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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"Yes, Sir!"

They had been on the road four months when the map of the South began to live inside Jackson's hands. It was not a map of towns or exits so much as a chain of rooms and rails, of gates that stuck, of fences nicked by a thousand reins. He could find the motel's ice machine in the dark and the light switch by the beds with his elbow. He could say which arenas had sand that swallowed hooves and which rattled a horse's legs all the way up into his chest. The miles had taught him in the way his mama always swore the world would: rough as a rasp and tender as a hymn, depending on how you touched it.

They slept in rooms with windows that sweated, rooms where the air unit chattered like teeth, rooms where the spread on the bed had a sheen that remembered cigarettes and aged perfume. Blake would throw his hat at the lamp and miss half the time, grin when it clattered to the carpet, and say, "Ain't no sense turnin' this place into a church. We're only passin' through." Jackson would answer, "Yes, sir," and set the St. Christopher on the nightstand anyway, a little circle of light catching on the medal where the neon outside bled red through the curtains.

They talked in low voices when they talked at all, their words hitching like the trailer over patched asphalt, and Jackson learned to listen with his fingers. He learned knots first, the quick-release that sang through when pulled just right, a bowline tidy as new handwriting, the clove hitch that held steady and came loose when called. Blake showed him twice and then made him show him back. "You tie a knot like you mean it," Blake said, thumb testing the give. "Horse is stronger'n both of us together. You don't argue with that. You just speak clear."

"I'm speakin'," Jackson said, and smiled, the rope warm from his hands.

"Speak louder," Blake said. "World don't lean in to hear ya. You give it a reason."

In the mornings, before the sun figured itself out, Jackson learned feed by feel and sound. Pellets hit the bucket like rain on tin. Alfalfa gave the whole place a sweet green breath. Bermuda had a thriftier smell. "Grain after water," Blake told him, leaning hip-shot on a post, checking his watch. "I ain't arguin' with your mama about choke from the middle of nowhere."

"My mama ain't answerin' your call if you ain't first to it," Jackson said, grinning without looking up, and Blake made a face like he'd been convicted by a joke.

They had a rhythm by then. Back the gooseneck into shade if any could be had, hang the fans, roll the hoses, check the mats for corners that might catch a hind shoe. Jackson counted scoops in his head the way he'd once counted the bars on Betsy, the mechanical bull at the Spur. Four slow, one quick, a pause for breath, another two. He could tell when a horse had drunk enough by the slackness in the lower lip and the angle of a head that wasn't still reaching forward. He learned to slide fingers along legs in the blue early light, hunting heat the way you hunt the first minute of fever on a child, calm, pretending to find nothing until you were sure.

They ate like men who didn't pretend about hunger, eggs at roadside diners where the waitress called Blake "cowboy" and Jackson "sugar," crackers out of cellophane in the truck between towns, peaches over a trash can while juice ran down their wrists. Sometimes Blake swore a peach was the best he'd had in five years. Sometimes he said the same about a gas-station corndog and Jackson would laugh until he had to press the back of his hand to his mouth to stop. "Don't look at me like that," Blake said one night, about a hotdog the color of a summer bruise. "Man gets to pick his sacraments."

"You go to hell for callin' that a sacrament," Jackson said.

"Boy, I been goin' to hell since I was ten," Blake said, and the laugh fell away from his mouth, easy as ash. He took a bite and winked. "Might as well go full."

County arenas opened out of nothing like fairytales. 

Nothing and then metal bleachers, moths throwing themselves at sodium light, a PA system whispering a man's voice that sounded as if it had been up all night at a kitchen table. Children in boots lined the rail with cotton-candy fingers, and old men leaned on the fence like they were waiting for a flood that never came. Jackson learned the people as much as the horses: the teenage girl who looped her barrel pattern in her sleep behind the chutes, a mother who fixed six braids with the same two elastic bands, a man with a limp who wrapped every rope twice because once felt like a dare.

At one little county in Arkansas, when the heat had pressed the day flat as a hand, they unloaded a gelding too quick and he staggered, silly with the bake of the ramp. Jackson had the halter in his grasp and the knot clean, and the horse wobbled just shy of stepping on him, one hoof slapping down right where his boot had been. Blake's shout, "Back!" was the kind that lived in the marrow. Jackson went, rope burning along his palm, and then the gelding was steady, head high, breath fogging the kind of thick that didn't belong to fog. Afterward, behind the trailer, Blake took Jackson's hand in both of his and looked at the blister rising through the rope-burn. He said, voice low, "You don't get awards for bein' brave in a bad way. I need you tomorrow. I need you next week. You hear me?"

Jackson nodded. "I hear you."

"Say it."

"I hear you."

"Good," Blake said. His thumbs mapped the sting. "You think I'm bein' mean when I talk like this?"

"No. I think you're scared," Jackson said, honest and gentle, and he watched Blake's eyes flinch at the accuracy like light had caught him wrong.

They spoke business at tailgates. Contracts slid under Blake's finger like road maps for a road you couldn't get a refund on. There were clauses that sounded like spells and others that read like traps with polite hinges. Added money. Day money. Grounds fee. Stall fee. Insurance that would pay a little after something took a lot. "This here indemnification," Blake said, tapping. "That's lawyers makin' sure if a cow sneezes you can't sue the man who sold the fence."

"Reckon cows sneeze?" Jackson asked, mouth tilted.

"You should be a preacher," Blake said. "Sassin' and smilin' at the same time."

Jackson read and re-read, index finger under words, lips moving. When the promoter in a panhandle town tried to tuck a "stock fee surcharge" into a page and a half of flourishes, Jackson found it, pointed, and said, "Sir, this here looks like a busted rib hid under a Sunday shirt."

The promoter laughed until he saw Blake wasn't. "Probably standard," the man said, but he reached for the paper anyway. "We can strike it. Don't tell nobody."

"Sir," Jackson said again, and the second "sir" wasn't a boy's. Blake felt the change in him and didn't interrupt. The promoter blushed bright enough to light a lane. The surcharge disappeared.

