Page 10 of Running Scared
Bailey let out a groan.“Dean, I can’t do this in the shower.I can’t do it on the way to work.And if you’re not going to be here when I get back, I don’t know why I should bother at all.Icareabout you, but I am obviously the last thing on your priority list—”
“That’s not true!”Dean protested, his dismay morphing into panic.“I had to bring my plants to the office in Sacramento because they would die because I spent so much time in Austin.Imissmy plants.My brother Reg was going to help me pick out a kitten, and I had to put that off, and his feelings were hurt, but I am spending all my time in Austin, and it wouldn’t be fair to the kitten.Youareon my priority list!”
He stood there, naked and dripping—he hadn’t soaped up at all—and Bailey finished soaping his pits and then handed the bag to him, along with the washcloth.
“I didn’t know that,” he said softly.
“I didn’t know you needed to,” Dean said, hoping this could be the end of it.
“I did,” Bailey said with a sigh.
Dean couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe—just maybe—he could make a move now.He got close enough to wrap his arms around Bailey’s shoulders and pull him back against Dean’s chest.“Are there other things you need to know?”he asked, thinking that a list might be nice.He and Marcus lived off lists when they worked together.
“So many things,” Bailey said with a little laugh.“But right now… for once, I don’t want to talk.This is nice.”
Dean let out a sigh, enjoying Bailey’s body again, some of his morning reforming around him with the peace he desperately needed.
“I’m glad,” he said.“I don’t want to talk about the kitten.It makes me sad.”He hated to admit it, but hemissedhis family.Every last interfering one of them had a solid, immutable piece of his heart.
“How many brothers do you have?”Bailey asked.“Just the two?”
It occurred to Dean thatthismight be the kind of information Bailey had been talking about when he insisted they communicate.
“Five,” he said shortly.“And one sister.”
Bailey stiffened in his arms.“Five?”
“Why isthatfreaking you out?”Dean asked, truly at a loss.
Bailey snorted and went back to letting Dean soap him up.“That’s a big family, Dean.You didn’t mention them.”
“Did you think all the time I spend on my phone is for work?Marcus has his own family to bother.”
“Marcus isn’t your brother?”
Dean blinked, and it occurred to him that if Bailey didn’t knowthisat least, he may perhaps have kept his life too much to himself.
“Marcus is mypartner,” he said.“With the Bureau.His last name is Cabrillo.We work cases together.”
Bailey was quiet for a long moment.“I can’t figure out if that’s better or worse,” he muttered.“How is it I didn’t know that?”Then he straightened up and glared at Dean.“Oh yeah.Because you didn’ttellme that!”
With that he stepped carefully out of the shower and out of Dean’s arms and began to towel off while Dean soaped his hair.
“It’s not my fault you didn’t ask,” he said, mostly to himself.
The ripping back of the shower curtain came as a surprise.“I’m sorry?”
“You didn’t ask,” Dean told him crossly, closing his eyes so he could rinse his hair.He finished, shook his head, and stepped out, then reached around Bailey’s angry body to grab the last dry towel.
“I didn’t… I didn’t….”
“I asked,” Dean said.“You were very forthcoming.You told me about your father, how your mother passed when you were in high school, how hard medical school was, how much debt you still have.”He smiled a little, wistfully.“How much you love your cat, and how you leave the television on sometimes or have the neighbor boy come in and make sure he’s okay and feed him when you’re working doubles.How your dad calls and talks to him, and you know that because your recorder tapes him singing.I told Val about your dad singing Gordon Lightfoot to the cat—he said that was encouraging.”
“You told your brother about me?”There was something desperately hopeful then about Bailey’s voice.
“Yes,” Dean said.
“Anybody else?”
