Uncommon Passion (19 page)

underestimated how long it would take them to let me go. Frankly, I didn’t think they’d find me worth

coming after.”

“Some families don’t let people leave without a fight.”

“I didn’t leave him,” she said simply. “I write him every week. If he would write me back, even open

my letters rather than returning them immediately, I’d go see him. Until then I’m not going back. This fight

is over,” she said.

He looked at his watch. “I won’t keep you,” she said, and went to grab her purse from beside the door.

“What would you have done if I wasn’t home?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Gone back to the farm and gone for a walk, probably.”

“You should swing by No Limits. Hottest pickup bar in town, and the best place to blow off steam.”

“I can’t see myself at a nightclub,” she said. “But I’d love to do something else with you.”

The words hung in the air, never to be retrieved, before she remembered he worked there. He wasn’t

inviting her on a date. She opened her mouth to take back what she said.

“Like what?” he said.

His neutral tone didn’t give her much hope. “There’s a coffee shop and bookstore on the Strand called

Artistary. They have concerts, book discussion groups, conversation nights, and open-mike nights on

Tuesdays for poets and local musicians. They have sandwiches and salads, if you want to get something to

eat.”

It sounded dumb as soon as she said it. Ben wouldn’t want to eat a salad, drink tea, and watch people

read poetry or sing songs.
Think of it as another lesson,
she told herself.
You’re learning to ask a man out.

You’re going to get rejected.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” The blade of a smile flashed. “I can handle anything for a few hours. I’ll pick you up, but I

can’t guarantee what time. I’ll text when I leave town.”

“You don’t have to pick me up,” she said. “It’s two extra hours of driving for you.” Half an hour out,

half an hour back, repeat after the show. Or the sex. Whichever took longer.

“It’s a date,” he said. “I do know how dates are supposed to work.”

She hesitated, then nodded because arguing with him seemed pointless and he had somewhere to be.

“I’m glad you’re coming with me. See you Tuesday.”

She let herself out, down to the parking lot, an odd mix of emotions tumbling inside her. Bright flashes

of desire mingled with that disquieting emotion she couldn’t name, tenderness, perhaps, or affection.

Simple happiness that he wanted to do something else with her. Anticipation for Tuesday.

Something new. It took her a minute to identify confidence. Today she’d stood up to the Elysian Fields

leadership and initiated sex with Ben. More important, she’d reminded herself of how far she’d come, and

how far she had yet to go. She closed her car door, pulled her cell phone from her purse and opened her

Drafts folder in her email. The carefully written email with her application to the local vet tech school,

admissions essay, and scanned transcripts sat in the folder.

She opened it, and touched Send.

Done. All she could do now was wait, and pray, and mull over another pressing question.

What on earth was she going to wear for a proper date with Ben Harris?

Chapter Twelve

Three a.m. Even after a shower and a night sweating in Galveston’s humid spring air Ben could still

smell Rachel’s unique scent, rain and risk and an increasing element of longing. Steve seemed to have an

ongoing thing with Juliette’s friend Marta, but Ben drove not to Juliette’s for a party but to his brother’s

house.

Fidelity to Rachel had nothing to do with it. He just couldn’t see anything at one of Juliette’s things

topping what happened a few hours earlier.

He waited until Sam finished the cut on a sheet of drywall, turned off the saw, and tossed the safety

glasses on the workbench. He’d expected silence but instead music filled the air. “Shine” by Collective

Soul, but an a cappella version. As he watched his brother sing along, a big hand reached into Ben’s chest

and squeezed everything tight. Heart, lungs, stomach, gut.

Sam had such a great voice, textured, raspy, a channel for everything he felt. He’d won the lead in the

school musical his freshman year, the same year Ben started at linebacker. They’d grown apart those first

two years of high school, Ben following the easy road through sports and girls to popularity while Sam

struggled with his identity. Or rather, how much of his identity to show in a rural Texas high school that

lived and breathed football.

He watched Sam sing and felt the hair lift on his nape.

To shake it off he looked around the half-finished garage. Drywall covered two of the three walls.

Loose wiring hung between the beams of the unfinished wall, just one more hurdle to jump to get Jonathan.

It was unlikely to happen. Ben knew it, and Sam did, too, even if he wouldn’t admit it. That didn’t stop

Sam. Nothing had, when Sam made a decision.

Sam caught sight of Ben out of the corner of his eye and spun into a crouch. “Jesus
Christ
!” he said as

he straightened.

“Common spelling?” Ben said wryly.

Sam blinked. “What?”

He’d told Rachel that story, not his brother, the person he used to tell everything. “Never mind. Sorry I

didn’t knock.”

Sam sat back against the workbench. “Two visits in less than a month. It’s a miracle.”

“A miracle would be Sunday brunch,” Ben said.

“The answer to my prayers,” Sam agreed. He opened the fridge and tossed Ben a beer. “How you

been?”

Good question. In the couple of weeks he’d gotten verbal reprimands from two different superior

officers, thoroughly debauched a formerly virgin refugee from a fundamentalist cult, then agreed to go to

an open-mike night with her. He wasn’t sure what was worse, expecting her to suck his cock like she was a

No Limits veteran, or taking her out on a date. He settled on, “Fine.”

“Staying safe?” His brother’s blue eyes glinted like shards of a broken mirror.

“Not my job, Sam.”

“I heard about what you did.”

Sam already knew about the gas station so he had to mean tackling the tweaking violent offender.

“How’d you hear about that?” The situation made the news, but his role was limited to
we apprehended the

suspect
, which was just fine with Ben.

Sam looked at him like the idiot he was. “There are gay cops, Ben. Gay cops go to gay bars, where my

friends hang out. Someone told a friend to tell me to check on my brother because while he’s always had a

reputation, he’s not acting like a smart cop.”

