Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (18 page)

Jeff bit his lip and the shyness returned, and he looked at Collin from the corner of his eyes. “Thank you, Collin. You're a good… God, you're such a good man.”

Collin's eyes widened, almost in horror. “Oh shit! I'm the nice guy? You're going to give me the nice guy speech? Dammit—I just helped Crick with dinner, and you're going to give me the blow off—”

Jeff started to laugh—it wasn't bitter or condescending or ironic, it was just laughter. “Cool your jets, Sparky. Sometimes, being a good guy really is hot, you know? It was a compliment, one that had „and you've got a great chest!' tagged at the end.”

Collin's smile was blinding, and Jeff felt the casserole wobble in his arms. Or maybe it was his heart. “I do, don't I? My chest is pretty awesome, right?”

Jeff laughed some more. “You've got the pecs of a god, Sparky. Now get out of my way, I'm going to go wow Crick with my cooking abilities, okay?”

Something darkened on Collin's face, and Jeff couldn't have even guessed what. It didn't matter. Collin stepped back—Jeff missed the heat from his arm immediately—and gestured Jeff from the living room to the kitchen with a courtier's grace. Jeff couldn't stop the rather goofy grin that took over his face, although he tried valiantly before he got into the kitchen.

Crick wasn't fooled for a minute. The expression on his face as he took the casserole from Jeff bordered on… relief?
“Have a nice conversation, Jeffy?”
“Shut up,” Jeff muttered, setting the casserole on the counter. “So, you're cooking—to what do we owe the honor?”
Crick was actually their best cook, next to his sister, but Benny wasn't there. Crick had been spending more and more time outside, helping Deacon, and the cooking had fallen to the less competent when there had been family there. Once—shudder—the cooking had even fallen to Shane. Jeff remembered that moment. He'd been the one to spring for pizza when the pile of blackened quesadillas had toppled over onto the kitchen table and Deacon had broken into a surprising fit of the giggles. Crick, Jeff, Mikhail, and Andrew had skipped the giggles and gone right into squalls of laughter, and they might have just stayed there,
literally
laughing their asses off, except Parry Angel had complained piteously about being hungry.

Speaking of which….
“Where is everybody?” Jeff asked curiously.
“They're all out in the barn. We got a new yearling to break, and

she's something of a showstopper. Jon and Amy took the girls out to see her, and Kimmy and Lucas went with them. Shane and Mickey aren't here yet… wait….” Crick looked up and Jeff with him, and watched Shane's monster GTO (also a big-dick car, if Jeff thought about it, but since all the engine parts were on the inside and it was painted black instead of candy-apple-red with white pinstripes, it had never occurred to him) came rumbling up the drive.

Jeff leaned forward and peered out the window. “How much do you want to bet that little bitch got laid while we were waiting for him?”
Crick chuckled. “They could have been tending the animals,” he said mildly. “I won't know until I see them come in together.”
Jeff looked at him sideways. “You can tell when they walk in?”

“Mikhail's all soft and dreamy after he's gotten some,” Crick said, grinning. “He's like a talking star thistle, most of the time, but after he and Shane have been together, he's practically Miss Congeniality.”

Jeff laughed, loving Crick very much in that moment. “Well, we can't have that,” he preened. “We all know I'm the prettiest one.”
Crick rolled his eyes and shook his head negative. “
Deacon's
the prettiest one—he just won't get on stage.” And then Crick's face took on a shuttered look, and Jeff actually connected a couple of dots that were
not
connected to himself.

“Wait a minute. What's going on? Collin looked like he'd swallowed a bug and didn't want to share too!”

Crick's face was narrow and pretty, with big, expressive brown eyes that were
not
meant for keeping secrets. How he'd managed two years in the army had always amazed Jeff—it had been a major miracle, sort of like Crick surviving his injuries at the end of the tour. Whatever was contorting his mouth right now was painful and frightening and, most terrifying of all,
hidden.
Crick was keeping something
hidden
from him.
Crick
, who had spilled pretty much every secret he'd ever had, including how he'd lost his virginity, in half an hour of physical therapy when they'd first met, was keeping a
secret
from his best friend.

Jeff's first thought was hurt. And then he remembered—and God knew, it was tough for a guy who'd been living alone with his cats for five years—that maybe the world didn't always revolve around the problems belonging to Jeff.

“Crick, what's wrong?”

Crick swallowed. “Look, we're going to tell everyone after dinner, okay? And if I tell you first, the whole world's going to get their panties in a wad, and….” Crick shook his head. “Look, just remember, when we tell the family, that I've had this on my chest for a month, okay? And

Deacon made me promise not to talk about it until we knew details, and it's been hard, and maybe you'll be pissed, but I'm going to need a friend who's not my irritating, know-it-all little sister, okay?”

