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“Well, I hate it, hate you,” I tell him, but he knows I don’t. I think he knows, at least. He’s not any more foolish than me. He sees there’s no future between us. I’m not sure he would want one, and I don’t either. Can’t let myself. If his family has anything to say about it, Sully will end up with Aimee Daniels. Their families are close. When a Sullivan or a Daniels speaks, people listen—unlike my family. It would be a perfect match, one I’m sure will happen one day. I think Sully knows it too.
“Do you?” he asks, and I can’t tell if he’s being serious. Instead of replying, I suck him to the back of my throat.
I blow him, listening to Sully whisper my name, to the breathy sounds he makes, loving the feel of his hand in my hair. When his thighs begin to tremble, I know he’s close, know he’ll blow at any second, so I pull off.
“Asshole,” Sully chuckles, a small smile tilting up the right corner of his mouth.
“You say that like we both don’t know I’m an asshole.”
“Race you to the stream.”
“I’m not playin’ those silly games with you.”
He rolls his eyes and takes off running. I can’t keep my gaze off his tight ass when he goes, and damned if I don’t end up chasing after him. We’re careful of the rocks beneath our feet, or the jagged ones will easily slice you or turn your ankle.
Fucking Bishop Sullivan Jr.
We rinse off, which Sully uses as an excuse to play around with me, trying to dunk me and splash me, while I grumble and tell him to stop messin’ around and get his ass out of the water so I can fuck him and get back to work.
Eventually, he listens, and it’s me chasing him out of the water again, before I take the packet of lube out of my jeans pocket and take him hard and fast by a tree.
The second we’re done, he gives me a dopey smile, looking orgasm-drunk, and I turn away. This is always where I hate myself the most for wanting him. I don’t give a shit that I’m gay. Screw anyone who has a problem with it. But of all people, I’m fucking Bishop Sullivan?
My family doesn’t have shit, has never had shit because of his. Because his great-grandfather cheated my great-grandfather out of the land for this ranch.
Because of that, Bishop is set for life, and my dad drank and worked himself into an early grave with nothing to his name, and now my mom is employed by the Sullivans, and I’m…
I shove to my feet.
“Porter,” he says, but when I whip my head in his direction, he sighs and doesn’t say anything else. I tug my clothes on, frustrated with myself, with him, with the whole fucking world because I’m always angry at the world and nothing ever gets better.
“It’s different with us,” he says. “Different now. My great-grandpa didn’t?—”
“I’m out of here,” I cut him off. I already know what he’s gonna say: that it’s not what I think, that my great-grandpa was a hothead who bet his half of the money for the ranch, lost it, and got arrested, so his family had no choice but to move on without him. That’s not true, though—not according to my dad. They took his money and his ranch and left us with nothing.
Without another word, I climb on Ranger’s back and ride off.
Sully shows up back at the ranch about twenty minutes after I do. I finish my workday, get into my old truck, and drive away.
That same night, my mom has a heart attack, dies just like my dad did, older than her age, and with hardly anything to her name.
It’s the first time I’ve cried since my dad passed, the stupid fucking tears that don’t help a damn thing and only make me feel weak.
I spent the night at the hospital, unable to leave her. When I get back home the next morning, our house is too small, too empty, but I have nowhere else to be. No one else who gives a fuck about me. I sit there all day, knowing I should do something, but I don’t know what to do. I’m alone now, and while I’ve always felt alone and liked it that way, the weight of it presses too heavily on me today.
I don’t want to be alone.
I don’t want her to be dead.
When I climb back into my truck Saturday evening, I tell myself I just need to tell Sully what happened, that Mom is gone and won’t be at work on Monday, but deep down, in the place I try to ignore, I know that’s not the truth. I just want to talk to him, to be close to someone who makes me feel things I’m not supposed to feel.
We found a spot where I can park my truck so it stays hidden from the road. You have to pull down this old, abandoned driveway to find it, but if I follow a trail through the property, I can sneak in around the back of the Sullivan Ranch, toward Sully’s private entrance to the house he shares with his folks.
Just as I’m about to break through the trees, I hear a laugh—a female laugh. I let myself get as close as I can without being seen, hide behind a tree and look toward Sully’s place, to where he sits, the sun setting and a bonfire in front of him, in front of them.
In the chair beside him is Aimee.
She reaches over and sets a hand on his arm, the expression in her eyes too close to how I try not to make mine appear when I’m watching him.
