Thorns

by Feliz Faber

  Will dug his fingers into his own upper arms and forced himself to remain silent as Francis went on. “I’m not used to people wearing their hearts on their sleeves. It seems absurd, jumping to conclusions like I did, but I just couldn’t believe you were for real.”

  “That sounds quite paranoid.” Annoying, the effort it cost Will already to stay mad in the face of so much contriteness. See? Still a wuss. He hardened his voice. “You should’ve known better.”

  “You’re right.” Francis dropped his hand and averted his gaze. When he looked at Will again, that strange vulnerability was still in his eyes, and he was visibly struggling to get his guard back up. “But see, I had feelings for you that made thinking clearly quite hard. I wasn’t used to that either.”

  “Feelings, yeah right.” Will still couldn’t bite back the sarcasm. “From what I’ve heard today, I can guess which kind.”

  Francis had the grace to look flustered at the reminder, even if his dark cheeks couldn’t actually turn red. “I’ve been an asshole, Will, I’ll give that to you. In writing, if you want. Just give me a chance to prove that’s not what I actually am.”

  Will considered him, cocking his head. By now, Francis seemed almost his usual confident self in poise and expression.

  But what he’d allowed Will to see was still there. Those walls weren’t impenetrable anymore, and Will felt like he could breathe easier for the first time in… well, since he realized he’d fallen for this man, actually.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You grovel nicely, I have to say. Looks good on you, although it takes some getting used to.”

  With a bemused expression on his face, Francis stared at him for a moment. Then he huffed a laugh. “Really? Are you saying I’m making progress here?”

  Will shrugged. “Some. Assuming you mean it.”

  “I do,” Francis said, his eyes so full of wistful seriousness that Will almost broke. Almost. “Believe me, I do.”

  “How the mighty have fallen,” Will said lightly, earning him another snort from Francis.

  “No shit.” He held out his hand. “Truce?”

  Will searched his eyes. Francis’s smile was still a little shaky, but he held Will’s gaze firmly, without a hint of reservation. A wholehearted offer that deserved honest acceptance. Will shook Francis’s hand. “Truce,” he said.

  In mutual silent agreement they turned away from the water and headed back, the lights from the promenade their guide in the falling dusk.

  “Where do we go from here, now?” Will asked.

  They’d reached the Promenade des Planches again, and Will watched Francis hop on one foot as he poured about two pounds of sand from each of his shoes in turn. Only he could pull that off and still look like a GQ model.

  “Back to La Thillaye, I hope,” Francis said. “You’re not going into a hotel anymore, are you?”

  Will sighed. “No, I’m not, but that’s not what I’m asking.”

  “I know.” Francis straightened after retying his laces. It was already too dark for Will to read his expression, but he could hear the tiredness in Francis’s voice. “I’m jetlagged. I really need to lie down. What do you say we take this one step at a time? See where it takes us?”

  “Fine with me,” Will said. “As long as there’s an ‘us’.”

  “Should I happen to forget again, may I rely on you to remind me?”

  Bearing down like a bird of prey, Will grabbed Francis’s dick through the loose fabric of his slacks and gave it a brief, firm squeeze. “Like this?”

  Francis gasped. “Holy… fuck! Yes, that’ll do.” He gave Will a light shove. “Jerk.”

  “Prick. You going back now?”

  “Yes, I think. You?”

  “I’d like to stay for a while longer. It’s nice out here.”

  “Fine. See you soon, then.”

  Will nodded and made to turn away, but Francis’s hand closed on his shoulder. Will half expected an assault, a payback for his own bold grope, but all Francis did was cup the back of Will’s head with his hand and lock gazes with him. His eyes were close to Will’s, closer than a moment before, and then so close they blurred. Will couldn’t look away, even when the nearness of these eyes made him squint, even when he felt Francis’s lips on his own. The kiss was chaste and dry, but it was too much, too soon, and yet not enough, and Will turned away, afraid he might break down otherwise under the onslaught of emotions.

  “You okay, William?” Francis’s voice kept him from making a complete spectacle out of himself.

