Page 14 of His Country
Ethan grinned, teeth flashing. “Definitely.”
Aiden didn’t answer. He didn’t know how. This was the most he’d spent thinking about this. Normally it was able to be pushed aside. Locked away into a corner until the pain lessened to a dull throb and he could move, go about his day. When it got too bad, he drank until it stopped hurting. Until he stopped feeling anything. Or he worked until he was too tired to think at all.
But here, in the bed of this truck, he wondered. He wondered if it wasn’t about forgetting at all, but about trying desperately to understand. To let the things heknewwere true equalize with the things he felt. Because that was the thing about feelings—they didn’t care about logic. His heart didn’t care that Everett and Billy didn’t do anything wrong. That they never meant to hurt him. Hell, if they’d known they never would have gotten together. And that would have hurt too. It would have been what he wanted, but seeing two people who looked at each other like that not getting everything they deserved? Because of hisfeelings?That was somehow worse.
People fall in love. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. They look at each other across a bonfire and their whole world tilts on its axis. Damn the people on the periphery, the ones who had nothing to grab onto and tumbled away into the ether.
Collateral damage is inevitable.
Aiden just never stopped tumbling.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Ethan offered, his voice faraway. “But I think we should.”
“I don’t,” he answered automatically. A knee jerk reaction he didn’t want to think about. He was tired of thinking. Tired of everything.
Mostly though, he was tired of himself.
“What do you grow in winter?”
“We’ve got some hoop houses on the back twenty. Grow some onions and kale. Trying to expand but Frank is the green thumb. Rest of us just kill ‘em.”
Ethan found that amusing. “Our parents grew up together, you know. When he was ten, he was massive. Biggest kid anyone had ever seen. People were scared of him, and he was no good with animals. Found comfort in plants. They didn’t give a damn about his size.”
Aiden didn’t know that.
“My grandparents had a big place just down the way,” Ethan sounded wistful. “Nothing big, just ten acres or so. But Grams loved to plant. Flowers mostly. Sold them at markets and stuff.” He was looking out over the horizon, eyes unfocused like he could see the place through the craggy granite of a mountain range.
“I was in vet school when she and Pops died. Someone built a strip mall over her garden.”
He grunted. “Sorry.”
Ethan shrugged. “They were dead.”
Aiden wasn’t sure if he meant the flowers or his grandparents.
They talked like that. About nothing, mostly. Aiden learned that Ethan broke his arm when he fell out of a rotten tree when he was a kid, and that he lost his childhood dog just before he went to college. Ethan liked cats and thought goats were cool. He had a bunch of brothers and grew up south of Billings. Graduated top of his class but surprised everyone when he took a large animal internship rather than go into research.Scholarships helped, but he worked his way through college by delivering pizzas. He had some crazy stories from that.
And he met Everett and Billy while he was in vet school. They were baby freshman, wide eyed and nervous. Ethan welcomed them into the school’s LGBTQ+ club and they formed a fast friendship. It was his idea they get married at Frank’s farm. He was Everett’s best man.
Just as the eastern sky began to lighten, tendrils of light creeping over the horizon and promising to chase the chill of the day away, Aiden finally asked.
“Why did you come for me?”
Ethan’s cigarette had long since burnt itself out, but he kept the filter between his fingers, rolling it between the pads like he was trying to sear his fingerprints into the paper.
“Thought the polite thing to do would be to for?—”
“Ethan.”
He stilled at his name coming from lips that were far more comfortable clucking to animals than talking to people. For the first time since they sat down, he turned to look at him. Russet irises bright despite the fact that the sun was rising behind him. His eyelashes were so long the very tips caught the red tinge from the waking sun, little ember tips that reminded Aiden of the cigarettes Ethan swore he didn’t smoke.
“Because I pushed,” he admitted softly, eyes tracing over every inch of Aiden’s face. “I wanted to know. I started something.”
He swallowed. His breath fogged out in front of him, dissipating between them.
“That’s the thing about me, Aiden, I always finish what I start.” His words were dripping in something Aiden didn’t recognize. Closer to a threat than a promise, but it made his heart flutter against his bruised chest.
“So the chances of you going away after this are…?”