Love, Like Water (29 page)

J
OSH
had been there the next time Eli had opened his eyes, and the time after that, but after a few days, just as Eli had started feeling more human, he stopped coming to the hospital. Eli’s ma had come in from Portland, and Jake and Sam had flown in from wherever they had been, just to make sure he was on the mend. It was nice to see them, but he missed Joshua.

Tucker, Sarafina, and most of the boys had made trips down to see him; the visits from them and his family alleviated the boredom in between hellish physical therapy and purely annoying tests. The doctors kept asking him stupid questions about shit like “how would he rate his pain on a scale of 1 to 10” like that even made
sense
, for Pete’s sake. Once he’d lost his temper and hollered “It hurts like a fucking
bitch
, you idiot!” Then, of course he felt bad and apologized, but it
had
hurt like a fucking bitch. He didn’t even remember what it was that had hurt that time—it all hurt.

The bruise he’d seen on Joshua’s cheek before was apparently the only injury he’d gotten. That was a relief to Eli. The bruise had scared him, and he worried that Josh had gotten hurt.

But he should have known better—Josh had that background in law enforcement, and apparently had single-handedly disarmed and captured the three guys Eli didn’t really remember attacking him. Eli didn’t remember much about the event at all. For some reason he had the thought that Joshua had told him he’d killed a lot of people, but he hadn’t heard anything of the sort from Tucker, so he figured it was just his imagination.

The guys that had attacked Eli seemed to be connected to a bunch of other attacks, so Eli had to go through some awkward conversations with not only cops and sheriff’s police, but also guys in black suits who looked much more like FBI agents than Joshua ever did. They asked him all kinds of questions, but Eli really couldn’t remember much about it. He remembered leaving the café, but that was about it. He tried asking some questions of his own, about Josh rescuing him, but they were real good at evading straight answers. He figured that was something they got taught in FBI school—Josh was kind of good at it too.

When he asked Tucker where Josh was, Tuck just said he was working hard in the ranch office, so that Tucker had time to pick up the slack from Eli, but that he sent his regards and would see Eli when he came home. Tucker seemed kind of embarrassed about it so Eli didn’t ask again. It might even have been true.

But somehow, he didn’t think it was. He thought Josh was avoiding him.

Easy enough to do, with Eli in the hospital, but shit. He’d thought Josh had got over his skittishness, but it looked like he was still as spooky as a mustang.

Jake and Sam stayed a few days, visiting with him until they were pretty sure he wasn’t gonna die of something, then had to go back to their various lives. Eli appreciated their visiting and it was good to see them again, but didn’t mind much when they left. They had their own commitments and that was okay. Ma decided to stay around until he went home and got settled there, which meant she was still in town when the hospital discharged him to the rehab center where he had to be for four weeks for his busted bones. His arm wasn’t working right, and then he kept having pain in his hip, and they found out that the bone there was cracked, too. At the rate he was going, he’d never be able to ride a horse again. Though the doctors and therapists assured him he’d be fine.

He hoped they were right. He’d need to be able to ride again just to work off the extra pounds Sarafina’s smuggled dinners were putting on him. He kind of thought that maybe that was part of the reason that Ma wanted to hang around.

She’d smacked him on the top of his head—gently—when he’d said that. But he noticed she didn’t deny it, either.

The rehab center was an improvement over the hospital—nobody came around at all hours to draw blood or wake you to take a sleeping pill, and the lights went off at night—but going there introduced Eli to a whole new world of pain. He’d thought he was in pretty good shape before the attack, but they had him working muscle groups he didn’t know he had, and was going to bed at night desperate for the pain pills they gave him. He’d been getting morphine in the hospital but got switched to pills (which didn’t work as well) at rehab. He’d expected he’d take them for a couple of days, then quit, but his body had other ideas. Once or twice he’d tried to go without, but after a few hours tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable enough to sleep, he’d buckled under.

The thing about it was that it wasn’t just one place that hurt—it was everywhere. They’d done a fine job of working him over, and he was just surprised they hadn’t broken every bone in his body. He guessed Joshua came riding in on his white horse quick enough to rescue him from that. (Although he was
pretty
sure he hadn’t been actually riding a horse, even if for some reason Eli remembered that. There weren’t any horses mentioned in the discussions he’d had with the FBI and cops, anyway.) It made it hard to rest, though—he couldn’t find a comfortable position—and he’d gotten crabby. It wasn’t like him to be crabby, he thought; at least he didn’t remember being this way before, but maybe he was? He didn’t like it.

Maybe that was why Joshua wasn’t coming around. Maybe he’d been crabby with him, and Josh didn’t like it. Well, who would?

He asked Tucker every so often how Josh was doing, and all Tucker would say was that he was fine, he was getting healthier, he was working hard organizing Tuck’s office, and that he asked about Eli’s progress every day. That was reassuring. Equally reassuring was Tuck’s telling him that Josh was working with the cops to convict the guys that assaulted him—they were, according to Tuck, the guys who killed and maimed a couple of other gays in town. So Eli was lucky.

He felt like he’d be luckier if Joshua were here, so he asked Tucker to ask Josh to come see him.

Josh did, finally, on one of the evenings he had therapy. He showed up half an hour before he had to leave for the shrink’s office. Eli barely recognized him.

For one thing, he was wearing a suit—not a black one like the other Feds, but a lightweight gray one with darker pants and a dark blue shirt. He looked nice and Eli said so. Joshua just said “thanks” and nothing else.

Finally, after a few minutes, he said, “You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah.” He’d intended to rail at Josh for disappearing, for not being around when Eli could have used a friendly face and a warm hand to hold, but Joshua was so cold, so forbidding in that sharp gray suit that Eli could only say, “I missed you.”