One day, they changed a tire on the shoulder of a state road in the kind of dusk that couldn't decide on night. A trucker blew past and the wind shoved them sideways and Jackson laughed from the belly just because they didn't die. "Hold that bar steady, kid," Blake said, grinning like a man with both hands in trouble. "You keep this trailer kissin' the asphalt and I'll buy you the worst corndog in three counties."

"I'm 'bout to get baptized in grease," Jackson said.

"Only kind of baptism sticks," Blake said, and he spit, and then kissed his fingers like that counted for prayer.

Night after night the rooms were slightly different versions of the same room. Jackson learned the shower handles, which way to turn when the knobs lied. He called Daisy from the edge of the bed with the towel still around his neck and told her the shape the day had taken. He never said the word lonely. He never had to. She asked did he eat green things. He said yes even when he hadn't. Sometimes the line crackled and he could hear the porch. Sometimes the porch breathed back with crickets that sounded like home even through plastic telephone bones.

"Tell Cas..." he started once, then stopped himself and let it go. "Tell Cassidy I ain't forgot she owes me a Polaroid of my ugly face."

"Boy, you carry your people like a pocket," Daisy said, voice soft enough to lay on. "Don't drop your change." Then, light as a sigh, "You sound happy."

"I am," he said, and felt how true and not-entirely true a single sentence could be.

When he slept, he slept hard, as if resting counted the way rope-counting counted. When he woke, there were days he woke with Blake's breath on the back of his neck, and he felt that ache that wasn't hurt at all, but something like standing too close to a fire you also needed. "You hog covers," Blake would mumble, voice more gravel than man. Jackson would say, "You snore like a tornado," and Blake would threaten to throw him out the door and not move at all, hand spread warm against the flat of Jackson's stomach like a claim and a pledge.

They fought twice in two months. 

Once because a man in a loud shirt got too friendly by the concession stand, called Jackson "sweetheart" in a way that put a hand on the word, and Blake's jaw went hard enough to make the air hum. "Let it ride," Jackson said, voice low. "We ain't in Willow Creek."

The second fight wasn't really a fight. It was two men getting quiet in different directions. Blake got quiet toward the window and Jackson got quiet toward the wall, and when the quiet met in the middle, they didn't know what to do with it. "You think I'm tryin' to own you," Blake said, finally, the words as careful as a man crossing wire.

"I think you're tryin' to keep me safe by keepin' me small," Jackson said, and the hurt of it made the room hotter. "I ain't small. I'm new. That ain't the same."

Blake turned then, all the way, the blue of the TV's sleep light cutting his face into muscle and shadow. "Hell," he said, very soft. "You right." He sat up, elbows on his knees. "It's' posed to be a door, not a lock."

"That's my mama's line," Jackson said, and because it was, the heat went out of the moment like breath off a mirror. They lay back down, not touching for a minute, and then touching. "Teach me contracts again," Jackson said into the dark, and Blake laughed, chest moving under Jackson's cheek.

"You the only man I know askin' for legal readin' in bed," Blake said. "Lord help me."

"Wanna fuck m'ass, instead?" Jackson proposed, and smiled.

In Oklahoma, a colt spooked at a flag and put both front feet where there weren't supposed to be any feet, and for two seconds everything looked certain in the way a wreck looks finish-lined. Jackson's body went to the animal the way other men go to water. He made his hands big and his voice bigger, quiet-shouting in the language that belongs to living things, there you go, easy, I got you, honey, I got you, and the colt's eyes turned from hot nickel to something like sky. Afterward, a man slapped Blake's shoulder and said, "That boy's yours?" and Blake said, "He ain't nobody's," proud like a house you built without a wrong angle. "But he's with me."

"Blake," Jackson said later, behind the trailer where the dust settled without manners, "don't say I ain't nobody's. I'm mine."

"That's what I meant," Blake said, not smiling at all. "I'm speakin' slow tonight. Don't make me get a dictionary."

"Ain't a dictionary got what you mean in it," Jackson said. "But I heard you."

At a little washed-out lake in Texas that summer gave back to the mud, Blake pulled off onto a narrow shoulder and said, "Stretch your legs." The waterline had dropped until docks stuck out like unfinished thoughts. They sat on the tailgate, boots swinging over cattails, and chewed on store bread that had more air than bread in it. The wind came up from nowhere and turned the heat over like a pillow. Out beyond, a boat lay on its side like a horse asleep.

"You ever feel like the world's bigger than you're built for?" Jackson asked, not looking at him.

"Ever'day," Blake said. "But I ain't lettin' it win."

"Maybe we ain't winnin' against it," Jackson said. "Maybe we supos' learn  to stand closer to it, that's all."

"Listen to you," Blake said. "Four months on the road and you done turned philosopher."

"Philosophy's free," Jackson said. "Contracts ain't."

Blake laughed and dug the folder out from behind the truck seat, put it in Jackson's lap. "Then do some of your expensive readin', smart mouth," he said. "Tell me where they're tryin' to pinch us."

Jackson read until the light went strange, using his forearm to shade the page. He found three little places the promoter had tried to charge them twice for what ought to be a single iniquity. He found a sentence that promised "best efforts" in a way that meant somebody else could do less than that and still get paid. He circled and bracketed, drew a checkmark next to language that protected horses better than men, and said, "This part's right. Somebody loved animals when they wrote it."

"Somebody loved money when they wrote the rest," Blake said.

Jackson shut the folder and looked at Blake full-on. "I ain't your passenger."

"I know," Blake said, and he looked like a man who had learned the same sentence in two different rooms and finally believed both.

That night, back at the motel with the air unit chattering and the neon scraping red across the wall, Jackson lay on his side and thought of home, not to ache but to place himself. He pictured Daisy's one tear and Cassidy's Polaroid and Cash's hands like doorframes, steady and square. He pictured the porch and the road as two arms wide enough to hold a man if he kept his feet under him. Then he turned toward the heat of Blake's sleeping body and placed his palm on the hunk's rib.

"I'm here," he whispered. Blake made a sound like the world had finally said the right name, and then he turned and drew Jackson in until there wasn't any neon left to map the ceiling, only breath and the dull holy thrum of a motel lamp.

