Hidden Heart

by Amy Lane

  “We’re keeping the cat?” Spencer asked helplessly, his eyes burning for no good reason.

  “Yeah, Spence. That’s your takeaway from this discussion. Mrs. Andreas can’t keep him because she’s going to stay with her son who has asthma. But now you know. You’re keeping me, and we’re keeping the cat, and nobody who loves you gives a dookie about your usefulness as a workhorse, but we really hope our friend gets better. Are we clear now?”

  He was still right there, right in Spencer’s face, yelling at him about Spencer being needed, and he may have been full of shit, but God. He was so beautiful. Spencer would have said yes to whatever it was he was yelling about.

  Spencer became aware that he was staring stupidly as Theo wound down, and he tried to fight back against that sudden influx of… well, caring that he’d been unprepared for.

  “I’ll know you care when you can say ‘shit’ instead of dookie.”

  Theo scowled at him. “Okay, Spencer. You’re full of shit, and I don’t give a dookie. How’s that?”

  And here was exhaustion, aided by painkillers and made exquisite by the knowledge that he may have been wounded but he was not alone.

  “That’ll work.” And with that, sleep took him, so fast he wasn’t even aware it had happened.

  HE awoke to find Theo curled up asleep in what looked to be a blessedly uncomfortable chair and Elsie stretched out reading a book on her phone. He must have made a noise because she stood and took the chair next to the bed.

  “How you doing?” she asked softly, her eyes darting to Theo.

  “Peachy,” he answered, his eyes doing the same. “How is he?”

  “Exhausted.” Her mouth quirked. “But nothing was going to stop him from coming today. He’ll probably be here tomorrow afternoon too. I’d say I don’t know how you inspire that kind of loyalty, dickhead, but I do know, so that’s fine. I also know you don’t shit on it, either, so I won’t tell you to play nice.”

  Except she just had. “Someone has got to warn that kid away from me,” he said, nodding soberly.

  She shook her head negatory. “Not. Me. He threw you in the basket, jumped on top of you, grabbed both sides, and hung on. That there is the best metaphor for a relationship I have ever seen or heard of—there will be no warning away, not from me. I love you best, honey, so listen to me when I say he has already been adopted by the team, and we vote him into your life, whether you want him there or not. Make it easy on yourself.” Her voice dropped tenderly, and he almost squirmed in embarrassment because she was his sister. “Want him.”

  He closed his eyes, doing exactly that.

  “Are they going to feed me?” he asked pitifully.

  “No. You nicked your lower intestine, sweet boy, on a giant tree branch from hell. Fluids for at least three more days.”

  God.

  He sighed, awake and irritated and uncertain. And definitely not in the mood for the kind of talk that would reveal his feelings for the sleeping man in the corner.

  “Whatcha reading?” he asked.

  “Murder mystery with lots of bodies and a priest who won’t stop fucking around.”

  “Sounds gothic. Count me in.”

  They’d done this while deployed. Yeah, sometimes when the boredom set in, you had long meaningful talks that bared your soul. Sometimes you bickered at each other for entertainment. But he and Elsie had taken to reading to each other, because it was like television or the movies, but they each took joy in the drama, doing the voices, building up the suspense, injecting their own editorial into the proceedings. Elsie started reading to him, and he settled back into the pillows, comforted in ways he didn’t let himself be with regular human interaction, and for a moment he let his gaze drift to the sleeping man in the corner.

  Who was partially awake and staring right back at Spencer. Spencer opened his mouth to say something, anything, to take away that sort of golden, happy admiration that he saw in Theo’s eyes, but Theo quirked up one side of his mouth, held his finger to his lips, and looked at Elsie, and Spencer fell under her spell once again.

  TWO days later, he was trying to explain to Glen why Theo had to go.

  “You don’t understand,” he muttered feverishly. “Gecko, I am not good for that boy.”

  “I can see that,” Glen said. “You jumped out of a helicopter to save his life, and you pretty much succeeded.”

  “I fell out of a helicopter because fuck my luck, and you and Elsie and Damien saved his life, so you can see my confusion.”

