Casual Wanderer © 2025 All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and specific other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
"The Man No One Knows"
The room was all hum, flicker, and cold air that smelled like lemons and bleach. Lights with no color at all droned down on the bed. Machines spoke in steady, lit-up syllables, an electric language that promised order and offered no comfort.
Weston lay in the middle of it, swallowed by tidy white gauze, tapes, a stiff blanket tucked too tight for the hot-blooded boy he'd been yesterday. A clear mask fogged with each shallow breath. Lines ran from his arms like pale vines while a monitor traced his heartbeat in green peaks and valleys.
Bruises had already bloomed where a face should be. One eye was a swollen plum. A curl of dried blood sat in the corner of his mouth, as delicate and horrible as a petal. Someone had cleaned him, his hair was damp and combed back, the soap-smell clinging to him like. But pain still clung harder, a shadow no nurse could wipe away.
They stood at the edges and tried to be smaller than they were.
Daisy first, because she always stepped into rooms like she was meant to make them gentler. Bare shoulders squared, chin lifted, eyes taking in every tube, every number. Her hands were clean but trembling. She laced them together to quiet them, then unlaced them again, the way a woman does when prayer and action are fighting for the same space in her body.
Cassidy was all sharp edges held still, arms folded so tight the tendons stood in her wrists, jaw set, her lip caught between her teeth until the color left it.
Cash stood a step behind, hat crushed in one fist, though he hadn't realized he'd brought it in. His shoulders filled the doorway, but his stare couldn't settle. First, the breath-mist in the mask, then the number on the monitor, then the cracked skin at Weston's knuckles, then the floor, then nothing at all. Guilt had already found him, though.
Jackson had the look of someone who'd run a long way and arrived in the wrong body. He kept his arms tight to his sides like if he reached out, the machines would shatter or Weston would. His eyes were raw at the rims, salt shining there but refusing to fall, as if grief might make too much noise in this place and wake what little peace the boy in the bed had managed to find.
By the bed, in a chair that had been pulled as close as rules allowed, Weston's mother sat like a woman who'd forgotten how to arrange herself. Evelyn Price, Evie to the ones who'd known her in school, Ms. Price at the diner, mama to only one, had her hair pinned up quick with a cheap clip, stray strands stuck to her damp temples. The skin at her knuckles was reddened and cracked from years of bleach and hot water. Her nails were cut down to the quick. A purse that had seen too much life slumped at her feet. She did not cry. Her eyes were dry and fierce and endless, locked on the soft fogging of the mask, counting each mist-bloom like a rosary bead.
No one spoke.
Language felt indecent.
A nurse came and checked a bag, pressed a button, scribbled something, disappeared. The door whispered shut behind her. The beeping did not change.
Daisy moved then, only her. She crossed the last inches between mothers the way you cross a church aisle, slow and certain, and rested her hand on Evelyn's shoulder. It was not a timid hand. It said: I have stood in rooms like this and kept breathing. It said: I will carry what you cannot, for as long as I can. Evelyn didn't look up. She placed her own hand over Daisy's without lifting her gaze, fingers rough and sure, two women making a bridge out of bones and will.
Jackson flinched at the sight and then softened, as if relief could hurt. Cassidy let out one slow breath, as if she'd been underwater and remembered air. Cash's fingers loosened on the hat just enough to un-crease the brim.
Daisy drew a chair from the wall with a whisper of metal on the linoleum and sat close enough that her knee brushed Evelyn's. Their shoulders touched, two straight lines making one.
The rest of it happened like rain beginning: small, inevitable, soft.
Cassidy reached for Jackson's hand and found it, squeezed once, and let go. Cash set his hat on his head again, not because he meant to leave like a man, but because he needed something to do that wasn't breaking. Jackson looked at the monitor one last time, the tiny mountain range of a life still underway, then at Weston's face, past the ruin to the boy he knew, the boy who laughed with his whole body and said sorry for things that weren't his fault. He bowed his head, not a prayer, not exactly.
Without a word, they backed away together. The door latch clicked, soft as a sigh. Out in the hall, the lights hummed on and on, and somewhere a vending machine thunked a stale bag of chips into a bin, the world insisting on its small, stupid noises. A TV with the sound off showed a weatherman pointing at storms that weren't this one. The floor shined so hard that it threw their faces back at them in thin, stretched reflections.
Down the corridor, Blake waited, big-shouldered, hair tied back, hands deep in his jeans, leaning against a notice board covered in laminated maps and "VISITING HOURS" signs. He caught Jackson's eye and shifted like he might come on, say something, and try to hold the air together with his two hands.
Jackson gave the tiniest shake of his head.
Not now.
Blake stayed put.
"Shouldn't've let him go," Cash said, voice grindstone-low, barely louder than the vents.
"Cash," Cassidy whispered, "don't..."
He spun off the wall, and the word hit like a spark to tinder. "Don't what?" His voice jumped and cracked.
"Cash," Jackson said, quiet, steady, tryin' gentle first. "Ain't nobody knew..."
"Oh, you didn't?" Cash laughed, but there was no joy in it, only teeth. "I did. I goddamn knew." He lifted his fist before he knew he'd raised it. "Knew and still..."
He drove his hand into the sheetrock beside the EXIT sign.
The sound cracked through the hushed corridor like a gunshot. The wall gave in as easily as cake. White dust leapt up, chalking his knuckles. A chunk dropped and skittered across the tile. A nurse two doors down jerked her head up, and someone in scrubs froze with a clipboard clutched to their chest.
"Cash!" Cassidy grabbed at his wrist. He shook her off without looking, breath heaving, eyes gone black and wet.
"Whoever did this," he said, choking on it, the words like hot coals he had to spit or swallow, "I swear to God, I'll..." He had to swallow. "I'll find 'em and..."
"Don't say it," Jackson murmured, stepping in close, chest to chest, palm up like a peace flag.
Cash's chest bucked. "I'm a put somebody in the dirt if that boy..." His throat closed. He dragged his forearm across his mouth. Spat on the linoleum like it was the only way to keep from drowning. "They left him by the damn river like he was trash."
"Hey." Blake had shifted down the hall despite Jackson's look. He kept his voice low, hands open, palms bare. "Bud, you gon' bring security down here actin' like that."
"Don't call me bud," Cash snapped without even turning. His voice broke on the last letter. "I ain't your nothin'."
"Cash," Cassidy hissed, "stop...please, just..."
It wouldn't. He wouldn't. He rocked forward like a fighter under a bell, looking for a face to hit and finding only air, machines, that white door that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY like a dare. His breath came harsh and ragged.
Then the ICU door hissed, and Daisy stepped out.
No hurry in her. No flinch. She closed the door gently with one palm smoothed along its edge as if she were laying down a baby. Her face had gone carved, all the softness packed away somewhere safe. What was left was the bone and steel of her, Miss Daisy Bell, who could hush a bull or a baptism with the same five words.
Her eyes took everything in: the hole in the wall, the dust on Cash's hand, Jackson's white mouth, Blake's half-step forward, and the nurse peeking from the station. She moved straight to Cash.
"Boy," she said. Not loud. Not angry. Just true. "Not here."
