculine and warm. The cosmetic changes didn’t mask the fact that it was the same living room Crick had thought of as home since before he’d come to live at Deacon’s. This was the living room where Parrish, Deacon’s father, had taught Crick some of his most important lessons, and this was the place Crick and Deacon had met every day and talked quietly in the painful time after Parrish passed away. This room was supposed to be sanctuary. The unexpected sad that permeated it right now could only come from one place.