  “Do me a favor?” he asked without looking back.

  “Depends.”

  “Can’t you call me Will, like anybody else? William’s so pretentious.”

  A chuckle vibrated through Francis’s answer. “Anything for you, my precious.”

  It took Will a moment to process this, and by the time he turned around again, Francis was already gone, his dark suit and darker skin merged with the evening gloom.

  Fifteen

  IN THE end, Will stayed out until well after nightfall. For a start, it took him the better part of an hour to find the way back to his car, and a wrong turn he took on the main road had him almost in the outskirts of Caen until he realized his mistake.

  Once he found his way back to La Thillaye by means of his GPS and an English-speaking gas station attendant, he was mentally as tightly wound as he’d been in the afternoon, but physically too beat to do anything about it. Boded ill for a good night’s sleep.

  The manor house loomed at the end of the driveway, all its front windows dark like closed eyelids. Will parked in his usual spot behind the house and, not wanting to wake up anybody, slipped in by the always unlocked back door and tiptoed through the kitchen. But through the unlit entrance hall wafted strings of soft music, and the sitting room door was ajar, a finger of light running from the crack along the floor. Will pondered whether to knock and hadn’t yet made up his mind when a low voice called out for him.

  “Will? Would you mind coming in?”

  In the mellow shine of the spherical floor lamps, all Will could see was a vague shadow of two human figures huddled together on the big sofa. By the time his eyes adapted to the weak light, the figures had moved apart, and Louis approached him, holding out a hand.

  “Please come sit with us for a moment. We want to tell you something.”

  They took him between them, Nic’s arm across the back of the couch behind him, Louis at his other side. Will could feel the occasional finger brush against the nape of his neck as they held hands behind him, but he didn’t feel like an intruder. They radiated a kind of benevolent warmth that made the tension stream off him and allowed him to relax in their presence.

  “I swear I didn’t notice anything unusual about Melody that day,” Louis said after a while. Baffled, Will sat up; he hadn’t expected it to go that way. Louis put a hand to his chest, gently urging him back. Will felt rather than saw them exchange one of those speaking glances before Louis continued. “Will, I’m not really good at making apologies, and neither is Nic. I’m speaking for both of us here. Yes, we shouldn’t have just taken Francis at face value earlier. We’ve gotten to know you a little over the past few days, after all. We can’t change what happened, but we thought we could try and make you understand. Do you want to hear our story?”

  Will glanced between the two men; they both wore matching serious smiles. He sat back, curious despite himself. “Go ahead.”

  “Melody, he was one of those horses that are easy to connect with,” Louis said. “Some horses are hard to read, but Melody, he always broadcasted his moods like a radio station. On that day, he was excited, eager, happy to run, like he was supposed to. I’d been concerned about his weak hindquarter before, but even that didn’t seem to trouble him that day. He felt perfectly fine to me. But he wasn’t. He was drugged up to the tips of his ears, shot so full of painkillers that he simply didn’t realize something was wrong with him. I don’t think he even felt it when his leg broke.”

/>   “Is this at all possible?” Will asked, taken aback.

  “Absolutely,” Nic said. “Common, even. You don’t want to know how many races are only won thanks to painkillers and cortisone. I’ve seen it so often that I’ve come to think it’s not the best-trained horse that wins, but the one with the best vet. And Kohler was a master of his craft.”

  “Are you saying your boss, Carrick, doped his horses on a regular basis?” Will asked.

  Nic nodded. “Yes, and so did I, back then. Thank you for looking surprised, but you’re giving me too much credit. I knew exactly what the horse was on.”

  Pulling his forehead into thoughtful wrinkles, Will turned back to Louis. “If you’d known, too, if Nic had told you earlier, would you have refused to ride?”

  Louis shook his head before Will had even finished his sentence. “No way. This was the Kentucky Derby, for God’s sake. Don’t you know the song? ‘A chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance’. I’d never have ducked out of this ride, for nothing in the world.”

  “But when Nic tried to have your horse pulled, you must’ve realized something was wrong.” Will searched Louis’s face. “I don’t get it. Why’d you take such a risk?”

