Page 13 of Down in Flames

He swallowed hard.

Michael cleared his throat and said, “It’s just that I never realized how you’d become such an important part of my life until you stopped showing up. You were always there, dropping off supplies or bucking hay or chasing frogs with Abby, and then suddenly…you weren’t. I nearly lost my ranch in that fire, but the day I stepped out of the hospital, I realized I’d lost more than that.”

“Shit. Michael—”

He held one hand, palm up, to forestall whatever West was about to say, and West shut his mouth with a snap. Probably for the best, because he had no clue what he could have said that wouldn’t make him sound like a selfish asshole.

“I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty,” Michael said. “You’re a grown man with a life of your own, and I respect that. I’m just trying to explain where my head was at when I said those things. I’m older than you by more than a decade. Sometimes it seems like I’m older by a lifetime. You were just a scrawny kid when I first moved to Sweetwater, and I guess it was easy to keep on seeing you that way forever. But the fact is, I’ve grown to trust you more than just about anyone. That’s why it hurt so bad to realize how much you’ve been keeping from me.”

West groaned and buried his face in his hands. What was that sound? Oh, right. His inner voice, sneering. Where’s all that righteous anger now, tough guy?

Seconds trickled by, one agony at a time, punctuated only by lively trills of calliope music and the shrieks of people joyfully living their lives. The clouds finally opened up, and a cool, fat raindrop struck the back of his neck. It was mild autumn rain, refreshing in the warm smog of the carnival.

“West.” Something in his voice pricked goosebumps down West’s spine, but he still couldn’t meet the other man’s eyes. How could he expect to be treated like an equal when he’d been running and hiding like a kid with a dirty secret?

But he did have secrets, and bronc-busting wasn’t the worst of them.

“Look at me, West.”

Christ, but that voice could turn a preacher to sin. Deep and compelling, expecting to be obeyed. Maybe some men had the strength to resist a voice like that, but he wasn’t one of them.

Michael caught and held his gaze easily, and the speculation in his eyes made West’s stomach roil. “Are you sure you don’t have anything else you want to tell me?” he asked.

I love you.

It was so loud in West’s head that he was shocked no one else could hear it.

I’m so in love with you that just looking at you hurts.

He didn’t want to lose this friendship. It was the truest thing he’d ever known, special in a way that even the lies and fear he’d pumped into it couldn’t destroy.

He swallowed thickly, and as the rain began to fall in earnest, he managed to squeeze one word out of his tight throat. “Nothing.”

Michael’s jaw tensed, and he gave a jerky nod.

“So be it,” he said grimly.

CHAPTER SIX

The crowd thinned once the rain turned into a steady drizzle, and they had a fight on their hands to hopscotch their way through the clumps of bedraggled families heading for the parking lot.

By the time they got back to the motel, they were soaked to the bone. It wasn't particularly cold, but the rapid change in air pressure had done a number on West's pain, and even Michael was limping.

“Your leg is still bothering you, isn't it?” he asked as they took a shortcut through a wilted pansy border.

“Now and then,” Michael admitted, choosing his footing with more care than West, “but part of that is just getting old. I've gotten knocked around so much over the years that pretty soon I'm going to know when a storm's brewing just by how much my bones hurt.”

“Forty-five is hardly ancient,” West argued.

“Talk to me in another decade.” Michael laughed, but there was something brittle in the sound. He scanned West, observing the stiffness in his posture, and said, “At the rate you're going, you might even end up worse than me. Do you need another painkiller?”

“Naw.”

All he really wanted was to get off his feet. A domino effect had taken hold of his body, beginning at his shoulder, where all his pain coalesced into diamond razors and then cascaded down his back in concentric rings of agony that ended at his pelvis. He was lucky the mare had fallen in a way that dispersed her weight across so much area. If she'd struck him just right, she might have crushed his pelvis—or worse.

He thought of Mary Whittaker, and the way one wrong fall was all it had taken to rip her away from her husband and baby girl. He hadn't known her well. Back then, Michael was a married man with a young family, and West was just some pimply kid down at the feed store. But even though he'd known he was gay since before puberty, he understood the thrall Mary held over the town. She just had a glow about her; one that had nothing to do with her sunny tan and flaming red hair, and everything to do with her zest for life. Standing next to her, everyone else seemed hollow and flat by comparison, like paper cut-outs instead of real people.

Not that Mary was perfect. Far from it. She'd had a mouth that wouldn't quit, and she seemed to enjoy kicking the hornet's nest of the Sweetwater gossip network. For months, the town couldn't stop whispering about her deliveries from an online sex shop. Not when the name of the company was right on the label and the postwoman, Dolores, happened to also be the leader of the Ladies in Prayer group that met every Thursday evening.

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