Cash stared at the floor, chest still sawing. The tendons in his neck held like ship rope.
"I know what's in you," Daisy went on, voice low as Mississippi mud in January. "If I could rip somebody in half with my bare hands right this second, I would. I ain't tellin' you not to feel it. I'm tellin' you to put it where it belongs." She tapped his fist, slow. Dust smeared her finger. "This ain't the place. Not with his mama in there. Not with him fightin'. You hear me?"
He swallowed. A long, punishing swallow. Didn't lift his eyes.
"Look at me," she said.
He did. Barely.
"There's a time to throw a punch and a time to hold a hand," she said. "Right now we hold. We hold each other together. You go breakin' the hospital, they'll throw you out, and I'll have to stop holdin' Evie to come bail your hard-headed behind from security. You gonna make me do that?"
"No, ma'am," he managed, voice shredded.
She nodded once, and some tight thread in the air loosened.
Daisy glanced at Blake then, and her voice changed not at all, but it filled the corridor like a steadying hand. "Blake."
"Daisy." He was already straightening.
"Take these children for a drink," she said. "Cafeteria, lobby, I don't care if it's a Coke from a machine or water out that fountain. Get 'em movin'. Get 'em breathin' somethin' that ain't this."
Blake nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
Daisy's eyes flicked to Cassidy. "You, too, sugar. Go on with 'em. I'll sit with Evie."
Cassidy's chin wobbled. "You sure?"
"I am," Daisy said. "And when I ain't, I still am."
She turned to Jackson last, and all the steel in her softened at the edges. "Baby, help me with this one."
Jackson had already stepped to Cash's side, arm sliding across those iron shoulders. "Come on," he whispered, the word brother a bridge, not a fact. "Let's get some air."
Cash didn't budge at first. He lifted his ruined hand, stared at the chalk in the creases like it might spell him an answer. His mouth worked. Nothing came.
Jackson squeezed. "We ain't leavin' him," he said. "We just steppin' out the room."
"Out the room," Cash echoed, hoarse, as if each syllable was a weight he had to lift. He let Jackson take the brim of his hat and set it right. He let Cassidy's fingers catch his wrist, light as a ribbon. He let Blake step backward, making a path that felt like a rope bridge over a flood.
"Let's go," Blake murmured.
They started down the corridor in a slow, crooked line. Shoes scuffed. A nurse with a tray flattened to the wall and let them pass, she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. At the end of the hall, the EXIT sign glowed the same hard red as a wound.
Daisy watched them a beat, then turned back to the ICU door and went in to sit with Evelyn and the boy who was still here.
Outside, Blake led the way with that quiet, big-shouldered steadiness of his, a step ahead like he could break the wind for the rest of them. Cassidy kept close on his flank, arms wrapped around herself. Behind them, Cash moved stiff and off-kilter, a storm walking on two legs. Jackson stayed glued to his side, a hand ghosting at Cash's elbow, not quite touching until Cash's stride hit a crack and stuttered, then there it was, that gentle pressure, guiding, steadying, not asking permission.
Blake's truck sat lonesome under a busted lamp. He unlocked it with a clack that sounded rude in the hush and swung the driver's door wide.
"Front," he said, nodding at Cassidy. "You get the belt that still works."
She slid in without arguing, the vinyl whining under her. Blake rounded the hood. Cash and Jackson climbed into the bench back, knees bumping, shoulders jammed. Blake turned the key. The engine coughed, then settled into a low, familiar rumble. He didn't touch the radio. They didn't need noise pretending to be comfort.
They pulled out onto the two-lane, tires whispering over the patched places, the town sliding by in a soft blur: the dark square, the pharmacy closed up tight, the bait shop's neon fish flickering like it might swim off the sign and flop into the road.
No one spoke.
The truck's fan pushed a warm breath around the cab. Cassidy held her seat belt in both hands like a rosary. Cash stared hard out his window, jaw tensed so long and mean it looked like it might crack. Jackson watched the place where Cash's sleeve met his wrist, the pale skin exposed there, tendons jumping. He wanted to say sorry. He wanted to say a hundred useless things. He kept his mouth shut.
The Rusty Spur rose out of the dark, neon longhorn buzzing above the door, one horn flickering out every third second, a gravel lot littered with bottle caps and oil drops. A couple of pickups and a sunburned sedan sat crooked across three spaces.
Inside was all amber: jukebox glow, beer signs, a line of bottles catching light like stained glass in a church for the broken. Old smoke, fryer grease, something sweet, maybe spilled whiskey or the gummy bottom of a bowl of maraschino cherries. A ceiling fan ticked, not doing much. Two men in seed caps hunched over a game of nine-ball, and a woman with sunburned shoulders fed quarters into the jukebox like she owed it money.
They took a corner table without a word. Cash's eyes found the bar like it had called his Christian name.
"Cash..." Cassidy started.
But he was already going.
He covered the scuffed boards in four long strides, shouldered into the thin slice of space between two stools, slapped his palm down on the bar hard enough to rattle the ashtray. The bartender, Hank, gray at the temples and hollow-eyed, the Spur's permanent fixture, looked up from polishing a glass and went still. He knew these kids. Knew their mamas. Knew that look on a boy's face like a coiled snake.
"Whiskey," Cash said.
Hank's gaze slid past Cash to the table, Blake standing there, still as a fence post, Cassidy with her mouth pressed thin, Jackson pale and burning at once. Hank didn't ask for an ID. He didn't ask anything. He reached for the bottle with hands that had done this too many times and poured a neat one in a squat glass. Slid it over. Cash snatched it. Threw it back like it was water and his throat was on fire. The glass hit the bar with a hollow knock. He didn't wince. He didn't breathe.
"Another," he said.
"Cash," Jackson said, close now, a hand brushing his shoulder, brief as a prayer.
"Don't," Cash snapped without looking, and his voice did that breaking thing that made the room hear him even if they didn't want to.
Hank poured. Cash slammed that one, too. A flush rose up his neck, a heat that had nowhere to go but meaner. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like he wanted to wipe the night off his face and couldn't.
"Easy, son," Hank murmured, low enough it wasn't a challenge.
"I ain't your son," Cash said, but it didn't have teeth. It had tears in it, the kind he'd never, ever let fall in public.
Behind them, Cassidy drifted up, Blake at her shoulder, big as a wall. She slid two fingers around the empty glass and held it there, not taking it, just touching, like laying a hand on a fevered brow.
"Hey," she said, voice round and soft, a tone she saved for babies and bad dreams. "We gon' sit, you hear?"
Cash's eyes stayed on the bottle. He could see his reflection in the glass, stretched and warped and wrong. He swallowed. The want would not quit. The guilt would not, either. Hank poured a third without being asked. Cash's hand moved on its own. He knocked it back, the burn climbing, the world blurring at the corners. He set the glass down so gently it might've been a bird he was afraid to break.
Behind him, the jukebox found the start of an old, sad song. The ceiling fan clicked. On the far side of the room, a pool ball dropped into a pocket with a soft, satisfied thunk.
Blake nodded at Hank once. "Couple o'waters and some cocktails," he said. "And coffee."