In the morning, before the sun figured itself out, the buckets rattled and the rope sang and the day went on. Jackson tied his knot sure and quick and left the tail just long enough to speak clear. The gelding blinked slow and pressed his forehead into Jackson's shoulder, an old ritual performed by new hands. Blake watched from the shade of the trailer door, the brim of his hat cutting his face to grit and grin.

"Looks good on you," he said.

"What does?" Jackson asked, not turning.

"Knowin' what you're doin'," Blake said. "Belongs on a man."

Jackson tugged the knot once more, not for doubt but for pleasure, the way you tug at a shirt that finally fits. He wiped his palms on his jeans and looked over his shoulder. "We got contracts to bust and hay to feed," he said. "Quit standin' around lookin' pretty."

"Boy," Blake said, smiling now, "I been doin' both my whole life."

"Reckon you ain't wrong," Jackson said, and the world bent around their voices the way a new halter gives to an animal that's decided to trust it. 

*

(Two months later)

The charity show had set up like a fair that forgot its ferris wheel. 

Jackson stood at the gate and watched the green colt blow, wide-eyed, head high as a question no one dared answer wrong.

"Easy now," Blake said, low at his shoulder. He had one boot up on the bottom rail, forearm across the top plank, hat pushed back so both eyes could tell the truth at once. "You ride him like he's water tryin' to be river. Hands loose, legs steady. Don't snatch him into bein' broke. Ask him pretty, he'll give you more'n you thought he had."

"Yes, sir," Jackson said, and felt how the words settled him the way a halter settled a nervous head.

They called his number, mispronounced his last name, and the colt trembled under him, a tremor that ran through saddle leather into bone. Jackson breathed with him, counted like he used to count the beats on Betsy, four slow, one quick, and let the reins live light. He didn't make a showman's circle. He made a small, faithful one, keeping the line soft, letting the colt look and see and live. The crowd quieted because there is a hush that comes before violence and another that comes before trust.

Jackson rode the second one like prayer.

A little girl near the rail clapped without thinking when the colt finally dropped his head a fraction and blew. The mothers smiled like they had all been holding their breath and could go back to being women again. The old men leaned off their elbows and grunted approval, the language of men who never did learn applause. Jackson felt the change come through his knees when the animal stopped arguing with a world that had already been decided and began to lean into it.

He trotted one clean figure eight and then another, patted the damp neck, and walked out with the reins draped. Blake didn't whistle, didn't crow. He just touched Jackson's calf as he passed the rail and said, "You spoke clear."

Jackson nodded, throat tight with a happiness that didn't need to be bigger than itself.

Back at the pens, the colt stood hip-shot and sleepy, the green knocked down to a color a man could keep. People came in the way people come when they think fame might accidentally brush them, kids first, then single women, then the men who tell you about the horse they once had and the one they should've kept. A wiry teen in a sequined belt asked for a photo. An older rancher in a sweat-dark hat said, "You rode him kind." A volunteer with a clipboard told Jackson he had "a face for brochures." Blake laughed at that and said, "Brochures don't muck stalls."

Jackson flushed and said thank you too many times. He rubbed the colt between the eyes where the bone made a small valley, and the animal leaned into that mortal sweetness. Blake watched with a look Jackson had come to know, the one that meant pride and warning were shaking hands inside his chest. "All right," Blake said at last, voice easy but edged. "That's enough autographin'. Horse needs water, boy."

"Yes, sir," Jackson said, relief and gratitude twined together on his tongue.

They drove to the motel with the windows down, and the night was too hot to let itself cool. Jackson sat on the edge of the bed with the towel around his neck and called his mama. Daisy answered before the second ring because she was that kind of woman and had made him that kind of son.

"How'd it go, baby?" she asked, and he could hear the porch behind her, the crickets, the little tick of the lamp cooling after sunset.

"Went good," he said. "Rode a green colt in the charity class. He was lookin' to bolt clean out his skin 'til he wasn't." He told her about the girl clapping, the rancher's nod, and the volunteer who wanted to print his face like it could sell water to a river. Daisy laughed in that way that carried butter and backbone both. She asked what he ate. He lied about greens. She let him.

"Answer when it rings," she said, after they'd run out of small things that held big love. "Even when it ain't me."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, because some habits were commandments. The line crackled like a pan of oil, then cleared. "I'm happy, Mama."

"I know," she said. "Don't let happy make you careless. Night, baby."

He set the phone down. From the bathroom, Blake called over the hiss of the shower, "You say goodnight to the queen?"

Jackson smiled at the wall. He took the phone back up and stared at Cash's name until the letters stopped being letters and turned into something that pushed on bone. He pressed call and let it ring once, half a ring really, like a word swallowed at the door, and then thumbed it dead. The neon boats kept traveling the same short river. He put the phone down as if it might break either way.

Blake leaned against the bathroom doorframe in jeans and a towel over his shoulder, steam unbuttoning the room. "You fixin' to talk to the past, or you just knockin' on it to see if it still answers?"

"I ain't sure," Jackson said, honest. "Feels like both."

Blake nodded like a man who had rented that same room in his own head and never got his deposit back. He tossed the towel on the chair, crossed the room in three lazy steps, and tapped the St. Christopher with one finger, a little iron bell. "You ain't alone, kid."

Jackson nodded, because he needed to feel himself agree.

He closed his eyes, and the world put a barn in front of him like a slide in a projector, nails skittering, lamp humming, the old breath of hay and heat and hurt. In that other air, Cash's mouth came to his like rain on a porch roof, steady, surprising, good in a way he had to call by its right name or else it would grow teeth. He didn't touch the memory. 

It touched him. 
And Jackson let it.

"Hey," Blake said, gentled so it wouldn't break anything. "You with me, or you drivin' with your eyes shut?"

"I'm with you," Jackson said, and the answer felt like truth and not-treason both. Blake searched his face the way he searched a horse's legs at dawn, for heat that meant trouble and heat that meant life.