Jeff nodded. He wanted to kick something. Dammit, he'd been so close to equilibrium, so close to feeling like the world might someday be safe again.

“Crick?”

Crick waved his hands and looked away, and Jeff… well, Jeff was the last person to hammer through a friend's bubble of safe emotions, wasn't he?

At that moment, Shane and Mikhail came walking in, and Crick looked up at them, almost in desperation. Shane was taking off Mikhail's coat to throw on the coat rack by the door, and Mikhail, several inches shorter than his “big stupid cop,” looked sideways up at Shane, his expression unguarded and absolutely adoring.

Crick gave a little sniff, trying to get himself together, and said, “I'm not taking that bet—they've probably been fucking like monkeys for the last three hours.”

Jeff laughed and bumped shoulders with his very best friend. “Hell, Kimmy was at Promise House since early this morning—I'm betting it was all day.”

Crick nodded in absolute agreement and then called out, stopping Shane from taking his own jacket off. “Shane, could you go out and tell everyone to wash up? We're about good to go here!”

Mikhail walked toward them carrying two pies, one chocolate and one banana cream, that he'd reclaimed after Shane had taken his coat.
“So,” Jeff said sweetly, “we're taking bets. How long were you two in bed? Three hours, or all day?”
“Fuck you, and wouldn't you like to know,” Mikhail retorted without slowing down as he blew past them both to put the pies on the counter.
“Three hours,” Crick said matter-of-factly. “They had to take time out for Mikhail to cook.”
“All day,” Mikhail snapped back. His pretty little face was insufferably smug. “I made the pies last night. So, what have you cooked in order to make my dessert look good?”
They were having broiled chicken breast with some sort of low-fat sauce, a broccoli vegetable dish that Jon and Amy had brought over, Kimmy's winter-fruit salad, French bread (brought by Collin), and, of course, Jeff's chicken casserole to fill in the blank spots. Jeff wasn't sure how it worked out—whether people just stopped by for dinner, or if it was family Sunday—but somehow, they always had a good spread. It was just The Pulpit, maybe—everyone wanted to make it good, and so it was.
Collin sat on Jeff's left at the big, battered, wooden kitchen table, and Martin sat on his right. Collin had talked engines with Shane, cats with Mikhail, smartass with Crick and Jon, and babies with Amy. He seemed to regard Deacon attentively, and generally, he fit right in.
Jeff kept trying to remind himself that he was now guardian to a kid who didn't like gay people and he had to watch himself, but he watched Martin, still regarding Deacon with some sort of awe, and hope kept growing in his belly like the proverbial watermelon plant. Oh Jesus… he had to rip that thing out by the roots, or it would leave a hole somewhere in his body where the bad things could get in!
“Jeff”—Crick leaned over his shoulder on the way to fetch more milk from the fridge—“why's Martin looking at Deacon like that?”
Jeff took a better look at Martin—he'd been listening to Collin talk about putting an engine together. Jeff had no idea what the boy was saying, but he kept using his big, battered hands to talk, and it was doing all sorts of fun shit to Jeff's libido—and tried not to laugh. Martin wasn't just looking at Deacon in awe; he was looking at the guy like he was a particularly strangely shaped puzzle piece, and Martin needed to know where to put him.
“Don't worry about him, sweetie. He's just trying to make the gay fit, that's all.”
Crick snorted. “Good luck!” he muttered, before going off to get that milk, and Jeff leaned over to talk to the confused adolescent next to him.
“He's the same guy, you know.”

Martin looked at him and rolled his eyes, but the gesture was lacking the usual sarcasm. It was more like a superior look of affection. “Yeah, yeah, I'm figuring that out. Give me some space, fairy-Jefffather, I'm doing my best.”

Jeff grinned. “Did you just call me…?”

“Yeah, yeah… tomorrow I'll call you something shitty and mean. There's women present today.” And then he smiled at Lila Lisa, the little fair-haired angel sitting in the tot seat next to him, and batted his eyelashes. “Aren't you a little lady, oh yes you are!”

The little girl squealed happily and reached out goopy hands, and Andrew warned across the table, “Watch out, Martin, she's going right for the—”

“Ewwwww! Ick!”
“Yeah, the nappy hair. Sorry about that, my man.”
Martin laughed and stood up, obviously on his way to go wash

baby-goo out of his neatly buzzed and crimped 'do. (Jeff had taken him to get new designs carved into his tight black curls, and God forbid that expenditure in cash should be obscured by chicken casserole!) That was when Deacon cleared his throat meaningfully, and Jeff was programmed enough to the family dinner table to wrench his attention from his own thoughts to family patriarch.

