Hard Ride (Clean Slate Ranch)

by A. M. Arthur

  Nina spotted the framed sampler on the table and picked it up. “My, my, Kim have you taken up embroidery? This is lovely.”

  Rachel gently eased it out of her hands. “It’s cross-stitch and Dad made this. For me.”

  “Since when do you do women’s crafts, Ken?”

  “Crafts aren’t gendered, Nina,” Slater snapped. “When I busted my ankle, I needed something to keep me busy, and a friend taught me this. It’s creative and challenging, and I have a lot of fun doing it. What hobbies have you taken up lately?” Besides flirting with my boyfriend.

  “I’m too busy working to have hobbies.”

  “Oh? What is it this time? Personal masseuse? Grand Canyon tour guide? Yoga instructor?”

  Rachel shot him a warning look.

  Nina huffed. “I work the phones and front desk of a tattoo parlor owned by my good friend Rocco, and it’s very steady work.”

  Good friend often equaled fuck buddy but Slater didn’t want to risk Rachel’s wrath by needling her mother much more. “If you’re happy there, then I hope it works out.”

  His polite response left Nina grasping for something to say.

  “Lunch was amazing,” Slater said to both Dad and Rachel, “but Derrick and I need to check in to our hotel and get ready for the ceremony tonight.”

  “Your tickets,” Rachel replied. “Let me go get them.” She dashed out of the kitchen.

  “She seems like an amazing young woman,” Derrick said. “You should all be very proud.”

  Slater wasn’t sure how much of an influence he’d had in Rachel’s life, but he very much appreciated the compliment.

  “She’s always been an impressive student,” Nina said with a smug grin. “I probably could have gotten college scholarships, but, well, life happened.”

  Annoyance flared hot and tight behind Slater’s breastbone. As much as he wouldn’t give up Rachel for anything in the world now, back when they were both seventeen-year-olds dealing with an unexpected pregnancy, he’d offered to pay for an abortion. So Nina could fulfill her dreams of college and a career as a physician’s assistant. He’d been willing to go the adoption route, too. Nina had said no, too excited about being a wife and mother to care back then. And now she was tossing that choice in his face?

  “It’s never too late to go back to school,” Slater said. “Be more than a receptionist.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Dad added. “Every college around here’s got self-improvement courses of one kind or another. You could look into one of those.”

  Nina made a soft, scoffing sound, and she was only saved from Slater’s sharp tongue by Rachel’s return to the kitchen. She had a ticket for everyone, including Derrick. “You guys probably won’t need them to get in, because the weather looks great and it’ll be outside on the football field, but I figure it’s a nice souvenir, right?”

  “It’s perfect.” Slater studied the slip of paper, still dazzled that his little girl was graduating high school in a few hours. “I’ll frame it and hang it on my cabin wall.” He’d have no way to explain it to anyone who saw it, but the words made Rachel beam at him.

  “It was very nice meeting everyone,” Derrick said on their way out. He shook Dad’s hand, hugged Kim, and gave Nina a polite nod from a distance. Then Rachel surprised the hell out of him by hugging Derrick and whispering something in his ear.

  Jealousy burned hot and tight in his chest, because she didn’t hug Slater. Only tossed him a smiling wave and promised to see him tonight. Slater pushed against that jealousy as he eased into the car and adjusted his leg. Derrick didn’t bring up prison while he followed the GPS to their hotel. Regular chain hotel with basic rooms, but they’d only had two full beds available when Slater placed the reservation. Probably a lot of people coming into town for graduation and things.

  Derrick didn’t comment on the bed situation beyond asking if Slater wanted the one by the door or the window. Slater chose the window, undid the brace and stretched out on top of the coverlet. Derrick fussed with their toiletries for a few minutes spent in awkward silence, before Slater couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Are you gonna ask me?” he said to the ceiling.

  “Ask you what?” Derrick eased on the bed opposite him, his face annoyingly passive.

  “Why I was in prison? When? For how long? The usual shit everyone wants to know.”