  Glen chuckled. “I can see that you’re confused, that is a certainty. What I can’t see is that you did not at least help keep that kid from getting blown out of the canyon before we could get to him. A team effort still counts, Spencer. There’s no law that says you can’t have help.”

  “Ha!” Spencer cried hoarsely—and then coughed, because dammit, the infection was back and they had him on all the antibiotics in the world and pneumonia was still a real threat. “See? You said kid!”

  “That kid is only a little younger than Cash, and you are younger than me, so I think you need to rethink your logic,” Glen said mildly. “And you know what I also think you need to rethink?”

  “You’re gonna tell me anyway,” Spencer muttered because God forbid Gecko didn’t get his say.

  “Whatever is inside you that thinks you’ve got a goddamned thing more to earn or prove. You seem to be an intelligent guy, Spencer. I try not to work with fools. Where did you get this notion that you aren’t good enough? That your maximum enjoyment out of life is one-nut hookups and your dog?”

  Spencer snorted. “You think a redneck like me can aspire to one-nut hookups and a dog without some hard work? I figure I hit the jackpot with Elsie. I don’t want to push my luck.”

  Glen leaned forward, his bright Caribbean blue eyes sharp and not missing a thing. “No bullshit now, Spence. Tell me, and when I don’t hate you, maybe you can work up the courage to tell Woodchuck, the guy who is currently back at the hotel room, ordering everything you’re going to need so we can do this at home and you can have dogs and sunsets as your reward for getting better.”

  Dogs and sunsets? Spencer’s eyes burned at the thought of being outside on the dog farm in Napa, watching the sun drop gold in the west, Colonel by his side.

  “It’s like he can read my mind,” he said gruffly.

  “Not a brain trust, Spence,” Glen told him. “Talk to me.”

  “Told you,” Spencer said, undone by that promise, outside on camp chairs, Theo at his side, Colonel between them, maybe a beer apiece as they watched the sunset. “Redneck boy. Just like his daddy. Did and said everything Daddy told him to. Was a little junior Nazi right up until I kissed my first boy and caught Daddy’s fist in my face and learned a new junior Nazi word.” He swallowed against the burn of that, the surprise at learning that of all those people he’d been brought up to hate, he himself was one of them. The absolute shock at the age of thirteen when he’d learned that if you hated everybody but yourself, eventually you’d hate yourself most of all. “Regular piece of shit, right? Doesn’t take a saint to change your tune when you realize you’re one of the hunted, right?”

  “That depends,” Glen said gently. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “What happened to the boy you kissed?”

  Spencer snorted, because he knew this one. “Knocked up a girl at seventeen. Has a job, four kids, a private porn stash and is the terror of every glory hole for a fifty-mile radius.”

  Glen grunted. “That’s a lot of anonymous dick to suck to prove you’re not gay. How’d you find that out?”

  Spencer gave him a rather wicked grin. “I had to drive through that part of the country and stopped to pee. Saw him go in ahead of me and was going to call his name, ask him about the kids, tell him I was in the Air Force, that sort of thing. Then I watched another guy go in and decided to hang back a minute. The other guy came out, looking all happy, and he leans into me and says, ‘That guy give
s the best head for fifty miles. Only time I’m unfaithful to my wife.’”

  “Ew,” Glen said.

  “I’m saying.”

  “You didn’t… uhm….”

  Spencer was affronted. “Jesus, no! God, Gecko, I’ve got standards!”

  Glen nodded. “Yeah. You do. Look, you’re exhausted, so I’m going to say this and let you sleep. My brother got sent home in high school because his best friend swung on him and gave him a black eye.”

  “Oscar?” Spencer asked, shocked—truly shocked—to his core. Having lived on Preston’s property for a while, he’d gotten to know Oscar and Belinda well, and he loved them both. They were like Preston—they could have worn T-shirts that said Dyslexic or Cognitively Delayed, but what they were, really, were nice people who put their heart and soul into Preston’s dog ranch and loved each other with stars in their eyes. “But… Oscar’s like the brother he wished he’d gotten instead of you!”