  Nic gave a low, choked noise that caused Will to cast him a glance. His face was drawn. A snort from Louis made Will turn back.

  “For nothing in the world, I said. Besides, even if I’d known that Melody was doped, this wouldn’t have been the first time I rode a horse that had been tampered with. Actually, I thought Nic had gone nuts. If he’d succeeded pulling my horse, I might’ve ripped his balls off.”

  “A fact of which I was damn well aware,” Nic threw in, which earned him a grin from Louis.

  “Yes, you’d better. Luckily, Carrick saved me the trouble.”

  “As I also perfectly well knew he would,” Nic added.

  “Then why’d you step in at all, Nic? This makes no sense,” Will asked in growing confusion.

  Nic sighed. “You think? Well, you see, I knew what was going to happen. It was Louis’s life at stake, and I was in a hurry. I couldn’t come up with anything better than to try and stop the race.”

  “How could you know? Had you turned into a psychic all of a sudden?” Will raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me here.”

  He waited while Louis and Nic exchanged another glance. Eventually, Louis shook his head. “The material your reporter buddy dug up, Kohler’s journals. You really haven’t read them, have you?” He immediately held up his hands in defense. “No, no, I didn’t mean to question you, Will, it’s just, it’s all there, all in there, and if read correctly, those journals could actually really clear Nic’s name, at least of ill intent, and Francis should’ve seen that right away if he hadn’t been so blind with… never mind. Come, please relax, you look like a coiled spring.” He put a hand to Will’s forearm and turned to Nic. “Tell him, will you?”

  Will’s jaw hurt; he only now realized how tightly he’d clenched his teeth, and forcefully relaxed his features. Pulling—not quite jerking—free of Louis’s grip, he sat back and wordlessly folded his arms in front of his chest.

  Nic regarded him silently for a moment. Then he nodded again, his face unreadable. “As I said earlier, I knew exactly what the horse was on. Hell, I held him by the reins when Kohler shot him up, like I’d done a hundred times before with other horses. If anything, I thought it was business as usual. I didn’t tell Louis anything because I’d been used to keeping mum about such things for years, and besides, I was confident he could handle a doped horse as well as the next jockey.”

  Try as he might, Will couldn’t help his nostrils flaring in dismay. A quick humorless smile flashed across Nic’s face. “I never said I liked it, Will, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Well, I guess I could have, but then I’d have been out of a job. Anyway, Carrick insisted on saddling and walking Melody out by himself. I stayed behind to help Kohler clean up his stuff, and that’s when I realized there was nothing normal about this.”

  “How?” Will couldn’t help asking, apprehension getting the better of him.

  “I came out of the stall, my hands full of vials and used syringes, and he was holding up an X-ray picture of a horse’s leg. Kohler had this mobile X-ray machine, you know, and I knew he’d used it on Melody earlier that day. I was right behind him, and even I could see the hairline fracture across the long pastern bone. I didn’t even have to ask. When he heard me approach, he flinched and gave me a look that told me everything I needed to know, and I dropped whatever I had in my hands and ran.”

  Will shot up straight. “They actually made a horse with a broken bone run a race? Knowingly?” At Nic’s terse nod, he blurted, “Fuck, Nic, that borders on criminal, doesn’t it?”

  “It was a crime. Insurance fraud. It’s all in Kohler’s notes,” Nic agreed. “But I didn’t know that then, and really, I didn’t much care. All I knew was Louis out there on a horse doomed to fall, and I had to somehow stop him from riding.”

  “Still. Couldn’t you, I don’t know, have alerted the authorities or something?” Will asked.

  Shaking his head, Louis cut in. “There wasn’t time, Will. Warm-up was about to start, which means the race was only eight minutes away, ten tops. By the time Nic would’ve found an official of any kind, let alone make them listen, the race would’ve been over.”

  “Besides, I was in too deep myself,” Nic said. “Did you know it’s the FBI who investigates doping cases? I couldn’t really point a finger at Carrick. They’d have nailed me for complicity.”

