You're Always in the Last Place You Look (9 page)

A shadow blanketed me, and I turned to find Zane standing so close I could feel his body heat, see the indigo flecks in his blue eyes. I swallowed, and concentrated on his shoulder, the faint lines in the leather of his jacket.

He tipped his head down, resting his forearm on my shoulder, and holding his smoke behind me. “You smell like dust, and sweat, and rain. There’s something different about you...”

“You sound awfully surprised by that.” Jesus, I sounded as if I’d just run a mile. His hair brushed my cheek, and I fought to stay where I was, refusing to be afraid or intimidated by having him so close. “So what exactly does that mean? Me being different?”

“You don’t smell like the average teenage boy—all juiced up, with that nervous tang.” The words tickled my neck, sending a shiver down my back. That quiver triggered an overall awareness of him, his warmth, his scent, the brush of his hair, his lips so close to my skin.

I chuckled nervously. “I just haven’t met anyone that excites me, is all.” That didn’t appear to be true anymore though.

His smile seared my neck, and my insides rioted. Who ever thought feeling a smile against your skin could cause such a violent reaction. Every part of me was straining to meet him, making me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t move away. Shockingly I found I didn’t want to.

“It’s okay, cowboy,” he whispered.

A juddering breath escaped, and I discovered my forehead resting on his shoulder, my hands gripping his slim waist, and his hand stroking my back. An icy tremor shuffled between my shoulder blades, while a knot grew in my throat.
Oh hell no
. Crying was not happening. Pushing on his hips, I set him away from me, keeping my head bowed until I had myself under control again. Would it be so bad if I were gay?

“Come, be a gentleman and help me across the creek.” Flipping the cherry off his cig, he stepped it out then put the butt in his pocket. I smiled over the fact he didn’t drop it on the ground, and maybe a little over how he chose to ignore my near meltdown.

“I saw that,” he exclaimed lightly.

“What?”

“A smile.”

“Shut up.” The smile widened, pulling at my cheeks.

He took my hand, and we made our way to the creek bank. As we grew closer, his grip tightened with each step until my hand pulsed with the effort to push blood through the vice, and into my fingertips.

He stopped about six feet away. “I need you to drag me across.”

I looked curiously at him. “What?” His eyes squeeze shut three times in succession, before he managed to glance at me.

Taking a deep breath, he admitted, “I can’t swim, and...I...uh...I’m afraid of water.”

“You never learned how to swim?” I asked appalled. I didn’t know anyone over the age of ten who couldn’t swim. But then, you hear about people drowning all the time, and some in fairly shallow rivers
with
life vests on.

He pointed at his chest. “City boy remember?”

“But didn’t you have swimming lessons in school?”

“Yes, and I can give CPR like nobodies business...but they couldn’t get me in the pool.” He grimaced, his eyes squeezing closed.

I shrugged, unsure what else to do. “It’s not that unusual a phobia. There are a lot of people afraid of water.”
Just like there are a lot of folks scared of dogs
. Seeing his ticks escalating before my eyes, I gripped his hand before he could think about it, and leapt the creek, dragging him behind me.

Zane landed with the heel of one foot in the water. He shrieked, and launched himself against me, trying to scale me as if he was a bear trying to climb a tree.

Cinching my arms around him, I tried to calm him down. “Hey, you’re safe. Solid ground, Zane.” I stomped a foot.
Thud
,
thud
,
thud
.

He was trembling while his throat worked continuously, the sound he emitted much like glugging a bottle of water. His reaction seemed more trauma-driven than that of a phobia. However I wasn’t a therapist, and really knew nothing about this sort of thing.

Suddenly he calmed, inhaled, and shoved me away. “You could have warned me! What type of person does that?” His voice cracked on the last word as his hands sought solace in his hair.

“Zane...” I threw my hands up. “Okay, yes, I could have warned you. But you probably would have tensed up, maybe even stopped at the last second, and I would have ended up yanked off my feet. It’s possible we never would have even made it across.” I folded my arms over my chest, feeling defiant, and a little hurt over his accusation. A realization hit me, and I cocked my head. “You seem to know where you’re going, so how the heck have you made it across before?”

He waved a hand, gesturing down the creek.

“The railroad bridge?” I asked incredulously. It was a half-mile away, and sported an open deck that looked way down onto the river Cranes Creek dumped into. I would have thought that a much scarier option than a three-foot-wide, eight-inch-deep section of slow moving water.

