Page 40 of His Country
He smacked him, grunting when Ethan caught his hand and used it to jerk him closer. It was difficult to fight in the narrow space, but Aiden kept trying to kick at him until Ethan tangled their legs up and had him wrapped up completely, head resting on his chest and face screwed up in indignation.
As much as he wanted to keep protesting, Ethan had a point. One Aiden was never going to acknowledge.
“I can’t believe you called me a rodent.”
“Marsupial,” Ethan corrected, poking Aiden in the stomach. “They have pouches.”
Whatever look Aiden had on his face must have been hilarious because Ethan laughed so hard it nearly threw Aiden off the bunk. His head tossed back, eyes wrinkled closed, and mouth open. From where Aiden was laying, he could see the full length of his neck. Long and elegant, veins prominent under his wind chapped skin.
Aiden was struck with the sudden and strange desire to bite him, so he did. Pushed himself up with toes buried in the mattress and sank his teeth just below the cut of Ethan’s jaw. Ethan gasped, hands flying to Aiden’s hip to hold him still.
“See? Bitey.”
Aiden hummed and rested his head on the meat of Ethan’s shoulders, fingers trailing over the ink of his tattoo, tracing the lines. He fell asleep with Ethan’s fingers buried in his hair and the world locked outside.
CHAPTER TEN
“Do you still love him?”
Aiden wished he could say the question came out of the blue, but it hadn’t. Ethan had been wanting to ask him about Everett for a long time. Why he decided to do it now, when they were sitting on the back of his truck with their legs swinging and breath pluming from the cold, he couldn’t say.
He could say that he thought it had been on his lips for a long time. At times he’d glance over to find Ethan staring at him with this odd expression. If he had to guess, he would say consternation. Wanting the answer but afraid to rattle whatever fragile thing existed between them.
So really it was probably only a matter of time. Things never stayed buried, and after a meeting where Ethan and Frank talked about things Aiden didn’t understand—laws that sounded a whole lot more like an algebra problem than something legal—he must have decided enough was enough, stuck his shovel into the ground, and leaned on it with all his weight.
Aiden couldn’t even pretend to be blindsided. He’d been thinking about it a lot. Asking himself if he was still in love with Everett, picking at the question like a scab. You never start in the center, where the scab is strongest, you pick at the edges.Scraping a fingernail against it until you can get a good grip, wincing at the sting but picking and picking until eventually the whole thing peels off and you’re left with something raw.
No matter how raw, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to answer anything definitively about that time in his life. There was too much joy shrouded by pain and uncertainty. Too many nights where his cheeks hurt from laughing at Billy’s exuberance, only to be clouded over by heartbreak when he turned to see Everett smiling at Billy, his eyes sparkling in a way Aiden had never seen.
He could still remember his last football game. It was a good game. Under the bright lights he’d pulled off his helmet, sweaty hair flopping into his eyes as he looked up at the stands. They were full of people wearing their school colors, some wearing players jerseys or holding signs. Every number danced in the crowd except his.
Aiden shouldn’t have been surprised. His own parents couldn’t be bothered coming to the first game he had ever started in.
When he got home, he found his mother scrubbing a pot she hadn’t used and his father in his favorite chair, staring down at a watery drink. Aiden didn’t ask if they’d forgotten or if they didn’t want to come. He dropped his gym bag at the door and walked past his father’s desk, careful not to knock the pile of bills off its surface.
The next week his father told him he had to quit the team. He needed to do more around the farm. Aiden hadn’t fought him.
“I got angry at my father once,” Aiden said, tucking his nose into the collar of his coat and sliding his fingers under his legs.
Billy had encouraged his anger. Told him he was allowed to be angry. To hurt. That he needed to tell his parents the farm wasn’t his responsibility. But it was. Billy would neverunderstand that. Billy wasn’tfromthere. He’s grown up in places that had the luxury of ‘not my responsibility’.
You never had a childhood,Billy had said.
Aiden didn’t see how that mattered.
“I got angry at him, and it was pointless. Nothing changed. I didn’t feel better. So I stopped being angry. I stopped being anything. All I had was this broken heart. I could feel that. That was mine.”
Ethan was staring at him, his eyes wide, breathing shallowly like if he breathed too hard it would remind Aiden that he wasn’t alone, and he’d stop talking. He’d play dead like the possum Ethan said he was.
Aiden had his broken heart, but he had the shame, too. That heavy feeling that clawed him with every thought he couldn’t moderate. The chaser to his desires. But Ethan didn’t like it when he talked about that. When he couldn’t say the words. The labels with all their permanence andmeaning.He never said anything, but he could see him flinch, like Aiden had reached out and smacked him rather than just stuttered over some words.
“I think I loved the heartbreak more than I ever loved him.” Aiden lifted his nose to look at the stars. They were far away, little pinpricks of light in a blanket of black. They weren’t all that interesting to him, but he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t look at Ethan. Because if he looked at Ethan, he’d be looking back at him. “So no. I’m not in love with him.”
For a while they didn’t say anything. It was as if the words needed to settle between them. Like the first drifts of snow, waiting to see if they would stick or melt the moment they touched the ground.
Finally, Ethan breathed out and took Aiden’s hand, stuffing it into his pocket where he tangled their fingers together. “I’m sorry.”
Aiden didn’t ask what for. He didn’t take his hand back, either.