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“You are not taking that horse out in the dead of night. You want to kill yourself, fine. Go walk into the dark alone and on foot, but I’m not letting you take that horse out at night when you can’t see what’s underfoot. He’s too good of a horse to let an asshole like you lead him to harm.” I folded my arms over my chest and planted my feet. If he were going to go for his horse, he’d be going through me.
His shoulders stayed rigid, his jaw locked, but I saw the defeat settle into the pools of deep blue that were now about halfway visible.
“I hate you,” he snarled. I nodded. I knew that.
“I hate you too.” He shuffled in reverse, his shoulders kissing a thick wooden beam that ran floor to ceiling. “Talk to me, Shep. Tell me what the fuck is going on because I’m not sure about you, but I’m confused as fuck.” He licked at his lower lip. The one that had been healing before that kiss had busted it open. I wanted to clear that blood from his lip with my tongue again. “Are you gay?”
“Yes, I’m gay. Yes, Morgan found out. And yes, it was my brothers who did this to me. And yes, they threw me out into the snow like some unwanted kitten and told me they’d rather see me dead than a fag.” A tear slipped free. My heart broke for the man. Taking a step closer to him, my goal was just to embrace him, but he threw a hand up to stall me. “I do not want your sympathy, Abbott. I’ve had all I can take of those looks you give me when you think I’m not looking.”
“I really think your brothers need another ass whooping.” He rolled his swollen eyes. “Hey, I did it before. I can do it again.”
“Why would you beat up two men over a man you hate?”
That was a fair question and one that I didn’t want to deal with right now. So I lied. “Because now that you’re a rainbow brother, it’s my sworn duty as a bi guy to defend you from bashers.”
“I highly doubt that’s the reason. But thanks, I guess. I just…” He deflated a bit. “I just need some time to get myself sorted. I’m sure my name has been removed from every legal document that would give me any kind of claim to any part of the ranch. Clay has control of my trust fund until I turn thirty so that will be a legal battle that will draw out for years. I really just wanted a place to lick my wounds and so I came here. The cabin was supposed to be empty.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Well, yeah, I was kind of out here for work reasons.” He didn’t need to know about my lost at sea mindset of late. Funny how once Shep had appeared, I didn’t feel so confused about…everything. That was also to be filed away for later scrutiny. “Look, I’m sorry about kissing you. It is not kosher to force a kiss on anyone, even a snobby brat like you.”
“True.” The tension had left his face, making him wholly adorable, black eyes and all. Fuck. What was I doing here with this man? Someone who I would have run over with a car a month ago. Now I was calling him adorable while staring at his mouth as if it were a meal and I was a starving man.
“Let’s just go back where it’s warmer and talk. Have some soup. I promise I won’t rage kiss you again.” I held out my hand.
He studied it, then slid his palm over mine. Dundee shuffled around in his stall, nudging at the feed bag for more hay. We shook, gave the horse another bag of hay, and then slowly made our way back to the cabin. Nate was calling when we stepped inside. I threw Shep a look. He shook his head and placed a finger over his just been kissed lips. Lips that I would really like another taste of. The call signal squawked again, jarring me from the sultry fantasy. So I covered for Shepherd again, never mentioning to my foreman and best friend that I was housing a McCrary on Blue Ice land. Not that I was overly worried that Clay or Morgan were looking for their baby brother. The fuckers.
I’d run into them someday somewhere and I’d settle the score. Two men on one was unfair. Whipping your little brother because he was gay was despicable. Throwing him out penniless into a fucking blizzard was inhumane. But we were talking about Morgan McCrary here. The same guy who had forced himself on a Native maid several years ago and had walked away from that with a slap on the wrist and an out-of-court settlement to the young woman. I’d always assumed Clayton was just as bad as Morgan. Now I had my proof.