Hank snorted. "No coffee." He slid a pitcher and a stack of plastic cups across.
They gave Cash the bar like you give a man a burning field, space enough to let it run or die on its own. Blake nudged Jackson and Cassidy toward the back, to the busted throne of the Rusty Spur: two wobbly tables half-swallowed by shadow, pinball machines lined up like chrome saints against the wall. The machines thumped and chimed to themselves, a little orchestra of luck and lightning, while the jukebox bled a lonesome guitar.
They sat. Nobody talked at first. Cassidy twisted a cocktail straw into a knot, then into another, then into a tiny green wreck.
After a while she said, voice low and a tremor under it, "It's easy to forget bad folks exist, ain't it? We been livin' like...like Willow Creek's this big soft quilt and we all tucked up under it." She glanced toward the bar, where Cash's shoulders looked like planks under his shirt. "Feels like we been sheltered. Or blind."
Jackson watched the condensation slide down the water pitcher, making a dark ring on the table. "I ain't forgot," he said.
Blake leaned back, one arm slung over the chair, the other cradling a plastic cup. His eyes had that long-mile look, like he was seeing a hundred towns at once. "Y'all got a quilt here," he said, quiet and gravelly. "But quilts don't stop winter. They just make it bearable." He nodded toward the door, toward the dark lot and the darker road beyond. "World's got teeth. Some places hide 'em better."
Cassidy's mouth tipped wry. "You talk like you've seen stuff, cowboy."
He smirked, then let it fade. "I talk like somebody who's slept in enough rooms with a chair under the doorknob." He tapped his cup, thinking. "You run long enough, you figure a few things. First: monsters don't look like monsters. They look like fellas who help you change a tire and then ask the wrong question the wrong way. Second: you plan your exits even when you ain't plannin' to leave. Park where you can pull forward. Keep a few dollars cash where it's easy. Sit with your back to a wall. It ain't bein' scared. It's bein' ready."
Jackson glanced at him, something soft and stricken flickering through his face. "That how you lived? All the time?"
Blake swallowed. "'Til lately."
Cassidy followed his gaze to Jackson, then away. "So what do we do now, Mr. Ready? Weston's layin' in a bed full of wires 'cause somebody decided to be meaner than God. How we s'posed to live with that?" Her voice cracked. She pinched the bridge of her nose like she could force the sting back inside.
Blake turned the cup in his hands. "You make promises you can keep," he said. "You show up at the hospital tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, bring his mama coffee, put gas in her car, sit the night shift so she can wash her face. You keep each other fed. And you don't go lookin' for a fight you can't win in a parking lot at two a.m."
Jackson looked toward the bar, toward Cash, and his jaw moved like he had words caught in his teeth. "He ain't gonna hear that," he said.
"Then you hear it," Blake said, not unkindly. "Hold it 'til he can."
Cassidy blew a breath out through puffed cheeks. "Feels like the world's a house with a bad foundation. One hard rain and it slides."
Blake's mouth twitched. "Most houses are. But I've seen folks jack a porch up with two-by-fours and heart. Ain't pretty, but it holds." He lifted his chin toward the front. "Your mama's doin' that right now. Daisy Bell could hold a roof on with spit and a hymn. You can't help but respect that woman."
That pulled a little laugh from both of them, wet, unwilling, grateful.
Then the sound changed.
Not the machines. The room.
It started as a chair leg scraping too hard. A syllable stretched mean. The bar's easy murmur went tight as wire. Blake's head came up before the first glass hit. He was halfway out of his chair when it burst on the floor, sharp, ringing, like ice breaking on a river.
"Ah hell," Cassidy breathed, already on her feet.
They rounded the end of the tables in time to hear it: one of the men at the bar slurring something ugly and soft as a snake. Not a word you write down. It slicked across the floorboards, found Cash where he stood hunched over an empty glass, and lit him like tinder.
Cash moved.
His fist was a hammer and the first man's jaw was a nail. The crack of it smacked the room into silence for half a heartbeat, then everything jumped. A stool skidded. Another glass went. Hank barked a word nobody obeyed. Two more men peeled off their stools, seed caps backward, boots dragging, circling like dogs around something wounded they'd mistaken for easy.
"Cash!" Jackson shouted, but the sound folded into the scuffle.
"Stay back," Blake snapped, already pushing through bodies.
At the bar, Cash swung again, caught a temple this time, and sent a red-faced man careening into the chalkboard that said WING NIGHT in smudged letters. The second came in low, grabbing at Cash's waist. Cash drove a knee up hard, a grunt thudding out of both of them. The third hung back just a beat, mouth twisted, fists up, choosing angles like he'd done this on too many Thursdays.
"Hey!" Hank barked, reaching for the bat under the counter he kept for snakes in the storeroom and men who thought they were snakes. "Y'all take that out..."
The third man feinted. Cash turned. The first staggered off the chalkboard and lunged from the side. Jackson was there, but then not, as Blake's arm swung across him like a gate.
"Blake!" Cassidy's voice cracked across the room.
Blake stepped into the churn without lifting a fist. He slid between shoulders and barstools like he'd been born in honky-tonks, palms up, voice low and easy as creek water. "Fellas," he drawled, that slow honey smoothing all the edges, "Y'all got good bone structure. Would be a cryin' shame to rearrange it on a Tuesday."
One of the men, red cap backwards, lip already slick with blood, lurched toward him, jaw tight. Blake didn't back up. He smiled like the man had just told him a joke.
"Hush now," Blake said, friendly as a handshake. "Hank'll make you pay for every glass with your firstborn and that pool table. And I'm too tired to fill out hospital paperwork. Ain't you?"
Hank, bat in hand under the bar, snorted despite himself. "He ain't lyin'."
Blake pointed at the toppled stool. "We upright that, I'll buy a round, beer for y'all, waters for my little hothead and his people. We call it even and don't bring the sheriff into a night already gone sideways." His voice dropped, and the room seemed to lean in. "We got a boy layin' up at Mercy gaspin' to stay on this earth. Save your knuckles for somethin' that deserves 'em."
The men glanced at one another, their pack-minds wavering. The third, with a thick neck and small, mean eyes, rolled his shoulder like he wasn't done. Blake pivoted to face him square, his grin widening, conspiratorial.
"Buddy," he murmured, "I got two hundred dollars says you can bench more'n both them cowlicks, and I ain't even arguin'. You hit my friend again, though, I gotta dance with you. You don't want that. I dance ugly."
That got a couple of ragged laughs from the rail. The thick-neck's mouth twitched against his will. The heat bled a few degrees out of the room.
Blake tipped his chin, the smile never touching his eyes. "That's right. Be smart."
He didn't wait to see if pride took. He turned his head just enough to catch Jackson's eye. "Jackson," he said softly, all charm gone, just command. "Bathroom. Cool him off. Now."
Jackson was already moving. He caught Cash by the elbow, then higher, palm flat between shoulder and neck, that old, quiet steer he'd been doing since they were boys. "C'mon."
