Forever Promised (28 page)

Benny and Drew had played, and sat and sunned themselves—and then left quietly, with Deacon’s blessing, to go have some quiet time in their hotel room. Drew had brought a special prosthetic made for sand, but that didn’t mean walking in it was a picnic, and Crick envied him the ability to say, “Nope! I’ve had enough! Play without me!” Crick couldn’t do it. Crick’s leg ached, and his arm too, and he was content to hang out under the umbrella next to the girls and read a book while Jon and Deacon pushed each other into the water (which was still ice-fucking-cold) and threw the Frisbee, making seemingly impossible catches against the red light of the sun on the water.

“You know,” Amy said, startling him because he’d thought she was asleep, “you’re the only reason we can leave him.”

Crick looked at dainty, dark-haired, vibrant little Amy and felt a distinct pang of sadness. He loved her like a sister—and since he loved his sister a helluva lot, that was saying something. He could remember, like a hazy dream, the jealousy he’d harbored when she and Deacon had dated in high school, but that emotion didn’t really exist now. What was left was gratitude. She and Jon had helped keep Deacon together when he’d been gone. They’d helped them keep their home together after he’d come back, and things had been rough and on the verge of collapse for oh so long. Crick and Amy knitted together, watched movies together, and met sometimes in the morning for coffee when their husbands were out running, a pastime that baffled them both.

And she hadn’t talked about the fact their house was almost empty of furniture, down to the bare minimum of toys, and that very soon it would be vacant, ready to be rented out to the two kids from Promise House who were on the verge of turning eighteen but who still needed the family that Shane’s family provided.

“Yeah?” Crick said, answering Amy like all this wasn’t lying heavy on his heart. “Then I sort of wish I was still a fuckup. If you guys taking off is the result of me being competent, that’s like rewarding someone for a good job by kicking them in the balls.”

Amy cracked up quietly into her book. “Asshole. You couldn’t let us leave without trying to make me feel like shit, could you?”

“No,” Crick told her seriously. “I was just waiting for the right time.”

“Well, excellent, Carrick! We’re all happy, it’s been a good day—kick me in the balls!”

Crick laughed, because she was just as snarky as Jon. “We’re going to miss the holy hell out of you. They’ve been inseparable for almost thirty years—I don’t know what he’s going to do without Jon.”

Amy sighed a little. “Yeah, same with Jon. Deacon’s his conscience. When we were in school, he always used to complain that without Deacon, he could have cheated his way into college.”

Crick watched the two of them horsing around and had a sudden, vicious moment of relief. If Jon had been even the slightest bit inclined toward men, Crick’s life might have been very, very different.

“Jon is his laughter,” he said after a moment, because this was the thing Jon had that Crick didn’t. Deacon had never blushed in front of Jon, and they’d never fought. (Although Crick was aware of some harsh words spoken when Deacon was having his heart attack—Deacon claimed not to remember.) Jon was easiness and laughter and the simple assumption life didn’t have to be that frickin’ hard. It was something Deacon sorely needed. “It’s going to be a lot harder to keep him from taking life so damned seriously without Jon here.”

“Yeah,” Amy said, and her smile was pure affection. “But you guys—you’ve got Shane and Jeff and everyone. And you’re going to have a
baby—
I know you think you know, but no one
ever
knows the difference that makes.”

Crick shrugged. “I’ve got a good picture,” he said, thinking of Amy with her hands full. “It’s gonna be a challenge.”

Amy nodded. “It is. And you know, we’ve got computers and stuff. We can Skype in the mornings, you can ask me stuff. It’s a little easier to keep up with each other than it was when you were in Iraq.”

Crick nodded. “Which is good. You’ve seen my parenting role models, right?”

Amy regarded him soberly. “Parrish Winters was a good man.”

Grimace. “Yeah, but he wasn’t there when I was as little as Jon-Jon.”