  “Yes, sir,” Glen said. “But in school, Preston had a crush, and he thought he’d give it a shot, and he surprised the hell out of Oscar. Damie and Preston had a little talk about consent, and Preston apologized, and Oscar apologized, and they’re friends for life, as you know. But the thing is, both of them acted badly because they were stupid kids, and there’s a learning curve with good behavior. Someone’s got to teach you right from wrong. You wanted to make your daddy proud, and there’s no shame in that. The shame’s his for being a rotten human being who taught his kid to hate. You had to teach yourself, Spencer, and as far as I can see, you got one hard lesson and did the rest on your own.”

  Spencer caught his breath. “That’s, uhm….” All he’d been able to think about, his whole adult life, were the people he’d wronged in his thoughts as a kid, before he’d known how truly mistaken he’d been.

  “Yeah. Mind-blowing. I can see that.” Glen chuckled a little. “You’re a good man, Spencer. You’ve worked for us, what? Getting close to three years now?”

  “Yeah,” Spencer said, swallowing hard.

  “I wish I’d been your first job out of the Air Force. I wish Damien and I had known you when we’d been in the Navy.”

  “And Elsie,” he said, because even in fantasyland, they came as a team.

  “And Elsie,” Glen agreed. “But also you. You’re a prickly, snarly, irritating man, Spencer Helmsley—but you’re also one of the best I’ve known. That young man currently planning to be your roomie with benefits isn’t stupid. He’s not starry-eyed. He has cursed your name for the last week because dammit, you are a handful. But with a little push, he could be very much in love, and I think the same could be said for you. Give it a thought, would you, Spence? Your body is going to heal, and it’s going to be slow and there’s not much we can do about that. But your heart—you’ve been working on that for, what? Twenty years now? And judging by the quality of the company you keep, I think you’ve done just fine. Think about giving it a test run, would you? Wouldn’t it be great if your heart could soar like your birds?”

  Spencer’s breath caught, and he bit his lower lip, his entire body feeling empty, weightless with the possibility of easing some of the burden on his heart.

  And then he started coughing because dammit to hell.

  “Fuck—” Cough, cough, cough. “—me.”

  “I’m engaged,” Glen said diplomatically. “But I will pass the sentiment along.”

  Spencer fell back against the pillows, exhausted as Glen said, but also, he knew, smiling.

  The Details of Home

  THEO was used to Preston’s routine by now, and he and Oscar had a rhythm for helping to feed the dogs and assist with the dog bathing and disposing the waste. (Preston had installed a septic tank for this very purpose, and added enzymes to it at least once a week to facilitate the breakdown. Theo was very impressed.)

  Apparently Spencer put in a few hours every day, when he wasn’t out of town, working with Preston to clean the kennels and do the training. It was a tremendous job—Oscar, Preston, and Belinda worked full-time to keep the dogs healthy, fed, and happy. Preston had started recruiting help from the local junior college and high school. He couldn’t pay anything, but kids could get their volunteer work certificates for all sorts of service organizations through his ranch, and a lot of them stayed on. But that didn’t mean they didn’t need adults who knew what they were doing to supervise.

  Spencer hadn’t been released in the hoped-for two weeks. Instead he’d been transferred to a nearby hospital in Napa while his body fought off the infection that had taken such a quick hold. Preston had three vehicles—two big trucks and a minivan—and when he or Oscar or Belinda weren’t using those for work or household needs, Theo was given carte blanche to take one into town and visit.

  But town was forty miles away, and Theo—who had grown up in a small town, where a trip to a big one was something of an event—understood that it wasn’t practical for him to live at the hospital, and that, given how much pain Spencer was in, it would probably make Spencer hate him if he was there all the time.

  So he’d set up his own bedroom—Spencer hadn’t even put a bed in the spare room; it had been mostly toys for Colonel—and he’d refurbished the weight room with all of the things the physical therapist had suggested Spencer would need. He’d ensconced Stupid in his bedroom, complete with cat box and—using some of his savings—a cat tree with dangling things to play with. The cat didn’t seem to miss the great out-of-doors, and, in fact, seemed to be growing alarmingly fat. Colonel was overjoyed by Stupid’s company, and the poor dog seemed to keenly miss Spencer as well. Theo was currently sleeping in the guest bedroom, yes, but he’d been decorating the trailer, because it was a bit austere and Preston said he could, and every time he went into Spencer’s room, Colonel and the cat were stretched out on his bed, cuddling. It would have been weird, but neither of them were conventional animals. Theo was just glad they were getting along.

