Love, Like Water (21 page)

Eli caught his arm. “No, not again. Jesus, Josh, stand still and listen for just a minute, will you? Good Lord, I never know what it is I say that sets you off. You’re worse’n a woman for that kinda shit.” He seemed to see Joshua preparing to respond and held up a finger. “No. Not one word. You just sit there and
listen
.” He pointed to a nearby hay bale.

Annoyed, Joshua plopped down on the bale. He winced at the sting.

Eli picked up the hat that apparently had gotten knocked off at some point in the last few minutes and smacked it against his thigh to dislodge the hay stuck to it. Then he looked up at the high roof of the barn, then down the aisle between the stalls. Then he sighed. “
Mijo
,” he said, then corrected himself, “Josh….”

“I don’t mind
mijo
,” Josh interrupted.

“What? But you said you didn’t like ‘son’ and it means the same thing.”

Josh shrugged. “It’s different, is all. Go on.”

“Damn it, I forgot what I was gonna say!”

“You were going to tell me that I shouldn’t do that again, that you have to work here and nobody knows you like ass, and that I should be concentrating on getting better and learning the ranch like I’m supposed to. And that you’re not interested in a fucked-up piece of useless shit like me.” Joshua’s voice, even to himself, lacked any kind of life. He didn’t even feel particularly emotional about it—after all, you couldn’t argue with the truth, could you? Eli’d lived here for years. He probably had a regular relationship with someone around here, or maybe in Albuquerque. Or maybe in Miller, at the hospital. That Dr. Castellano seemed to know him pretty well. What did he need a mess like Joshua hanging on him? Why would he
want
that?

He knew he’d been childish and stupid to get pissed off at Eli and to start this fight, but when Eli had just gone about his usual business as if nothing had happened, it had hurt. He’d thought that their little interlude had been special, but Eli had been acting as if it was nothing. Just a break in a busy day. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe it had been stupid to get involved with someone like Eli, someone who had a life. He didn’t know why he’d followed Eli into the shed in the first place. He’d just hadn’t wanted to let go.

“Jesus.” Eli sat down beside him and laced his fingers through Joshua’s. “Wasn’t gonna say anything of the sort,
mijo
. I was gonna…. Shit. I was just gonna apologize for treating you bad, and to say you shouldn’t let people treat you like that.”

“Treat me like what?”

“Be all… rough and stuff. I was hard on you, in a hurry. Didn’t mean to be. Didn’t….” He blew out a breath. “Wanted the next time to be good. To do it right, not just in a hurry like before. Like now. Like you’re not worth taking the time. Jesus Christ, if that’s how people treat you, no wonder you got such a shitty self-image. Fuck.” He thunked his head back against the wall behind them. “Fuck.”

“You lost it,” Joshua said. “Don’t you realize how fucking hot that was? You lost it, and you pinned me up against that wall and took me because you wanted me, and it felt fucking awesome.” He looked down at their linked fingers. Eli’s were long and bronzed and callused like the workingman’s they were. His were thin and soft. As dark as Eli’s, though paler than they used to be, after so many months in rehab—his Puerto Rican ancestry made sure he always had a nice tan. But not working hands.

Unless you counted holding a gun, or a piece of pipe, or a set of brass knuckles. His weren’t working hands. His were killing hands.

But in Eli’s, they looked different.

Eli dragged them up to his lips and kissed the back of Joshua’s fingers. “I don’t know what you want, Josh.”

“What do you want?”

“Shit.” Joshua loved the way he said that. Not quite the “sheee-it” that he was used to hearing from the blacks and Latinos in Chicago, but a long, dragged out “sh” and a shorted, chopped “ee-it” at the end. It was how most of the guys on the ranch said it, even Tucker on the rare occasions he swore, but coming from Eli it sounded sweeter. “
Shhhh
-ee-it.” “I want you to get better,” Eli said. “I want you to like it so much here you want to stay forever and not go back to the city. I want you to learn to love horses as much as I do. I want you to be happy.”

“That’s a whole lot about me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re kinda on my mind these days. Shit.”

Shhhh-ee-it.

