Page 37 of Peacocks

Jay

A few hoursafter Lane fell asleep, I had to admit defeat. Sleep wasn’t coming for me. I had too much on my mind.

As much as I’d enjoyed every minute of my evening with Lane, and as relieved as I was to hear he wasn’t taking Chad’s job offer and moving away, I had to remind myself there hadn’t been any kind of declaration in his words or actions.

Lane had said he was happy in the Thicket, that he felt good and cared for when he was with me, and that he appreciated it so much he’d gone to the trouble of setting us up a nice lunch.

All that was great.

Really, genuinely great.

Not only did it make my chest squeeze that he’d gone to the trouble of showing me his appreciation—though Lane was always thoughtful that way—his decision to turn down the Georgia job meant we could keep doing what we’d been doing for the past couple of months: spending time together, casual and easy, for as long as he stayed in town.

That should have been enough, I knew. For a small-town guy like me, keeping someone who shined as bright as Lane Desmond in my life inanycapacity should have been enough. It’d be greedy to ask for more. Butdamn, when I was holdingLane in my arms and watching him sleep, fresh from feeling him come undone on my cock, I felt all kinds of greedy.

I wanted more with Lane.

If I was being really honest, I wanted… everything.

I wanted commitment and love and Entwinin’.

I wanted a wedding at the town event barn and for us to raise the next generation of Licking Thicket Bovine wide receivers (or cute little mathletes, or animal lovers, or artists, I didn’t care) together.

I wanted us to watch Disco Dave’s great-grandfowl strutting around our yard.

I wanted forever.

But it wasn’t up to me.

I carefully disentangled myself from Lane’s bed and stood, watching with a grin as he rolled into my warm spot—as per usual—and burrowed under his blankets.

Tomorrow was the Entwinin’, and I had a metric shit-ton of stuff still to do, so I snuck out quietly and made my way down to my workshop. There were a few things I wanted to add to the wreath I’d made Lane, and I needed to get it done before finishing up the other projects on my workbench.

The encounter with Chad and then my conversation with Lane afterward rolled through my head as I took a seat on my stool. Now that my anger and hurt feelings were mostly soothed—and, okay, now that I’d come my brains out and held Lane tight for a while—I could finally think clearly.

The wisteria vines bit into my palms as I twisted them tighter, forming new additions to Lane’s wreath.

Lane had said he was happy here, and if he’d said it, he meant it. The man I loved was no liar. I knew he enjoyed working with Alva and Pete, he enjoyed getting to work with animals rather than just teaching about them, and he enjoyed getting to knowhis “patients” and their owners. After last night, I knew he had feelings for me. I knew he cared about me.

But that wasn’t the same as wanting to be together for the long haul. And from all the reminiscing Chad had done, it was clear Lane had been happy in his last life too… until he hadn’t.

If there was one thing Chad’s visit had made me realize on a gut-deep level, it was that Lane’s world was much bigger than mine. Now that I knew what kind of situation he’d given up to move here, I couldn’t help wondering how likely it was that someone as smart and talented as Lane would stay in Tennessee permanently, giving Mrs. Moore’s Persian cat yet another claw trim (“because Doc Lane has a real talent for soothing my Susannah’s delicate feline nerves”) and spending time with a man who genuinely enjoyed working at a car wash, when he could find himself a high-paying job in a bigger town and a man he’d be proud to have on his arm.

I truly didn’t know.

I wasn’t without hope—there were plenty of couples in Licking Thicket, including Dunn and Tucker, and my own cousin Charlie and his Hunter, where someone had moved in from a big city and decided to stick around—but the odds seemed low. I was a lucky man, but I didn’t know if a person could get quite that lucky.

And that was… well, I couldn’t make myself say it was okay, even in my own mind, because it wasn’t.

Losing Lane would hurt worse than when I’d been team captain and the Bovines had lost the football championship in double overtime during the last game of my senior year. Worse than the time I’d managed to have the stomach flu and the regular flu and a sprained rib, all at once. Worse than anything I’d ever felt.

But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t love him while I had him. I’d never understood the sense of cutting yourself off from caringabout other people just because they might eventually leave—that would be like never eating ice cream because you might someday be lactose intolerant or never learning to walk because you might end up with gout like old Herman Wanamaker.

In fact, the opposite was true. I wanted to love Lane as hard as I could for as long as I could. I wanted to love him like it was my full-time job. I wanted that man to be so loved up his whole body glowed like a neon sign. I wanted to hold up a mirror and show Lane his own worth until joy burst out of his stomach like that creature in theAlienmovies and?—

Shit.

I blinked down at the wreath in my hand, finding I’d managed to twist a vine into a tiny feral alien just waiting for Sigourney Weaver to come along.

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