  And he’d figured out how to help Preston with the dogs, so he didn’t feel like dead weight.

  He was in the middle of taking a scooper full of poop to the septic tank when his phone buzzed. He paused, looked around at the foggy day, and set down his scooper and his rake before pulling out his phone.

  Up to your eyeballs in shit already?

  He laughed a little. Glen must have given Spencer his phone number, because for the last two weeks—ever since the move to Napa—he got texts like this once or twice a day. Or, well, he’d gotten one or two a day when Spence had first started texting him, but now, it was more like six or eight or twelve.

  Not too many, really.

  You know my schedule?

  Nothing else to do here. Brain’s all squirrel, body’s all rotting oak tree.

  Maybe it’s just a sleeping bear. Theo had been working to keep him from getting too depressed. He hadn’t needed twelve hours on a raft to figure out that standing still wasn’t Spencer’s strong point, and the last month had only proven that first assumption right.

  Nobody has EVER called me a bear before!

  Theo snorted. Once again he’d texted something perfectly innocent and Spence had heard sexual innuendo.

  I wouldn’t know, would I? For all I know, you’re covered with fur. He wouldn’t talk about seeing Spencer in the hospital gown, pale and worn, furious at being sick, trying so hard to keep his temper.

  Don’t lie to me, Woodchuck. You haven’t exactly seen me at my best.

  Well. Damn. Leave it to Spence to hit him in the soft places. Spencer wanted honesty? Fine.

  You have a little bit of brown hair in the center of your chest, he texted. Happy? Not a bear. Not furry. Just right.

  There was a pause, and in pique he put the phone away and strode to the pipe at the edge of the kennel property that they dumped the dog waste into. Apparently it got fermented with the enzymes and came out perfectly respectable dirt. Theo was going to take Preston’s word for it.

  When he’d finished his task and leaned his tools up against the
equipment shed that sat at the hub of all the kennels, he washed his hands at the outdoor sink, dried them on one of three pairs of jeans he now owned after a trip to Walmart with Elsie, and picked the phone up again.

  And cursed Spencer again.

  I have to look at myself in a mirror every day when I’m doing PT, he’d written. I’m even a disappointment to myself.

  Oh heavens. Well, that’s why other people look at you. We see the good parts too. Send me a selfie.

  No.

  Theo grunted, turned his camera on himself, and sent one first. He didn’t pause to look critically at it, didn’t even wonder what Spencer was seeing. Spencer had spent twelve hours looking at him frazzled and terrified and sopping wet. He’d lost a little bit of weight since then, but that was mostly worry. He was still the same guy.

  You are still damned cute came the reply—which warmed him, but he got no selfie in return.

  Now you, he prompted after a few minutes.

  No.

  Oh fu-dge. Goshdarnit, Spencer! You’re being childish.

  I don’t want to scare you off. I’ve gotten kind of… used to the idea that you’ll be there when I show up.

  That’s the plan. When is that again?

  Sooner than you think. So, which dog has the biggest crap?

  Preacher, but Preston won’t admit it.

  HA! I KNEW IT!

  And they continued like that, off and on, for the rest of the day. Theo didn’t ask for another selfie—only because he planned to get a picture the next time he saw Spencer in person.

  But that didn’t stop him from venting his irritation at the dinner table with Preston, Oscar, Belinda, and little Caden when Preston brought the subject up. He’d been pleasantly surprised to find they did this—not every night, but particularly when Damien was out of town and Preston was alone. He was even more surprised to find that he was invited. He’d taken to washing the dishes afterward as payback, because Belinda sort of cooked for everybody and didn’t ask for anything more than groceries. One day after visiting Spencer in the hospital, he’d had Preston stop so he could bring her takeout Chinese, and she’d cried all over him. He’d told Preston and Oscar privately to maybe give her a day off cooking once or twice a week, even if it was just one of them making mac and cheese.