Cash yanked once, instinct, then let himself be guided, breath still ragged, pupils blown wide. He shouldered past a stool, stumbled on the lip of the floorboards, caught himself on the wall. Jackson didn't let go. He hauled him down the crooked hallway past the neon beer signs and the framed rodeo poster with somebody else's glory in it, past a payphone that ate quarters and a pinball machine blinking EL DIABLO in devil red.
The bathroom door stuck. Years of humidity and fights had swollen the jamb. Jackson threw his shoulder into it and kicked. It bucked open, and a squall of hinges, heat, and chemical lemon rushed out to meet them.
Inside, the light was too bright for a bar, flicker-white and buzzing, bouncing off tile that had seen more than it could remember. A hand dryer hung crooked, dead as a beetle. The mirror was a map of old scratches and a smear that might've been a hand once. Graffiti climbed the stall door in Sharpie confessions. The place smelled like Pine-Sol and beer and iron.
Cash barreled for the last stall, shoved the door so hard it banged off its stopper, and fell to his knees. He got one hand on the rim and then his body took over. Deep, wrenching, the sound ripped out of him, a surrender you don't choose. Whiskey, rage, and nothingness thundered up and out, again and again, until only the dry pull of a man trying to drag up the thing that hurt and learning it won't come that way.
Jackson leaned his shoulders back against the sink, arms crossed tight, head bowed. He watched the tap run for a second, then let it. Water hissed a thin, steady line into the steel basin. He fished two rough brown paper towels from the squealing dispenser and set them beside the faucet without a word.
Cash retched again, a hollow, punishing sound.
The stall walls shook.
Jackson didn't flinch.
He'd promised Daisy he'd hold.
So he held.
And he waited.
Cash eventually lurched outta the stall like a man walking off a bad boat, one hand on the dented partition, the other reaching blindly for the wall. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and winced at himself in the mirror: red-eyed, knuckles raw, jaw set like it might crack.
Jackson didn't move from the sink. He just cocked his head, that half-grin he kept for trouble inching up on one side. "Well, ain't you a vision," he drawled, soft as a towel left in the sun. "You done baptizin' that toilet or you need me to call a preacher?"
Cash huffed a laugh that hurt. "Shut up," he said, voice sandpaper. "Ain't funny."
"Little bit funny," Jackson said, and when Cash misstepped, he was already there, arms under his, palm firm at the ribs. "Whoa now. I got you."
He guided Cash to the sink, hip to hip, and turned the tap with two fingers. Water hissed brightly into the bowl, cold enough to sting. Jackson cupped it, let the first handful spill, and then brought the second up gently, patting it against Cash's cheeks, temples, and the nape of his neck, where the heat pooled.
Cash held the porcelain as if it could keep him. He didn't look at Jackson at first, but instead, he stared at the drain swirl, the silver ring of the stopper, and the way droplets clung to his lashes. But his breath found the rhythm of the water, slowing some, and when Jackson tipped his chin with a knuckle, "C'mon, big dog, eyes up", he let them rise.
They stayed like that.
Jackson's hands were working quietly, with wet palms and cool fingers. Cash's eyes fixed on his face like the only thing in the room that wouldn't move. No talk. Just the small work of care.
Jackson reached for a wad of brown paper, dampened it, folded it neatly like a nurse, and swept it across Cash's brow. "You runnin' hot," he murmured. "Hold still." He dabbed at the corner of Cash's mouth, thumb catching a stubborn bead, then at the scrape along his cheekbone where a ring or a bottle had kissed too hard. His touch was careful as church.
Cash swallowed. The muscle in his jaw twitched, then eased. The world narrowed to water, breath, and the smell of Jackson. Soap, grass, and something warm, like sun-dried cotton.
He swayed without meaning to.
Jackson's hand slid to the back of his neck, steady. Cash let his head fall forward, that last inch he'd been holding on to, and the weight found the hollow of Jackson's chest. He stayed there, felt the thud under his ear, steady as porch swing chains, let his hands fall useless at his sides.
Jackson didn't spook. He went still in that way he had, like making room. One arm wrapped across Cash's shoulders, an old habit wearing a new skin. The other combed slowly through the thick of Cash's hair, palm curving to the crown, fingers parting it gently. Back and back again. He'd done it a hundred times for smaller hurts.
Cash breathed in.
A long, wrecked pull. It came out on a truth he hadn't meant to let loose. "I..." He coughed and tried again, softer, as if the tile could hear. "I love your smell."
The words landed between them like a coin in deep water.
Jackson's hand paused. Just a heartbeat. He looked at the mirror and saw both of them there, his own mouth parted, Cash's face turned in, the tired light, the wet at his throat where water had run, the broad shape of them making a shelter out of elbows and breath.
He didn't answer it with words. He just folded Cash closer, chin resting easy on the crown of his head, the way you set something precious down where it can't roll. His fingers moved again, slower now, tipping over the whorl at Cash's scalp, tracing the line behind his ear where the hair went soft. His thumb found the pulse there and stayed, like counting.
Cash let his eyes close. The embarrassment ebbed, leaving a clean ache. He breathed Jackson in again, soap, summer, a ghost of cornfield, the smallest thread of Daisy's dryer sheets, and something inside him unwound enough to make room for the hurt.
"Alright," Jackson murmured, voice almost nothing. "Alright. I'm here."
Cash nodded against him, a tiny motion that felt like a fall and a landing at once. The tap kept singing its thin silver note. The mirror gathered the fog of their breath and wrote it back to them in soft halos. For a long moment, the world was this: cool water, a steady heart, the quiet of two boys holding the part of the night they could carry. Then Jackson's palm drifted to Cash's cheek, tapped it once with a damp finger, half joke, half blessing.
"Rinse," he said, gentler than laughter. "Spit. We gon' go back out there like we ain't the fools we are."
Cash smiled into his shirt. A small, cracked thing. "Ain't makin' no promises."
"Me neither," Jackson said, and held him one second more before he eased him toward the sink.
*
The Rusty Spur's neon horseshoe flickered against the night like a bad heartbeat, washing the gravel lot in jittery pinks and blues. Cassidy hooked her arm under Cash's and hauled, grunting as he sagged his full weight onto her.
"Lord have mercy, you heavy as sin," she said, breathless but laughing. "Pick up them feet. I ain't draggin' you like a sack'a feed."
Cash mumbled something, his face slack and wet at the corners. He was tucked into the back seat like a scarecrow folded at the first storm wind. Jackson reached across him and buckled the belt with careful hands. Cash's head lolled against the window, and he sighed, eyes closed, the faintest smile touching his mouth as if that cool glass had been a blessing.
"You good back here?" Jackson asked.
"M'floatin'," Cash whispered. "Don't let go."
"I ain't," Jackson said. He gave his shoulder a squeeze.
Cassidy climbed in beside her brother, one knee on the seat, one foot still outside, like she might spring back out if trouble called her by name. "I got him."
Jackson shut the door and circled the hood. Blake stood by the driver's side, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers, hat brim low, the lines at the corners of his eyes deeper in the neon. As Jackson passed, Blake shifted, reaching to open the door for him, and their hands grazed, warm palm to warm palm, the barest hush of contact. The touch felt small and enormous all at once. It ran up Jackson's arm like a live wire and settled hard behind his ribs. Blake's mouth softened, a quick, private daylight in the dark.
