Down In The Holler

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.

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"Deal"

Two months after Weston's beating, the lake sat down in its cracked bowl like a secret that had forgotten how to shine. The boat ramp ended in nothing but weeds and old bottle glass. Blake had parked the truck on the mud-packed shoulder where the ruts grew deep and the cattails made whispery threats in the wind. 

Out here, the town couldn't look at them. 
Out here, the sky let them breathe.

A single dome light glowed and then clicked off, and their faces became shapes, jawlines, shadows of lashes, the pale flare of a smile found by touch. The windshield fogged from the inside until the world outside turned to a soft white blur, and the truck creaked with every weight shift, the old bench seat sighing under the stubborn choreography of two men who had never been taught a polite way to want.

Jackson had climbed into Blake's lap, knees settling to either side, hands sliding around Blake's neck like he'd been born knowing what to hold on to as the hunk rammed himself into him. Blake's hat lay crown-down on the dash, brim tilted like an eyelid. The gearshift pressed a small reminder against Jackson's thigh. He laughed once, breathless, and then the laugh disappeared into Blake's mouth.

"Tell me when you..." Blake started, and Jackson shook his head, quick and easy, a smile brushing Blake's upper lip.

"I ain't," Jackson whispered. "Keep goin'."

The words braided heat and hush together. Blake's hands found the small of Jackson's back, the warm span of skin under the hem of his sweat-drenched T-shirt, the tight shiver that meant yes. Their kisses had learned a rhythm that wasn't neat but knew what it wanted: slow, then too fast, then slow again because neither wanted to miss the weight of any second. The truck took the jostle like a patient animal, the chrome mirror ticking against the doorframe with each stolen inch. 

Jackson's fingers worked the buttons of Blake's shirt, clumsy from hurry, and when he finally got the last one, he laid his palm flat against Blake's chest as if to measure the truth of the heartbeat he'd felt for months inside his hole. Blake shivered under it and bent to press his mouth along Jackson's jaw, to the corner of his smile, to the soft place under his ear where his whole body seemed wired for yes. He kissed the inside of Jackson's wrist and felt the pulse kick there against his lip. Jackson turned his head, gave more, took more, the old bench seat giving a little squeak every time Blake's cock slid in. Every time they reached for the next breath.

The truck smelled like them. Under it, the clean salt of skin and the sweetness of something familiar that lived only where a neck met a shoulder. Blake breathed it in until his head got light. Jackson rocked forward, and everything inside Blake gathered and broke in the same small second. His hands tightened, his mouth opened on a sound that wasn't quite a word, and he felt Jackson's insides clutching tightly around him.

"You comin'?" Jackson murmured against his cheek, and the care in it made Blake weak in a way he never let the world see.

"Close," Blake said, voice roughened to gravel. "I'm close."

Hips had learned a language older than both of them: push, answer, take, give, imperfect, and right. A pocket change rattle spilled from the dash cubby and danced, then stilled. The seat belt latch clicked once as a knee bumped it. Jackson snorted a breathless laugh and kissed the laugh out of his own mouth against Blake's.

"Blake," Jackson said, and that alone carried more than any sentence he could have finished.

Blake answered with his hands, mouth, and careful, hungry press of his body, saying, "I hear you better than words could." He kissed Jackson's intoxicating skin along the lines he had learned by now, as if the map might change if he didn't trace it often.

The lake took a breath. 

And when it came, a small, beautiful unspooling, there wasn't enough noise in the county to drown the quiet of it: that last held breath, the tremor, the heavy peace after. Jackson's breath found Blake's shoulder and stayed, warm. Blake had to close his eyes against the way it made his chest ache.

They stilled by degrees. 
The world crept back.

Jackson eased his forehead onto Blake's, a clumsy bump that turned into a tender lean. Their noses bumped, and they both smiled like boys.

"You cold?" Blake asked after a while. He didn't move, not willing to trade heat for air.

"Nah," Jackson said, hair damp against his temple. "Reckon I could stay like this 'til mosquitoes carry us off."

"We'd be a good story for 'em," Blake said. "Whole mosquito church preachin' about the two fools too horny to swat."

"That's us," Jackson breathed, and kissed him, slowly. "Fools."

Blake let his hand drift along Jackson's spine, settled it in the small place that had begun to feel like home. When Jackson finally slid off, hole queefing slightly, and collapsed back against the passenger door, the seat springs prayed for mercy and then forgave them. The windshield had turned to milk. Blake dragged his forearm across it and made a small, useless crescent.

They lay crooked, shoulder to shoulder, heads against the same seat back, hands linked the way a rope links two men crossing a river. Silence hung easy for a while, all the words neither of them needed to say resting where heat had been a minute ago.

"Two months," Jackson said at last, quiet as the reeds. "Feels like longer."

Blake knew without asking he meant Weston. He let the name come and sit on his tongue even if he didn't speak it. "How's that goin'?" he asked.

"Better," Jackson said. "He walkin' with that cane Ms. Landry loaned him. He hates it." He smiled, tender. "Cassidy painted flames on it so he'd quit lookin' at the floor."

"That sounds like her," Blake said. He tucked that picture wherever he kept his reasons to stay.

"They still ain't found..." Jackson stopped. "Sheriff says they askin'. But you can feel it, can't you? Folks done decided it's easier not to know." 

Blake watched their joined hands.
But said nothing. 

Jackson turned his head. In the fog-soft dark, his eyes shone. He thumped the heel of his hand lightly against Blake's thigh. "You ever think 'bout leavin'?" he asked. "Just, you know. Truck pointed somewhere the road runs out in a good way."

"I've done a lot of leavin'," Blake said. "Ain't so great as songs pretend." He angled a glance at Jackson. "You want me to run?"

Jackson took his time. "I want to see you under a daylight nobody else picks at. That's all."

Blake let his head tip side to side, weighing. "I got a weekend in Meridian next month," he said. "Could make a wrong turn, end up Gulf side." He tried on a smile. "We could pretend we strangers in a place where nobody cares we ain't."

Jackson's mouth went soft at the corners. "You plannin' a trip or a test?"

"Both," Blake said.

They let the silence take root again. Somewhere far off, a fish slapped the surface twice, like punctuation. From the reeds, something small chittered and then thought better of it.

"Daisy?" Blake asked, so he wouldn't drown in his own thoughts.

"She good," Jackson said. "She pretends not to watch you sneakin' into the house when she leaves. Don't tell me you ain't noticed the extra pie?" He smirked. "She said, 'If Buckley gon' keep burnin' calories driftin' round this house, I ain't gon' have the shame of lettin' him starve.'"

Blake swallowed, that tender ache under his ribs again. "Your mama's a saint with a switch."

"She is," Jackson said. "She know you sat up with West those first nights."

Blake shrugged. "Weren't no trouble."

Jackson's hand found Blake's again, that rope between them tightening in a good way. They kissed again, unhurried this time, learning what it felt like to move through heat and come out the other side into something steadier. Blake's hand slid into Jackson's hair and stayed, palm to skull like a blessing. Headlights swept the treeline on the far side of the lake and went away. The fog on the glass burred with condensation and then cleared an inch at the bottom like a modest curtain lifting. 

Jackson pulled his feet up and tucked them under him, a boy's posture grown into a man's body. "We should go," he said, not moving.

"We should," Blake agreed, not moving.

At last they both laughed, small, shared, and Blake turned the key. The engine coughed to life. He wiped a sleeve across the inside of the windshield. Jackson reached to set Blake's hat back on his head, brim tugged low with a gentle tease. The way Blake liked it.

"Don't do that," Blake said, smiling.

"What?" Jackson teased.

"Mm," Blake said. "I might have to pull us over and fuck y'again before we even get to you' Mama's." He let himself say it.

Jackson's answer was simple and clean as lake water. "Fine by me."

Blake put the truck in gear and they rolled slowly along the water's edge, past a sign riddled with shotgun rust that had once said NO SWIMMING, past a busted jon boat half-buried in cattails, past a piece of shore where, two months ago, the town's kindness had been measured.

They rolled back into Willow Creek. Dawn had walked itself into midmorning. The town looked the same if you drove fast, but the closer they got, the more the sameness showed its seams.

Weston's attack had left a film on things, like smoke that never quite cleared. Folks still waved from porches, but their hands didn't reach as high. The feed store's bulletin board held a flyer for a benefit supper curled at the corners, thumbtacks biting deep. Somebody had taped a strip of black ribbon around the base of the flagpole by City Hall. The air itself felt cautious. Conversations ended a half-step sooner. Laughter came with an apology tucked inside it. The Rusty Spur's neon horseshoe slept dark, even in daylight, and Jackson had the oddest feeling it was listening.

Cash's distance had become one of those facts people pretended not to see, like the house at the end of a street where the grass grew too long and everybody said they'd ask after it tomorrow. Since the night at the hospital, Cash had learned the art of showing up where Jackson wasn't. He still sat with Weston and walked Cassidy home late, his hands jammed in his pockets as if he'd put his temper in there and buttoned it shut. But when Jackson rounded a corner, Cash had already crossed the street. Their friendship, once as easy as breath, had turned into the kind of quiet that made your ears ring.

Jackson felt the gap and did not fill it. Love had given him a high place to stand, and from up there the ground looked too far away and the fall too certain. He told himself Cash needed space. He told himself time was a river that brought things back on its own. Mostly he told himself he would call tomorrow, and then another tomorrow came.

Blake drove with one hand on the wheel and one draped over the back of the bench seat, fingers just brushing Jackson's shoulder like he was keeping him from sliding off the world. The rodeo grounds lay low and dusty past the ball fields, a scatter of tin roofs and white fencing and the kind of smell the town had loved since before any of them were born. He slowed at Daisy's and let the engine idle, leaning forward to peer across Jackson's knees at the porch and the pair of chairs angled toward each other like they'd been caught whispering.

