Page 43 of His Country
At some point you’re going to have to figure out there’s so much more than being fine, and you can want that.
And Aiden did want that. He wanted to hug Ethan and let Ethan hug him back. He wanted to kiss him when he saved tortoises and brush their pinkies together. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to be angry.
He wanted to be more than fine.
“I think I’m angry at my parents.”
Ethan’s hand froze where it had been rubbing his back. “I’m angry at your parents, too.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
Shifting, Ethan lifted his chin with a gentle hand and bent down to kiss him softly. “Be angry.”
Aiden kissed him back, getting up on his tiptoes so he could do it right. They pressed together, sharing warmth and breath. Because they wanted to.
“Hey!” Frank’s voice cut through them, and Aiden nearly fell over backwards in fear. Ethan caught him and glared at theparking lot. He took a step forward, placing himself between Aiden and Frank.
The move didn’t go unnoticed by his boss. He looked between them, mustache bristling before rolling his eyes. “Hurry up, I’m hungry and I want tacos.” He shook the keys over his head as he walked back toward the truck.
Frank caught them kissing. He’dseenhim. Aiden waited for the shame. Waited for the horror to come clawing up from the ugly place it lived in. For the instinctual need to run. To put another mistake in his rearview mirror and start all over again.
But it didn’t come. It didn’t come because Aiden didn’twantit to.
He laughed as he dropped his head against Ethan’s back. Tacos sounded great.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The day of the town hall meeting was the last good weather they had. Winter hit hard, harder than usual, and it was all Aiden could do just to keep the farm running. It was frustrating. Doing the bare minimum wasn’t in his nature. His father had fostered an atmosphere of work. If you had time to sit around, you weren’t doing enough.
Not that his father was a shining example of…anything. But Aiden didn’t know any other way to be. If he was moving, wearing another hole in his boots, then he didn’t have time to think about it. His parents, his childhood, his future. Ethan told him to be angry, but he didn’t know how to do that. Seemed like the kind of thing that should come naturally. But so far all he’d been doing was getting lost in his memories, realizing just how mistaken he’d been. How misplaced all his feelings, strained as they are, have been.
Sometime between slogging through snow and breaking ice in the water troughs he realized that the problem with being angry was that there was nowhere for that anger to go. No way tostopbeing angry. His father was dead, and his mother was so far removed from his life that she might as well be, too.
Aiden was stuck stewing in his new state of emotional turmoil. His days began to blur together, and it was only when Isaac packed a bag and explained he was going back home for the holidays that Aiden realized it was Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve passed. He fed the animals and returned to the bunkhouse to live off PB&J and stale coffee. He hardly noticed the holiday drift by, napping with Sugar beside him.
Then Ethan returned. Not bothering to knock, bundled in a new jacket courtesy of his mom, and bearing a gift for Aiden. Little flurries of snow melted on the tip of his red nose and his eyes sparkled in the dim light of the bunkhouse as he handed over his gift.
“Merry Christmas, Aiden.”
Aiden had to look away, emotion clogging his throat. He was the only person who’d wished him a happy holiday.
He opened the gift wrapped in comics from the newspaper with a little bit of trepidation. Honestly, he didn’t know what to expect. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been given a gift.
The moment he worked the box open, he laughed.
Ethan had gifted him the complete series of pirate romance novels. Each cover was worse than the last, and they laughed for an hour over the improbability of the plot. Eventually Aiden found his back pressed to Ethan’s shoulder, reading random passages of the novel by the light of the fire, and pointing out the funny bits to him.
“I just don’t think a man stuck on a prison ship for eight months would smell good. What refined noble woman is going to smell that stank and be up for a roll in the hay? And seriously? He got her to come three times? This guy hasn’t had a partner in almost a year, and he has that kind of stamina? I call bullshit. Man’s going to blow his load at the first breeze.”
“Is that jealousy I smell?”
He elbowed Ethan, sitting up and tossing the novel to the floor beside them. Honestly, Aiden’s sexual experience had been limited to his hand whenever he had a quick minute. There was everything to be jealous of, except the partner. Aiden never found the swell of creamy breasts to be appealing.
Ethan was staring at the novel, his eyes unfocused and thoughts scattered. Aiden let him have it. The quiet was nice. Chores were done, the fire was roaring, and the couch pillows they were sitting on kept the chill from the hardwood floor off them. Sugar was sleeping on the couch, and frost clung to the windows. The town hall meeting was over with and for the first time in days, his head was clear. It was the nicest holiday Aiden had in years.
Dragging his legs up, he crossed his arms over his knees and looked into the fire. He let the light sear his eyes so that when he blinked the flames would dance against his closed lids.