Joshua closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall beside Eli. “I want the same things,” he admitted. “I don’t
deserve
them, but I want them.”

“You deserve ’em. Everybody deserves to be happy.”

“You don’t know, Eli. And I can’t make you understand. But I want them. That’ll have to do.”

“What can’t I understand?”

Joshua only shook his head, thinking of a girl, and a warehouse, and blood spilled black as oil on stained concrete. Reluctantly, he disengaged his fingers from Eli’s. “You’d better get back to work.”

The foreman searched his face, his eyes sober. “You oughta go take a nap,
mijo
—you look beat.”

“Yeah, maybe I will.” He watched as Eli got up, slapped his hat against his thigh again in what Joshua was beginning to realize was a habit with him, and went out into the sunlight.

He stayed in the dark corner of the barn for a while. The hay in the bale was hard, scratchy, and not at all comfortable, particularly on a sore ass, but he was disinclined to move. From here, he could see most of the ranch yard and half the buildings, and he watched as hands and horses moved in their daily ballet. Tucker was out in the small arena, putting a small black and white horse through its paces; he didn’t seem to move much, but the horse was practically dancing through a series of seemingly planned movements. Jesse, Spencer, and Patrick were standing in a group near the trough. Patrick was talking with his hands and the other two were listening. It occurred to Joshua that the other trainers, Tuck and Eli and the guys from Wyoming and Montana Eli had mentioned before, didn’t wave their hands around like that. They were real still when they were talking, letting their words do the work. He wondered if he used his hands in such a noticeable way—it wasn’t the kind of thing you noticed when it was you doing it.

A pickup chugged into the yard and pulled up by the pole barn, the biggest structure on the ranch. Manolo, who everyone called Manny, got out and started unloading boxes and big feed bags. Jesse left the others and went to help. Joshua noticed that Spencer and Patrick just stood by the fence and watched. He wasn’t impressed.

Ramon came by on one of the horses; he stopped and let Manny load him up with a bunch of bags, and rode into the barn with them. Tomas rode in from the opposite direction with a string of horses behind him, and led them into the corral near where Patrick and Spencer were standing. They passed pretty closely, and one of the horses decided to dump right near Spencer’s shoes. Joshua stifled a laugh. Served the dick right. Then he remembered what Eli had said about revenge scenarios and a good-looking kid getting too close…. Holy shit—did he mean Spencer? He eyed the kid curiously. Seriously? Eli thought he had to be jealous of a white-bread piece of mama’s boy like
that
?

It was almost funny. No. It
was
funny.

Joshua sat in the dark of the barn and grinned maniacally to himself.

Chapter 18

T
HE
ranch had long since gone to sleep, and the full moon was riding high in the sky. Joshua stood in the middle of the ranch yard and stared up. He hadn’t spent a lot of time outdoors at night since he’d arrived here; he had been too exhausted to stay up late, and even though his sleep was too often broken by the nightmares, it had never occurred to him to go outside and look at the stars. He should have, he thought, and would, the next time he woke from a bad dream—all this beauty, all this brightness would surely chase away the demons that haunted him.

A memory surfaced of his grandfather teaching him about the stars long ago. Joshua had sat on the top rail of the fence, Granddad next to him, smelling of tobacco and coffee and pointing at the different constellations. Joshua looked up now and tried to pick out one he knew, but the only one he did was the Big Dipper. He was familiar with Orion, because that was one of the few bright enough to make its light known through the lights and smog of the cities Joshua had lived in, but it was a winter constellation, and invisible now. But he’d see it come the frost. Did they get frost up here on the high desert? He supposed he’d find out.

His gym shoes made no sound on the packed dirt of the yard as he crossed it to the foreman’s cottage. It, like the ranch house, was dark, but the door opened easily under Joshua’s hand.

Eli’s voice came out of the bedroom. “Bolt the door behind you.”

At the sound of his soft, slow voice, deep and patient, a shiver ran through Joshua. “Yes, sir,” he said, and did so. When he entered the bedroom, Eli had turned on a small lamp on the nightstand and was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt.

“Pretty late for a social call.”