  “If you haven’t brought it up before now, you have your reasons. Yes, I’m curious, and I admit I’m a little upset you didn’t share this before you moved in.”

  Slater turned his head to glare at the other man. “Why? So you could take the offer back?”

  “No, so I had all the facts about the guy moving into my building and getting his own front door key.”

  “I might be a felon, Derrick, but I’m no thief and I don’t plan on ever going back. Not for any reason.”

  “Were you guilty?”

  “Yes.”

  Derrick’s face pinched once before smoothing out, and since they were having this conversation, Slater didn’t want to do it on his back. He sat up—which still wasn’t the easiest thing in the world because bruised ribs could take forever to heal right—and twisted to face Derrick.

  “It happened eleven years ago,” Slater said, his stomach a mess of acid. He hated remembering that night. “Rachel was maybe a year old when Nina cheated on me the first time, and it pissed me off royally because I was working two jobs to take care of her and the baby, but she apparently had time to run around and find dick. I put up with it for a while for Rachel’s sake, but we were both miserable, so when Rachel was five I filed for divorce. Got joint custody, but Nina took off and left me with Rachel.

  “We moved in with Dad and Kim, and I wanted to be more for my daughter, so I tried a stint in basic training. Thought maybe an Army career was the path to go but I washed out. I was really bullheaded back then and didn’t like taking orders. I also didn’t have much of a censor, so I’d say what was on my mind, and it got me fired from more than one job. So when Nina came back around a year or so later with a new husband on her arm, wanting to take Rachel, I lost my temper.

  “I was working at a lumberyard at the time, and they actually came to my place of work to say they wanted Rachel.” Slater’s fingers twitched with the phantom pain of split knuckles and the rough two-by-four he’d grabbed. “The guy’s name was Pete, and he got in my face, saying he knew people who’d help him take Nina’s kid away from—his words—trailer park trash like me. A few guys at the yard who saw the fight swore Pete put his hands on me first, but since Nina was standing right there, the jury seemed to believe her when she said I punched Pete first and started the fight.”

  “But Pete started the fight?” Derrick asked.

  “He put his hands on me, to push or grab, I don’t know, because I decked him. He stumbled and then came at me. We both landed a few good punches before the other guys got us apart. Then Pete decided to mouth off and said, ‘If you fuck like you punch, no wonder she left your faggot ass.’”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah.” Slater clenched his hands in his lap as his worst moment came back in vivid detail. “I barely remember grabbing the two-by-four off the pile but I remember how it felt in my hand. The way the impact jarred all the way up my arms to shoulders when I slammed it into the back of Pete’s head. The thud when he hit the ground. That was the main reason I got five years for assault. I attacked with a deadly weapon and put a man in the hospital.”

  “Five years?” Derrick seemed equal parts furious and horrified at everything he’d learned in the last ten minutes. “Damn, man.”

  “It sucked beyond explanation, but I kept my head down, tried not to make any enemies, and I did my time. Even took a few classes before they stopped the program. I wanted to be a better man when I got out, so I could make it up to Rachel, but she was so scared of me the first time s
he saw me again.”

  “She didn’t visit you?”

  “I didn’t want her to see me in that place. I couldn’t believe how much she’d grown. But even though she’d been mostly living with my parents, Nina had tried to poison her against me. Rachel wouldn’t hug me, wouldn’t come near me for weeks. I worked odd jobs for a while, until my parole was over. I got the gig with the shipping company that led me to Clean Slate. No one at the shipping company cared I was a felon and neither did Arthur Garrett when he hired me.”

  Slater’s heart skipped with trepidation. “I know this is a huge thing to learn about a person, but no one outside my family except Arthur and Judson know I was in prison. I don’t talk about it. But I am sorry if I broke your trust, Derrick, I mean that. I value our friendship.”

  “Me, too.” Derrick picked the bed’s coverlet. “And I get you wanting your privacy about the prison thing.”

  “But you’re upset I moved in with you without telling you?”

  “I don’t know. Not upset. You haven’t said or done a single thing to break my trust, and you were honest just now.”