“No—but you’ve seen your sister and Deacon and Drew with Parry. You’ve got a good start, hon. But”—because he was obviously about to dump crazy insecurity on their gorgeous day—“I’ll be there. Your sister will be there. Deacon will
definitely
be there.”

Crick blinked and laughed a little. “Would you believe I forgot that last part?”

Surprisingly enough, she laughed. “Yeah—everybody does. You know, the first week after Jon was born, I was a mess. All hormones and I was finally off of bed rest, and I was just absolutely certain that I had to make up for being on my ass for months by being the world’s perfect mommy, you know?”

Crick shook his head. “I had no idea. No men were allowed in your inner sanctum until Jon-Jon was two months old.”

Amy clapped her hand over her mouth and scrambled to sit up, holding Jon-Jon’s head until she could rest him gently on the ground. “Right?
Right
? Because I was just that crazy! Anyway, one night I just lost it—Lila dumped potpourri on the ground and I had a
cow
,
became a hysterical shrieking crazy bitch, and Jon came home and Lila was crying and the baby was crying and dinner was burning on the stove. And it was like—like, sudden clarity. He turned off the stove, made me sit down and nurse Jon-Jon, and made mac and cheese and hot dogs for Lila. And then he fed me some, and I realized I hadn’t eaten
all day
, because I’d been trying to clean the bathroom with two kids in the house. So there I was, scarfing fat in a bowl over Jon-Jon’s head, and he was eating like a champ, and Jon was making Lila laugh, ’cause that’s what he does, and it hits me—”

“You needed a maid?”

Amy giggled. “Well, yeah. Being a lawyer has its perks, and Shane’s kids work for cheap. But more than that.”

“You needed help?” He wasn’t stupid.

“Yeah. And some people have to go it alone—that boggles me. Single mothers? They get all the respect in the world. Because you’ve got to admit, as hard as it’s going to be, you’re not going to be doing it alone.”

Crick looked out again at Deacon and Jon. “Deacon’s worried that I might have to someday,” he said shocking himself with the rawness of that. He looked up at Amy and saw she was sad—but unsurprised.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “We don’t have guarantees. But think about it this way. If the worst happens, would you rather be parenting alone, or would you rather just be alone?”

He grunted. She was fearless. She’d been fearless when she was in high school, dragging Deacon to dances or riding a horse out to Promise Rock to go skinny-dipping with Deacon. (Deacon thought Crick didn’t know about that. Crick let him keep his illusions.)

“Yeah,” he said. “It always sort of comes down to that.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Sort of a no-brainer.”

“Yup. And since you have proved you actually have a brain….” She raised her eyebrows impishly, and he rolled his eyes in response.

“It’s not like I was going to suddenly call a halt to the whole thing anyway,” he said with some injured dignity, and Amy laughed.

“I should hope
not.
” She stood up, brushing the sand off her shorts. “Now help me get all packed up. You and I can get the kids back to the hotel for a bath before dinner, and the boys can stay and bond.”

Crick nodded and had a sudden thought. “Oh, oh hell. What are we going to do with the damned dog when we’re all out eating?”

“Silly puppy.” Amy smacked his cheek lightly with a cool, dusty hand. “You and Deacon are going to stay at the hotel and have sex, and we’re going to bring you takeout!”

“I’m gonna make you somethin’
extra
special for Christmas!” he said playfully, and just that sudden, Amy was serious again.

“You’d damned well better. ’Cause I’m going to be missing the holy hell out of you people while we’re gone.”

There didn’t seem to be much more to say to that. Amy offered Crick a hand and he took it, relying on her tiny, vital body to heft him up. She didn’t let him down. He started packing stuff up, leaving the kids and their sun umbrella until the very end.

“Hey, Amy,” he said after a minute, and she looked at him over her shoulder as she put the last of the trash in a small bag and then tucked it into the ice chest to get rid of later. “How come we don’t know any tall women?”

Amy shook her head. “Like I would know the answer to that. Collin’s sisters—they’re all Amazons. Those moms on the soccer team—thereyago. Jesus, Crick, the things that come out of your mouth.”