"I'm gon' run out to the grounds," he said, voice pitched soft. "Put a couple miles on those colts' fore the heat makes 'em mean. Meet me there 'bout an hour? We'll take the horses down by the creek, let 'em stretch their legs."

Jackson turned, bright already. "Yes, sir," he said, teasing.

"Don't 'sir' me unless you wanna go for a third round," Blake said, mouth quirking. "Go on," Blake said, soft. "I'll see you soon."

Jackson smiled. It still startled him, the ease with which passion had taken up residence in his chest, how it showed up in plain places: the angle of Blake's wrist on the wheel, the scuff on his boot, the way he always checked his mirrors twice like he'd learned the hard way not to trust what wasn't in front of him. It made the town blur and sharpen at the same time. It made him braver in ways that didn't look like bravery.

Jackson eased the door open and slid out. He took two steps toward the porch, stopped, and looked back over his shoulder. 

"You alright?" Blake asked, elbow hooked over the wheel.

Jackson swallowed, eyes bright. "You serious 'bout it?" he said, voice softer than the late morning. "Takin' me with you. Leavin' together."

Blake's mouth went quick to a grin he tried and failed to tame, something boyish and brand-new shouldering through the man. "Ain't never meant nothin' more in my life."

Jackson nodded, a small, decisive tilt. "Let's do it."

Blake was out of the truck before the word finished landing, boots hitting dust, door swinging, that laugh he rarely let out breaking free. He ran to Jackson, scooped him clean off the ground, and kissed him, spinning once, twice, Jackson's legs locking around his waist. Jackson felt his heart melt and set again in a better shape, Blake's joy shining up through him like sun on a river.

"You just 'bout made me the happiest man alive," Blake said, breathless against his cheek.

"Good," Jackson murmured.

Blake set him down gentle, then, wicked spark lit, patted him once, playful, on the backside. "Now go on' fore I haul you up them stairs an' give you some o' that lovin'. This house ain't near far enough once you get to hollerin' that way we both know you do... neighbors'll call the law, swear I'm up here murderin' somebody," he teased.

Jackson laughed and turned toward the porch, still light, still floating. Blake jogged back, slid into the truck, and pulled away slowly, smiling at the mirror where Jackson stood in the dust and sun, hand lifted in a little wave that said yes three different ways. Jackson watched it shrink around the turn, joy buzzing under his skin like a hive. Yet, somewhere beneath it, quiet as a shadow under noon light, a slight doubt curled and waited, asking what a road might take as easily as it gave. 

He drew a breath and stepped toward the house anyway.

The screen door gave its little squeal and slapped behind him, and Daisy's kitchen rose up like it always did, cooler than the rest of the house, lemon oil and coffee, the soft complaint of the old fridge. Sunlight came in patched through the lace curtain and laid coins on the table.

Daisy stood at the counter with her back to him, a dish towel over one shoulder, her hair caught up but coming loose at the nape. She didn't turn right away. She reached for the percolator, poured coffee into a mug with a chip at the rim, then poured sweet tea into another glass, as if she hadn't decided which he needed more.

"'Bout time you darkened my doorway, Jackson Bell," she said, and there was a smile in it, and a little stone.

Jackson kissed her cheek from behind, breathed in that Daisy-smell, jasmine, and Ivory soap. "Mornin', Mama."

"Mmm." She set the coffee in front of his usual chair and slid the tea beside it for backup. Up close, she peered at him, cataloguing what mothers always did: sleep, color in the face, a scrape on the knuckle he'd half-forgot. "You eat?"

"I will."

"Which is not the same as did," she said, but she let it pass. She nudged him into the chair with two fingers under his chin like he was ten again and needed aiming. "You look happy."

He tried not to smile and failed. "Reckon I am."

"I can tell. You got that…" She tapped the side of her own neck with one red nail. "That candlelit look. Like somebody put a porch light on behind your eyes."

He reached for the coffee and then the tea, sipping both. "Ain't that somethin' you always wanted for me?"

"I did." She folded the towel and folded it again. "Still do."

Daisy reached past him and set a plate with two slices of pound cake on the table, then sat opposite. She rested her elbows and laced her fingers, studying him the way she studied a recipe, what it needed, what it had too much of.

"You been scarce," she said, gently.

"I been around."

"Around is a circle, baby. You been makin' lines." She leaned back a shade, eyes soft but steady. "I ain't complainin' 'bout the boy who fell in love, Lord knows I prayed for the day you'd walk through this house with your shoulders dropped and your mouth that easy, but I got to say it plain so I don't swallow it and get indigestion." She tipped her head. "You been here and there with Blake. You ain't been with folks who look for you when the day breaks."

Jackson picked at the edge of the plate. "I been to see West."

"Once." Daisy let the word sit. Not cruel, just true. "And I know Blake sat with him those first nights. I ain't countin' anybody out their kindness. But the town got quieter after what happened, and you got quieter right along with it, just in a different direction." She smiled, and it was the kind that made you listen. "Happiness can make a person disappear same as grief, if you let it."

He flushed, a boy under the man. "I ain't meanin' to disappear."

"I know you ain't. That's how it happens." She reached and turned his coffee so the chip faced away. "You and me, we been a team a long time. I can feel you even when you ain't in the room. Lately I feel you like a storm along the horizon, pretty to look at, little thunder under it, movin' off quick." Her eyes softened further, apology tucked inside the love. "I miss my boy. The house misses your noise."

He swallowed.

"I know how a new thing pulls. I ain't tryin' to pry your fingers off it. I'm just remindin' you your hand is big enough to hold more than one good thing," she said, but her mouth tugged. Jackson nodded, throat tight. He looked up and found her waiting, patient as a porch swing. "And Cash," she added, the syllable landing like a pebble in water.

Something moved in Jackson, quick, pained, alive. He looked down at his hands, at the faint ridges of old scrapes and one new nick from a fence post. "He been..." Jackson sighed. "I don't even know, Mama. He keep slippin' out a door I ain't found."

"Maybe you ought to knock," she said simply. "Ask him why he closin' it."

Jackson huffed a laugh with no humor in it. "What if he don't open?"

"Then at least you ain't standin' on the stoop tellin' yourself stories," Daisy said, and there was iron in her velvet. "You go to the boy and you say, 'I see you pullin' away. I ain't lettin' you vanish without tellin' me where you goin'.' You let him be mad if he need to be. You let him talk crooked 'til he finds straight. But you show up, Jackson. That's what love knows how to do, whether it's the easy kind or the hard kind."

He blinked and nodded again, slower. "You right."

"I'm frequently told so," she said, and the corner of her mouth ticked, then gentled. "But before you go pound on Cash's door and wake his temper, you go sit with Weston. Not 'cause it's a chore. 'Cause he was laid low by somebody who counted on us bein' too busy, too tender, or too scared to stand in the room and keep count with him." 

Jackson glanced at the clock over the stove. "I'm s'posed to meet Blake," he said, and the words came out softer than he meant, excuse and confession all at once. "Out at the grounds. He want to take the horses down by the creek."

Daisy paused, and something in the space between her eyebrows said she had felt the shape of what he hadn't said, how easy it was to pick that road every time. Her face went smooth. She smiled like a woman choosing kindness over all the other sharp tools in the drawer.

"I'll swing by the grounds," she said as if she were talking about picking up sugar. "Tell Mr. Buckley my boy's takin' the morning and givin' it to a friend who needs it. I'll say he'll see him later."

Jackson's eyes lifted fast. "You ain't gotta..."

"I know I ain't," she said, and patted his hand once, firm. "But I got fine legs and good manners. He'll respect it, and if he don't I'll learn him how." She leaned in a hair. "You go on to the hospital. Sit a spell. Let Weston see that sunshine on your face. Talk, or don't. Read him the bulletin board if that's all you got. But be there."

He let out a breath he hadn't noticed holding. Relief and dread braided together like honeysuckle and kudzu. "Yes, ma'am."

She stood and so did he. For a second they just held each other's eyes, decades of kitchen mornings folded in, the scraped knees, the report cards, the nights he'd stumbled home with the world on his back and she'd set it on a chair and fixed him eggs.

Daisy touched his cheek. "Love'll carry you where you need to go, baby. Don't let it turn you into somebody who forgets where he started," she added. "Now eat this cake so I don't feel like I'm feedin' ghosts," she said, shoving the plate toward him. "Then take my keys."

Jackson took a bite he couldn't taste and smiled around it anyway. Daisy watched him with that soft, alert look mothers have when they've made a decision on your behalf and are waiting to see if you notice. After a beat, she grabbed her purse and her sunglasses from the hook. "I'll tell Blake you'll be along this afternoon," she said at the doorway, voice light, something steel-boned and gracious under it. "And I'll tell him thank you, kindly, for understandin'."

Jackson swallowed and nodded. "Tell him I..." He stopped. The words were too big for a kitchen.

"I know," she said. "He knows." She winked.

When the door sighed behind her, the kitchen went back to its hum. Jackson stood a moment in the square of sun on the linoleum, then reached for Daisy's keys. He slipped them in his pocket, finished the cake, and headed out.

*

The physiotherapy room smelled like citrus cleaner and rubber. It was bright as a school gym with its windows, posters, skeletal diagrams, and cheerful slogans about progress measured in inches. 

Weston stood between a pair of parallel bars, sneakers planted on the tape line, brow furrowed like he was working out a math problem. A male nurse hovered at his elbow, mid-twenties, curls cropped neat, scrub top patterned with tiny cardinals. He had a clean, kind face and forearms that looked used to lifting people and not just weights. His badge read Levi.