Shep settled into his chair as I talked with Nate. Things at the ranch were good, cold and snowy, but they were slowly getting everything plowed and were looking to come out to the Lone Vale in two weeks or so. I told him there was no hurry, everything here was fine. Which probably sounded odd to Nate, but he never said a word. Probably assumed I was deep into transcendental medication or yogic knee bends as I worked through my shit. Little did he know I was giving Shep time to heal mentally and physically, not that the mental healing would be complete in a month or less. The body recovered far more quickly than the mind.
Maybe you should tell Nate that you like kissing on the guy too?
I let that little internal nugget float off. Sue me. I was a red-blooded man in my prime and Shep was…well, beautiful. Yes, I had said it. A McCrary was beautiful. Sue. Me. I ended the call with Nate by saying I needed food, which wasn’t a lie. Shep got me a bowl of soup from the pot resting over a low flame. He removed the kettle from the fire with potholders as I stripped out of my wet clothing and lay it over the log pile and chairs to dry. The whole scene was insanely domestic. While I sipped my soup, I watched Shep moving around the small kitchen as he washed dishes and made a pot of coffee. His jeans fit him well, as did the flannel shirt he wore.
“You can wear anything of mine if you want,” I tossed out between slurps. He gave me a nod, then eased the coffee pot over the fire. I crumbled more crackers into my soup while he added some wood to the hearth and stood there, hand on the mantle, staring at some of my old whittlings. A fish and a bear. I’d planned on doing more to kill the time while I was out here but Shep showed up and threw everything into a tailspin.
Several quiet moments passed as I ate. The coffee pot began to perk. Shep sighed when I lifted the spoonful of soup to my lips.
“I knew when I was thirteen,” he whispered as the coffee burbled and the logs sizzled and spat like bacon.
“Knew what?” I asked, wiping my mouth on a paper towel. Only the finest here at Chez Lone Vale.
“That I was gay.” He stared at the bear I’d carved out of soft pine, taking a finger and tracing the bruin’s head and back. “Of course that was not something that I could tell my brothers. Not that I wanted to. I hated myself for being queer, for being one of the things they despised most in other men. That and being Native American, or Latino, or Black, or Jewish or…fuck, just pick something and they hated it. Women too. They’d learned that lesson well from my father. He had no use for women other than for one thing. No wonder my mother cheated on him. He was a vile human being.”
“That affair was what started the feud between your family and the Blue Ice,” I said as he took the coffee pot from the flames and carried it to the table. After he poured us both a cup of steaming fresh coffee, he placed the pot on a trivet to the right of our mugs.
“Yeah, it was. She took up with the man who owned Blue Ice before Reece bought it. Even though my mother ended up staying with my father, he never let her forget her infidelity. They’re all dead now, but the hate is very much alive.” He sat down across from me. “I fed into that hate. For years I went along with my brothers knowing deep down that it was wrong but feeling unable to speak out. I was ashamed of being gay, so I buried that shit deep. And it was easy when I was living here to pretend to be straight and dole out the vitriol. Then I went to college. That opened my eyes, let me tell you.”
“At that rundown Vassar campus,” I slid in just to add a smile to the moment. Shep grunted, his gaze lifting from his coffee to me. Christ he had pretty eyes. Soulful and sad.
“Yeah, at that slum known as Vassar.” That made me smile. He shook his head. “It was there at Vassar that I began to see that there are more ways to look at life. College opened my eyes to how I’d been raised…indoctrinated if you will. Yeah, that feels like a better word. Indoctrinated into a culture of hate for others. I actually dated a guy in my senior year. All totally on the sly. I’d never been happier and had these grandiose dreams of coming home with my new art degree and telling my brothers to—”
“Wait. Hold up.” I lifted my left hand. “You have an art degree?”
“I do. Why?”
“Like you paint pictures?” This was blowing my mind as the kids back in the sixties used to say. “With a brush and canvas. Like that kind of art?”
“No, I don’t paint. I’m a photographer.”