Something flickered in Josh’s dark eyes and his expression got even colder. “Sorry.”

“‘Sorry’? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Eli was shocked and scared by this new, chilly version of the man he loved. Who was this guy? Where had Josh gone?

“It means sorry. As in ‘I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m sorry you missed me, because there’s really no reason for it.’ I didn’t come here because I didn’t want to get into anything with you while you were recuperating. I still don’t. Anything we have to say to each other can wait until you get home and are back on your feet.”

Eli struggled to sit up straighter. “What the hell are you talking about, Josh? What do we have to say to each other? I was kind of figgering on the only thing us needing to say to each other is you saying welcome home and me saying glad to be back. What the Sam Hill is there else to say?”

Josh was so quiet that if Eli hadn’t been staring straight at him, he’d have thought he’d gone. Finally, he said, “Yeah, that’s right,” in a quiet, dead voice. “That’s all.”

“Josh—what’s going on? Why are you in that suit?”

Joshua looked down at himself, then back up at Eli. “I had a meeting.”

“With the FBI about the case?”

“With the FBI, yes.”

The realization hit Eli like a slow, cold wave, washing over him and building up speed. “You’re going back in. To the FBI. You’re leaving the ranch.”

“I’m considering it, yes.”

“Why, Josh? Your uncle needs you….”

“The office is organized enough that Tuck can handle what he can’t teach you. He’s going to have to spend more time outside to make up for you not being there. I figured you could take over the office stuff….”

“I ain’t working in no office.” The idea both infuriated and terrified Eli. To be locked up indoors for the rest of his life? There wasn’t any way in hell he was going to put up with that. “I’m gonna be working with the horses, same as I ever did. No fucking broken bones’re gonna stop me from that. It ain’t like I’m some old man, you shit!”

Josh didn’t acknowledge the insult. “With luck, you’ll be back outdoors in a few months. By then Tucker can find someone else to handle the paperwork.” He shrugged. “I’m sure you and I and Tucker will have some conversations about it when you get back to the ranch. We’ll work it out then. There’s no need to worry about it just yet.” He glanced at his wrist. He was wearing a watch. Eli didn’t remember him ever wearing a watch before. “I need to get going. Good luck with the rest of your therapy.”

“Get out,” Eli said, his voice thick with rage. He could barely get the words out through the anger and the hurt. “Go. I don’t need to see you again. Go back to your fucking FBI, you useless….” He stopped. He couldn’t say that to Josh. Not to Josh. Even if he was
furious
at him.

Josh gave him a thin, humorless smile. “See?” he said softly. “Now you get it.” He turned and walked from the room.

“Josh!
Josh
!” Eli struggled to get up, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate and he fell back on the bed, the pain in his knee flaring down to his feet. “Josh!”

But Josh had gone, and left Eli alone.

Chapter 26

“W
HAT
the devil are you doing, Joshua?”

Josh looked up from the spreadsheet program he was working on. The data lay in neat columns, all with their totals at the bottom—logical, sensible, unemotional. Numbers were numbers, data were data. They didn’t pretend to be anything else. “Doing a cost benefit analysis of the different kinds of feed you’re using compared with similar products and integrating shipping and volume costs and discounts. I should be done in a few minutes. Did you need the computer?”

“I need you to talk to me.” Tucker sat down across from the desk with a heavy sigh. “Son, you been walking around like a robot since Eli got hurt, and you won’t talk to me even though I figured we were getting along pretty well.”

“We’re getting along fine,” Joshua said, not looking at him.

“Save the file,” Tucker said.

“What?”

“Save the file.”

Joshua blinked at him, then looked back at the screen. What was Tucker up to? He picked up the mouse and clicked the save icon.

“Done?”

“Yes. Why….”

The screen went dark. Tucker tossed the end of the power cord he’d just pulled out of the wall onto the desk. “You, son, are going to tell me what the
fuck
is going on in that pea brain of yours. Because I really don’t like what I’m seeing here, and I’m hoping you’re gonna tell me I’m reading something into this situation that really ain’t there. Because if it is, you are a dead disappointment to me, Joshua.”

Joshua folded his arms. “What if you are reading the situation right?”

“I hope I’m not.”

Saying nothing, Joshua picked up the pencil from the desk and rolled it in his fingers. “So what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that my nephew, who I always took as a good guy, is dumping his lover because he’s too crippled up for him to be bothered with.”

The shock of his uncle’s accusation reverberated through Josh. He dropped the pencil. “Is that what you think?”

“Well, you tell me what I should think.”

“I think,” Joshua said bitterly, “you should stop thinking of me as a good guy.”

His uncle closed his eyes as if in pain.

“Because I’m not. I’m not a good guy. I may have been in a career where I should have done good things, but I’m about the farthest thing from a good guy you can get.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t want to believe it.”

“Your shrink’s office called this morning wanting to know if you wanted to reschedule the appointment you canceled last minute. When you left for the meeting with the Feds, you said you’d be home after the appointment. Where did you go, Joshua?”

“I went and found a supplier for heroin and got wasted!” Joshua shot back. “Where the hell else would I go?”

He’d shaken his uncle, but Tucker said doggedly, “I don’t believe you.”

“Fine. I didn’t. Not that I didn’t want to.” Joshua leaned his head back against the headrest on the chair. “I went and saw Eli, and when I was done there I just didn’t feel like dealing with McBride. I went for a walk.”

“What did Eli say?”

“What do you think he said? He told me to get lost. He said he didn’t want to see me again. And he called me useless.” Josh let out a humorless bark of laughter. “Smart man, Elian Kelly. He knows what you don’t want to.”

“That I don’t believe. Eli would never say that to you. He… I think he loves you, Josh. You should see his face when he asks about you.”