“Yeah,” Joshua replied. “I guess I’m just not a very polite person.” He waited.

Eli watched him, his blue eyes hooded, then sighed and shifted over on the bed. “Come on, then. No point in keeping us both up.”

“That was the idea.”

“Uh huh,” Eli said.

Joshua skimmed out of the sweats and T-shirt he wore and sat down next to Eli. Eli reached down and drew the sheet up over both their laps. Joshua waited.

Finally—
finally—
Eli reached up, curled his hand around the back of Joshua’s neck, and dragged him down for a kiss. It was soft and sweet, just what Joshua wanted at that moment.

“I set the alarm for five,” Eli said as he drew back, “so you can get home before Sarafina gets up. Not that she’d say anything, but no point in putting her on the spot.”

“Mm,” Joshua said.

Eli smoothed his hand over Joshua’s hair. “Growing out,” he observed. “I like it better’n the shaved bald look so many guys have these days. All muscle-bound and tattooed and bald.”

“I used to be shaved bald. I started letting it grow as soon as I went into rehab. Had more muscles before. The tats, well, you’ve seen most of them.”

“‘Most of them’? You got more I ain’t seen? Where you hiding ’em?”

Joshua touched the side of his head. “Here, under the hair. It’s part of the reason I’m growing it out.”

“Shit, son! That had to
hurt
.”

“Like a bitch.”

“What’s it of?”

“Nothing. I want to forget it.”

Eli ran his hand over Joshua’s hair again and pulled him in for another soft kiss. “Then forget it.”

“Eli….”

He didn’t need to say more. Eli pulled him down onto the pillows, sliding his hands up Joshua’s spine and then down again to cup his ass, pulling him against him and kneading the muscle there. It felt good and not just in a sexual way; it had been a long time since Joshua had been on a horse, and his ass was feeling it. “You ever fuck on horseback?” he murmured into Eli’s neck.

The foreman snorted a laugh. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, Josh! Fuckin’s complicated enough without adding an animal and five feet of height to the mix! Where did you ever get that idea?”

“Cathy used to read these romance novels, and I’d sneak ’em to read the dirty parts. There was one that was a Western, and the couple fucked on horseback.”

“Well, maybe you could do it with a woman,” Eli said doubtfully, “but a man’s more complicated. I mean, maybe if the horse was in crossties, and was big enough—a draft horse, mebbe, where you had enough room to balance. But Jesus, Josh. I get dizzy thinking about it.”

“That’s not how I want you dizzy,” Joshua whispered. He turned his head to meet Eli’s lips, pressing his tongue inside hungrily.

Eli’s hands came up and held Joshua’s head still, controlling the kiss despite the fact that Joshua had been the one to initiate it. It felt so good, letting Eli take over, knowing that Eli wanted him enough to take charge like this, that it wasn’t up to Joshua to make the decisions, that it wasn’t on Joshua’s head if something failed, that Joshua wasn’t the only one who would be responsible for how this shook out. That there was someone else Joshua could trust besides himself. And everything he’d seen about Eli, everything he’d seen in how the others respected him, how Uncle Tucker relied on him, hell, even how Sarafina treated him—all those things told Joshua that Eli was a man to be trusted.

A man that, if Joshua had still been capable of love, he could love.

Eli must have felt him shiver, because he stopped kissing him and said, “You cold?”

“Someone walked over my grave.” Joshua gave him a shaky grin.

“Not on my watch,” Eli growled and kissed him again.

T
HEY
made love the way Eli wanted to: slow, patient, intense. Eli kept Joshua hovering on the edge for so long the sheets were wet with sweat by the time he turned his head, kissed Joshua’s knee where it pressed against Joshua’s shoulder, and said, “Come” in a hoarse, hungry voice. Joshua threw his head back against the pillows with a stifled shout and obeyed, his cock in Eli’s hand spurting hot and wet between them. Eli kept riding Joshua a few moments, then let out a long, drawn-out groan of his own, dropping his head onto Joshua’s shoulder. They lay there, panting, for a moment, then Eli raised his sweaty head to grin at Joshua. “You okay?”