No hot sex here tonight, that was for sure.
“Why?” Glen asked when the silence had gotten to be too much.
“Why what?” For the first time in forever, Cash didn’t sound angry or resentful or put out or sullen. He sounded thoughtful.
“Why am I the bad guy?”
Cash closed his eyes. “You were never the bad guy.”
“Yeah, but someone was. My dad left when I was a kid—my mom told me he was a spoiled, selfish child. That’s how I know real men stay. How do you know I’m the bad guy?”
“You’re not the—”
Glen’s temper snapped before he even knew it was wound tight. “Cash Harper, we are fifty miles from fucking nowhere. You about ran a horse to death before you gave it to a couple of gorillas, along with our other means of transportation, and we are literally right next door to the only working toilet between here and Jalisco after walking halfway to Zacatecas and back in an effort to tilt at your goddamned windmill. The least you can do is not lie to me, do you understand?”
He paused in his rant, suddenly afraid he’d gone too far. For all Cash’s toughness, Glen knew—possibly better than anyone but his missing friend—that Cash was an open nerve, a bunny ready to bolt, underneath that swagger.
Cash’s deep, shaky breath told Glen he might have fucked this up.
“Not all men leave,” Cash said gruffly. “Sometimes they stay and things are worse.”
Of course they were. Glen let out his own breath. “Did he hit you?”
“Once or twice. Mostly he was just… mean. Mom left when I was fourteen. Brought me down here, spent her alimony on Botox and alcohol. Let me run wild, I guess. But it’s funny, how when you’re doing something, anything, to piss off that mean-assed voice, it only gets louder in your ear.”
Glen thought about it, about how relieved he’d been when his father had finally left, for pretty much the same reasons. “Got to be careful, kid. You listen to that voice too much, it becomes who you are. That’s not the person I saw last night. Not the person I tracked down this morning. Ask yourself if it’s who you want to be.”
Cash’s deep breath told Glen he was taking the question seriously. His next breath, shaky and thick, told Glen he didn’t like the answer.
“Maybe,” he said, his voice small in the darkness, “when this is over, I can try to become my own man instead of that voice’s in my head.”
Glen sighed. “Kid, maybe you don’t start someday. Maybe you start now.”
“Don’t call me kid,” Cash begged weakly, but Glen heard the tears.
“Make me.”
“Fuck you.”
Glen could hear it—Cash was desperately trying to pull his shit together. He sighed, slid out of his bed, and stood over Cash’s.
“Scoot over,” he ordered. “And stay dressed.”
Cash slid against the wall, and Glen squished in next to him, Cash’s warm, lean body reminding Glen that the night before he’d taken Cash like the man he pretended to be.
Not tonight. Tonight Cash was vulnerable and defeated and young, no matter what his chronological age. Glen wasn’t going to hit that—not again. But dammit, he’d made the kid cry, and he heard his own voices in his head. In Glen’s case it was his brother’s voice and Damien’s voice, telling him not to be such a fucking asshole and to maybe show a little bit of goddamned human sympathy for once.
Preston and Damien were good men, but they could both hold their own in the swearing department.
And they gave good advice, as evidenced by the way Cash pressed his face to Glen’s chest and cried.
Present
THE water had run cold, and Glen turned the spigot off regretfully. His skin was wrinkly, and he was shivering, but he really wished he could go back into the shower and stay.
It took him a little extra time to get dressed—his back and shoulder ached, between the long horrible job he’d just completed and the cold shower. And, let’s face it, the tension in his neck. By the time he emerged, Cash had finished off the rest of the soup in the container in the fridge and was reheating Glen’s in the microwave.
“Here,” Cash said. “Sit down. You look tired.”
“I’m fine,” Glen said, shouldering his way past Cash into the kitchen. Maybe if he pretended Cash wasn’t there, Cash would go sit at the table obediently and stay.
But all evidence had shown staying anywhere wasn’t Cash’s best thing.
“You look like you’re in pain,” Cash argued. “Just let me—” He tried to worm his way under Glen’s arm, using his smaller stature like a shiv.
“I am in pain, which is why you need to let me do this by my—”
“Goddammit, do you have to be so stubborn?” Cash jostled his side, and Glen compensated by shifting his hips and his shoulders in an effort to not touch him and….
“Ouch! Goddammit. Sit the fuck down!”
Cash froze. “What did I—”
“Just sit,” Glen said, closing his eyes and trying to breathe through the back spasm. “Just….” He took a breath, and Cash ducked out from under his arm and shoved a chair behind him.
“Sit,” Cash snapped irritably. “You. Just. Sit.”
Dammit. Glen didn’t have a choice. He sat and closed his eyes, working on the isometrics that had strengthened his back and his shoulder again and allowed him to fly.
“Pain pills?” Cash asked. He sounded really close. Glen could feel his body heat through the space between them, and he kept his eyes closed on general principle.
“Flight bag,” he muttered. He didn’t take anything stronger than ibuprofen when he was flying or driving, but right now he got the good stuff.
After an interminable wait, he felt two tablets pressed into one hand and a glass of water pressed into the other. He tossed back the pills and finished off the water, grunting thanks when Cash took the glass from his hand.
“Now,” Cash said like he was talking to a child. “I’m going to help you up, and we’re going to move this chair to the table, and you’re going to eat your dinner like a grown-up so that shit doesn’t rip a hole in your stomach. Do you understand me?”
“Fuck you,” Glen said sullenly. The red was clearing from his vision, but the kid was right. He’d tried living on alcohol and painkillers for his first month out of the hospital, and the resulting stomach troubles had Damien kicking his ass back to the hospital.
“Very mature, Mr. I’m The Grown-up Here. Now do you need my help up or not?”
Glen got his feet squarely beneath him and used his leg muscles and lower back muscles to heft himself out of the chair. He was turning toward the chair itself when Cash snarled, “I’ve got it. Fucking stubborn asshole.”
Glen walked to the table instead and Cash set the chair down and told him to sit. Glen lowered himself into the chair—thankfully one of the ones Damien had bought him before he’d moved out, with lumbar and neck support—and Cash put his soup and some crackers in front of him.
Cash was making himself comfortable again when Spence ambled out of the hallway, chestnut hair mussed around his face, green eyes sleepy.