"Alright, Weston," Levi said, voice easy, "let's do two more down and back. Slow and pretty."

"Sugar," Weston drawled, breath huffing, "slow I can promise. Pretty gon' take Jesus and a dimmer switch."

Levi laughed, not the polite kind. "I got a whole ceiling of fluorescents here. I'll make you a mood."

Weston grinned like he'd found a penny. The movement pulled at the healing purple along his cheekbone, and the smile faded into a wince he tried to swallow. He shifted his grip on the bars and took a step. Then another. Cassidy's flaming cane leaned against the wall, black lacquer with a lick of red-orange dancing up the shaft.

Jackson paused at the door, one hand on the frame. The AC ran cold as a meat locker, and he suddenly felt underdressed in his thin T-shirt, too warm with shame under the chill. Weston's body looked the way grief sounded, tight in the shoulders, careful at the knees, hair grown out in places where a nurse hadn't evened a shave. But his mouth had the old abandon for a joke, and his eyes, the good clear part, still lit when Levi teased him.

Jackson cleared his throat. "Hey."

Both their heads turned. Weston blinked like a flash bulb had gone off.

"Well, I'll be," he said, voice softer than the old Weston's, but shaped just like it. "Look what the town drug in. Come see 'bout me, Jacks?"

"Came to get judged," Jackson said, walking in with his hands out like he'd been called to the front of the class.

Levi slid a glance between them, assessing the air the way nurses did, then patted Weston's elbow. "You want a minute?"

"Keep him," Weston said to Levi, tipping his chin at Jackson. "He the only one don't fuss 'bout my speed."

"I fuss about everything," Jackson said, smiling because Weston had said keep him and hadn't meant the hospital. "You know me."

"I do," Weston said, and something moved between them, a little bridge hidden under all the newness.

Levi stepped back just far enough to be near without hovering, hands in his pockets like a man who wanted to give privacy and keep safety, both at once. "Let me get your band warmed," he told Weston, nodding at a stack of resistance loops. "Jackson, you pull up that chair if you want. He's on his second lap and talkin' big."

"I'm performin'," Weston said with mock dignity, then he wrinkled his nose. "Audience of one ain't bad. Any more and I'll charge admission."

Jackson dragged the chair where he could walk alongside the bars, not too close. "You look good."

"You a liar," Weston said, but he was smiling. His hand tightened, knuckles pale against chrome. He took three careful steps, paused to breathe, then three more. "I look like I got jumped by a dump truck and litigated by its lawyer. But I'll take good."

Jackson walked the length with him once, quiet. They pivoted at the end, and for a second it was like walking down Main again, killing time and quarters, their reflections doubled back at them from the candy store window.

"Ms. Landry says you makin' her cane famous," Jackson tried.

Weston's eyes sparked. "She been tellin' every soul it's a collector's item. Cassidy did me up like a hot rod. I look a mess, but my cane looks fast."

Levi returned with the loop and slipped it around Weston's ankles with a care that made Jackson want to thank him. "Okay, firecracker," Levi said. "Ten side steps. Small. Controlled. Don't get greedy."

"You sayin' I got greedy energy?" Weston asked, feigning scandal.

"I'm sayin' you got 'show off for friends' energy," Levi answered, deadpan, and shot Jackson a conspirator's look. "He likes an audience."

"Always did," Jackson said. "Used to do that little twist at the pinball and make the lights hit like he'd kissed a fuse."

"Still got it," Weston said, and took a side step, tiny and fierce. "Just lower wattage."

They got a rhythm between the jokes: step, pause, breathe, talk. Jackson learned how to match Weston's pace without the pity of slowing on purpose. Weston learned how to let Jackson see the wince come and go without hiding it. It felt awkward for three minutes, like shoes on the wrong feet, and then it didn't.

"Miss Daisy's keepin' this hospital in casseroles," Weston said. 

"She sent cornbread for your mama and got mad when the nurse wouldn't warm it proper," Jackson said. 

"I know," Weston smirked. "Nurse Calvin wrote 'Daisy Bell' down like a hurricane name."

Levi snorted. "We put her on the board. Bell, Daisy...Category Four, landfall in Room Twelve."

"I'll tell her y'all speakin' ill," Jackson said, and Weston's laugh came out startled and genuine and then softened into a breath when the loop fought his ankle.

"You okay?" Jackson asked.

"Yeah," Weston said. "Just ain't got the same swagger. Gimme a month." He leaned his forearms on the bar, let the loop rest. He looked at Jackson then, not avoiding. "How's Blake?"

Jackson swallowed and nodded. "He good. He…" He couldn't find a word that conveyed the pleasure of being fucked by Blake's cock so he kept nodding. "He good."

"I like him," Weston said simply, and the generosity in it felt like a gift pressed into Jackson's palm.

"Me, too," Jackson said, and it sounded small compared to what he meant, but Weston nodded like he heard the bigger thing behind it.

Levi checked the clock, gave Weston's shoulder a little squeeze. "Two more sets," he said. "Then cane laps, and I'll set you free. You want me to grab you water?"

"Get yourself some," Weston said. "You thirsty from stalkin' me with your stopwatch."

Levi grinned and went to the cooler. The room rang a little with his absence, as if laughter had hands and had been holding the air up.

Jackson watched Weston's face in profile, the healed split at his lip, the line between his brows that hadn't been there in spring. He thought about Daisy in the kitchen, how she'd turned the chipped rim of his cup away from his mouth. He thought about the porch swing and the way Cash crossed the street like a man trying to spare himself and failing at honesty.

"West," he said, and his voice came out the way it did at church when the hymn turned truer than his throat could hold.

Weston turned, patient. "Mmm?"

"I shoulda come sooner," Jackson said. "I been..." He blew out a breath. "Happy," he admitted, like it was a sin. "And scared. And...lazy. Tellin' myself I'd swing by tomorrow 'til the tomorrows piled up like scrap."

Weston studied him, not to judge, but to make the right shape around the words. "I know."

"You mad?"

Weston shook his head. "Tired," he said, no sting in it. "But I ain't collectin' debts. Folks come and sit when they can. You sittin' now."

Jackson's eyes burned a little. He nodded, grateful and ashamed, both at once. "I am."

"You are," Weston said, and smiled that small, plain smile he'd learned lately. "Just, you know...farther away than usual."

Levi returned and handed Weston a cup. "Hydrate, heartthrob," he said. "And tell your friend to stop looking like he's confessing to arson. We like him."

"We do," Weston said, then looked at Jackson. 

Jackson reached out and gently squeezed his shoulder. Weston squeezed back. "I'll be back," he said, tipping his chin toward the door.

His hand found the push bar when Weston said, "Hey, Jack?"

Jackson turned. Weston wasn't putting on a brave face now. The tilt of his mouth had gone honest, and his fingers had tightened on the rail just enough to show it. "Stay a minute?" Weston asked, quiet. "Ain't done bein' good company yet."

The ask was small and it landed heavy. Jackson felt something ease and settle inside him, like a horse finally taking the bit. He took a few steps back, pulling the chair along the bars so he could sit and angle his knees toward Weston.

"I'm here," he said. "Ain't got nowhere else more important."

Levi slid right in, holding up a fresh loop band and a mock-serious expression. "Alright, Romeo," he told Weston, snapping the band lightly for show. "Let's see if them flames on your cane mean you go fast or just talk fast."

Weston lifted his chin, the old spark peeking through. "Boy, I go so fast your little birds gon' fly right off your scrubs."

"Cardinals," Levi said, trying not to smile. "State bird. Show some respect."

"I'll show respect if you walk me down to the cafeteria and buy me a Jell-O after," Weston fired back, eyes brightening. "Cherry. I'm a high-maintenance patient."

Levi bit his lip like he might lose the battle with a grin. "If you do two clean sets, I'll consider it."

"Deal," Weston said, and slid his foot out, careful and proud at once.

Jackson watched them.

Watched Weston shade back into himself, watched Levi let him. Jackson leaned his forearms on his knees and smiled without hiding it, the kind of smile that had weight to it. His friend was still bruised, still healing, but there he was, flirting shameless, cracking wise, pushing through another inch.

"Take your time," Jackson murmured, mostly to the room, mostly to himself. 

And he stayed.

*

The rodeo grounds dozed in the heat, all tin roofs and white rails and dust that never quite settled. 

Daisy strolled in by the shade of the concession shed and walked the long way round, keeping the arena boards between her and the main pen. She watched through a slat: Blake in the dust with a bay colt, hat brim low, weight set easy. He worked like a man talking a skittish thought into saying yes, no show, no temper, just the steady grammar of hand and voice. The colt snorted and danced sideways. Blake let the spin spend itself, then stepped in and laid a palm along its neck. The animal's ear flicked. Quiet gathered.

Daisy smiled despite herself. Lord, you do know how to make a thing feel safe, she thought, and that's the trouble of you.

She slipped along the fence, pretending to admire the empty bleachers, and came up on the far gate so her shadow wouldn't spook horse or man. Blake saw her when he meant to, no sooner than one glance that took her in whole. Then, he looked back at the colt and finished the conversation he was having with it. Another minute and the bay blew out a breath, head lowering an inch like surrender. Blake rubbed the withers, unhooked the line, and sent him off with a cluck of gratitude.

"Ms. Daisy," he said at last, pushing the gate with a boot heel and stepping through. Dust lifted and settled on the sweat-dark line down his shirt. He tipped his hat. "You come to write me a ticket for loiterin'?"

"I come to see if you were worth the fuss," Daisy said, easing her purse strap higher on her shoulder. "And to tell you my boy's runnin' late. He at the hospital with Weston...where he oughta be."