Crick would explain it to Deacon later—after they’d gotten back and showered and the dog had passed out and Crick had given Deacon a first-class blow job on the hotel bed, rushing it only a little because he wanted to finish before dinner came knocking on the door of their room.

“Why don’t we know any big women?” Deacon asked, covering his eyes with one hand while trying to pull his boxers up around his hips with the other. Crick helped him out there—his lame hand wasn’t great with fine motor skills, but he had enough strength to slip it under Deacon’s scrawny ass and lift it up while Deacon pulled.

“Yeah.”

“We
do
know big women,” Deacon said, looking at him sort of laughing and helpless, once they got him dressed. “They’re just all big on the inside and tiny on the outside. How’s that?”

Crick shook his head and flopped on the mattress next to Deacon. He’d shot off in his shorts, because watching Deacon play in the sun on the shore had made him half-mast and aching for pretty much all day. “It’s weird. I’m sort of hoping Parry Angel is at least five foot seven. And if our kid’s a girl, maybe she’ll get to be, you know, closer to your height than Benny’s.”

Deacon’s hair had grown long enough to fall a little across his forehead. Crick liked it like that, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He pushed at it, though, so he could feel it against his palm, and Deacon took him seriously in a way that had always surprised Crick—but it had also made sure Crick could probably not love another human being the way he loved Deacon Winters.

“Why is this important?” he asked after a moment, and Crick wondered if he would ever get tired of looking into Deacon’s green eyes.

“Because babies are small,” he said after a moment. “Babies are small, and I’m big, and my hand is lame, and I’m hoping this baby will be big so I’m less afraid to hold it.”

“It’s not going to pop out toddler-sized,” Deacon said, but he wasn’t laughing when he said it. “It’s going to come out the size of a Chihuahua, and wrinkled and helpless. And yeah—we’re going to have to do some work on how you’ll manage when you’re alone. But you won’t be alone too much, Carrick, you know that. I work long hours, yeah, but Benny and I managed, and you and me—we can do the same.”

It was so very close to the reassurances Amy had given that he wanted to smile. His people knew him.

“Okay,” he murmured. “I’ll trust you.”

Deacon blinded him with a smile and then leaned forward to kiss Crick, and that was pretty damned awesome. It might even have gotten somewhere, but someone knocked on the door. After pulling on their sweats in a damned hurry, they opened the room to Jon and Drew with an armload of takeout for Deacon and Crick and plans to order a violent movie on cable while the girls had a slumber party in Jon and Amy’s room.

But the conversation, that stuck with Crick. It lasted through whale watching the next morning, which was pretty amazing for Crick but not so amazing for Deacon, who spent much of his time in the back of the boat, chumming the waters and assuring the little kids he was going to be just fine. Eventually Deacon put a clamper on his gag reflex, and when the gray whale dove under their ship to slap the water in front of them with his massive, massey tail, he was one of the first to run around the other side, Parry Angel in his arms, to watch the animal as it surfaced, the water sliding slick and shiny off of its soft hide.

That was a man, Crick thought, and although he’d known this his whole life, it came to him now in a big way that the things that made a man a good man, period, also went into making a good mate and a good father.

It wasn’t until much, much later, after the drive home when the exhausted dog (who had been allowed on the whale-watching boat but who had spent the entire time dozing in the cabin) had fallen asleep in the living room and he and Deacon were falling asleep in their own bed, that it occurred to him: Deacon’s plan for the weekend had been completely successful.

He’d call Benny the next day and confirm, but he was pretty sure neither one of them had thought of Step-Bob once the entire weekend.

Parrish Winters, yes. Jon and Drew, yes. Bob Coats, no.

For some reason that, of all things, reassured Crick more than anything else. His stepdad had been a shitty role model, that was for sure, but Crick had moved past that when he was nine years old.

It had just taken him twenty years to realize how far beyond it he really was.