Font Size
Line Height

Page 10 of Captivated (Salvation #3)

Chapter Nine

Zeeb couldn’t keep his attention focused on his Kindle: Watching Nate was far more interesting than his latest e-book.

Nate stood in front of the easel, capturing the view with a few strokes of his pencil. Then he began to add more detail, and Zeeb couldn’t tear his gaze away from the image unfolding on the large sketching pad.

Damn, he’s good.

“You could do this for a living.”

Nate stiffened, and Zeeb kicked himself for destroying the silence. Nate obviously didn’t want to talk. More than that, with a pencil in his hand, Nate was a different person, calm and confident.

Then his shoulders relaxed. “I do. I’m a freelance illustrator.”

“I’ll bet you get tons of work.”

Nate lowered his pencil and turned to face Zeeb. “Not really.”

Zeeb blinked. “But you’ve got an awesome talent.”

He flushed. “Thanks. But nowadays it takes more than talent to succeed. You need to know how to promote yourself.” He cocked his head. “Think about Salvation. If you didn’t have that website, how would people ever know about the ranch?”

“You got a point. Toby’s always talking about promotin’ the place.”

Nate nodded. “And I’m crap at promoting myself.

I don’t make connections easily. I don’t make friends easily.

Maybe if that changes, I might achieve some success.

” He returned his gaze to the sketching pad.

“But enough about me. Tell me about Salvation. You said it’s a safe place, where a man can be true to himself, with no shame, no judgment.

I want to hear more about that part of Salvation.

My dad told me something that surprised me. ”

“And what was that?”

“He said half the regular hands are gay, and the other half are bi.”

Zeeb chuckled. “That’s probably a fair description. Robert, the guy who owns Salvation? He’s gay. So I guess like calls to like. There are some straight hands, by the way, but they’re kinda enlightened. If there was any trouble, Robert would throw ’em out on their ear.”

Nate flushed. “And you… I mean… are you… where do you…”

Zeeb arched his eyebrows. “Where do I fit into that description?” Nate nodded, and he shrugged.

“Me? I’m just a human being, doing his best to get along with everyone and be at peace with the world.

” Okay, that was nothing but evasion, but Zeeb wasn’t going to go there. He hardly knew Nate after all.

And Nate’s doin’ his fair share of evading too. That “enough about me” comment was a clear signal.

“I know I claimed not to possess a single artistic bone in my body, but…” Zeeb pointed to the sketching pad. “Y’know, when I was a helluva lot younger, I used to sketch. Wrote stories too.”

Nate smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah. I had this shoe box where I kept everything I wrote.”

“Do you still have it?”

Zeeb’s stomach clenched. “Nope. I got no clue what happened to it.”

Except he knew exactly what had befallen his precious words.

Dad had found them.

Nate rested his pencil on the ledge that supported the pad, went over to his bag, and removed a smaller sketching pad and a pencil. He came over to Zeeb and held them out. “Here.”

Zeeb stared at the items. “You want me to draw?”

And when was the last time I did that?

“You don’t have to. It’s just an idea. Sure, it might take you a while to get back into it, but I guarantee you will. All that creativity? It’s still in there somewhere.” He smiled. “Go on. Give it a try.”

“Hey, I said I used to sketch. I didn’t say I was any good at it,” Zeeb remonstrated.

“Then now’s the time to improve.”

It was obvious Nate wasn’t going to back down.

And if I’m drawing, I’m not talking.

Yeah, maybe Nate had an ulterior motive.

Zeeb took the pencil and pad, sat on a flat rock, and gazed at the view.

Where do I start?

“If you don’t draw a line on that blank page, it’s going to sit there and taunt you.” Nate pointed to the far side of the lake. “Look at those trees, the way they’re reflected in the water. It’s such a peaceful scene. Make the surface of the water your horizon.”

Zeeb followed Nate’s finger. Then he coughed. “You just go back to your drawing. I can’t do this if I have an audience.”

“You’re right.” Nate retreated back to his easel, picked up his pencil, and resumed his sketching.

Zeeb took a deep breath, and drew a horizontal line across the white sheet.

I didn’t see this comin’.

Nate was right about one thing—it took Zeeb a while to get his focus back. He did his best to draw what he saw, and little by little, the pencil went where it was supposed to go.

What surprised him most was how good it made him feel.

I used to fuckin’ love this when I was a kid.

Surrounded by pencils, paint… it had been Zeeb’s idea of heaven.

Until heaven was stolen from him.

“I always preferred being outdoors, which I guess is no surprise, seein’ where I grew up,” he murmured as he filled in more details. “But I loved sitting up in my room, drawing, painting…. You couldn’t see the walls for all my artwork.”

“How old were you?”

He did a quick assessment. “Ten or eleven, I think.” He smiled. “I had notions of bein’ an artist or a writer.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

And there went Zeeb’s stomach again.

“Let’s just say my creativity didn’t fit in with the world I lived in. That was a traditional, hardworking, masculine world that had no place for dreams of writin’ or paintin’.”

“So you became a cowboy instead?”

Zeeb snorted. “I did so many jobs before I became that.”

Silence fell between them, and Zeeb wondered what was going on in Nate’s head. He wasn’t about to fill the quiet with inane chatter, however.

Peace was a healer.

“I was like you when I was a kid,” Nate said in a low voice.

The admission came from out of nowhere, and Zeeb didn’t want to stem the tide of conversation.

Zeeb smiled. “You couldn’t play football, you forgot to do your chores, and your mom despaired about how dirt seemed to follow you around like a shadow too?”

