Page 34 of Wistful in Wyoming
He took a tentative step closer, water streaming off the brim of his hat. “Dale, I’m so sorry. He caught me off guard, and I-I didn’t know what to say. No one ... no one has ever called me a faggot before. I ... God, it hurt. But I’d go back and take that hurt a hundred times over if it meant not doing this to you, to us.” Hanging his head, he swallowed the burn of tears. “Dale, please.”
“Jeremiah, no. I can’t. Ican’t! My heart can’t take this again!” His voice cracking and his eyes swimming with tears almost had Jeremiah falling to his knees. “I’m sorry you were spoken to that way, but it’s a part of being out. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s humiliating. But I refuse to let anyone tell me who I have to love, and if it doesn’t conform to their ideals and twisted morals, have them tell me I have to hide who I really am because it offends them. Fuck that. No one writes my life, my happy ending, but me!” He hitched a thumb toward his own chest.
“Does shit like that happen? Yeah, absolutely, but I need to have confidence that when it does, you can handle it. It’s not even so much that you denied being gay. I wouldn’t want anyone to be forced to come out because some vulgar asshole announced it to the world like it was something disgusting and depraved. Your verbal reaction I can understand—you were caught off guard. But it was that you looked and sounded soashamed! Ashamed of me! Ashamed of what we have together! Loving me isnotwrong! I’m not something to be ashamed of! And neither are you!” He swallowed hard. “One day, I hope you can accept that, but I’m not waiting around anymore to find out.”
The door slamming, then locking, were the only sounds Jeremiah could hear before tears began to race down his cheeks, mingling with raindrops, and a sob lodged itself in his throat. Gasping, he turned away, dragging his feet back to his truck with his head down. He felt like he’d just been shot in the chest, his heart fracturing from the trauma. Only that would’ve been less painful.
Dale’s right ... I don’t deserve him.
Gulping for air, fighting back screams of agony, Jeremiah climbed into his truck, his drenched clothes making it difficult. The rain hammering on the roof did little to drown out his thoughts of self-recrimination. He didn’t look back at the RV. Dale had made things more than clear—Jeremiah had royally fucked up and there was nothing left for him here.
Slamming the driver’s door shut, he threw the truck into gear and made the drive back to his ranch in total silence, aside from his own choked sobs of pain and gasps of regret he tried to stifle. He was parking in his usual spot before he knew it, realizing he’d made the short drive home totally on auto-pilot. As he trod toward the house, it was all he could do to keep himself at a walk and not run for his room like a teenage girl after her first break-up. The storm raging outside matched how he felt within—volatile and chaotic.
Anthony stood at the door of the barn, calling out and waving to get his attention, but Jeremiah ignored him. He had to get inside, needing privacy before he broke down for all to see. His soul was screaming as pressure built in his chest, and if he didn’t release some of it, he’d explode. Flinging the front door shut, he ran up the stairs, two at a time, leaving small, muddy puddles in his wake as he hurried to the sanctuary of his bedroom. Jenna was nowhere to be seen, a fact for which he was grateful.
He shut his bedroom door, locking it behind him. He stripped his wet things off—clothes, boots, and hat—everything landing on the floor in a sopping pile. He ached, bone deep—regret, embarrassment, unrelenting rage, all battling within him for release.
Entering the en suite bath, he avoided looking at himself in the mirror, turned on the shower, and stepped under the spray without letting the water warm up. The extra-large stall was easily big enough for two people, and he’d been fantasizing for weeks about having Dale in there with him. Now that dream didn’t seem like it would ever happen.
It’s over ...
Quaking under the cold spray, he fell to his knees, collapsing under the weight of his emotions. The valve he’d held tightly shut since he’d arrived back at the ranch, capping his sobs, let go. Screaming, he smacked his hands against the tile floor of his shower over and over, until his palms were stinging and sore. Tears mixed with the water running down his face. Pulling at his hair, he bowed over his knees, putting his forehead to the floor, and weeping his heart out. A piece of himself had been ripped out today, and the empty place left behind was a throbbing, bleeding wound. A Dale-sized chunk of his heart was gone.