"Get on in," Blake murmured, low enough to belong to the night alone.
"Looky here," a voice spilled from the front steps of the Spur, drawn-out and familiar as a dog's bark.
Colton.
He strolled off the porch with two shadows snickering at his back, a cocked grin bright on his face as if he'd found a dollar in the road and meant to spend it cruelly. "Well, ain't this precious," he said, swinging his chin toward Jackson. "Mama's boy babysittin' his...friend." He let the word hang, sour and mean.
Blake didn't even look his way. "Jackson," he said, quiet but hard. "Get in the car."
Jackson set his jaw and reached for the handle.
Colton came closer. "Heard y'all had yourselves a rough evenin'. Heard poor lil' Weston got himself what was comin'. Boy's been beggin' for it, swishin' round town like a porch flag. Some folks oughta know better'n to breathe same air as decent people."
"Get in the car," Blake said again. "Now."
Colton's eyes never left Jackson. "Truth is, town'd be cleaner if he'd stayed down by that river. Ain't no room in Willow Creek for faggots," he spat, a word worn sharp from years of hatred. "One less of 'em wouldn't trouble nobody."
The sound inside Jackson snapped like a green stick. The world narrowed. Nothing but Colton's mouth, and Weston laid up in a bed with machines breathing for him. Jackson's fist moved before the thought finished forming. Knuckles met jawbone with a resounding, clean thud. Colton's head whipped. His boots slid, and he fell hard onto the gravel, hat skittering off like a beetle.
Silence held a breath, and then the rednecks' laughter broke wide and startled, unsure whether to mock or admire.
"Damn," Cassidy said, half-proud, half-scared, already out of the back seat and on the gravel, hands on her hips. "Colton Wayne Bishop, your mouth been writin' checks your scrawny behind can't cash since grade school. How's it feel finally bouncin' one?"
Colton pressed his palm to his split lip, eyes wide with shame and beer. He spat, red blooming at the corner of his mouth, and scrambled to his knees. "You..." He choked on whatever else he had and snapped his jaw shut when the laughter swelled again behind him. He shot a glare like a thrown bottle at Jackson.
Blake had already stepped between them, forearm across Jackson's chest, a quiet fence. Up close, his voice went soft as heat off asphalt. "Easy now. He ain't worth a night in county."
Jackson's breath came ragged. He stared over Blake's shoulder, bright and shaking. "Say it again," he said. The words rasped. "Say his name like that again."
Colton got to his feet, swaying. He swiped at his shirtfront as if dust had insulted him too. He leaned in toward Blake while the laughter made a cover of noise, and his smile turned mean enough to cut. "He's next," he muttered, barely moving his mouth.
Only Blake heard.
Cassidy took one step closer, chin up, eyes blazing. "Honey," she said, syrup-sticky and razor-edged, "if ignorance paid bills, you'd own the power company. Now go on back inside 'fore your friends laugh you clean out the county."
The two men behind Colton snorted. One of them slapped the other's shoulder. "C'mon, Colt," he said, trying to help him save face. "Let it go. You're bleedin', man."
Colton's eyes cut from Cassidy to Jackson to Blake. He lifted his hat from the gravel, beat it against his thigh, and jammed it back on. His mouth worked around a curse he didn't dare to finish. With the last of his swagger lopsided and cheap, he turned and lurched for the door, shoulders tight, vanishing into the Spur's light like a moth that'd flown too close and lost a wing.
The lot exhaled.
Somewhere down the block, a dog barked as if to say that's right.
Cassidy faced Jackson, the spark still jumping in her eyes, and then softened, reaching for his hand. He was shaking, the skin over his knuckles already swelling, blood shining like a cherry seed. "Hey," she said, voice dropping low. "You okay?"
Jackson blinked, found her, and nodded. "I'm fine."
"Liar," she said, gentler still. "But I like the ambition."
From the back seat, Cash stirred and knocked his head against the glass. "What's that racket?" he muttered, eyes slitting open.
"Nothin'," Cassidy said, climbing back in. "Go on back to dreamin' you a gentleman. We'll break it to you easy in the mornin'."
Blake took Jackson's hand without asking, turned it palm-up, thumb moving slowly over bruised knuckles like he could rub away the heat. "We gotta get you on some ice," he said. The cigarette had burned down, forgotten between his fingers. He flicked it away, ember skipping like a firefly before it died. "Get in."
Jackson looked at him, that private daylight again flickering between them, and something in Blake's face, some mix of pride and fear and a tenderness he'd worked all his life to outrun, quivered like a slack rope catching weight.
He's next.
The words rattled in his chest, more warning than threat, more prophecy than promise.
He opened the door. Jackson slid in. Blake rounded to the driver's side, settled behind the wheel, and the engine turned over with a tired, willing sigh. As they pulled away, the Spur's neon shrank in the mirror to a smear, a dot. Cash breathed slowly on the seat behind them, and sleep dragged him under again.
Minutes later, Carla's porch light snapped on like a judgment, washing the yard in a square of harsh yellow. The screen door banged, and there she was, hair up in a rag, nightgown tucked into a faded robe, one hand on her hip and the other already wagging.
"Jesus, Mary, an' every last apostle," she said, coming down the steps. "If that ain't my fool son drunker'n a June bug in a Coke bottle. Cash Dalton, you think I birthed you just so you could pickle your brain in bottom-shelf whiskey?"
Cassidy slid out first and tried to soften it. "Mama, now..."
"Hush, girl. I know your fingerprints on trouble the way I know my own skillet." Carla leaned into the back seat, pinching Cash's ear between two fingers, and twisted. Cash yelped, eyes flying open like window shades. "There you are. Tomorrow mornin' I'm tyin' you to that bed with my clothesline, you hear me? I will hog-tie you, boy, make you the prettiest porch ham in three counties if you so much as sniff at a bottle."
"Mama...ow...hold up now," Cash whined, trying to cover his ear. "I'm delicate."
"You delicate as a cinder block," she snapped, then cut a glance at Blake and Jackson and sighed, a little put-on, a little real. "Lord bless the two of you for deliverin' him home. Next time, throw him across the yard. I'll hose him down and let the possums finish the job."
Cassidy snorted. "He do make good possum bait."
Carla pointed at Cassidy without looking. "You hush or I'll tie you to the bed too. Twins, two ropes...ain't nothin' but math."
"Y'all hear this?" Cassidy whispered to Jackson, eyes big and dramatic. "She abusin' our civil rights."
"Get on," Carla huffed, but a smile tugged the corner of her mouth. She soft-patted Blake's arm as if to say thank you, then hooked Cash up under her own arm with surprising strength. "If I don't see you again, Mr. Buckley, it's 'cause I'm in jail for raisin' these two. Night."
"Night, ma'am," Blake said, tipping his hat.
Cassidy paused long enough to throw them a lazy salute.
Blake and Jackson rolled away, the Dalton porch shrinking in the mirror.
They turned onto Daisy's street and crept into the drive. The house sat dark except for the little lamp in the front room that Daisy never turned off. Inside, the air still held the ghost of the barbecue. "She prob'ly stayin' at the hospital," Jackson said, voice low. "She'd sit with Weston's mama all night if she had to."
