Page 28 of His Country

“Oh,” Ethan smirked. “I haven’t. Yet.” He looked around before leaning conspiratorially. “I’m the youngest, I couldn’t do anything to them. But they’re about to start having kids. My revenge can wait.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “You’d take it out on your innocent nieces or nephews?”

Ethan grew somber. “Collateral damage is inevitable in every war.”

It was ridiculous, but Aiden couldn’t help but grin at his antics. Actually, he’d been smiling so much his cheeks hurt, something he didn’t know was possible. It’s not like Aiden was a particularly happy person but he didn’t think he was so bad that his face would hurt after a single conversation.

“What about you?” Ethan asked. “Any siblings?”

“No,” he answered quickly. He used to wonder what his life would be like if he had a sibling, someone who could help shoulder the burden. Someone who might have been better at reading his parents. In the end, he decided it was probably best they only had one child.

“Parents got it right on the first try?” Ethan waggled his eyebrows.

Aiden hummed as he finished his beer. The alcohol was making him warm and pliant, so he answered honestly. “More like one was one too many.”

“I know losing the farm was tough, but it couldn’t have all been bad.”

And there he went again, causally bringing up the farm like that. He didn’t tiptoe around it, lower his voice and use euphemisms to describe it. No, full voice and barreling ahead like he wasn’t dancing in a minefield. Maybe that was why Aiden couldn’t get angry about it. Maybe that’s why he kept talking.

“It wasn’t all bad,” he acknowledged, looking out into the bar without really seeing. “My dad taught me everything I know about ranching. And no one knew animals better than my mom. She had this great way of being empathetic but also practical.” As he spoke, he began recalling memories he hadn’t thought about in a long time. Like when his dad had him change the trucks battery for the first time and he accidentally laid the wrench on the positive and negative terminals at the same time.The thing sparked and started a fire, nearly melting the wrench to the casing.

Aiden had been terrified but his dad had just laughed, clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘bet you won’t do that again.”

Now that he was thinking about it, his life could be split into two halves—before the whiskey and after. He was sure at the time it was a gradual transition, but time had made the edges sharper. It was like one day his dad was taking the time to teach him how to keep tension on wire fencing and the next he was slumped over his desk, eyes tearing up from the sting of alcohol while he glared down at numbers on a piece of paper.

People say first impressions are important, but it was the last memories of his father that left a bitter taste in his mouth. They stayed with him, overpowering all the good. Despite that, this was the second time that Ethan had made him think past them. Wade through the prevalent memories, with all their pain, and look back to the ones he’d forgotten. The ones that shaped him into the man he was.

Being with Ethan was like standing under an umbrella. Beside him, he could be dry. Comfortable in his own skin. Breathe through the tension in his chest. But if he stepped away, all of that—the ease, the memories that made him smile—were washed away in the downpour. Leaving nothing but cold discomfort.

Shaking himself, Aiden tried to focus back on the conversation. “They were just…they had a lot going on. Mom tried her best to keep up appearances, kept dragging our asses to church and all that but selling her horses was more than she could take. Dad drank and she looked out the window and stopped doing much at all.” He swallowed. “She’s in San Antonio now. Says she’s happy, so…”

He didn’t want to see the pity in Ethan’s eyes, so he looked away, tried to find interest in the random crap they’d nailed to the walls. Eventually his attention drifted to the TV hung over the bar. It was a small flatscreen with a ticker tape of subtitles lagging across the bottom. He was too far to see the words, but he didn’t have to.

The reporter was holding a puffy microphone up to Everett. He was sweaty, hair pushed back off his forehead and grass stains on his jersey. Even without the sound he could tell it was a post-game interview, and judging by the way he was talking, it was a good one.

His chest squeezed the moment he recognized him. It was like another memory, one that was bogged down by all the bad. It floated to the surface, playing out in front of his eyes like a home movie.

It was one of those nights where his mother was sitting at the kitchen table, picking at her nails for hours while his father drank in the living room. The atmosphere was so oppressive it was crushing, a weight he couldn’t escape. Then Everett texted him and all that weight sloughed off. He jumped off the porch and jogged down the long drive so Everett didn’t have to get out and open the gate. Aiden couldn’t even remember what it was they did that night.

But he remembered the freedom Everett brought with him. The ability toleaveand do whatever he wanted. The reprieve from his mother’s vacant stares and his father’s sour breath. Away from another costly tractor repair or a sick sow.

Nothing existed beyond the cloudy beams of the headlights.

That’s what Everett was to him. An escape. Permission to exist as someone beyond Aiden Brooks—the suffocating son of a failing family.

Noticing his distraction, Ethan grabbed his wrist. Softly, just a press of fingers to drag his attention back to him.

“Let’s play pinball,” he suggested in a way that wasn’t a question.

Aiden glanced back at the ancient machine in the corner. “What? You don’t want to play a game of pool?” his voice was raspy, not nearly as sure as he’d like it to be.

“Nah,” he said as he stood up, stepping past the table to lean over Aiden’s shoulder. His weight pressed into his skin as he turned to speak directly into his ear. His breath seared across his skin, electrifying every nerve. “Much as I’d love to see you bent over, I want to save that view just for me.”

By the time Aiden resumed breathing, Ethan was halfway to the pinball machine. He unclenched his fingers from the edge of the table and shuddered as he realized Ethan wasn’t just messing around. He wasflirtingwith Aiden. He played back the rest of the evening and found that he’d been doing it a lot. Openly. Like he wasn’t nervous or ashamed.

He was more surprised to discover that he liked it. His cheeks were flushed with heat and when he remembered just how Ethan’s hand had felt, impossibly large on his shoulder and his breath with the faintest trace of nicotine, that warmth pooled in his gut. Hunched over, Aiden tried to remember the last time that had happened because of someone and not just because. Or as the result of his half-hearted attempts to find something on the internet worth his time.

This was a first for him and underneath the simmering anxiety was an undercurrent of excitement. For so long,so long,he hated that he was different. Wrong. Beyond not being attracted to girls, he wondered if he had any kind of libido at all—at least beyond what his body did without his input. But here he was, hunched over a sticky bar table, because Ethan had whispered in his ear.