So much for the thin blue line. “I’m fine.”

“She was worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, because repeating it would make it so. “Is that why you texted me?”

“Yes.” Sam chucked an empty at the recycling bin that held only empty bottles of organic orange juice

and Coke Zero cans, with a few Shiners thrown in. A very few. “Stop being stupid or I will kick your ass.”

Ben actually took that seriously. Somewhere in the two years he was missing, Sam had learned street-

fighting moves that didn’t spare eyes or throat or nuts. When he fought, he fought to maim. “It’s not stupid.

It’s my job to go after guys like that.”

“There are rules and procedures for calling for backup, or letting the dog take down the big crazy

tweaking drug dealer. Jesus Christ,” Sam said again, and this time a laugh huffed out. “What the fuck were

you thinking?”

He’d never been able to resist Sam’s laugh. “Fuck if I know,” he said. “He was built like a goddamn

tank, and he knocked Montgomery right through a railing. Hitting him was like hitting a brick wall. Good

thing he tripped over his own fucking feet.”

“And despite this, you’re going home alone again?”

Ever since he’d met Rachel. Normally everyone understood the rules. Going home with him wasn’t

dating him. No one had any claim on him, and he gave the same courtesy. Whether a girl he’d slept with

Friday night showed up at No Limits on Saturday with a male friend or a pack of girlfriends made no

difference to him. He got booty calls, and considered them fair trade. When it was all over but the leavin’,

usually the woman gathered up all the peripheral bits of her image. She’d slip on a watch, rings, earrings,

find something to pull her hair back. Grab her purse and shoes and maybe a jacket. Then she’d walk out the

door. Rachel was exactly the same whether she wore a pretty dress, jeans and a T-shirt, or nothing at all.

Rachel had asked him to go on a date. Or hang out. What the hell was it?

Dating was part of what she had to learn about. Good dates, bad dates, rejections, they were all part of

the scene she knew nothing about. It was just like teaching her about sex. Except it wasn’t.

“You’re taking an awful long time to answer that question,” Sam said.

Ben shrugged. “Yeah.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow, but went back to Ben’s errors in judgment. “She said you’ve always been

reckless, but it’s been worse lately.”

The song ended, and Ben changed the subject. “I haven’t heard you sing in a while.”

When his brother sang, everything he’d ever felt or seen or done swirled on the surface of his skin, then

flowed into the air. When Sam sang, everyone in the vicinity stopped what they were doing to watch. Ben

had learned to play guitar so Sam had someone to accompany him, and to his surprise, actually liked it.

Sam shrugged. “I fill in for a friend in a band every so often. Ever since we got Jonathan I want to stay

home. How about you? Played much lately?”

After Sam left Ben had put his guitar in their closet on the ranch and never picked it up again. Sam

knew that, so the question rankled. “Too busy.”

“How busy are you October nineteenth?”

“Why?”

“You know why, you stubborn motherfucker. It’s Dad’s fifty-fifth birthday. We’re throwing him a

party.”

Sam hadn’t forgiven their father by his fiftieth. Now, because he had, Ben was supposed to forgive and

forget? No fucking way.

He chucked his can at the recycling bin. “I’ll probably be working.”

“That’s not a weekday, or a Friday night, or a Saturday night. It’s a Sunday afternoon months from

now. You ask for the time off.”

“I’m on twenty-four/seven call with the SWAT team.”

“And you don’t get to ask for days off?”

“It’s SWAT, Sam. I have to be out of the state to not get called.”

He was lying. He knew it, and despite the effort he made to control his face, Sam knew it. Sam knew

him.

“I’ll take that as a yes, unless the state decides to serve warrants on violent offenders on a Sunday

afternoon.”

“Don’t count on me. Sunday’s a great day to serve warrants.”

Sam didn’t find this funny. “You’d better be there, Ben. What happened is in the past, and this is

months from now. Know who’s going to be there? Me, Chris, Jonathan, Katy and Alan and the girls, Mom,

all her sisters, all of Dad’s brothers and sisters, and damn near everyone else he knows. You’d better

fucking be there.”

The silence between them vibrated until Ben heard a ringing in his ears. Sam huffed out a laugh. “Bring

whoever this girl is who’s removed your screw-around gene. I’d like to meet her.”

“There isn’t anyone.” It was just timing, and a virgin. A former virgin. A woman who chose him

because she thought he wouldn’t care.

Was that what he’d become?

“I’d believe that if your reputation wasn’t the stuff of myth and legends.”

“You know better than to believe in myths and legends.”

“The thing about them, Ben, is that they may not be literally true, but they’re always true. That’s why

they last as long as they do.”

Ben had slept through World Religions. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever,” he said, and turned to go.

Jonathan stood in the doorway, his bony knees sticking out from the hems of a pair of gray cotton

shorts with blue sharks printed on them. Even Ben could tell the kid was half-asleep. Jonathan looked at

Ben, then at Sam, then back at Ben. He’d done the same thing the first time they met—looked at Sam,

looked at Ben, looked back at Sam—then said, “He’s not like you.”

For a kid who supposedly had attachment issues, he was a pretty sharp judge of character.

“Hey, kiddo,” Sam said. He crossed the garage to hunker down in front of the boy. “You remember my

brother, Ben.”

Jonathan nodded.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Sam said, his voice gentle.

“I wanted a drink.”

Sam straightened and held out his hand. “Okay, let’s get you a drink. Hang around for a minute,” he

said to Ben in a low voice.

Ben leaned on the workbench and watched through the lit kitchen window while Sam got milk from the

fridge. A couple of minutes later he disappeared from the kitchen window, then reappeared in the upstairs

hallway. Enough time passed to tuck Jonathan in again, then he reappeared in the hallway window before