  “Yeah, because my dad outed me at lunch.” Slater definitely got his blunt nature from Philip Stamos.

  “Still, you could have easily told me it was none of my business, but you trusted me to keep your secret. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Relief finally washed away some of Slater’s anxiety over sharing this part of his past. “Thank you for taking it all so well.”

  “Everyone’s got a past. Yours is just more colorful than some. I’m not standing in any place from which to judge you, man. But I think I see more clearly where you’re coming from, so I’m grateful you shared Rachel with me today. She’s beautiful and smart.”

  “Thank you.” Slater beamed, because if he’d done anything right in his life, it was making that perfect young lady. “I was terrified she’d hate her gift, or she’d think I was, I don’t know, less of a man for knowing cross-stitch.”

  “Nah, her generation is going to change the way we look at gender norms. Like you said to Nina, why do crafts need to be gendered? Why do sports or clothes or anything else?”

  “I hope so. I just...really hope she’ll give me a second chance, you know? I can’t remember the last time she hugged me like that.” And then she hugged you, too, you lucky bastard.

  “What?” Derrick asked. “What just happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you always been bad at hiding your tells, or am I just getting really good at spotting them? For one instant, you looked mad.”

  “I wasn’t mad, just had a thought I didn’t like.”

  “Care to share with the class?”

  “It’s childish.”

  Derrick leaned back on his hands, his posture open and reassuring, and he was definitely not going anywhere. And neither was Slater, with his crutch on the floor beside him.

  “I was jealous Rachel hugged you goodbye but not me,” Slater admitted. “Okay? She really engaged with you today, and then she hugged you, and it hurt that she reached out to a relative stranger instead of her own damned father.” He hadn’t meant to let his temper spin out but his voice definitely rose by the time he shut his mouth.

  Derrick’s face fell. “I’m sorry. Shit, I didn’t even think about it.”

  “I know, and there’s no reason you should. Decent dads get hugged by their kid.”

  “Hey, come on.” Derrick moved to sit beside Slater and held one of his hands. “You are trying your best. That’s all you can do. And Rachel strikes me as a smart girl. She’ll come around.”

  “I hope so. She’s the only thing in my life I’ve ever done right, and I even messed that up.”

  “I don’t know.” Derrick squeezed his hand briefly. “I think you’ve got the friendship thing down pat, and you’re an outstanding lay.”

  Slater snorted laughter that made his ribs twinge. “Yeah, fucking is something I know how to do well. Just wish I was a better people person.”

  “Man, you do like putting yourself down a lot, don’t you? You are a people person, Slater, you’re just guarded. Look how fast you befriended Dez and Morgan. Hell, you even got a conversation out of Orry Thompson upstairs. You were great today with Rachel and your parents. You’d probably have fifteen best friends at the ranch if you allowed yourself to open up and let them into your life like you let me in.”

  He probably wasn’t wrong about that. Slater did his very best to avoid personal conversation with his fellow horsemen. The few times early on that Hugo tried to befriend him by sharing bits of himself, Slater usually grunted and found something else to do. He kept people at arm’s length because he’d been disappointed by them so many fucking times, and he was tired of it.

  Except for Derrick. Derrick hadn’t disappointed him once since their...arrangement began.

  He will, though, when we break up. And it will be my own damned fault for falling for the man in the first place.

  But Slater didn’t want to think about that right now. He wanted to get his mind off his confessions and mistakes and problems, and he had a hot guy beside him who could do just that. “We have three hours before we have to leave for the ceremony. Feel up to fooling around, Tiger?”

  Derrick barked laughter. “Geez, segue much?”

  “Why beat around the bush when being blunt gets things done faster?”

  “Too true.” Derrick leaned in and nuzzled at the pulse point that always got Slater’s crank going. “I didn’t pack anything.”

  “We can faux-fuck. Don’t hotel rooms always have little bottles of lotion?”

  “I like where your mind is at.” As Derrick lurched off the bed, Slater smacked his ass once. Derrick flashed him a wolfish grin on his way to the bathroom.