Blake's mouth touched the shape of a nod before the nod came. "Good," he said.

"Mm." Daisy let her eyes roam the pen like a woman admiring fencing, then put them back on Blake. "You handle a colt like you handle a rumor, slow breath, two hands, and you never once raise your voice. Folk find that attractive."

"Colts do," he said, deadpan.

"And boys." She smiled, sweet as tea and sharp as the glass it sat in. "I expect you know."

He didn't bite. He set his rope over his shoulder and rested his forearms on the top rail. Daisy took the rail beside him, both of them looking out at the churned earth as if the conversation lived out there and might stroll over when it was ready.

"So," she said lightly, "when's your season kickin' up hot again? I hear Meridian calls in August, and Biloxi pretends it got sense come September."

Blake's eyes softened with the geography of it. "Six weeks I'll be stackin' miles. Couple dates local, then it turns into a map."

"And what you figure to do with my son while you chasin' that map?" Daisy asked without looking at him, like she were discussing the weather's plans. "Leave him where you found him? Pack him in your glove box? Mail me postcards?"

He let a breath go. "I been thinkin' on that."

"I know." She turned her head a fraction, watching him the way farmers watch the sky. "Say it out loud so we can hear if it's a blessing or a problem."

He didn't reach for poetry. "I want to take him with me," he said. "Put him on the road next season. Work horses, learn the bones of it. See more than three stoplights and a lake that forgets to shine."

Daisy closed her eyes for the space of a blink and let the truth land. When she opened them, she smiled in that way that meant she was choosing not to cry. "I was afraid you'd say that."

"I figured," Blake said.

They let the pen breathe around them. 

Blake shifted his weight, not fidgeting. "Jackson got a whole earth inside him and no map. I remember that feelin'. I ain't talkin' 'bout runnin' him ragged or hidin' him. I mean showin' him the road, lettin' him have a sky that ain't always pointed at him. He'd work. Earn. Sleep tired, wake hungry, learn how a place changes a man and how a man don't have to change for every place."

Daisy listened, chin high, hands quiet on the rail. "That sound like freedom when you say it," she answered softly. "But freedom got cousins, lonely, and lost, and gone too long." She angled him a look that had raised a son and talked down a drunk with a shotgun. "Since you come to town, Blake Buckley, my boy been happy. He also been lacking. He got friends who feel like ghosts and a best friend he ain't called in a month 'cause pride tripped 'em both. Happiness can isolate a soul same as sorrow can, if you let it. You understand what I'm sayin'?"

Blake's gaze flicked to the far fence, then back. "I do."

"I ain't sayin' you a wall," she went on, voice like a cool hand. "But you a high wind, and high winds blow folks off porches they mean to sit on. I want my boy's life wider with you, not narrower. I want his people closer, not quieter."

He worked his jaw as if checking a tooth he'd learned to live with. "You think I'm pullin' him away."

"I think you could," Daisy said, all softness with iron under it. "Not on purpose. Just 'cause you make a small space feel like enough. It ain't, sugar. Not for eighteen and not for the long haul."

Blake let that settle. He took off his hat and scraped sweat-flat hair with his fingers, then hung the hat on a post like a man laying down a shield. "I want him to see the world, Ms. Daisy. Not to own him in it," he said.

Daisy breathed, slow. "Words is pretty," she said, and her smile said she respected his attempt. "I like 'em. But I like doors better. Doors open both ways, Buckley."

He glanced down, thumb running the rail's splinter smooth. "I ain't always been good at doors," he admitted. "But I can learn if the house is worth it."

"It is," Daisy said. She softened further, the way magnolia petals fold around what they love when the rain comes. "And so is he."

They stood a moment longer, quiet yoked to candor. Then Daisy tapped the rail with two nails, businesslike. "He's comin' later," she said. "He stayin' with West a bit. After that, I expect he'll want those horses. You go gentle."

"I always do," Blake said, and there was a ghost of a grin.

"You do on colts," Daisy said, arching an eyebrow. "Men you go at like they a pen to be worked. Don't do that to my son. You hear me?"

Blake took the nudge without bristle. "I hear you."

"And Blake?" She waited till he looked at her full. "You tell him the road is an ask, not an order. You let him say no and love him the same."

His voice dropped a notch. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She patted his arm once, like sealing a pact. "Now...what you feedin' that bay? He shine like you put him in lotion."

"Attitude and alfalfa," Blake said.

"Mmm. I got both in my pantry." She started to walk, then paused, her hand on the gate's post. "I ain't your enemy," she added without turning, the words light, the meaning weighted. "I'm your proof. If you can keep a boy like mine close while you takin' him far, you'll have done somethin' worth rememberin'."

Blake watched her go, hat still on the post, dust still lifting and settling like thought. Then he cut across the hardpan toward his trailer, dust puffing at his heels. 

Daisy's words rode with him, Doors, not locks. An ask, not an order. He sat on the aluminum steps, the metal hot through his jeans, and thumbed a match alive against the box. The cigar took flame slowly, then evened out, smoke lifting in a tight blue ribbon.

He rolled the taste across his tongue and let his jaw slacken. The grounds were half-asleep: a flap of canvas snapping, a gullible wind stirring a rag of bunting, somewhere a horse thudding a gate and giving up on the drama. He tried to rethread what Daisy had handed him, rules a man could hold without feeling handled. He got as far as weekly come-backs when a voice came over his left shoulder, soft as someone finding a familiar door in the dark.

"Coulda saved me one."

Blake's mouth hardened before he turned. Colton stood a few yards off, hands in his pockets. Sun cut him in half, one side bright, one side shadow, and he wore the grin of a boy who wanted somebody to dare him to stop.

Blake didn't bother to be polite. "What the hell you doin' here."

Colton's smile twitched. "Rodeo's public property, far as I was taught." He let his look run lazy over the trailer, then Blake, then the pen beyond, like he was shopping for trouble. "Figured we might finish what we started at the fair. Thought you might be friendlier this time."

Blake said nothing. He drew on the cigar once, steady, and set the matchbook on the step beside him. He didn't move, and somehow the not-moving was louder than a shout.

Colton's eyes flicked toward the concession shed, the empty bleachers, the far-off pickup. Satisfied no one was watching, he came closer, boots whispering over dust. "You know, I been thinkin' 'bout it," he said, voice going low and private. "You and me, we got…unfinished business. You can pretend you don't hear it hummin', but I know you do. We could make that noise stop for a spell."

Blake's gaze cut up through the brim. "One more step," he said, quiet, "and the only noise you gon' hear is your teeth countin' gravel."

Colton stopped but didn't back up. The grin sharpened. "You always did like bein' the one give orders. All that easy, son voice and them hands that don't shake." He shrugged, trying for light. The hitch in it betrayed him. "I ain't here to fight, Buckley."

"You ain't here to leave," Blake said, and now the anger was a line he'd drawn in his own chest. "Say your piece and get gone."

Colton looked past him at the door, the three shallow steps, the bit of shade beneath the trailer like a crouched animal. When he looked back, the want had twisted into mean. "You playin' house," he said. "With that Bell boy. Got him lookin' at you like you a miracle and not just a man who ain't learned how to stay."

Blake held his cigar between two fingers like a measure of time. "You don't say his name."

Colton's mouth curled. "Jackson," he whispered, tasting it wrong. "Pretty thing. Be a shame if the town got to lookin' at him different. Be a shame if the road showed him he ain't as special as you make him feel."

The words slotted into an older threat, He's next, and settled under Blake's ribs like a splinter. He rose without hurry, the way he stood when a rank horse went light in the front end. "You tried your talk," he said. "Now you try walkin'."

Colton doubled down, because that was what he knew, because the cliff felt better than the climb down. He leaned in and said it plain, the hatred in him wearing a poor disguise. "You keep your little boyfriend on a leash. Or somebody else gon' teach him how the world handles boys who forget their place."

Blake moved. 

He didn't remember deciding. One hand had Colton's shirtfront in a fist, the other on his belt, and the two of them hit the trailer steps hard enough to rattle the door. Metal sang. The cigar hit dirt and died with a hiss. Blake dragged him up the steps and through the doorway, the slam of the door taking the light down a notch. He shoved Colton against the thin wood-paneled wall, and the trailer groaned around them.

Blake's forearm pressed across Colton's collarbones, elbow crooked just so, a bar a man either respected or broke his own fool self against. His voice came out low, even, all the more dangerous for it. "You lay a hand on him. You breathe at him wrong. You let your boys think about his shadow..." He leaned in until there was a sliver of air and no more. "I will do to you what you did to Weston. Do you hear me? I will put you flat where the river can listen to you beg."

Colton's pupils blew wide. For a heartbeat he looked like what he was, a boy who had been taught to make threats because asking for touch got him hurt. Then the look shifted. Something ugly and bright crawled up from under his shame and hitched a ride on his grin. He lifted his chin into the pressure like a man seeking warmth.

"That it," he breathed, and the breath made Blake's skin crawl. "There he is. That's the man from the fair." His hand came up quick, snake-fast, fingers angling for Blake's belt, for proof he could touch what he couldn't name.

Blake caught his wrist and pinned it to the wall above his head, knuckles whitening. "Don't," he said, and the word had more disgust than thunder. "Not now. Not ever."

Colton's laugh was small and wrong. "You say never like you ain't already..."

Blake shoved him harder, the paneling squeaking, the wall clock tipping a half inch on its nail. "There ain't a we here," he said, each syllable clipped like wire. They stayed in the hard breath of it a long second, two men who'd both rather bleed than blink. Then Blake stepped back, all at once, as if the closeness had burned him. "Now get the fuck out of my trailer."