Nate laughed, but then his face fell. “My mom said I was sensitive. Gentle. Artistic. Unfortunately that didn’t make me the son my dad had dreamed of.

” His face tightened. “He saw gentleness as a sign of weakness, so he tried to make me into a man. At least, how he thought a man should be. And when his efforts didn’t work, he got frustrated. Angry.”

Zeeb had to resist the urge to hug Nate. There was an undercurrent of pain to his words. And while Zeeb’s dad had expected him to follow in his footsteps—work hard, be tough, and marry a woman to continue the family line—he hadn’t gotten angry, not even when he found out about?—

Nope. Not gonna go there.

Then Nate’s words sank in.

“Wait a sec. I’m a bit confused here. I’ve met your dad. The man you’ve just described sounds nothing like him.”

“Remember I said Derek hasn’t been my dad all that long?” Nate put his pencil down. “He sort of adopted me when I was eighteen. I started calling him Dad about two years ago. And you’re right. He’s nothing like my real dad, thank God.”

Eighteen? What happened before then?

Zeeb wasn’t about to ask. The moment felt as fragile as glass, and one wrong move, one wrong question, could shatter it into a million fragments.

He expelled a breath. “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

Nate studied him for a moment. “It isn’t something I talk about. In fact, I’m not really sure why I said all that just now.” He took a breath. “I think I’ve talked more the past two days than in the previous two months.”

“Maybe I’m a good listener,” Zeeb suggested. “It has been said before.”

“Maybe that’s it.” He cocked his head. “What really happened to your shoe box? I saw how your face tightened when you talked about it.”

Zeeb set the sketching pad on the rock beside him. “My dad found them.”

“And?”

Zeeb could still see his dad’s face. “He had clear ideas about what it meant to be a man. Writing stories about… whatever… didn’t fit those ideas.

Neither did drawing or painting. So one day he went up to my room, collected every piece of artwork off the walls, took them and my shoe box outside—and burned them.

That was bad enough. What was worse? He made me light the match. ”

Nate’s breathing hitched.

“It taught me a valuable lesson.” Zeeb glanced at Nate. “It told me I couldn’t talk to my dad about… about my feelings.” He shivered. “You know something? I ain’t never told a living soul ’bout what he did.”

There were lots of things he didn’t tell people. Things that still itched beneath the surface.

Too much talking.

“You ever go swimming?”

“Not for a long time,” Nate admitted.

Zeeb stood. “Then maybe now’s as good a time as any.”

Nate blinked. “The water’s probably freezing.”

He kicked off his boots. “Hey, it’s July. It can’t be that cold, right?”

Nate gaped at him. “Wait, are you?—?”

Zeeb shrugged out of his flannel shirt, then tugged the tank over his head. “Yep, I am.”

Before my loose tongue gets the better of me.

Then the jeans came off.

I picked the wrong day to go commando.

Before Nate could say another word, Zeeb took off at a run and launched himself into the lake with a clean, reckless dive, the splash sounding like a crack of thunder.

Water closed over Zeeb’s head, cold as hell and a shock to the system.

That was the point. It shut everything out: their conversation, the soft tension in Nate’s voice, the ache in his own ribs from things unsaid.

For a few long seconds, Zeeb stayed under, letting the cold drag him back into himself.

When he surfaced, hair slicked back, he squinted toward the shore. Nate was still on the bank, standing by his easel.

“You comin’ in or what?” Zeeb called, his chest heaving.

Nate raised a brow. “You’re naked.”

He snorted. “You expect me to go swimmin’ in my clothes?”

There was a long beat. Nate tilted his head, studying him as if Zeeb was a figure in one of his drawings. “I don’t think you jumped in to swim.”

Zeeb trod water, his lips twitching. “Maybe I like the way the water feels.”

“Or maybe you hate how talking feels.”

Yeah, Nate saw way too much.

Zeeb turned and swam a few strokes out, letting the silence drag. He turned onto his back and floated, his arms out, his chest rising and falling with the slow slap of the water, the sun warming his skin.

He hated being seen .

He’d counted on Nate not joining him: Zeeb might have only known him for a short time, but he’d gotten a handle on the guy. Zeeb wanted to be alone in the quiet, where no one asked questions he didn’t want to answer.

Eventually, however, the cold started to bite, and he made his way back to the bank, his chest breaking the surface, water cascading off his skin. As he walked up the shallows, he realized too late that Nate was still watching, quiet, steady, unmoving.

Zeeb suddenly felt bare in more ways than one.

He bent to grab his jeans, angling his body away, not quite meeting Nate’s gaze.

“You could’ve warned me,” Nate said, his voice softer.

“About what?”

“The full moon show.”

Zeeb cackled. “Would’ve ruined the spontaneity.” He pulled his jeans on, his damp legs protesting, and finally looked at Nate.

Nate was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You feel better now?”

That depends on whether you ask me any more questions.

Zeeb grinned. “You should try it.”

“Maybe another day.”

He put on his shirt, the fabric clinging to him. “You ready to eat?”

Nate smiled. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.” He paused. “Thanks for bringing me here.”

Zeeb shrugged as he buttoned up. “Don’t mention it.”

But something in Nate’s voice, in the way he said it—like he meant more than the lake—stuck with Zeeb as he headed for the wagon where he’d left the insulated bag containing their lunch.

And what are you gonna do the next time he asks a question about your past? Find another lake to dive into?

Zeeb would deal with that situation if—or when—it arose.