  Slater whipped off his shirt, grateful for the distraction and the amazing, attentive, forgiving man providing it.

  * * *

  Derrick had been to more graduation ceremonies than he could count, thanks to all his cousins, and they were all pretty boring in their own ways. But tonight, Derrick fed off Slater’s excitement over seeing his baby girl graduate. They met and sat with Philip and Kim, as well as Rachel’s best friend Jayla, who’d graduated last year and had completed her first year of college. Jayla had looked Derrick up and down like he was a popsicle she wanted to lick, even after Slater used the b-word to introduce him.

  The guest speaker droned on about something Derrick tuned out, and the class’s valedictorian was mercifully brief. With the last name Stamos, Rachel wouldn’t be called until near the end. But when the principal said her name, Slater let out the loudest, proudest wolf whistle Derrick had ever heard. If Nina hadn’t spotted their group in the bleachers, she knew where they were now.

  Derrick applauded while Rachel strode across the small stage to collect her diploma, pause for a picture, and then walked back off. He’d known the girl for all of two hours, but his heart still surged with pride for her. He glanced at Slater, whose eyes were full of unshed tears. Kim discreetly handed Slater a tissue.

  Finding Rachel again once the ceremony was over took a bit of doing, but she texted her location to Jayla once she got all of her stuff from wherever she’d left it in the school. Rachel and Jayla squealed and hugged, and then Rachel hugged everyone again—Slater included. She allowed Slater to cling for a moment, and he whispered something in her ear that made Rachel beam.

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

  Nina ruined the beautiful moment by swooping in to hug her daughter. Philip and Kim excused themselves first, so they could head home and start putting out party snacks. Derrick wasn’t sure how many people to expect, and when he and Slater arrived at the house, a few new faces were there. Philip had a bachelor brother who’d come by to support his only grand-niece. Three neighbors whose names Derrick forgot the minute he was introduced. Rachel�
�s tenth grade social science teacher, who’d turned her onto government as a career.

  They ate simple snacks of chips and dip, pizza bagels, and veggies with ranch. Drank cola and ginger ale, and Derrick did his best to keep Slater socializing, instead of alone in a chair. Trying to prove to Slater he could be a people person if he tried, especially around folks he’d known for years. No one was blatantly rude to either of them, even if Rachel’s great-uncle gave Derrick funny looks a few times.

  As one of only three black folks at his workplace, Derrick was used to standing out in a crowd.

  Overall, they had a good time. Derrick truly enjoyed getting to know Slater’s family better, and he adored Rachel. She had a lot of her father’s stubborn nature, which would serve her well if she did pursue a political career. President Rachel Stamos had a nice ring to it. She even held a lengthy conversation with Derrick and Slater about all the work Mack had put into keeping the tiny town of Garrett, California, alive and running with his investments. Rachel definitely had thoughts on the state investing in dying small towns in ways that made sense and brought true trade to those areas.

  She and Jayla even made plans for a summer road trip south to see Bentley Ghost Town. Derrick wanted to text Wes about spreading the word but no one else knew about Rachel, and it wasn’t his secret to share.

  By the end of the evening, the guests trickled out and it was just the family left, plus Jayla, who was spending the night with Rachel. The uncle was also staying over in the guest room, which had been Slater’s room once, according to Slater. Nina left first, and no one was sad to see her go. The woman was tolerable in small doses but something about her made Derrick’s skin itch.

  Rachel shocked the hell out of them both by inviting Derrick and Slater over for breakfast before they left town. Derrick thought Slater was going to cry again over the offer, but he graciously accepted, hugged his daughter goodnight, and they left.

  Back in their room, Slater was so full of excited energy that Derrick barely had the door shut before Slater was wrangling him out of his pants. Things went happy places very quickly, and since Slater had used regular crutches tonight instead of the hands-free because of the bleachers, they didn’t have to stop and fiddle with the brace. Clothes came off. Slater made a meal out of Derrick’s nipples and navel before moving down to suck him hard.