"I figured," Blake said.
They drifted toward the kitchen like they'd been pulled on the same slow tide. The moon made a pale square on the linoleum, and the countertops gleamed like river stones. Jackson rested his hands on the sink, head bowed, a breath, the bones of his knuckles flushed and swollen.
Blake closed the space between them and took Jackson's right hand in both of his, as carefully as picking up a sparrow. "Lemme see," he murmured. He turned the hand palm down, thumb grazing the ridge where skin had split. "You ain't gotta hurt yourself to prove nothin'."
"I ain't sorry I did it," Jackson said. The words came out rough, warm.
Blake didn't argue. He bent, and his mouth touched the first bruise with a kiss. Then another, softer. He breathed there, then flicked his tongue, once, light, across the cut, like tasting a word he meant to keep. Jackson shivered. Their breath tangled, quickened. Then the kisses moved, knuckles to the heel of the hand, wrist where a pulse hurried, inside of the forearm. The world narrowed to breath and skin and the small sounds people only make when they've run out of places to hide. Jackson's free hand slid into Blake's hair, held him there, and trembled.
Blake rose, and his lips finally found Jackson's. It started tender and got hungry fast, the kind of hunger that says I thought I'd starve without you. Jackson leaned back, and Blake's hands were already on his waist, sure and hot. The counter met Jackson's hips with a firm thunk, and a startled laugh shook through him, swallowed by Blake's mouth. Jackson caught Blake's shirt and drew him closer, chest to chest, breath to breath.
"Boy," Blake managed, breathless, forehead to Jackson's. "If I ain't careful, I'm gon' start worshipin' you."
"Ain't seein' the problem," Jackson said, eyes bright, voice gone honey-thick.
Blake's laugh broke. He kissed Jackson again, deeper, and that's when the words slipped out, unguarded as a heartbeat.
"I love you..." The syllables hung there, bare as a wire.
They both pulled back a breath, eyes locked.
Surprise flashed, then fear, then something steadier.
Jackson's mouth twitched, then slowly bloomed into a smile. He tipped his chin like a dare and a thank-you. "Say it again."
Blake swallowed, the night catching at his throat. "I love you, kid."
It landed in Jackson like rain after a long drought. He went soft and fierce in the same breath, hands framing Blake's jaw. "I knew it," he whispered, and then he tugged, closing the last inch between them, giving his answer with his mouth, with his weight, with the way he opened and leaned and let.
After that, the words didn't matter so much.
They merged, like two men who'd just stepped off a ledge and were surprised to find the ground had come up to meet them. Then Jackson's smile turned reckless and tender at once, and he pulled Blake back in by the jaw, answering with his mouth, with the lean of his body, with the way he yielded without giving an inch.
They found heat fast.
Blake's hands slid under the hem of Jackson's T-shirt, palms moving up ribs to shoulder blades, thumbs tracing the dip of his spine. Jackson shivered. Blake lifted the shirt, and Jackson threw his arms up to help, the fabric snagging a second on his knuckles, drawing a hiss that Blake kissed away as soon as the cotton cleared. Jackson tugged at Blake's buttons, clumsy in his hurry, laughing once under his breath when a stubborn one refused.
"Hold still," Jackson murmured, breath warm against Blake's throat.
"Ain't never been good at that," Blake said, voice gone rough.
The button gave. The shirt opened. Skin found skin, heat to heat, chest to chest. Blake's mouth went to Jackson's jaw, his ear, the soft place at the base of his throat. Jackson's head tipped back, and he made a small sound like something freed. Blake caught him by the waist and lifted. Jackson's cheeks struck the counter's top with a muted thud that jarred a drawer open an inch. A wooden spoon rattled. A stray lid clinked in a metal bowl. They both stifled a laugh that turned into a gasp when Blake pressed closer, deepening the kiss until the room narrowed to breath and want and the cool of laminate against the small of Jackson's back.
"Careful," Jackson whispered, smiling. "You 'bout knocked Mama's spoon straight into next week."
"I'll buy her a whole drawer," Blake said, and kissed him hard enough to make the spoon rattle again. By then, his big hands were already unbluckling Jackson's belt.
Blake pulled it off with a loud snap, then ripped the jeans open, yanking them down Jackson's legs. He managed to squeezed one of his boots out before they fell, hanging a few inches from the floor, stuck to the blonde's ankle. In the same breath, Blake snapped his buckle open and pulled his pants down, freeing his precum-oozing cock.
They tried to go slow and failed.
Blake's hand came up to his mouth, letting a thick gob of spit fall on it before smearing the liquid over his shaft. Jackson's fingers threaded into Blake's hair and tugged, gently, then not. Jackson chuckled, then swallowed the laugh with his mouth, his shoulders rolling, his knees bracketing Blake's hips like he'd been born knowing how to hold him close. The faucet handle nudged and sputtered a cold spatter onto Blake's forearm. He jerked, and Jackson grinned against his lips before Blake finally pushed his cock into Jackson's hole.
A gasp.
A groan.
Forehead bumping into forehead.
A shared breath.
"You thick," Jackson teased.
"Your fault," Blake said, breathless.
He slid one hand down to Jackson's thigh and drew him nearer until there wasn't any space left to pretend with. His cock was all in now, Jackson's sphincter stretched around it. Perfectly so. His breath hitched. Blake's did, too. They moved together with a kind of graceless grace, bumping a cabinet with a knee, knocking their foreheads once, and apologizing in kisses, finding a rhythm that was part laughter, part prayer. Blake kissed along Jackson's cheek to his mouth again, then lower, tasting the salt at his collarbone, the quick flutter at his throat, the edge of a bruise blooming on his hand. Jackson caught at Blake's shoulders, holding on like the world had tilted and this was the only steady thing in it.
"Wish..." the blonde mumbled as Blake pushed in and out of him with a slow yet forceful energy. "Wish I could keep ya in me like this...all the time. F'rever," Jackson said, in a way that made it sound like something they'd been saying for years.
"Hush now," Blake breathed against his skin, not meaning silence so much as I hear you mixed with Stop talking or you'll make me come.
Jackson's head turned slowly, and he looked past Blake's shoulder toward the dark window, as if the town were out there listening. Then he let it go. He reached for Blake, tugged, guided, shy and sure at the same time. Blake followed, patient where it mattered, greedy where it didn't. The counter edge bit Jackson's cheeks. Blake's hands went there, soothing, then urging, and Jackson answered with a roll of his hips that made Blake swear softly and reverently.
They tumbled off the counter in a tangle, half-laughing, half-desperate, catching themselves against the cabinets. Jackson's heel skidded on linoleum, and Blake took the slip with him, turning it into a messy spin that pressed Jackson back to the counter again, his cock still pistoning into the boy's inviting warm hole. Jackson kissed Blake, slow, then faster, then slow once more because neither of them wanted to miss a second of the truth between them.
One that was becoming inescapably clear.
"I love you," Blake said again, less startled, more certain, as if the words had found their feet.
"Blake," Jackson said, voice breaking on the name. "I..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to. He held Blake's face in both hands and said it with everything else.
