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“Yeah. He’s great, but we didn’t always. We fought like two bobcats when we first got together. He wanted shit from me I wasn’t ready to give. I was headed to prison early on and wanted to just let him go, let him live a life. He didn’t let me. Refused to hear about it. Went so far as to show up at the clubhouse with another dude.”
Indio turned to him, jaw dropping.
“It’s true,” Kirk confirmed. “He was crazy, man, still is. I almost killed the poor guy he brought. I dragged his ass home, he pushed me, and he had less muscles then than he does now, but he told me what an ass I was being. He said he loved me, and I knew I loved him. I was just too fucking mean and stubborn to admit it.”
Indio knew that was an intentional jab at him. “Yeah, well, what if you’d have gotten killed for loving him?”
“Will you though? Do you think Dante would kill you?”
“Why not? I would. Some fucking guy from a fucked up home, barely hanging on to his own life, with a guy like Sel? Come on, Kirk. Don’t act like I’m some catch.”
He gently slapped Indio’s arm and had him follow to the water’s edge where they sat. “Catch is relative. I think that you think you need a bunch of money to be good enough for him. Or that you’ve lived a hard life and that might rub off on him.”
“Yeah!”
“That’s bullshit. No one had a perfect upbringing, Indio. We all have our emotional scars, but what is more important is how you move on from them. Trusting yourself and trusting him, that’s fucking hard. I know. But it gets easier.”
“If he even wants me. If I even want him, I mean, hell, maybe it’s just the sex.”
“Could be, sure. I doubt you’d be out here in need of heavy thinking if it was only your dick you were worried about.”
He hated the talk. He felt like he should hold it all in and deal with it. Still, having someone who understood him for once in his life was nice, if not completely uncomfortable.
“I’ll figure this out. If Sel waits for that, though, I kind of doubt it.”
“Me too. He’s not the type to have a lot of patience.”
“Wow,” he said laughing. “I really thought you’d say he’d wait for me.”
“You’d know I was lying. He’s stubborn too, Indio. Maybe spend some time thinking today, go to him soon and let him know how you feel, one way or the other. Please, man, before you two kill each other.”
“I’d never hurt him.”
“It might be in self-defense.”
They spent an hour at the lake, tossing rocks in, talking about the Azteca’s and Devil’s move to Montana, then rode back together and Kirk was quick to head inside, but Indio hung back, walking off in the trees to lean on one while he smoked a cigar and used the quiet time to think.
It wasn’t needed, of course. He knew what he wanted, to go up to Sel’s room, wake him, if he was sleeping, tell him things he never thought he’d say. But, he thought, he knew he’s cower and head downstairs to his lonely cot and spend the night tossing and turning, wishing he’d have gone up the stairs and made his feelings known.
He wasn’t that type of guy. Everything inside him fought against those feelings, fear overwhelming good sense, because love always meant pain. It was harsh and scarring pain that came with caring about anyone.
After the cigar was finished, he walked out of the trees toward the farmhouse, smashing the butt of the cigar on the hard-packed road. Into the backdoor he went, taking the gun from the holster on his shoulder, the one he’d grown so used to having, he mostly forgot about it.
As he moved to set it in the basket, he saw the basket was gone. “What the fuck?”
Thinking someone had hidden it while the backdoor was unlocked, he kept the gun on him and went through the breezeway door into the kitchen, turning to head down to the basement when he suddenly froze in his tracks.
There was a chair butted up against the doorknob of the basement door, effectively locking everyone out of the main house.
His entire body tingled with alertness, his mind spinning as to what could be happening, but he found he already knew, and when he heard the soft footsteps upstairs, he knew who it was.
He dislodged the chair from the door, quietly opened it and turned on the basement light, hopefully alerting Kirk, if he wasn’t already sleeping.
Quickly he took off his boots and left them by the stairs before taking them up to the second floor, padding quietly.
His gun in hand, cocked, he moved over the landing ducking, watching ahead of him as he turned the corner to the hall where the bedrooms lay.
His heart was beating so hard that he was afraid it would signal his position, but he didn’t stop, making his way as fast as he would without running and making noise.