Zane nodded, digging his toe into the damp ochre soil as he toyed with his tongue stud. “I found this crossing last week, and it’s much closer, and I thought I might be able to cross if you were with me. So I brought us this way.” He shook his head once. “I should have told you...Anyway, I’m sorry,” he held his hands out triumphantly, “and we
are
on the other side,” he said as if everything were forgiven.

I stood, arms still crossed, staring at him for a moment, trying to decide if I could deal with everything that was Zane. It wasn’t as if I was marrying him or anything. Heck, I didn’t even know for certain if I liked guys that way. So I’d had some fantasies, a few minor reactions, one or two or a hundred wet dreams—it didn’t mean I was gay. I shifted uncomfortably as I felt my face warm.

Then I caught the apprehension in his eyes, the slow repetitive cringe along his temples, the barely there flick of his fingers. He was nervous—upset about my reaction.

I let my arms fall to my sides while my hazel eyes narrowed with intrigue. “You have a crush on me, don’t you?” And even though I was having an impossible time admitting it, I think I’d had one on him since he was stung that first day. Heck, I’d smelled him for God’s sake.

He grinned, though the apprehension remained. “God, are we still in junior high? Do I like you? Yeah, even though you’re extremely high maintenance for a cowboy.”

I gawked mockingly at him, even though my body became as light and fluttery as a gnat over his declaration. “Who are you calling high maintenance? And just how many cowboys have you snared to make you such an expert?”

“Let me think...” His brow furrowed in concentration, his lips moving silently as he counted them down on his fingers. “Eight?” He glanced up as if God would help him recall his debauchery. “No...Nine.”

My lower jaw would have fallen to the ground if not attached. He couldn’t be serious. He
looked
serious.

Then he cracked up. “Oh my God, you are
so
gullible.” He pointed, swirling his finger at me. “You might want to close your mouth before you choke on a bug.” Shaking his head, he continued to laugh, then sobered suddenly. “Wait. You actually thought I’d slept with that many guys?”

I shrugged. I knew guys that had slept with more than that many girls, so why wouldn’t a gay guy do the same? Not that I could ever be promiscuous like that. Of course you had to meet someone you actually wanted to have sex with in order to take a step in
that
direction. And I hadn’t. My eyes strayed to Zane.
Not true
, singsonged in my head. And I was so not going there.
That’s what you think
. Jesus, now I had a voice in my head.

“How do you know I’m gay?” I blurted, surprising myself, yet at the same time hoping he could enlighten me. I hated this conflicted feeling. I mean, what did people—my friends—Zane—see when they looked at me that had them assuming I was gay?

Chapter Eleven

“Aahhm...I think I’ll take the fifth on that one.” He looked to the sky again. “And if we want to be back before dark, we should continue our hike—date, getting to know each other, day of odd discoveries...Whatever you want to call it.”

“So, you’re not going to answer my question?”

“Nope.”

I sighed, disappointed, but knowing if I were him I wouldn’t answer the question either. “Is that what you call this? Getting to know each other?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah...I think that’s what this is.”

“I can go with that. Because if this were a date, it’s the strangest one I’ve ever been on.”

He laughed as he headed down the trail away from the creek. After a few hundred feet, he ducked beneath the scraggy limbs of a scrub oak onto a deer trail, wending around large rocks and deadfall as if he had made the scant track himself. He led me onto another barely there path, then took the south trail for a bit before turning up the cut leading into cougar station, an area not many hiked for obvious reasons. The area was chockfull of small caves, rock ledges, and thick underbrush perfect for fox, rabbits, badgers, and the things that hunted them. Mainly cats.

“You remember when I asked you to let my folks know where my body is...”

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Yeah?”

“Just keep that in mind since we don’t have a gun, and your legs are longer than mine.”

He slowed his swift pace. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re leading me into cougar country.”

He stopped, causing me to bump into him, and landing my nose in a pile of sweat-dampened thick hair just above the collar of his jacket. Sweating didn’t make him smell any less amazing, just different, more like a—
crap. This is not happening—
guy. I hustled back, mortified by my body’s quick reaction. Slipping on the hill, my hands grappled, and closed on the first thing they found.

“Oh my God,
oh my God
, I am so sorry.” Totally humiliated, I scrabbled around, and planted my butt on the trail, my head buried in my hands.
I can’t believe I did that
!

“You know, I don’t usually let guys into my pants on the first date,” he admonished, finishing with a
tsk
,
tsk
.