"Tomorrow," Blake said, "we load at six. You feed before that. Read that contract they gave us. The clause by the stall fee's crooked." Blake tipped his head low and let a smile crawl out, wicked with affection. "And, Jackson?"

"Yeah?"

"Quit lettin' the world think you don't know what you're doin'. You do." He said, a little bow for a king and a boy at once. "Now come on. That bed's ugly without you in it."

Jackson set the phone face down like a sleeping thing, slapped the bedroom's light out, and slid into the bed, which smelled faintly of bleach and their particular ordinary. 

"Hey," Blake said, voice low as honey. "You sound like you been talkin' too much."

"Nah," Jackson said. "Just listenin' too hard."

"That's when a man needs holdin'," Blake said, and sat on the mattress edge. The bed dipped and gave, the way road shoulders gave under a heavy truck. He touched Jackson's shoulder with the back of his knuckles like he was keeping a horse from spooking. "Turn toward me."

Jackson turned. 

There were nights when he wanted to be thrown, to burn the world out of himself with the speed of Blake's cock pumping into him. There were nights like this, when he wanted to be set down in a room that stayed. Blake smelled like motel soap, dust, and the good leather of a halter that had seen hands. The brim of his hat was on the chair, the crown caved just so from a thousand thoughtless grips.

"Your hands," Blake said, palms up. Jackson laid his in them. Blake thumbed the rope burn, the blister already turning from anger to memory. "This the part I can do," he said. "Make it quiet down. Make you forget."

Jackson nodded, throat tight.

Blake kissed the place on his palm that the rope had raised, like a blessing, like ownership, he didn't keep for himself. Then he moved that mouth to Jackson's wrist, where the blood said a man was living, to the inside crook of his elbow, where the skin kept a child-softness nobody reckoned belonged on a grown boy, to the notch under his collarbone where St. Christopher sometimes rested when the chain wandered. He did it slowly, mapping a county he meant to farm.

"Home ain't just a porch, kid," Blake murmured, breath warm where the words landed. "It's how you get touched when you're too tired to talk. Let me do my job."

Jackson breathed, and the breath shook.

Blake pulled Jackson's undies the way you pull a shirt off after rain, careful of what clings. He didn't hurry, didn't yank the hem, just eased the cotton and tossed them aside, Jackson's already growing pink shaft slingshotting and slapping his stomach. He searched Jackson's face like a man checking cinches before a ride. "You with me?"

"I'm with you."

"Tell me if that changes."

"I will."

"Good," Blake said, and his mouth found Jackson's like they'd agreed on it years ago and had been rehearsing in their sleep. Jackson met him back, not starved but grateful the way a field is grateful for straightforward rain. They moaned into each other's mouths, and Jackson's body melted into the scent of Blake's breath. It wasn't the usual wildfire. It was the porch in a storm, the kind you sit on because the thunder belongs to you, too.

Blake rolled him over and lay alongside, one leg thrown over, one arm long across Jackson's ribs like a beam set to keep a roof from sagging. Their mouths never parted, tongues laced together. They didn't ask for anything but breath and more breath. When Jackson reached for Blake, he caught his hand and pressed it flat to his own chest. "Right there," he said, voice near a whisper. 

Jackson spread his fingers until he could feel Blake's heart in the surface of his large hand, pulsing steady, steady, constant. Then, steered Blake's palm lower over the ridge of his stomach, wrapping it around his hard cock. Blake shivered once, not from cold. He laughed softly, the tip of his engorged cock already pressing against Jackson's puckering hole. "Y'want me to...?" Blake breathed against Jackson's mouth. "I can pull the reins tonight, if you ain't feelin' it…"

"Naw, I want ya to." Jackson drawled. "Make me forget, Blake."

Blake kissed him for that truth's meanness and the sweetness with which it had been said. Then he pushed himself inside, not making a show of it, just making good on a promise. His hands held Jackson through the places where a man remembers he's not only muscle and bone but lightning and riverbed both. His mouth turned homesick to home by inches. Jackson let himself be made simple: sound, heat, the rise that isn't a ladder but a tide. He kept his eyes open until they wouldn't stay, and when they closed, he saw the barn, porch, and red boats on the motel wall, all inside this one room because Blake put it there.

"Breathe," Blake said, and Jackson did.

They fucked like men who had found a single language and wanted to see how many sentences it could hold. Blake was slow because slow takes more skill. Jackson was greedy because hunger, answered kindly, makes a better man. The bed knocked on the wall, small and apologetic, as if they were asking permission and being granted it. The air unit rattled and steadied, rattled and steadied, and their bodies learned that rhythm and then fucked a better one on top of it.

When the heat crested, Blake didn't take it from him. He guided it, hands sure at Jackson's hips, words in his mouth that weren't orders so much as road signs: easy / there you go / I got you / come on home. Jackson let go the way a man lets go of a rope when the knot's already done its work. He felt himself being submerged in bed and then found he hadn't at all. Blake followed after, not a second later, not a lordly beat before, like they'd planned the minute on paper.

An hour later, when the world had quietened again, when Blake's seed still slowly spewed from Jackson's insides into the sheets, Blake wiped them both with a washcloth he'd run under the hot tap, another kindness that shouldn't have felt like much and somehow felt like the whole doctrine. He threw the cloth toward the sink, missed by a mile, didn't care. He pulled Jackson into the cup of himself and set his mouth where shoulder meets neck, the place that makes words hard and sleep easy. They lay like that until the neon boats went out and came back on again and neither of them counted how long it took.

"You feel less lonesome?" Blake asked into the skin he was already answering.

"Mm-hm."

"That a yes?"

Jackson smiled in the dark, where nobody could see him do it. "Yes, sir."

Blake's palm slid down Jackson's stomach and settled, warm as a stove in winter, not asking anything anymore, just staying put. "Tomorrow you're gonna read me that crooked clause with the stall fee," he said, already half-asleep. "You're gonna say it in that voice that makes men change their minds."

"I reckon."

"And we'll load at six," Blake went on, stubbornly tender. "You'll feed before that, and you ain't liftin' that fifty-pound sack like you're still tryin' to impress the world. Bend your knees. Save your back for me."