  “So that’s why you tried to stop the race,” Will commented, calmer now. Nic rubbed a hand across his face.

  “Yes, even though I knew I couldn’t actually stop things from playing out, and I knew Louis wouldn’t heed any warnings, whatever I told him. The moment I went to take Melody out of the race, Carrick fired me and recanted my orders.”

  “But if you knew that, why in the hell did you even try?” Will leaned back between them again. “I get it that you were scared for Louis’s life, but as you said, you couldn’t change a thing anyway.”

  “He saved my life,” Louis said softly. Against his back, Will felt the slight movement of Louis squeezing Nic’s hand.

  “I felt Melody fold under me and jumped off a split second before he went down. Remember, I thought everything was fine with him? Chances are, I wouldn’t have been so hyper-alert without the fuss Nic made. Chances are, I’d be dead now. Or not, who knows? At any rate, I’ll be ever glad he stepped in when he did.”

  “So will I,” Nic said, almost under his breath.

  Will slowly looked between them, at a loss for words. After a moment of silence, Nic continued. “I cut a deal with Carrick. We’d take the blame for Melody’s fall, let him stage a nice little scandal around us. Nothing better to silence any rumors than a juicy sex affair—and with homos, behold—and there, we were off the hook, and all we got was banned. In turn, Carrick made sure anything about the doping was kept firmly under wraps. I didn’t want that stain on Louis’s reputation, nor on mine. Actually, Carrick stood to lose just as much as we did; he was more than happy to play along. Even though he’d have loved to rip my head off.”

  Will couldn’t help it. He had to get out from between them. “All that hype, the whole fucking secretiveness, just for that?” He jumped to his feet, glared down at them. “You couldn’t just have told me that, could you? Hell, you could’ve told Francis ages ago, for that matter. Would’ve spared us all a shitload of trouble.”

  He saw their faces fall, saw Louis about to flare up in defensiveness. Nic reached out a hand and stilled Louis with a touch and a look. At the shamed expression on Nic’s face, the anger left Will as fast as it had grabbed him.

  Nic took a breath. “It’s not that simple, but… for all it’s worth, I apologize. I’d never thought….”

  “All we wanted was you off our case,” Louis said. Will flinched, and Louis held out a hand to him. “I’m sorry, but that’s
the truth. Nosy little shit, I thought, I’ll have myself a little fun with you. I wasn’t prepared to like you, Will, but I do. Quite a lot.”

  Will looked between his honest, concerned face and the hand that still hung in the air. “Way to go, to show me that,” he said.

  “Well, yes, and for that I’m sorry, too,” Louis said, waggling his fingers. “Come back here, Will. My arm’s going to sleep.”

  “Man, you’re really two of a kind, Francis and you,” Will said, but he slumped back down between them, amused despite himself. “Where is he, anyway? I gather you came clear to him, too.”

  “He’s gone to bed,” Louis said, pulling Will into a brief one-armed hug. “Yes, we talked to him. Gave him something to chew, I’m afraid, given the pedestal he’d put us on.”

  Will made a face. “You don’t say. Now, what was it you said earlier? That it wasn’t this easy? What you just told me, it’s long over and done with, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if I write about it or not.”

  “Not entirely, no, and that’s why….” Nic took a breath. “The French Jockey Club runs a tight ship when it comes to doping, Will. If they ever got wind about what I’ve done in the past— They aren’t likely to be casual about something like that, even though it happened many years ago and I’ve always run a clean stable at La Thillaye. If the worst comes to the worst, I could end up losing my license, and with our current situation, that’d mean we’d lose everything: the horses, La Thillaye, our living. You’ll take that into consideration, right?”

  “He will, Nic,” Louis said softly, leaving it to Will to nod and hold Nic’s gaze. After a moment, Nic sighed and bowed his head, resting his forehead against Will’s.

  “Desolé,” he whispered, and Will held his breath. It was the closest Nic had come to him so far, in any way, and it touched him to the core.

  “Don’t be. I understand,” he answered equally softly, feeling Louis’s hand rub small circles on his back.