Page 16 of Down in Flames

“You could’ve gotten a scholarship.”

“I wasn’t smart enough for something like that. I missed so much school that I barely graduated. Besides, I love my hometown.”

“So do I,” Michael replied sternly, “but I’ve seen what else is out there. When I settled down in Sweetwater, I knew exactly what I was getting…and exactly what I was giving up. You never had that chance.”

He was still looking at West like Abby looked at a fascinating new insect specimen. Like he’d just discovered his existence, and he wasn’t about to stop poking until he got to the bottom of what made him tick. West’s ears began to ring, softly at first, but growing louder. Alarm bells. His pulse kicked into high speed.

“What’s your point?” he asked tersely.

That must have been the wrong response. Michael's face shut down, and he stood so abruptly that a wave of chlorinated froth caught West in the mouth. Water sluiced off his tense back as he climbed out of the tub, and the borrowed shorts clung wetly to every hard curve of his ass.

West had to force himself to look away. He stared down at the water, fingers digging convulsively into the meat of his thighs. His reflection rippled back at him, bruised and hollow-eyed, with his hair standing up on end like a thatch of hay. In the darkness, his skin looked pale and sickly, but he ignored it except to note that it made his face look even more like it had been shaped out of a lump of clay.

“I guess I don’t really have a point,” Michael said harshly, toweling himself off in an angry burst. “I just wanted to see if you’d finally admit what’s been going on with you lately.”

“You already know—”

“Yeah.” Michael interrupted, and something dark flashed in his eyes. “I know…and now I’m wondering how long you’re going to keep dicking me around before you tell me the truth.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“What…I don’t—it’s not—” West stammered, eyes darting everywhere except where they most wanted to be.

Michael stood there, all languid confidence despite only being covered by a scrap of wet fabric. But if there was ever a clear-cut sign that he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, that was it. He wouldn’t be standing there, looking like that—looking at West like that—if he understood even a fraction of West’s fixation. He'd be running so fast in the other direction, he'd leave behind nothing but a puff of smoke.

“What I want to know,” Michael continued, ignoring West’s verbal fumbling, “is why you felt like you had to hide it from me?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” West insisted—and really, the possibilities were endless.

He’d kept so many secrets for so long that taking a guess was like playing Russian roulette. He licked his lips, but terror had turned his tongue to a shriveled husk inside his mouth. His mind bounced like a panicked pinball in a broken machine, unable to form a coherent thought except: deny, deny, deny.

“So that’s how you want to keep playing it, huh?” Michael sounded calm, but West finally understood the harsh undercurrent that had been playing peek-a-boo in his voice since the night before. “You’re the kind of man who’d lend a stranger his last five bucks in gas money and then walk home, but you seriously want me to believe you took one look at the ashes of the Triple M and decided: Nah, he’s got this?”

“Hey now,” West protested, “I was there for you at the hospital.”

“My bad," he said sarcastically. "You waited until I got some crutches before suddenly developing a raging social life.”

“You’re out of line.” West figured he might have had more impact if his voice didn’t crack, but he was lucky he got anything out at all.

Guilt pressed on him like a physical weight, leaving him to wonder how easy it would be to just drown himself in this boiling chemical bath. But that would undo the work of dozens of people better and smarter than he was, and he couldn’t allow that, so he climbed stiffly from the tub instead.

Michael’s eyes burned as he tracked him. All at once, he didn't seem like the relaxed, friendly cowboy West had known for years. He looked huge and cold and fierce. Dangerous. West wondered if this was what he'd looked like back during his army days.

"You didn’t leave my side when I was stuck in that hospital bed,” Michael said in a low voice. “I wasn’t so out of it that I could forget something like that.”

“That wasn’t anything. You would have done the same for me,” West said, snatching up his towel and giving himself a hard buffing to disguise the way his hands were shaking. If his shoulder still hurt, he couldn’t feel it under the shot of adrenalin.

“Maybe. Maybe I would have, at that. But you know what I wouldn’t have done?” Michael asked, shifting forward and stepping up so close that his heat penetrated the rainy chill. He ducked close to West’s ear and enunciated the next two syllables with dangerous precision. “Run. Away.”

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in West’s chest, and all he could do was pray it sounded scornful instead of panicked. Stumbling back on trembling legs, he said, “My family’s been keeping me busy. You said it yourself.”

Something like pain tightened Michael’s expression, and he followed for each step West retreated, backing him toward the fence.

“What did I ever do that could make you so afraid of me?” he rasped.

Red-alert, West’s mind rattled, red-alert!

Even if Michael had somehow clued into the fact that he was gay, even if he'd picked up on the lust and longing that took hold of him every time they were in the same room together, there was no way he understood how deep it ran. And he never would. West was taking that shit to the grave. But he needed to put a stop to his digging, and he needed to do it now.

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