Jackson laughed, a quiet, helpless sound. "Bossy."

"Alive," Blake corrected. "Six months on the road and I ain't lost you yet. I aim to keep that streak."

Jackson turned his head until his mouth found Blake's temple. He kissed it without fanfare, then pressed his forehead there and let stillness be the last clever thing they did.

*

(One Year Later)

They said it happened fast, but time had opened wide for Jackson. The bull came out mean and left meaner. Blake stuck the first jump, lost the second, and on the third, his spur caught wrong. The dismount turned into a fall that tried to fold him in half. The air went out of Blake like a stove blown cold. He rolled to his knees, one arm clamped to his side, and then he went still because stillness was what pain demanded.

Jackson was already under the rail. He didn't think. He made himself into what was needed, voice before hands, calm before hurry. "Stay with me, cowboy. Eyes right here," he said, kneeling in dirt that remembered every boot. The medics came with their brisk, blessed fuss. Jackson kept them and the world from talking over Blake. "Breathe with me now, slow. One, two."

Blake's mouth crooked at the corner, cocky even then. "Ain't broke," he whispered, and swallowed breath like it had edges.

"Save your lies for Sunday," Jackson said. A rib under his palm felt wrong, angled like a question. He swallowed the shake in his own hands and buttoned his voice. "We're up. We're movin'. You lean, I steer."

Blake's hat lay belly-up in the dirt. Jackson snatched it, set it crown-down on his own head, and didn't care how it looked. On the gator toward the tunnel, Blake caught the brim with two fingers, as if to say remember who we are, and Jackson said, "I remember. Breathe." The tunnel swallowed them. The light narrowed. In the white room beyond, a nurse cut Blake's shirt with the neat mercy of scissors. Jackson stood at the bedrail and did the math on a future he refused to let go dim.

Blake's eyes found him once, sharp through a sweat. "You with me, kid?"

"I ain't goin' nowhere."

"Say it."

"Yes, sir."

Paperwork stacked itself without apology. A woman at the desk slid forms toward Jackson in a plastic clip like a dealer laying down a hand. Association injury report. Temporary stall waiver. Grounds fee refund, "pending adjudication." Insurance that paid a little after something had taken a lot.

Jackson printed their names neatly enough to pass any Sunday-school test. He flagged what needed flagging and circled what needed shaming. When the clerk said "stock surcharge," he said, polite as heat, "Ma'am, that fee ain't in the contract. If you'll look at page five, paragraph three, you'll see we paid it when we paid the grounds."

She blinked. He held his smile like a steady flame. She picked up the phone and made the fee disappear.

At Blake's curtain, a young doc with hair too clean for this county said, "Two cracked ribs, maybe three. Wrap, rest, pain management. No broncs, no bulls, no nonsense." He looked past Jackson toward the bed. "You got someone to mind you?"

Jackson lifted his chin a little. "He does."

The doc studied Jackson the way men studied a colt they wanted to like. He nodded. "Ice twenty on, twenty off. Laugh careful."

Blake groaned. "I ain't laughin' at nothin' you say."

"You ain't laughin' at nothin' at all," Jackson said, signing the last page and sliding it back across the counter like a victory that didn't need whooping. He reached for Blake's boots, loosened them without jarring the hurt, and set them side by side like two truths that matched. "I got you. Hear me?"

Blake's hand found his wrist, anchor to anchor. "I hear you." 

They limped the distance between the hospital and the motel like a road they'd crossed a thousand times under different weather. Jackson levered Blake onto the bed by degrees, one arm behind his shoulders, one hand guarding his ribs, the kind of work you do slowly because love made a man patient. He iced and taped like a pro he had learned by watching, then by doing, clean wrap, even press, no show. He set pills out with water, set the remote where it could be reached, and set the hat on the chair like a sentry.

The ledger opened its flat mouth on the little round table and waited. Jackson perched, clicked the pen, and went to war kindly. He called the promoter and worked a stall credit with a voice that sounded older than the driver's license in his wallet. He emailed a sponsor with three photographs and a paragraph tight as good knotwork. He drafted a post about charity week and community that made people want to be the sort of people it talked like they already were.

Blake watched him through the drug-slow. "Look at you," he said thickly. "Takin' care of the whole damn wagon train."

"I ain't draggin' you," Jackson said without looking up. "I'm drivin' with both hands."

"You ain't my passenger."

Jackson's smile tipped sideways.

"You my partner."

The ledger line he added was too dark. He didn't fix it. He closed the book, stood, and tucked a pillow more snugly under Blake's arm. "Damn right."

At eight-fifty-five, Jackson's cracked phone alarm shook a little piece of the table. He silenced it with his forefinger like shushing a child. Nine was the time Daisy would be at the sink with the lamp humming just so and the phone in its cradle like a hymnbook. But tonight the first call at nine wasn't Daisy. It was Blake, twenty inches away, hand hovering toward the door like he might take his ache outside to smoke and spare the room.

"No," Jackson said, gentle and firm, the tone that had calmed the green colt in the charity ring. "Hear me. First road rule."

Blake's eyebrows did their stubborn dance. "Lord, here we go."

"No disappearin'," Jackson said. "If you're mad, you can say mad. If you're hurtin', you can say hurtin'. You can step out for air, but you don't vanish on me, and I don't vanish on you. We answer at nine. Every night. Even if we're in the same room."

Blake looked at the door, at the phone, at Jackson. He nodded once. "Phone at nine," he said. He pointed at Jackson like a man paying a compliment with his forefinger. "You answer me."

"I answer you."

He pressed Daisy's number. Her hello came through like home does, simple, exact. He told her the truth, the way you do with people who bought you shoes when you were little. "He's fine but mad at breathin'. Two ribs cracked. Maybe three. I'm makin' him stay mean about stayin' still."

"Good. Mean's a tool," Daisy said. "Don't whittle with it. Cut clean."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You answer at nine," she added, an echo that made the room feel less like a room.

"Yes, ma'am." He hung up and set the phone back on its back, the St. Christopher on top like a silver lid on a pot. Blake watched the motion, then lifted his hand. Jackson put his own in it.