And then Crick looked at Collin, and Collin squeezed Jeff's shoulder. “You'll have to tell me why I'm getting sent to the kiddie table,” he murmured. It was the most intimate thing they'd shared since dinner started, and it pretty much soured the dinner in Jeff's stomach.

Sure enough, Collin stood up and said, “Martin, you want to get that one, and I'll get the troublemaker over there by Deacon?” He made eyes at Parry Angel, who squealed “Colly!” and waved back. “Let's go get them washed up and we can eat dessert in the front room, okay?”

Martin nodded and asked Amy permission and picked up the little girl like he had long ease picking up younger cousins and such, and Jeff's throat ached. God. God. How had he lived without this for all those years? How could Martin's family ask him to live without it now?

And then the children were gone, and Collin was herding them into the living room with the promise of banana cream pie, and the rest of the family was left, looking at Deacon.

Jon, Deacon's best friend since grade school, was sitting on Deacon's left. He was a beautiful man, golden hair, tanned skin, the face of an angel, if angels modeled underwear for Calvin Klein. He was also terribly in love with his Amy, who took Martin's seat to be closer to Jeff now that they had lost three people on their side of the table.

“What's up, Deacon? Does this have anything to do with the running?”
“What about the running?” Crick asked, his voice sharp.
“He's been going easy on us,” Shane said with a shrug. “Five miles maximum, five days a week instead of seven—it's like a trip to the Bahamas, as far as Deacon's concerned!”
Crick relaxed, but it was Deacon who answered.
“Yeah. Yeah. Guys, look—I told Crick I'd say this, because I made him keep it to himself for the past month or so, and we all know how good he is at keeping a secret, right?” Crick usually sat at the other end of the table from Deacon when there was family dinner, and now, he stood up and moved to Deacon's end, pulling Parry Angel's high chair out of the way and stealing Amy's vacant seat.
He sat down heavily, not like a man who was not quite twenty-six, and took Deacon's hand with an uncharacteristic quiet. “I'll help,” he said softly, and Deacon's hand tightened obviously over Crick's scarred one, and the table fell so very silent, they could hear the little girls playing in the next room.
“About six weeks ago, I fell off my horse,” Deacon said into the silence. His cheeks were red, and it wasn't a… healthy color. His cheeks were red and his lips were pale, and Jeff's watermelon plant died a sickly, acid-eaten death in an instant.

“You fell off your horse?” Jon said neutrally, and Jeff could almost sense the coiling spring in Deacon's best friend.
“I did.” Deacon smiled faintly. “And it was so uncharacteristic of me that Crick made me go to the doctor. And the doctor said my heart wasn't working right, and we did some tests, and then we did some more tests, and then it got harder and harder to walk across the yard, and then they told me I had to cut back on the running but that I needed to keep doing it, and then….”
He stopped and shrugged, and Crick said, “Then they stopped giving him tests and got to the point.”
“Thank God for that!” Deacon joked weakly. He was left with a hurt and angry silence.
“So what is the point, Deacon?” Jon asked, and Deacon did an unexpected thing and reached out and clasped his hand too. Underneath the table, Jeff felt Amy's hand digging into his thigh, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder tightly, because, God! This was not what he had expected.
“The point is, I've got some sort of thing… my heart is scarred. Apparently I've been having mini-attacks for quite some time, and my heart—”
“Being as stubborn as the rest of him,” Crick muttered.
“Well, yeah, anyway, it started re-forging new paths over the scar tissue that has built up because the original problem wasn't fixed, and now there needs to be surgery. They need to run a wire up inside my… that artery in my thigh… what is that again, Jeff?”
“The femoral artery,” Jeff said blankly.
“Yeah, that. They need to run it up inside my thigh and to my heart, and then doodle about for a while, carve off the scar tissue, re-forge some new pathways, and then put in a pacemaker for good measure. The surgery will take a few hours, but it's not too invasive, so the recovery is going to be about ten days to two weeks. We were going to do it right after Benny's finals, so she can make sure our favorite angel has a good Christmas, and that way, none of the clients will be too put out because I won't be there for riding lessons or to break or anything like that. It's not—”
“If you say „not a big deal', I'm going to fucking kill you, asshole!” Jon said tightly from Deacon's side, and Jeff looked at their clasped hands and realized that Jon was practically breaking Deacon's fingers in his own. “How could you not tell us!”