Colton smoothed his shirt with his free hand where Blake had wrinkled it, trying to rebuild the swagger from scraps. He swallowed, watched Blake. Then chose the only weapon he thought he had left. "You tryin' to be somebody's husband," he said, voice going cool and cruel. "Ain't in you. You're a stopover, Buckley. Man like you, people don't keep you." He tilted his head, the old half-smile back like a bad penny. "Why don't ya ditch that no-’count Bell-bottom and hitch your wagon to me, sugar?" he teased between scratching teeth. "I'm the sort knows how to make a man forget his own name for a night. And I'm good at it, too. Best pussy you'll get in this county 'til the state line."

Blake didn't flinch, but the loathing in his eyes went from hot to cold. "Out," he said again.

Colton held the stare a beat longer than was wise. Then Blake's hand found his shoulder and the world turned. The door flew open, and Colton went with it, boots losing purchase on aluminum, back meeting dirt with a thud that shook dust loose from the trailer's belly. He lay there a second, sun carving a bright stripe across his cheek. The door slammed, the sound flat and final.

Colton rolled to a sit, dust on his tongue, and spat dry. After a heartbeat, he smiled, thin, satisfied, mean. He dusted off his palms like a man pleased with the mess he'd made and stood, joints popping. He didn't look back at the closed door, didn't check if he'd left a mark. He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and walked away slowly, the grin riding his face like a dare.

*

Levi had Weston mid–side-step when the double doors banged open and Cassidy came in, bangles chiming, curls on the loose, a grin already three steps ahead of her.

"Well lookit this," she announced, hand to her chest like scandal. "Physical therapy or a boy band rehearsal? Levi, honey, if you start singin' I'm finna throw my bra."

Levi fought a smile and lost. "Please don't," he said. "These scrubs are not rated for projectiles."

Weston, loop band tight at his ankles, gave Cassidy a look that was half relief and half trouble. "You late," he told her.

"I like to make an entrance," she corrected, kissing her fingertips and patting his shoulder with them. "Hey, heartthrob. You doin' your exercises or just flirtin' at this poor healthcare professional?"

"I can multitask," Weston said, and the corner of Levi's mouth tugged like somebody had hooked it with fishing line.

Cassidy clocked Jackson perched on a rolling stool beside the parallel bars and clicked her tongue. "And if it ain't the prodigal cousin." She threw an arm wide and then narrowed her eyes in mock accusation. "Look who decided to remember his friends exist."

Jackson spread his hands, guilty and grinning. "I been around."

"Around where?" she shot back. "Backseat o'trucks don't count as a zip code, baby." Her tone softened into affection ripe with thorns. "I'm glad you here." Cassidy bumped his shoulder with her hip as she slid past him. "Scoot, help me witness this mess." She bent so her mouth was level with Weston's ear, stage whisper loud enough for the ward to hear, "You see how Levi's sleeves hug his arms? That's a cry for attention if I ever saw one."

Levi looked down at his sleeves, then at Weston, deadpan. "Please tell your friend to stop sexually harassing my polyester."

"Can't stop her," Weston breathed, working the band. "We just try to minimize the damage."

"Damage?" Cassidy scoffed. "I'm a civic service." She turned on Jackson again. "And you." A poke to his sternum. "We gon' talk later 'bout how you ghosted your shadow, but for now you can buy me coffee so I don't faint from all this hospital fragrance."

"Citrus cleaner?" Levi offered.

"Despair," she said sweetly. "With a top note of Jell-O."

Weston barked a laugh and then winced, breath catching. Levi's hand was there, steady at his elbow. "Easy," Levi murmured. "Small steps. Don't show off for the peanut gallery."

"Ain't a peanut gallery," Weston said, eyes shining in Cassidy's direction. "It's a pecan grove."

Cassidy preened like he'd given her a kingdom. "Finish up, flame cane. We'll be on the terrace, burnin' daylight."

"The terrace?" Levi's eyebrows hopped. "That for patients."

"Uh-huh," Cassidy said, already backing toward the door. "And I'm a patient's friend and emotional support menace." She hooked Jackson by the elbow. "Come on, delinquent. He gon' be fifteen minutes. We'll spill quick."

Jackson looked to Weston. Weston nodded, the smallest blessing. "Go. I'll be here flirtin' my heart rate right into a chart."

Levi was still trying not to smile. "I'm documenting that."

"You document how good I look doin' it," Weston said, and lifted his chin like a man reclaiming a kingdom an inch at a time.

Cassidy dragged Jackson into the hall. They waited for the elevator, the light over the doors doing its slow orange flicker like a tired wink. When the doors slid back, the box held only a wilted fern and the faint smell of someone's cologne that had lost an argument to antiseptic.

Cassidy mashed the button for the cafeteria and leaned against the rail, head tipped to look at him sidewise. "You alright?" she asked, and since it was her, the question wore jokes like jewelry but had a bone-deep core.

"I am," he said.

She nodded, satisfied. The elevator hummed down a floor and opened onto the cafeteria. They grabbed two coffees, Cassidy elaborately doctoring hers until it was more dairy than bean. Jackson went for black and a pecan cookie he didn't want but bought because Daisy would have.

"Terrace?" Jackson asked.

Cassidy's grin sharpened. "Terrace."

They slipped back into the elevator and rode up to a floor that did not belong to them. The doors parted onto a hushed corridor and a metal exit with a sign that said STAFF ONLY in faded red. Cassidy cocked an eyebrow, then shouldered it open. A set of concrete stairs climbed into sun. Heat rolled down, bringing with it the baked-dust smell of roof tar and something green and far, the treetops, probably, where the town pooled around the hospital like a skirt.

"It's fine," Cassidy said, breezy, as Jackson hesitated. "I got a cousin works here. Distant. In spirit."

They stepped out onto the terrace, half-fenced with chain-link and half-edged by a waist-high wall the hospital had painted pink a decade ago in honor of something and then never repainted. Below, Willow Creek unrolled, the courthouse squat and stubborn, the Rusty Spur's sign gone sullen in the dusk, Daisy's street a ribbon Jackson could have traced with his finger from memory.

They skirted the AC units and found the low wall. Cassidy hopped up, swinging her legs over like a girl on a dock. Jackson followed, careful, the coffee hot in his palm. They sat with their thighs just touching, shoes dangling above the brick drop, the whole town held up to them like a map they could fold and unfold at will. Church bells far off tried on the hour and gave up after four notes. Smoke rose thin from a backyard somewhere, somebody grilling, probably.

Cassidy took a long sip and sighed. "Pretty from up here," she said.

"It is," Jackson answered.

They let the town breathe between them a while. Cassidy finished doctoring her coffee and set the cup between her knees, pinky up like a joke.

"Blake asked me to go on tour," Jackson said, finally.

Cassidy's leg stopped swinging. It started again a beat later, like she'd only paused to scratch a thought. "Huh." She lifted the cup. "That a tour tour or a cowboy word for 'let's see where the wheels fall off'?"

"Season," he said. "Startin' soon. Meridian, then…all over. He wants me to work horses, learn it right."

Cassidy stared out at the courthouse roofline. "You want to?"

"Yeah," he said, and it came out clean. "I always wanted to leave. See somethin' that ain't Willow Creek in July."

She nodded, and the nod was too careful not to be honest. "I always knew you was built for more miles than this town'll allow," she said, light, and then softer. "More sky, too," she said, mouth quirking. She took another sip, then set the cup down and picked at a flake of pink paint on the parapet. "You'll miss it, though."

"What? The heat?"

"The way the heat makes the air sing," she said. "Ms. Landry cussin' her cane. Coach Arnett washin' his truck every Saturday like the Lord cares. Daisy droppin' off food you didn't ask for 'cause she knows what your face looks like when you lyin' 'bout eatin'." She bumped his knee. "The gossip. You know you love the gossip."

Jackson smiled, eyes wet. "Maybe a little."

"She know?" Cassidy asked, and he didn't have to ask who.

He shook his head. "Pretty sure she do."

Cassidy watched the horizon, where the sky went from peach to bruise. She breathed, buying herself a second. "He a porcupine lately," she said. "Walks around like huggin' hurts."

Jackson huffed. "He avoidin' me."

"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe he waitin' for you to prove you still know the way to his door." She kept her voice easy, playful, as if it didn't matter which way he took it. "Some folks don't chase when they hurt. They burrow. You gotta knock. Loud."

"I did, once."

"One knock don't count as weather," she said. "You persistent when you want somethin'. Seen you ride Betsy 'til the whole bar forgot how to clap. Don't tell me you ain't got the stamina to ring a bell."

Jackson stared at his hands. "What I'm supposed to say?"

"Try the truth," Cassidy said, as if suggesting a new shampoo. "I miss you. I been selfish. I want us right. Then hush and let him get ugly 'til he ain't. You know his words got thorns on 'em when he's scared."

He nodded, a little more sure. "You think he'll listen?"

"To you?" she stated. "He hears your name like a radio left on in the next room." She nudged his shoulder with hers. "But you goin' out on that road without lookin' him in the face first? That's a ghost you'll have to pack. They heavy."

He blew out a long breath, the kind that moved old dust. "I'll go after this."

"Good." She nudged him again, lighter. 

The sun slid a little lower, smearing gold along the hospital's windows, painting the Rusty Spur's sign a kinder red than it'd earned. The town looked perfect from this far up, no bruises, no whispers, just lines and light.

"You gon' miss our sunset," Cassidy said softly, not quite looking at him.

"I'll miss you," Jackson said, no wobble in it.

That got her. She smiled without teeth, small and bright, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I'll let you," she said, and let the town fall quiet with them while the day gave itself to night.

*

Daisy's truck rattled like old bones over the ruts and turned onto the Daltons' street with a sigh. 