"You takin' tomorrow's calls, too?" Blake asked, half-dare, half-gratitude.

"I'm takin' every call we got," Jackson said. "You do the breathin'. I'll do the talkin' till you can do both."

Blake's eyes went wet the way men do when they hate it and need it. 

By Thursday, Jackson had the trailer balanced like a ledger, feed stacked, fans tied, mats neat, and inventory written on a paper bag in block letters that meant business. He'd fixed a ground wire that never had the decency to stay fixed, traded a bent snap for one that clicked sweet, and found two bags of shavings in a town where stores kept hours like they were favors. He'd sweet-talked the night desk into a ground-floor room without the thirty-dollar upcharge. He got a fifty off the weekly because he brought the clerk a coffee that wasn't a bribe so much as a sermon about how people should be treated when they spend all night inside other people's travel.

He set the phone on the little table at eight-fifty-nine and sat beside the bed. Blake turned his head on the pillow with that slow wince a rib makes you pay for. "I ain't disappearin'," he said before the alarm rang.

"I know."

"You sittin' right there at nine?"

"I am."

"Say it."

Jackson leaned back in the chair, boot heel hooked on a rung, hat tipped over his knee. He looked at Blake until the pain took its own breath and made room for something else.

"Yes, sir."

*

(Eight Months Later)

By March, the murmurs had started to move, cooler under the chutes where men talked with their caps low and their boots braced against dust that never settled. Jackson felt the talk before he heard it: a rep in a starched shirt speaking in discounts and "partnerships," a woman with a clipboard promising boots and denim that would remember his name. He stood there with the halter rope looped in his palm, the horse blowing sweet hay breath across his forearm, and he kept his face set to polite so his soul could stay set to plain.

Blake hung back just enough to see without being seen, hat brim cutting him to shadow. When the rep finished selling the moon in monthly installments, Blake came up and tapped the folder with one brown finger. "You thank 'em, then you read it twice," he said, voice easy as a whetstone. "A free pair a' boots can cost a man his feet if he ain't lookin'."

Jackson smiled slightly. "Reckon I'll read it three times just so you sleep."

Blake's mouth tipped, pride hiding behind its hand. "There you go. Go shake hands, take the card, and keep your name your own."

The month after, the regional buckle came in a ring that still held yesterday's wind. Jackson rode the set like a hymn he'd learned slow, patterns clean, hands quiet, legs sure enough to say please and mean it. He dismounted to a noise that wasn't quite applause but lived next door to it, and someone pushed the heavy oval into his palm. For a heartbeat he was a boy again with a prize he had no pockets for.

Cameras found his face the way moths find stadium light. A little boy on the rail asked if it was heavy. "Feels like work," Jackson told him, grinning, "and that means it fits."

Back at the fence, Blake didn't crow. He just set two fingers in the back of Jackson's belt like a homing beacon and said, quietly, "Hold it for the picture, but don't let the picture hold you."

"I won't."

And then it happened in a breath: a kid in a red cap got too close to a mare with a memory. The mare spooked and came up like she'd found fire under her feet. People yelled the way people do when they've practiced panic more than help. Jackson was already there, a hand to the lead, a voice big and low as a church organ, there you go, honey, I got you, ain't nothin' here but air. The mare blew out, the boy's hat rolled, Jackson knelt and set it back on the small, scared head like a crown you earn by staying put.

Somebody's phone caught it, kid's eyes, horse's softened ear, Jackson's face bent gentle, and by sundown, the picture had run the county and started nosing state lines. Feed stores printed it for their bulletin boards. Aunties texted it to sons who hadn't called home in too long. "That Bell boy," strangers said, meaning not his father but his mother and the town and whatever weather raised him.

Daisy answered at nine on the dot like the clock was her idea. "I seen it," she said, before hello had finished. "You look like every good thing I hoped the world wouldn't take from you."

Jackson swallowed. "It ain't took nothin', Mama."

"Good. Keep it that way. Your kindness is your headline."

And Daisy was right.
She was always right, even when she wasn't.

Fame came side-long and smiling. Old stock contractors clapped Jackson's back and told long stories, and a college team roper with a jaw like a movie poster asked what motel Jackson was at. A man with gray at the temples, boots too clean to trust, put a hand at Jackson's waist when a photo lined up and didn't move it fast enough after. Jackson stepped away a step that was polite and permanent. The man laughed like he hadn't done what he'd done. The air got thin as a lie.

Blake didn't say a word then. He didn't have to. His jaw told on him. The brim dropped a notch. Later, back at the trailer where the night had a fence around it, he said, careful, "I don't like men reachin' for what ain't theirs."

Jackson leaned against the fender, moonlight hanging off the chrome like one more buckle to carry. "I ain't nobody's to reach for."

Blake held his eyes and, for once, didn't look away first. "No, sir, you ain't."

"I'm here," Jackson said, tapping knuckles once to the trailer wall, a sound like a true name. "I want you. But I ain't your property."

Blake's face softened the way leather does after rain. "I know. Don't mean my hackles don't raise when men act wrong."

"Let 'em raise," Jackson said. "Just don't turn 'em on me."

Blake exhaled, the kind that empties a man all the way to make space for better air. "All right."

"Say it like a rule," Jackson pushed, gentle but unbending.

Blake nodded, a slow oath. "New rule: always the truth. If I'm jealous, I say jealous. If you're tired of it, you say tired. We don't guess, we don't disappear, and we sure as hell don't lie."

Jackson felt the ground come up steady under both their boots. "Always the truth," he echoed, and the echo sounded like a door opening, not a lock snapping.

Blake tilted his head toward the motel, toward the nine o'clock that had taught them both how to stay. "We square?"

"Yes, sir."

By June, Jackson's face had outrun his name by a county or two. A sponsor sent a box with his initials stitched small, where only a careful eye could find them. The buckle rode his belt some days and rode his duffel others, because he didn't like how weight made a man forget the work. At shows, boys with shy mouths asked about their hands, and men who should've known better asked about his room. Jackson learned to smile like a porch light, warm, not open. He learned to choose his "No" so it didn't need a second sentence.