Until that moment, he hadn’t known he’d fallen in love with Dale. No longer in progress—it was a done deal and irreversible. It was a kind of soul-deep love they wrote songs and poetry about. The type that was etched in the stars and existed through time itself. And he’d fucked it up. Maybe beyond repair. He didn’t know.
Curling into a ball, he stayed that way, sobs racking his body until his arms and legs shook uncontrollably under the water pelting him. The temperature had warmed up, but it couldn’t penetrate his skin to his frozen soul. He stayed there until completely drained.
Finally climbing out of the shower, he didn’t even bother drying off, shuffling, zombie-like, to his bed where he buried himself under the comforter, face first, naked, shivering, and completely lost.
Chapter Eighteen
Jeremiah awakenedthe next morning with a pounding headache, and his eyes feeling like he’d crossed a desert in the middle of a sandstorm without protection.Crying yourself to sleep will do that to you, jackass.
Groaning, he rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed. Feet flat on the floor, he set his elbows on his knees and his aching head in his hands. Based on the feel, his hair was sticking up all over the damn place, as if he’d put his finger in a live socket.Going to bed with wet hair will do that to you too, jackass.
His words of denial from yesterday slammed into him, a freight train of regret barreling down the tracks of his mind, derailing, and exploding in a fireball. He’d won the championship medal for fuck-ups of the decade.
“Crap.” Clearing his dry, scratchy throat, he glanced at the clock. It was almost nine a.m., hours past when he was normally up, in the barn, and well into the workday. He didn’t take sick days, ever—the only exception was when he’d had a stomach flu a few years ago and was afraid to pass it onto his employees. Well, that and the fact he hadn’t been able to stay out of the bathroom and stop kissing the porcelain god. Those had been the worst two days of his life—until now.
He was honestly surprised Anthony hadn’t shown up at his door yet, checking to make sure he was okay. Even Jenna was MIA.
Staggering to the bathroom, he caught sight of his naked self in the mirror and winced. There were dark, baggy circles under his bloodshot eyes, his hair was, as suspected, all over the place, and his already pale skin had a morbid gray tint to it. In effect, he looked like death warmed over. A whiff of the odor coming from his pits made him amend that, he looked andsmelledlike death warmed over. The cold shower last night hadn’t included soap, just tears and heartache, and most of the water had merely struck his back before rolling to the tiled floor and down the drain.
Flipping on the shower, to hot this time, he stepped in and washed quickly, but didn’t bother to shave the stubble from his face. His motivation only went so far today. After drying off, he brushed his teeth and dressed in an old pair of jeans and ratty, black T-shirt he hadn’t worn in ages—it fit his mood though.
The smell of coffee hit him full in the face as he descended the stairs, but the sight that greeted him in the kitchen had him stopping in his tracks.
Jenna and Willow were seated at the breakfast table together, coffee mugs clutched in their hands. In near unison, they turned their heads and glared at him as if he’d kicked a dog in their presence. It creeped him out and made his balls shrivel. While they looked nothing alike, he got some serious Shining-twinsvibes from them. Nothing good was about to happen.
While he should’ve been man enough to stand up for himself and Dale yesterday, he knew better than to argue with these two women. It was best if he followed orders and took whatever they were about to dole out. And he was certain they were about to lay into him.
“Jeremiah, sit.” Willow pointed at the empty seat, and yup, that was her don’t-fuck-with-me voice.
He sat, laced his fingers together, and then released them. Fiddled with a coffee spoon resting on a napkin. Glanced at both women and subsequently away.
“Stop fidgeting. Consider this your intervention,” Jenna said, her tone just as stern as Willow’s and brooking no argument from him.
Sighing, he leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Can I at least have coffee first?”