Cassidy rode shotgun with one bare foot up on the dash, coffee cup wedged between her knees, her bracelets chiming every time the truck hit a pothole. She'd gone quiet since the terrace, mouth doing its brave-girl set while her eyes watched the same bit of sky like it might confess something if she stared it into telling.

Jackson eased to the curb in front of the shotgun house with the peeling blue trim and the hydrangeas that refused to die. The screen door creaked, and Carla stepped out wiping her hands on a dish towel, hair wrapped in a scarf, nightgown under a faded robe the color of robin's eggs seen through smoke. "Well, if it ain't my stray," she said, soft as bread, and leaned into the porch post like she could hold the house up with one shoulder. "Evenin', Jackson."

"Evenin'," he said, tipping two fingers off the wheel.

Carla's eyes did a quick motherly inventory of color, posture, and rings under the eyes and seemed to settle on mostly alright. She glanced at Cassidy, who popped the door and hopped down before cutting the towel in half along the edge of her knuckles, like she could tear worry the way you tear cloth. "You eaten?" she asked Jackson.

"I'm fed," he said.

Her mouth lifted, and the smile fell into a tired crease. "Cash's 'round back."

Cassidy slid a look at Jackson and then at the side-yard path where bermuda grass gave way to packed dirt. "He's probably by the barn," she said, voice light as she could make it. "Ain't been much in the house but showers and mutterin'. Rest of the time he's out there, fixin' tools don't need fixin' and cleanin' a tack room we don't own."

Carla huffed a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "He reorganized my nails by length yesterday. Nearly called the priest."

Jackson nodded, throat working. "I'll go," he said.

Carla's hand rose, hovered, then landed warm on his forearm through the open window. "Be kind," she said, not a warning so much as a benediction. "He been sharp lately, but sharp ain't the same as mean. You know his corners."

"I do," Jackson said.

He killed the engine, climbed out, and shut the door gently. The truck gave back a sympathetic clunk. He rounded the house, and the yard narrowed into a corridor of shadow and honeysuckle. 

The barn sat crouched at the property's edge, a patchwork of old tin and newer boards. You could hear Cash before you saw him, the irregular rhythm of a hammer, the scrape of something dragged across concrete, a soft curse, then the hush of a man arguing with himself under his breath. 

Jackson slowed.

The barn door sat half-open like a mouth. Jackson stopped just shy of the light, hand on the post. He took one step, then two, easing into the glow like a boy wading into a creek.

Cash stood at the bench with his back turned, hunched over a bridle that did not need fixing. His shoulders were tight under a gray T-shirt, a dark smear of grease thumbed along the hem. He didn't turn when the door groaned. He didn't turn when Jackson's boot scuffed the floor. He threaded a strap through a buckle with the care of a man trying not to shake.

"Evenin'," Cash said.

"Evenin'," Jackson answered, and they both let the word sit longer than it deserved.

"You're late," Cash said, dry. 

Jackson almost smiled. "I'm here."

"Mhm." Cash set the bridle down, reached for a rasp, and drew it once along a piece of leather. "How's Daisy?"

"She good," Jackson said.

"Good."

They were quiet until quiet got mean. Jackson shifted so he could see Cash's profile, the jaw ticking, the way pride clenched in the temple when he tried to look unbothered.

"Been to West?" Jackson asked.

Cash nodded. "Every day," he said. He didn't mean to, but it stung Jackson's chest. "Did stairs yesterday," he said. "Hollered half the way. Then flirted at Levi 'til his heart rate chart looked like neon." He wiped the rasp on a rag. "He's steady. Tired. Meaner when he needs it. That's good."

"Yeah," Jackson echoed. He put his hands in his pockets, took them out. He was close enough now to smell the heat on Cash's skin. Cut grass, motor oil, cedar. Something in him eased and ached at the same time.

"You remember how to sit still," Cash said without looking, "or you just passin' through."

"I can sit," Jackson said.

"Uh-huh."

Jackson watched the rasp go idle in Cash's hand. He looked down at the coffee can of nails, sorted by length. There wasn't any graceful way to do it, so he did it plain. "Blake asked me to go out on the road," Jackson said. "I told him yes."

The lamp hummed. 

Cash laid the rasp down very carefully as if he were putting a baby to sleep. He did not turn. "Well," he said. "Ain't that somethin'." He reached for the bridle again, found he had nowhere left to put his hands, and let them fall to the bench. His head bowed a fraction. The care in the gesture told more truth than a holler ever could. "World's big," he said after a beat. "Guess you always meant to see it."

"Don't do that," Jackson said.

"Do what."

"Pretend your mouth ain't fillin' with blood."

Cash turned then. His eyes were bright and not wet, the exact shine a man got right before he decided to laugh or swing. "What you want me to do? Throw myself on the hay and weep? You happy. I can clap."

"I want you honest," Jackson said. "Like we swore."

Cash's mouth twitched at that. "We sworn a lot of things," he said. "Ain't kept all of 'em."

"That's why I'm here," Jackson said, and the floor under both of them felt like a thing remembered and relearned at once.

Cash shoved his hands in his pockets, took them out. He tried a smile that didn't catch. "So when you ridin' off, cowboy. Today? Tomorrow? You want a send-off sign from Ms. Landry? I can get her to write Godspeed on that cane with the flames."

"It ain't like that," Jackson said. "It's a season. Work. I'll be back and forth."

"Mm." Cash's nod said sure, and I'm the mayor. "Since he rode in, you been a ghost wearin' your own face."

"And since Weston fell," Jackson shot back, "you ain't let nobody touch the hurt but your fists."

Cash's head jerked like he'd been slapped. "Don't try to tell me what to do with pain you ain't sat with."

"I'm sittin' with you now."

"You two months late to that bench," Cash said, and at last, there was heat in it. "You runnin' high. Good for you. I ain't tryin' to drag you down. But don't come in here and act like the sky ain't doin' tricks with your eyes."

Jackson felt something stubborn rise. "So say it," he said. "Say you mad. Say you scared. Say you..." He stopped himself just in time.

Cash's jaw worked. "You want every ugly thing I ain't proud of?" He barked a humorless laugh. "Fine. I'm mad I can't keep you. I'm mad you kiss him with the same mouth you used to tell me I was the only person in this town who knew how your head works. I'm mad he gets my seat at your Mama's table half the time and I get your shadow. And I'm scared, yeah. Scared the road'll take you and make you somebody I don't know how to hold no more."

Jackson took a step he hadn't planned on. "You ain't never tried to hold me," he said, too soft to be cruel and too true not to hurt. "Not the way I needed."

Cash's breath hitched. "That what you call it? Me takin' punches for you since grade school? Me standin' on porches with folks three fingers to the wind and sayin' the hell you will? Me breakin' my hand on a locker door 'cause they put your name in they mouth? I held you. I held you when you ain't even know you wanted touch, hand off your bed when we was thirteen, remember? You drop it, I caught it. Every damn time."

Jackson's answer came quick. "Then why'd you keep runnin' from me? The night at the Spur. You said..." Heat scorched his throat. "You said you loved my smell. Then you ran out a window and left me alone with it."

Cash flinched like the words had hit a bruise. "You ain't leavin' to be a man," he said, low and careful as a knife. "You leavin' 'cause you need one to tell you where to stand."

Jackson felt the cut and refused to bleed where Cash could see it. He tucked his chin, chose his own blade. "And you ain't stayin' 'cause you loyal," he said. "You stayin' 'cause you scared nobody wants you anywhere else."

It was too far. 
They both knew it. 

Something mean and reflexive pushed Cash forward. He bumped Jackson with his shoulder, not hard enough to fell him, just hard enough to say move. Jackson didn't. He set his feet and shoved back. The coffee can of nails spun off the bench and hit the floor, silver heads exploding in every direction, skittering like rain on tin. Cash grabbed for Jackson's wrist to keep his balance. Jackson caught Cash's forearm. They staggered, hips knocking the bench, then sloughed sideways into the hay. Dust leapt and shimmered in the lamplight. The lamp swung a fraction, and the world pitched with it.

They wrestled like boys who'd learned early to keep their punches quiet, no wild swinging, just a tangle of limbs. A grunt. A body flip and a half. Spurs of breath. Jackson's palm found splinter, then sweat-warm cotton. Cash's fist knotted in Jackson's shirt and then forgot why. 

"Let...go," Cash said, and didn't mean it.

"Say it," Jackson said back, breathless.

They rolled once more, hit the hardpan under the hay with a shared oof, and stopped not because they wanted to but because seeing got heavier than moving. They lay half-on, half-off each other, foreheads close, noses almost bumping. Jackson's hand was still fisted in Cash's collar, thumb pressed into the notch at the base of his throat. Cash's fingers wrapped Jackson's wrist and weren't squeezing anymore.

The lamp steadied itself. 

Jackson looked at Cash's eyes, there, at last, without all the cleverness and fight. They were the same eyes that had shown up at his window every night since they were kids.

"Say it," Jackson whispered, but he wasn't pushing anymore. It sounded like a permission he'd been withholding from the both of them.

Cash's mouth had been set to a smart remark all his life. He let it go. His gaze dropped, traitor, to Jackson's mouth. It jumped back to his eyes like he'd touched a hot pane. Shame flushed him. Not shame at wanting, but at wanting this long and telling it wrong for years.

"Get'off me," Cash said, voice rough as gravel rolled in a palm.

"Say it," he repeated, and his thumb smoothed the torn collar he'd just made because that's who he'd always been with Cash, fixer and fire both.

Cash swallowed, and the admission finally broke loose like a tooth. "I love you," he said. The old dare was gone. What took its place was simple and huge. "I always have."