Blake learned to stand a half-step back and a half-step close. When the crowd pushed, he let Jackson be seen. When a hand lingered where it had no right to linger, he was a shadow that ached to be useful and chose not to become a storm. It cost him, but he paid it, because the rule was the rule and love that needed locks didn't deserve doors.

That night, in a room that smelled of window unit and wet denim, Blake said, "Truth time. I hated the way he touched you."

"I know," Jackson said.

"I ain't proud 'bout how it felt."

"You ain't gotta be proud to be honest."

Blake tipped his hat onto the chair and looked fifty instead of the weathered thirty-two he told the world. "You want out, you say out. You want me, you say me."

Jackson reached, palm to Blake's chest, where the rib scar still told its story even in the dark. "I'm fixin' to get under that shower, and then I want you to fuck my ass 'til I pass clean out on that bed...can you do that for me, cowboy?"

Blake's breath evened under that hand, strong as a fence post, soft as Sunday, his thirty-two trips around the sun coming back to his eyes. "Damn right, I can."

*

(Five Months Later)

They had loaded the last horse under a fat sky filled with heat lightning, the kind that stitched white seams in the clouds and never spilled a proper rain. Fans rattled under the awning, a generator coughed bravely, and somewhere, a calf bawled like a hinge.

Blake checked the latch, then rechecked it, shoulders tight. "You shorted the feed by twenty pounds," he said without looking at Jackson. "You tryin' to make 'em trim or dead?"

"Feed was right," Jackson answered, coiling the hose. "Weight's on two bags in the tack room. You'd know it if you opened your eyes instead of your mouth."

Blake's jaw went sideways. "Watch your tone."

"Watch your math."

They'd been on the road long enough to know exactly where to push. Blake took two boot-steps in, dust giving under his heel like an insult. "You smiled through a full pitch from that rep and forgot we ain't for sale."

"I smiled 'cause we ain't stupid," Jackson said. "Boots and banners ain't handcuffs if you read the fine print. I did. Twice."

"You read it like a boy wants his picture on a truck," Blake said, soft and ugly. "You don't know yet what you don't know."

Jackson straightened from the hose. He was taller when he got mad. "Say it plain: you think I'm ridin' your name."

Blake barked a laugh that had no humor. "Hell boy, you are ridin' my name. You ride bulls now 'cause I made you wait till your hands were ready. You finish a night 'cause I taught you finish means goin' to bed sober enough to wake up mean."

Jackson took the last two steps and set his chest to Blake's. The brim of Blake's hat knocked his. Both refused to give first. "I finish 'cause I'm my mama's boy," Jackson said, steady. "I read because contracts don't care about legend. And I ain't your boy. I'm your partner."

Blake's smile showed teeth. "Then act like it. Don't shake a sponsor's hand till I've seen the clause that bites."

"I sent you the clause," Jackson snapped. "Nine a.m. You didn't answer at nine. You didn't answer at all."

"Service was bad," Blake lied because pride loves company.

"Your honesty was worse," Jackson said.

It went quiet then, the kind of quiet that belongs in churches and barns. Blake lifted a finger and pressed it into Jackson's sternum. It was not hard, but it was like a man checking a plank for rot. "You talk pretty," he said. "But you don't know what it costs to keep a boy like you from gettin' ate alive."

"Don't call me a boy," Jackson said, and his hand came up without asking. He flicked the corner of Blake's hat and sent it skidding under the trailer. "I ain't yours to shepherd."

Blake's hands went to Jackson's shirtfront and bunched thick cotton. Jackson's palms hit Blake's ribs in the same breath, right where old cracks still whispered in weather. They shoved once, twice, not to injure, but like men trying to push each other back into their right bodies. The trailer rattled.

"Careful," Blake said, breath hot. "You ain't strong enough to move me."

"Reckon I don't need to," Jackson said. "Reckon I only gotta stand."

They stood. They felt the same pound in each other's wrists. Years lived in the little adjustments, Blake's thumbs easing off the sore place he'd grabbed, Jackson tilting his weight so Blake's ribs weren't pinned wrong. Even mean, they handled each other like gear they meant to keep.

"Truth time," Jackson said, softer and worse. "You're scared I'll pass you in the dark. That what this is?"

Blake flinched like it landed. Cruelty rose in him, the old Bogalusa seam. "You don't pass a man who built your road," he said. "You only learn to drive on it."

Jackson smiled then, and it wasn't kind. "You didn't build me, Buckley. You taught me knots and how to finish. I built me. And you..." He let himself cut, just once. "You hide behind bein' needed 'cause you don't know how to be loved."

Blake shoved him hard enough to bounce him off the fender. "Say that again."

Jackson set his boots, breath tight. "You heard me."

It might've gone bad. It might've gone to fists and gotten stupid. But the generator hiccupped, and a moth smacked the bulb and fell, and the two of them remembered the rule that had kept them from being men other men whispered about for the wrong reasons.

Blake stepped back first. He put both hands up like a man surrendering a weapon. "All right," he said, voice gone low and human. "Rule One: no disappearin'. I disappeared at nine. That's on me."

Jackson's chest still lifted sharply, but he nodded. "Rule Two: always the truth. "I'm tired of bein' handled like I'll break," Jackson said. 

Blake dragged a hand over his face and let the fight clot and fall away. "You ain't breakable," he said. "You're new."

They picked up what they'd thrown. Jackson crouched and fished Blake's hat from under the trailer. He slapped dust from the crown with the care of a man cleaning a wound, then set it on Blake's head himself. "You missed a stitch on the cinch strap," he muttered, because tenderness embarrassed him when it wore its church clothes.

Blake snorted. "You shorted feed by twenty pounds."

"Check the tack room."

Blake jerked his head toward it. Jackson opened the door and thumped two bags with his boot. They both worked their mouths the same way when they'd been wrong and wouldn't say sorry yet.

"I don't want your picture on a truck if it costs you your name," Blake said, gentler. "But I ain't gonna be the reason you stand small."