The world went bright and close. They moved with a hungry tenderness that didn't know what to do with its own joy, groins bumping, fingers fumbling, breath hitching, bodies finding a cadence that was half rough insistence and half careful worship. A cabinet door clicked open against Jackson's hip. Blake's hat fell and rolled. Jackson's laugh broke again, and Blake kissed the laugh right out of him. They whispered a dozen nothings that sounded like everythings: right here, I got you, I ain't goin' nowhere, and the kitchen took them in, a small, ordinary room suddenly holy with heat and the undeniable connection of two souls.
One final jerk, and they stilled.
Jackson felt the first shots of Blake's warm jizz fill his insides. Fast and deep at first. Then, a slow descent of intensity, the spasms of the cowboy's cock still alive inside his heated hole as it forced the thick juice deeper. Jackson slid his right hand between their sweaty, muscular bodies and stroked his cock.
Three times.
That's all it took.
In seconds, he was firing his own load into Blake's hairy chest, cum fusing with sweat in a perfect, alchemic transmutation.
When they finally stilled, the night pressed its face to the window, and both men breathed like they'd outrun a storm. Blake rested his forehead on Jackson's, eyes closed, smiling that new, unguarded smile that looked good on a man who'd been braced all his life.
"Y'awright?" he asked, voice hoarse as gravel.
Jackson nodded and let out a shaky laugh, his palm smoothing over Blake's jaw. "Better'n okay," he said, soft and shinin' like.
"Oh?"
"I got you in m'life," Jackson answered.
They stood there a while longer, tangled up in the quiet, in the ordinary sweetness of a kitchen at night, learning each other's breath the way people learn a place they mean to stay.
*
They had drifted to Jackson's room when the house finally exhaled and went still, the dark turning close and kind. The bed was too small and too warm for two grown men who slept like fighters, elbows, knees, the loosened tension of bodies that had finally stopped bracing. Jackson lay naked on his stomach, one arm flung over Blake's chest, breath slow and even, hair damp at the temple. The little fan on the dresser turned its head and whispered across their skin.
Blake watched him sleep.
In the thin blue of the hour, Jackson looked even more beautiful, brow unknotted, mouth softened, lashes a golden brush on his cheek. The bruised knuckles rested open on Blake's ribs as if they had nothing left to prove. He'd taken Blake's cock two more times since they'd left the kitchen. When he breathed, the sheet rose and fell. The sheet had been all they could manage to pull over themselves, and even that sat cockeyed across their hips like a surrender flag.
"Lord help me," Blake whispered, not to wake him and not quite to pray. He eased his hand up and smoothed the hair back from Jackson's forehead, thumb pausing a heartbeat on that warm skin like a benediction.
He lay another minute. Two. Three. The room kept its hush. Somewhere in the house a pipe ticked again, dutiful and small. The words he'd said in the kitchen, I love you, kid, moved through him like a skittish animal that had finally crept into the open and didn't know where to bed down. He felt both lighter and more unsafe for it.
He slid himself out from under Jackson with a care he hadn't known he owned. Jackson made a sound, soft and not quite a word. Blake stilled, palm spread on the mattress as if it were the one thing keeping them both from falling. When the sound faded, Blake shifted again, slow, patient, until the heat and weight of Jackson's arm slipped to the sheet. He pulled the blanket higher over Jackson's bare back, tucking it at the waist.
He dressed. First, he put on jeans, then the shirt with its stubborn top button that behaved now that there was no hurry. He found his hat and thumbed the crease smooth. At the door, he paused, turned, and let his eyes memorize what they could: Jackson's shoulder rising and falling, the small bed, the fan, the life he'd just stepped into like a man wading past his knees into a river.
"I'll be back," he mouthed, as if the room might carry the words to the sleeping boy.
The hallway gave him its old-house chorus, the gentle complaint of a floorboard, the sigh of a hinge, the soft draft sighing past curtains Daisy had hemmed by hand. In the kitchen, he washed his hands without turning on the light, ran water over the washcloth and wrung it out, then set it folded on the counter beside a chipped mug like a small commitment to come back and finish what care was left to give.
Outside, he slid into the truck and turned the key. When he pulled away, he checked the bedroom window once. No movement. Good.
The hospital wore its late-hour quiet like a starched sheet. Weston's floor had the hush of a chapel. Blake moved down the hall with his hat in his hands, feeling too large for the place. A man made for arenas and open air, now trying to fold himself small enough to fit into mercy.
Daisy sat in a molded chair beside the bed, her hair falling out of its clip in tired curls. Weston lay still, his face swollen along one cheekbone, his lip split, and a strip of tape at his brow. The machines breathed with him and for him. The boy's hands lay quiet atop the blanket, moon-pale in the hospital glow.
Daisy looked up as Blake filled the doorway. Her mouth lifted into a smile that was mostly gratitude and something else, a mother's mercy that had learned to stand on its own two feet. "His mama went home to shower," she said softly, voice worn to velvet by long hours. "Grab some rest' fore sunup. Reckon she'll be back 'fore the coffee's worth a sip."
Blake tipped his hat and kept it in his hands like contrition. "You oughta do the same, Daisy. You stayin' ain't what's keepin' him breathin'." He nodded at Weston. "I'll sit with him 'til morning."
"You sure?" She reached for her purse, then for the boy's blanket, tugging it up a little, that small, automatic gesture mothers never forget. "Ain't no need for you to..."
"I ain't leavin' him alone," Blake said. He didn't raise his voice, but something in it set like concrete. "Go on. I'll call if he so much as twitches."
Daisy stood. The chair scraped quietly against the floor. Up close, he saw the fine line of worry etched between her brows, and the salt at the corner of one eye that hadn't even had the decency to turn into a tear. She looked at him for a long second, past the hat, past the belt buckle, past the stories and the swagger people glued on a rodeo man, and found the person she'd already decided to trust.
"You a good man, Blake Buckley," she said, and she leaned in and kissed his cheek, soft as a Sunday blessing. "Don't argue with me 'bout it."
He didn't. The word good sat in his chest like a coin he hadn't known how to spend. He swallowed and let the silence stand in for what he couldn't say without fumbling it.
"Lock your jaw if any fool comes sniffin' round," she added, the steel back in her gentleness. "I ain't fixin' to wake up to news of any more boys fightin' on account of hate."
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
She squeezed his forearm once, firm, then gathered her bag and slipped out, that cloud of jasmine following and thinning down the hall.
Blake set his hat rim-down on the sill and took the couch by the window, made for smaller men or men who'd never been taught to take up space. He folded himself into it anyway, long legs angled, spine curved where it had always wanted to be straight. He settled, elbows on his knees, hands knit loosely, head bowed as if to listen for footsteps that weren't there yet.
From somewhere deep, Colton's "he's next" drifted through, thin and venomous. Blake let it come. Let it pass.
"Reckon I ain't," he said under his breath to no one, to everyone. Then he went still, a tall shadow tucked in a corner, keeping watch while the town slept.
*
Blake drifted, dozed, and woke again, the quiet turning like a slow wheel.