Half-turning, I yelled, “It was an accident.”
Jesus
, he hadn’t pulled his pants up yet. As a matter of fact he was standing there, his hands resting on his hips in the middle of the trail, undeniably amused over his situation. The one I had unfortunately put him in.
Man
he has nice legs
. I figured his legs would be thin, but his thighs and calves were all lithe muscle, and practically hairless. Just a faint dusting on his—
What am I doing admiring his legs
?

I flicked my hand at him. “Would you pull your pants up, please?”

His blue form-fitting boxers left almost nothing to my imagination, and I really tried hard not to look, but he was just
standing
there. I guess what girls said about thin guys was true, or at least in Zane’s case it appeared to be. Suddenly I felt all kinds of inadequate, then the mechanics of gay sex came to mind and I shuddered back to normalcy. I refused to let anyone go
there
. But it was a two way street right? And I’d really like to—
no
,
I wouldn’t
. With a self-proclaimed sigh I realized I actually would.

“You’re the one who undressed me.”

I huffed, however the hilarity of the situation was beginning to conquer my humiliation, and I began to chuckle. “I already told you, not on purpose, and if you think I’m pulling them back up...” I began to really laugh. “I can’t believe...you have, like, no hips.”

“I know. It’s a curse,” he said, a light tease in his voice.

I stood, and peeked around, thankful to find him zipping his jeans closed.

“You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“What? How so?” I asked, forgetting the obvious.

“You’re staring.” He adjusted himself none too discreetly.

Damn, I was. Humiliated, my eyes flashed to his face as heat flooded my cheeks. The sweet smile he gave me was knowing, and a little timid, and it did something to my insides, leaving them all jittery. Then something peculiar happened. All the tension within me evaporated as if every part of me sighed at the same time. An easy smile cruised across my face, and for possibly the first time in my life, I felt completely comfortable in my own skin, of where I existed at this moment. He was so easy to be with, and even our teasing was kind of amazing in how effortlessly it flowed.

Zane must have picked up on my revelation, because the timidity disappeared, replaced with a broad grin. He gestured up the trail. “So, there’s this place I found...maybe another quarter mile. I haven’t been eaten yet...What do you think our chances are?”

I thought about it for a second, and figured out where he was taking me. “You mean Mary’s Wall? The ledge? It’s pretty close, we should be okay as long as we’re outta there before dark.”

His brow furrowed. “Why is it called Mary’s Wall?”

“It’s kinda gruesome actually. This girl back in the forties, supposedly unwed and pregnant, threw herself off the ledge.” I shrugged. “The locals started calling it Mary’s Wall, and now there are all these ghost stories surrounding it.”

He started towards our destination with renewed vigor. “Cool! Tragic too, but, that’s
so
cool.”

I laughed, following him up the trail. “I take it you don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Never met one, so until I do, no.” He slowed slightly, turning thoughtful blue eyes towards me. “I kinda wish people could come back and talk to us though, you know?”

I nodded, imagining how many would find peace if that were possible. “It would help, wouldn’t it? Those last words...”

He looked to the heavens, and gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah,” he said quietly. But before the hands of my heart reached him, he shook off his melancholy, smiled back at me, and trudged onward, a man on a mission.

He set a blistering pace, and I was huffing, sweat trailing down my back and chest by the time we broke from the Salal and scrub oak into the clearing. The shelf had been created when, long before my time, a large piece of the granite cliff broke off. The crushed remains could be seen from the ledge over a hundred feet below. That is if you were willing to get that close to the crumbling edge. I wasn’t. Dropping onto a patch of moss, fluttering my shirt in an effort to cool down, I leaned against a log which had landed here during a storm several years ago.

Zane crept cautiously to the edge. The city boy wasn’t even breathing hard while the country boy felt about ready to keel over. I leaned my head against the broken pine, closing my eyes to the late afternoon glare, and willed my breathing to regulate.

“When I found this place...I screamed at God until I couldn’t scream anymore.”

I cracked my lids and found him looking out over the undulating tree soaked vastness. It was all you could see up here. And as your eyes strained to see farther, and farther, the deep blue-green became infinite. No shape or form, just infinite.

He turned to me. “It made me feel better at least.”

“He heard you,” I said, to make him feel better more than anything. Tucking my hands behind my head, I closed my eyes again. Zane made a noncommittal noise.

I heard the soft slap of leather as his jacket landed on the log next to me, then the white on my lids darkened as Zane blocked out the sun.

Weight settled on my thighs, and my eyes flew open to find him straddling my legs, practically in my lap.

“What are you doing?” I eked out, pushing my back against the damp log behind me.

“Hopefully liberating you—and being incredibly selfish.” His hands landed against the pine on either side of my head.