Jackson closed his eyes because opening them any wider would've spilled everything. "I love you too," he said, and the ease of it was the ache. He felt Cash's fingers tighten, once, surprised, then soften again.

They lay there catching breath, foreheads almost touching, dust drifting through the lamplight like slow snow. Then the stillness tilted. Jackson's fist loosened in Cash's collar and slid down, palm flattening over Cash's sternum as if to quiet a scared bird. Cash's lashes fluttered. 

Jackson shifted, knee braced in the hay, weight settling until he had Cash pinned, not rigid, not mean, just held. He sat back enough to get his hands between them and tugged at the hem of his own shirt. Cotton rasped his skin. The fabric stuck to the sweat at his ribs for a heartbeat and then came up and over, hair mussed, breath quick. He tossed it aside where it landed among the scattered nails, a pale flag in a messy crown.

Cash made a small sound, half word, half wonder, and Jackson answered it by sliding his fingers under Cash's T-shirt. He peeled the shirt up slow, knuckles grazing warm skin, the hem catching at Cash's shoulder before giving. When the shirt cleared, Jackson just looked.

It was like seeing the inside of a house he'd lived beside his whole life. His hand went of its own accord, roaming Cash's chest, over the shallow dimple above his sternum, the line of the ribs, the little scar under his collarbone he got falling off Ms. Pike's fence. Jackson's fingers learned and relearned, reading, remembering, like braille he should have known by heart. Cash murmured something, but Jackson seemed half under a spell, blue eyes gone soft, breath steadying to the rhythm under his palm.

He took Cash's hand then and set it to his own chest, pressing it flat. For an instant Cash held back, the old shyness that had hardened into swagger catching on the lip of a new truth. Then his fingers spread, careful at first, mapping the breadth of Jackson, thumb to clavicle, palm to heat, a soft graze of the hardened nipple, a sweep across the shoulder where years of throwing hay had put their quiet muscle. He sat up into it. Their bodies fit without talking about it, a long-sought answer that didn't need the question repeated.

"Finally," Cash breathed. 

And then, the softest sounds replaced words, the hitch when a fingertip found a tender place, the sigh when a kiss landed on the edge of a smile, the hum they both made when skin met skin and nothing in the world asked them to explain themselves.

Cash's mouth touched Jackson's shoulder first, feather-light, like he was asking permission of bone and skin both. Then lower, along the line where neck became chest, soft kisses that carried the apology he'd never said right, the thank-you he'd been too proud to admit. Jackson's head fell back as Cash's tongue teased his nipple. A laugh escaped him, turned at the edges into something shining. It wasn't hunger. It was homecoming. It was two boys who'd learned to armor everything but this, laying down pieces one by one.

Cash rolled with him, gentle, and the world turned, hay whispering, lamp swaying a breath. He ended up over Jackson, hands on either side of his ribs, faces level. Even through their thick denim, Jackson could feel Cash's stiff cock rubbing against him. Eager. Desperate. 

They met each other's eyes and held long enough to be brave, then Jackson arched and pulled him down into a kiss.

It started small, sweet, unsure even now, the kind of kiss that feels like finding your name on a door you forgot you once owned. Then it grew, lips pressing against each other, tongues embracing, press and answer, long and deep, messy with relief. It felt different from Blake's wildfire, Jackson thought, less like being swept up and more like being held still while the world settled around him into its rightful place. 

Blake had felt like a sky cracking open. 

But Cash felt like the porch you step onto when it rains, the one you built together without noticing, the one that keeps you from running.

"Please... don't leave," Cash got out against Jackson's mouth, muffled, the words slipping free before pride could catch them.

Jackson's hands tightened at his waist. He kissed back like he could build a shelter out of it, and then the truth he'd already spoken came for him again. "I have to," he whispered, and even as he said it he hated the shape of it in the air between them. "I'll die if I stay here."

They both heard the hinge catch. 

Cash's face changed first, hope folding neatly and putting itself away. He pushed up slow, breath ragged. The warmth he'd let in pulled back like a tide that wasn't sure it had permission to stay. He sat back on his heels and reached for his shirt, jaw going hard at the hinge like he could hold the rest of him together with it.

"You should go, then," he said, and it landed flat and heavy in the straw.

"Cash..."

"What." The word snapped. "You want me to clap you out the door? You want me to tell you I'm proud you picked a man who ain't me and a road that don't start here?"

"That ain't what I..." Jackson pushed up, hay clinging to his skin, every nerve raw and open. "I'm tellin' you the truth 'cause you're the only one I can't lie to."

"Hell you can't," Cash spat, shoving his head through the collar, the shirt twisting in his frustration. "You been lyin' to me since the night you climbed into that man's trailer. Lying by the way you stayed gone. Lying every time you let me watch you walk past and pretended it didn't damn near tear me in half."

"You avoided me!"

"I did," Cash shot back. "I had to. 'Cause I know me, Jackson. I know if I touched you I'd say this and it'd ruin us sooner."

"It ain't ruined," Jackson said, desperate, and heard himself sound like a child arguing. "It ain't."

"You goin' anyway." Cash's laugh came out crooked and mean to himself. "You go be in love with your cowboy and leave me here learnin' how to breathe without your name. Tell me again how it ain't ruined."

"That's ugly," Jackson said, heat rising to meet heat. "You bein' ugly to make it easier to hate me."

"Maybe I am," Cash snapped. "Maybe I got to hate you 'fore dark or else I ain't got a skin left come mornin'."

"Fine," Jackson threw back, standing too fast, snatching his own shirt off the hay without bothering to pull it on. "Hate me, then! Sit in this damn barn alphabetizin' nails while the world happens. You been doin' it for years..."

"Go on," Cash said, voice gone low and dangerous. "Say it. Say I'm small. Say I ain't brave 'less I got somebody to swing at. Say you outgrew me."

"I ain't..." Jackson bit it back and failed. "You just want me to stay 'cause you scared to see what you look like without me," he said, and the second it left his mouth he wished he'd ripped out his own tongue instead.

Cash recoiled like he'd been struck. "Get out," he said. "Get the fuck out!"

"Fine." The word cracked. "Fine!"

They moved at the same time, Jackson for the door, Cash for the bench. Both of them trying to be the one who didn't look back and both of them failing. 

Jackson shouldered through the half-open door, shirt in his fist, bare chest flushed with heat and shame. "Screw you," Cash threw after him, voice breaking on the you.

"Right back," Jackson shot, already in the yard.

The night took him. He made it three steps before the first sob grabbed him by the ribs and bent him double. He clutched the shirt like it could hold him up, then straightened, blinking hard at the blur of porch lights down the block. He walked, one foot, then the next, as if the ground might argue, and the farther he got from the barn the more the tears came, silent and hot, cutting through his cheeks.

Inside, Cash's legs went out from under him. He dropped into the hay, elbows on his knees, hands over his face. The sound he made wasn't pretty and it wasn't small. 

It was the sound of a boy and a man in the same body realizing what the mouth had wrought and what the heart had already known. 

*

(Two Weeks Later)

Blake's trailer sat hunkered at the curb of Daisy's driveway. He was outside with his hat pushed back, hoisting Jackson's duffels into the bed of his truck with a soft grunt for each. The porch was a bouquet of roses: Cassidy cross-legged on the swing, Carla with a dish towel over her shoulder, Marla fanning herself and pretending not to watch too hard. 

Inside, Daisy's kitchen held back the heat the way it always did, with lemon oil, a fan whirring, and the radio low. Jackson stood by the table with his last bag yawning open, rolling socks into tight little fists and stuffing them into the corners. His favorite shirt, white with pearl snaps, mended at the cuff, lay on top like a truce flag. 

"You ain't takin' that threadbare thing," Daisy said, hands on hips, chin lifted toward the shirt like it had offended her on purpose. "It's a rag with buttons."

"It's my rag," Jackson said, but he smiled when he said it.

She sighed and picked it up anyway, smoothing the cuff with her thumb. "Then I'm fixin' to hem it proper. You can thank me in Baton Rouge." She folded it the way mamas fold things when they know they're folding more than cotton and laid it back in the bag. "Did you get the little kit I made you? Needles, thread, aspirin, safety pins, that tiny bottle of peppermint for when your stomach regrets the choices your mouth made?"

"Yes, Mama," he said. "And the St. Christopher."

Daisy patted her throat where her own necklace lay, then lowered her hand to the bag again and tucked the medal deeper like it could do its job better if it didn't shine. "Now listen at me. Road livin' is just livin' with fewer drawers. Wash your clothes before they start talkin' back. Eat green when you can. Be kind to the ones workin' night desks and gas counters, they see everybody at their worst and they remember who wasn't. Sunday don't keep itself. You set it aside or it'll slip off. Sleep when you can't think and call me when you can't sleep."

He nodded, eyes on her hands.

"And baby..." She paused, picking a bit of lint that wasn't there. "When your heart gets lonesome, it'll try to tell your body to do the fixin'. Sometimes that's a liar. You hear me?"

He huffed a laugh and looked down. "I hear you."

"Good," she said, light again. "And don't you touch gas-station sushi. I will come find you and beat you with a cucumber."

"Yes, Mama."

Outside, someone whooped at something Blake had lifted too easily. The porch giggled and then hushed like they felt the walls listening. Jackson reached for the zipper but didn't, his gaze snagging on the window over the sink. 

Daisy followed the look without moving her head. "He knows you goin'," she said, voice even.

Jackson didn't answer.

She folded the dish towel she'd picked up and hadn't meant to pick up, then put it down again. "I ain't askin' for the particulars," she went on, gentle as a hand on a fevered brow. "I just know y'all been walkin' around each other like stray dogs at the same fence. Sometimes boys ain't late 'cause they don't care. Sometimes they late 'cause they do."