He let his head fall back against the couch and slouched until his boots touched the wall. What woke him for good wasn't a beep or a nurse's step. It was the small click of metal, the whisper of a sash easing up, the soft complaint of a window screen nudged aside. Blake opened his eyes and didn't move.
A shape slid through the window like it had been practicing since childhood, one knee, a palm, and a lean body slipping down the wall. Boots touched rubber quietly. The figure straightened, and the parking-lot luster sketched a jaw he knew, a thatch of dark hair, a frame wrapped tight in a denim jacket.
Cash.
He paused a beat, listening. Then turned toward the bed. Weston lay where he had, the tape on his brow a pale stripe, the machines keeping tempo. Cash's shoulders sank as if some weight had finally found the ground.
Blake stayed still. He could have cleared his throat and made himself known, but the boy had come in like a prayer, and it seemed sacrilege to interrupt a prayer.
Cash stepped up beside the bed and leaned both hands on the guardrail, head down. It came out hushed but plain when he spoke, like he wasn't talking to the room, just the boy on the pillow. "Hey," he said. "It's me." He waited like he expected an answer, then shook his head once at himself and tried again. "I know you can hear me, man. You always could hear what folks ain't sayin'." His mouth twitched, not a smile.
He slid one hand under the blanket and found Weston's thumb rubbing small circles like he was warming it back up for use. He looked at their hands for a long second, jaw working, and when he lifted his eyes to Weston's face, they were rawer than Blake had ever seen.
"I'm sorry," he said, and the word came out thick. "I shoulda walked you home. Hell...I shoulda done a whole book full'a shouldas." He swallowed.
The monitor kept its measured pace. Cash's thumb never quit moving.
"You ain't hard to love, you hear me?" he went on, lower. "You're good, Weston. You ain't the problem. I am. Them other boys are." His mouth trembled, then set. He leaned closer, voice going almost to breath. "I ain't lettin' this stand. I swear to God, I ain't. I'm gon' find who did it. And I'm gon' put him where he can't touch you nor nobody else."
A beat. He scrubbed his free hand over his face, fingers raking his thick hair back. His laugh caught on something and turned into a sigh.
"You remember that time you told me my heart's like a stray dog—snappin' when it's scared but all it really wants is a hand?" He shook his head. "You was right. I ain't say that often, so you better wake up and mark it down."
He bent then, quick, like he might lose his nerve, and pressed his mouth to the ridge of tape at Weston's brow, careful, just a touch. When he lifted his head, his eyes shone. The hand under the blanket lay still, like he'd felt some small answer move through it. He leaned his forehead to the back of Weston's hand and stayed there, breathing with the machine, syncing himself to its patience.
Blake watched the boy's shoulders hitch once, twice, quietly, and then settle.
After a while, Cash lifted his head and wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm, hard like he could erase the proof. He straightened, squeezed Weston's fingers a last time, and tucked the blanket close like he'd seen Daisy do, a learned tenderness that fit him better than he knew. He turned toward the window, and the movement slid him into the light enough for Blake to see the ghost of the bruise blooming along his cheekbone from where the night had been rough. Cash froze half in the window's glow when he finally clocked the shape on the couch.
"Well...ain't you comfortable," he said, voice low and flinty. "Sittin' in the dark like a church mouse. You enjoy listenin' at folks, cowboy? Just settlin' in, catchin' people's soft parts through the walls?"
Blake didn't move. The shadow kept him, long and quiet.
"Whole town's been sideways since you showed up. We had our mess, but we knew where it lived. Then here you come..." His jaw clenched hard enough to make a sound. "And now, everythin's worse. You carry a storm, Blake Buckley."
Blake kept silent, letting the boy's words land where they wanted.
"You think you somethin' special 'cause you talk low and fuck better than most? You a spark in a dry summer, that's what you are. And I'm sick to death of puttin' out fires you started."
Blake let the quiet stand a second longer, then shifted forward, elbows to knees, hands folded, no threat in it. "You finished?" he asked, calm as a screened porch in shade. Cash's chest still worked, but he lifted his chin. "I ain't mad at you, boy."
Cash snorted. "Don't 'boy' me."
"Ain't mockin' you." Blake's voice stayed even. "Truth is, I respect you."
Cash blinked like the word didn't fit the math. "The hell for?"
"'Cause you remind me of me," Blake said. A corner of his mouth ticked up, sad and true. "Same fire slid under the ribs. Same rage that feels like it keepin' you safe when it's really just keepin' you burnin'. Same heart, too, don't pretend you ain't got one. You'd throw yourself in front of a truck for the folks you love and argue about it later." He tipped his chin toward Weston. "You stood here and promised a boy he ain't alone. That's a man talkin'."
Cash bristled. "I ain't nothin' like you."
Blake huffed a small chuckle. "I grew up watchin' a man drink himself mean. Mean when he was wet, meaner when he was dry. Every night I kept the hate like a hot coin in my mouth, thinkin' it made me strong. Thought if I stayed mad enough, I'd be harder to break." He leaned back, eyes gone to some other place in time. "All it did was hollow me out 'til there weren't nothin' left to protect but the hate itself. So I left. Rodeo to rodeo, town to town. Folks laughin' with me in bars and forgettin' my name' fore breakfast. That's where the road ends when hate's your map. Drifter. Alone. A man folks clap for and never know."
Cash squared his shoulders, the old scrap of pride hitching his voice a notch. "I ain't afraid."
Blake's tone thinned, cooled. "You oughta be. Listen to me, Cash. Don't go diggin' at Weston's hurt like it's a root you can yank clean. You pull that thread, you unearth more than one man's sin. You'll drag up ugliness tied to folks who got cousins wearin' badges and daddies signin' checks. You'll find out things ain't just what happened in a dark patch by the river." He set his jaw. "Leave it."
Cash stared, eyes hard, voice sharpened to a point. "What you scared of, Buckley? You hidin’ somethin’?”
Blake let the question hang between them until it started to feel like weather. When he finally spoke, his voice was easy, almost kind, how a man might talk to a skittish colt right before shutting the gate.
"If Jackson didn't exist, you and me could sit a porch and swap stories 'til the ice give up," he said. "But he does. And I'm tellin' you plain: I ain't the sharin' sort." The words came gentle but wore a spine. "A man puts himself between me and what keeps me breathin'...well, nights get long in this town, and long nights got a way of teachin' manners."
Cash's jaw tensed, but he didn't speak.
"You got years on me with him, I'll grant you," Blake went on, softer still, "but time ain't the same thing as claim." He leaned forward, and the room's thin light climbed his shoulders, throwing his shadow up the wall behind Cash like a storm cell rolling in. "Don't crowd him with that stray-dog loyalty 'til he can't turn without hittin' wire. Don't come at him sideways with guilt or history, neither. You hearin' me?" His smile didn't reach his eyes. "Jackson's happiness is my business now. And I don't farm out my work."
Blake let the silence do what it needed.
Then he stood, easy.
He set his hat on his head and thumbed the crease once more out of habit. "You sit with your friend now," he said, a slight nod toward Weston. "I'll be outside if you need me."
Cash's throat worked.
No words came.
Blake touched the brim in a quiet salute and slipped out, the door whispering shut behind him.
(To be continued...)
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