“Maybe I don’t need liberating, and why selfish?” I squirmed, causing him to shift forward. Closer. I froze as his fingers brushed down my neck.

“Because I want a chance at another first kiss with you.”

I shook my head quickly, my fingers digging into the mulch as I turned my head away. “I don’t...I can’t...” Despite my new found discoveries of only fifteen minutes ago, I was actually terrified. Was I really ready for this?

“Hey.” Zane’s fingers found my chin, and lifted my face as his descended, stopping when we were cheek to cheek. “One kiss, that’s all I will ever take from you. I’ll honor whatever decision you come to after that.” His words floated on the air before finding purchase inside my head. “Gabriel, gift your first kiss to me. I know how precious it is, and I want it as mine.”

Practically hyperventilating, I hooked onto his blue eyes, and found them appraising me warmly.

“Are you always so poetic?” I asked, stalling as I tried to catch the air running away from me. Even though my mind was a jumbled mess, my body was relishing the weight of him, yearning for more contact.

He smiled. “I don’t know where that came from actually. I guess you bring out the best in me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It was just a kiss, right? “Okay...” I braced for impact.

His eyes searched mine, his head lowering, and I was frozen with fear, wonder, and expectation. He hesitated, his breath feathering across my lips, his scent teasing—aggravating me, as the desire to touch, to feel, and the driving need to know, crashed through me.

“Yes?” he breathed.

I swallowed. “Damn it, just kiss me.”

When his lips touched mine I tensed, my mind snapped, and I felt myself retreating. I fought the urge to push him away. Zane’s hand wrapped the back of my neck as his chest pressed against mine. It was as if I had run straight into an electric fence. A jolt wiped out all thought, leaving me empty. His tongue traveled over my lips, birthing a flutter in my chest, a tingle along my skin, and then warmth budded in my stomach, blossomed and spread, smothering the emptiness with something alive.

Whimpering, I sat up. Zane pulled back, and looked at me, his hands cupping my face, his eyes full of concern. A tremor rolled through my body, and I felt lost among all the sensations.

“Don’t stop...” I whispered, needing him to show me the way.

“Gabe, do you think...could you touch me...please,” he gently implored, his thumb brushing across my mouth.

His soft plea burned through me, and I almost laughed at the fierce reaction. My hands let go of the substrate they’d been gripping, and found his thighs. The moment I felt the firmness of his muscles, the strength there, my mouth found his.

The kiss scorched through every sliver of remaining doubt I had. His tongue stud slid across the roof of my mouth, sending shivers all the way down my back, and I pulled him tightly against me. He moaned, I moaned, and we lost ourselves to each other.

When we pulled apart, we were both shaking, and breathless. Zane buried his face into my neck as I held onto him, unwilling to let go just yet. Holding him didn’t feel like a lie, or wrong, or corrupt, or disgusting. Right this moment, he was everything I never knew I had been missing. All these years—but I wasn’t dead inside, not really.

“Hey,” Zane rubbed my back, “You okay?”

I discovered I was crying—not just crying—sobbing. I nodded, lowering my head to his shoulder. It was one of those gut wrenching, life altering cries my mother said everyone needed now and then. But I had never been one to cry, so I never understood her philosophy. Until now, that is. I had always stood back while others loved and lost, not understanding what they saw, what they felt, hiding inside myself, sure there were pieces of me missing. Kissing Zane hadn’t made me miraculously whole, but the crevices within me didn’t echo quite so deeply.

He kissed my neck, and held me tight. I guess I really had needed liberating.

*

That night as I lay in bed I couldn’t stop touching my lips, remembering what it had felt like kissing Zane—after my initial freak-out anyway, and before my total collapse. The implosion had been inevitable upon learning everything you assumed you knew about yourself, not to mention your future, no longer applied. But I was over that, and more into the wondrousness of the discovery itself. I’d never wanted to kiss, or touch, or
know
another person the way I wanted to with Zane—and that truly blew me away. And damn, everything about him flipped a switch on me somewhere. From talking and joking with him, to...yeah, that. Just thinking about him made me hard—yet another thing no one had ever managed to do. Well, except Tye on occasion, but Tye was off limits, and Zane—I felt the smile sweep across my face—obviously wasn’t.  

*

“Hey, handsome.”

Zane startled me, and caused AJ to snort. I recovered, and bit my lip trying not to smile over the appellation.

Draping his arms along the stall door—his blue squiggled magenta nails glaringly obvious against the worn wood—he chuckled. “I meant AJ.” 

I sneered mockingly. “You’re going to give him a complex. What are you doing here anyway?”