Jackson's throat worked. "I thought he might come."

"Maybe he will," she said. "Maybe he won't. Either way, you ain't leavin' empty. You got years in you that don't wear out 'cause somebody didn't show up on a Tuesday." She touched his cheek, thumb warm. "You goin' ain't the same as gone."

He nodded, still looking out that small square of glass toward the possibility of a shape in the heat shimmer, a familiar gait, a last-minute mercy. The window gave him back the kitchen, their faces layered with the yard, like the town itself couldn't decide which way to look.

Daisy took his wrists, turned them up, and wrapped a strip of tape around each duffel handle, writing his name with a black marker she pulled from nowhere. "There," she said. "When the world gets to tumblin' bags, it'll know who belongs to who."

He watched the J and the crooked B curve under her hand, the way she'd written his name on lunch sacks, permission slips, the back of his Sunday school book. "You doin' alright?" he asked, and it came out softer than he meant, a boy's question in a man's mouth.

"I'm doin' what mamas do," she said, smiling with the corners. "Which is pretendin' the house ain't gettin' quieter." She took a breath and let it out slow. "I'm proud of you. That's the loud part. The rest is just..." She searched for a word and found one she liked. "Weather."

He laughed through his nose and shook his head before shutting the zipper. The sound felt too final. Daisy reached over and smoothed the bag like smoothing a bed, then tapped the medal through the canvas like blessing it one last time. 

"You ready?" she asked.

"No," he said. "But yeah."

"Well," she said, turning the radio off with two fingers, "then we ain't gone make a liar out of you."

She took one handle, and Jackson took the other. They carried the duffel together down the hall that had seen him toddle and storm and dance and come home late and lie badly and tell the truth better, the runner rug whispering under their steps. At the front door, she nudged it open with her hip.

Cassidy popped up off the swing like a jack-in-the-box, wiping at her eyes as if dust had committed a crime. Carla made a soft sound people make when something they love moves. Blake looked up from the truck, hat brim lifting, that new open happiness in his face like the sun had learned a different way to shine.

Marla got to Jackson first, bracelets chiming, lipstick smudged from other folks' grief. She pressed him into a hug that smelled like powder and Aqua Net, then held his face in both hands and kissed his forehead with a noisy smack. "Go be scandalous and successful," she said, voice wobbling, "and don't you let them out there tell you barbecue is anything but pork." She stuffed something into his pocket: folded bills, two peppermints, and a tiny Saint Jude card. "For lost causes and broke-down transmissions."

"I'll miss you, Miss Marla," Jackson said, and her smile folded at the edges.

"You better," she sniffed, stepping aside to let the next wave hit.

Carla came gently and steadily, that dish towel now a surrender flag crumpled in her fist. She hugged him long, the kind that told a boy to breathe right down to his toes, then leaned back to look him in the eyes. "You ain't gotta be brave every day," she said softly. "But be kind every day. That counts double." She touched his cheek with her knuckles. "You got my number. If you get stranded, I'll bring a ham and a socket set."

He laughed, throat tight. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good," she said, and passed him to Cassidy.

Cassidy crashed into him with all elbows and perfume, then immediately pinched his side like she was testing ripeness. "You better not go off and get famous without a publicist," she said, brave-girl bright. "I will lie to magazines 'til you cry."

"I'm countin' on it," he said, and she tried to smirk but failed.

She pulled back, swallowing, then shoved a Polaroid into his hand, blurry, the two of them on the hospital terrace, legs dangling over the town. "For when them skylines ain't ours," she muttered. "And...call me if your heart forgets how. I'll yell at it."

He folded her in again, hard, then let her go because if he didn't now he might not. 

Daisy stepped into him. He didn't know where to put his hands at first.

Then he remembered: everywhere. 

He hugged her like the house depended on it, and maybe it did. He bent, mouth at her ear. "I love you, Mama," he whispered, breath hitching. "Thank you."

She closed her eyes. 
She didn't say a word. 

One tear slid clean and unashamed down her cheek, catching on the corner of her mouth like a small, bright proof. She touched the back of his head, patted twice, then did the thing mamas do when they can't stand another second: turned him by the shoulders and gave him a little push toward the steps.

Then, her gaze snagged on Blake by the hitch, and something changed in the air.

She walked down to him slowly, the heat mirage glimmering in her eye gone to steel when she stopped at the bumper. Blake straightened, hat in his hand before he thought to do it. "Blake Buckley," Daisy said, smile soft as cake and edged like a good knife. "I'm fixin' to exercise my God-given right to deliver a sermon thinly disguised as hospitality."

"Yes, ma'am," Blake said, because there wasn't anything else to say.

"You are takin' my baby boy out on a map that ain't got near enough streetlights. You will feed him food not sold through a window when humanly possible. You will see to it he sleeps horizontal at least three nights a week and don't write checks on his bones he can't cash. You will pull over when the rain gets bossy, you will not pass a church on Sunday without rememberin' what day it is, and if he calls you 'cause the world tipped, you will answer before the second ring."

"Yes, ma'am."

She leaned in, conspirator-sweet. "And hear me good, 'cause this the part wrapped in roses with thorns hid in the ribbon: if a hair on that boy's head comes home wrong 'cause of your negligence or your pride, I will rearrange your face so gentle people will swear it was done by angels." She patted his cheek like she was flouring a biscuit. "You followin'?"

A couple of the gals made a wounded noise and reached for each other's hands. Marla dabbed at her eyes like she'd sprung a leak. Carla muttered "Amen" like a period.

Blake's jaw worked. The corners of his eyes went shiny. He nodded once, fierce and plain. "I'll take care of him," he said. "He's yours before he's mine. I know that."

"Good," Daisy said, the smile back full and dangerous. She lifted her chin toward the cab. "Now secure your mess and crank that engine' fore I change my mind and chain you to my porch swing."

Blake snapped the safety chains, checked the tongue lock, thumped the hitch with the heel of his hand, then jogged around and climbed into the truck. The engine came alive and settled into a patient growl.

"Jackson Bell!" Daisy hollered, hands funneling the sound like town crier and mother both. "You call me from the first gas station you stop at. I don't care if it's five minutes from here, I want to know you remembered how phones work!"

"Yes, Mama!" Jackson called, voice bright, doing his best to grin at all the crying.

He rounded the front of the truck to the passenger side, hand on the door handle, and then paused. The grin faltered. He looked down the road, past Ms. Landry's yard, past the hydrangeas, past the heat shimmer where the street bent out of sight, as if the road itself might deliver what hadn't come yet.

Jackson exhaled, climbed into the truck, and shut the door.

Blake eased the truck into gear, and the trailer creaked forward, the whole rig breathing like a beast about to move. 

And that's when a bell sound split the afternoon, bright, ragged, desperate. Jackson's head snapped to the mirror, down the dirt run-in to Daisy's, a bike fishtailed through the heat shimmer. 

Chain squealing, front wheel jittering, Cash pumping like a boy late for everything and bent on undoing it. Sweat slicked his hair to his forehead. His jaw was set in that old, stubborn line Jackson knew from scraped-knee summers and backdoor escapes.

Jackson's mouth broke open into a smile before he knew it. "Stop," he said, and he didn't wait for Blake to. He popped the handle, hit the dirt at a jog as the truck rolled. Blake stomped the brake, squinting into the rearview, one hand already going for the door.

Daisy's palm hit it and slammed it back shut. She leaned in the open window, voice low and iron-laced. "You stay outta this one, Buckley."

Blake swallowed, nodded once, and sat back, hands off anything that could meddle with fate.

Cash jumped off the bike before he'd truly stopped, let it clatter into the daylilies like a casualty. For a second they just stared, two boys grown up wrong and right in the same town, heat zigzagging off the road between them.

"Hey," Jackson said, breathless, stupid with relief.

"Hey," Cash said, breathless, stupid with everything else. "I couldn't..." Cash started, then shook his head. "Couldn't let you go without..." The sentence tripped and refused to finish under all the eyes on the porch watching.

Silence helped them. 

It stripped the moment down to plain boards and heart. Jackson took the step nobody else could take for him. He went in and folded himself around Cash, forehead to temple, chest to chest, like the day might open up and swallow them if they didn't hold each other together. Cash's hands stayed in his pockets the length of a heartbeat, two, like old habits arguing for pride. Then they rose, slow, shaking a little, and came around Jackson's back, pulling him in with a care that was fiercer than a grip. Cash's eyes shut, love and pain folding together under his lids.

On the porch, everyone forgot how to breathe. 

Jackson eased back first, not because he wanted to but because leaving requires a kind of standing he hadn't yet learned to do any other way. He touched Cash's jaw with two fingers, quick and private, then turned toward the truck.

And that's when Cash's voice came. "Hey," he called. "Don't let the road make you forget my name," Cash said behind him, not a challenge, just a truth offered to the air.

Jackson put a hand on the door and turned back, the sunlight soft on his face. "Don't let the town make you forget mine."

Cash nodded once, firm. "Deal."

Jackson smiled at him and climbed in. 

Blake's hand found the shifter. Chains clicked, tires rolled, gravel popped. The porch lifted hands to wave and then to their own mouths.

Cash stayed on the road, sweat shining at his temple. 

In the truck's wing mirror, Jackson saw him shrink from a figure to a thumbprint to the bright place where a body had been. The rig took the bend, and the town, for once, did not fold them back together. 

Jackson drove on, and Cash stood still. Each carrying the other like a coin in a pocket, their love set carefully on the porch rail to cool. 

Waiting there, patient as summer heat, until they'd grown.

So that one day, maybe, they'd come back and lift it without breaking.

(To be continued...)

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