Jackson let the words sit for a second. "Then stand with me when I'm talkin' to men who think they can buy the part of me that ain't for sale."

Blake nodded once, slowly. "Deal."

They reset the latch together, one hand each, as they always did when dignity needed a task. When it clicked, some tight thing behind both their ribs clicked with it. Blake's palm found the back of Jackson's neck and held there.

"Nine o'clock," Blake said.

"I'll answer."

"Say it."

Jackson looked out at the heat, lightning sewing up the sky, and felt the day loosen its teeth. He tipped his chin and let the answer land where it always did.

Plain, binding, theirs.

"Yes, sir."

*

The sponsor's barn show ran bright as money, with fresh banners, buckles arranged like bait, and a brisket table steaming under fluorescent saints. Outside, the heat held men close enough to smell their day on them. Inside, every surface shone the way things do when somebody expects photographs.

Jackson had just slipped a halter off a mare that took compliments like she meant to pass them along when the sponsor's son stepped out of a knot of catalog girls and landed in his path. He was beautiful the unexpected way a storm front is, green eyes under a mess of raven curls, skin pale enough to look expensive in August, a mouth already sure of its tricks. Twenty-two, give or take the smirk.

"You're even prettier in person," he said by way of hello, voice pitched to make a private event out of a crowded room.

Jackson laughed, low. "Pictures ain't supposed to catch all of a man," he said. "They'd run outta ink."

"Evan." He offered a hand. Didn't let go when Jackson shook it. "My daddy keeps writin' checks to this circus. Feels like I oughta finally meet the reason."

"Jackson," he said. "I'm the reason we run outta coffee before noon."

Evan's smile bit. "And the reason they put you on the posters. You got a face folks think they're gonna remember themselves better by."

"I got a face I shave with the back of a spoon half the time," Jackson said, twang dry, eyes bright. He could feel it, the part of himself that liked the play, the spar in it. Not the lie. The shine.

Evan moved closer. He raked his curls back, a nervous habit dressed as a pose, and let his knuckles knock Jackson's shoulder like they'd been friends at some other party they hadn't both hated. "You ride bulls now, right?"

"Ride what carries me," Jackson said. "Step down when it's smart."

"That smart mouth," Evan said, approving. "You use it for interviews or instructions."

"'Pends who's listenin'."

"I am," Evan said. He let his gaze fall, buckle, belt, the stubborn flat of Jackson's stomach under a fresh sponsor shirt stitched small where only a careful eye would find it. "I like the shirt on you. The color."

"It's white."

"Not on you," Evan said, grin tipping feral for a heartbeat.

Jackson should've stepped aside then, should've made it all harmless by walking away and making it nothing. He didn't. He let himself enjoy being looked at in a way that didn't ask him to fix a fence or finish a fight first. He tipped his hat back a notch. "You always this forward, Evan, or I just caught you on a brave day?"

"Only when I want somethin' I ain't supposed to," Evan said. The green in his eyes went hot. "You ever want somethin' you ain't supposed to?"

Jackson thought of porches and barns. He thought of nails hitting the floor, sweat-covered skin, and bodies rolling in hay. A kiss. The kiss. Only then came Buckley and the rule that kept him from lying to himself. "Sometimes," he said. "Mostly I want what's mine."

"You his?" Evan asked, too quick, too pleased with the poke. "Or you just borrowin' names out here til you make your own?"

"I don't borrow what I already got," Jackson said, and let a little honey slide into the gravel. "Question is...do you know what you got?"

Evan laughed, bright and reckless. He drifted nearer so their boots almost said howdy. "I got a room key and lots of free time."

Jackson smiled. 

Evan's hand came up, casual at first, as if to straighten a nonexistent wrinkle at Jackson's shoulder. He let that knuckle drag down the sleeve seam, paused where the bicep pulled cotton tight, then, like a coin trick, his thumb caught the edge of the tucked shirt and flirted with the leather at Jackson's belt. The room narrowed around the touch. It was almost nothing. Almost.

Jackson shifted, one half-step back that was polite and final. "Uh-uh," he said, soft but plain. "Keep your hands where your daddy's money can see 'em."

Evan's pulse jumped in his throat, excitement, not embarrassment. He leaned in with a breath that promised a lot for free. "You ain't sayin' no."

"I ain't finished sayin' yes," Jackson returned. The charm stayed. The door did not.

"Je-sus, listen to him," Evan said, almost to himself, delighted. "You talk like a porch light."

"Then don't go testin' the fuse," Jackson said, and that was when the air changed temperature.

Boot-heels, heavy. Hat brim cutting a shadow out of the aisle light. A presence that arrived the way heat arrives through tin, slow, total. 

Blake.

He didn't come in loud. He didn't have to. Men moved for him the way stock moves for weather, subtle, involuntary. He stopped a yard off, took in the angle of Evan's body, the place of his hand, the flare in Jackson's eyes that wasn't fear but wasn't not. Something dark flickered under Blake's cheekbone and then climbed.

"Afternoon," Blake said. The syllables had edge. “You losin’ somethin’, son? Looks like your hand ain't leashed to your mind."

Evan's smile sharpened. He didn't step back. If anything, he tilted further into the trouble, eyes gleaming that proprietary green. "Hey, cowboy," he said, choosing the honorific like a toy with teeth. "You the chaperone or the plus-one?"

Blake's head tipped. "I'm the man you don't smart-mouth," he said gently. "On account of your house wouldn't like the bill for what happens next."

Evan laughed, bright and mean now that he'd found purchase. "That a threat?"

"That a truth," Blake said. The brim stayed low, but the heat was all parish, all Bogalusa boy who'd learned ten bad lessons and spent a lifetime trying to unlearn them. "You put your hand on what ain't yours again, and we don't settle it on a banner table."

Jackson moved then, hand out and up between them with a touch that knew ribs and old weather. "Blake..."

But Evan couldn't help himself. He let two fingers tap the low loop of Jackson's belt, not even a proper touch, just the suggestion of one, and he looked straight at Blake while he did it, grin turned to dare. "Jealous looks good on you," he said.

Everything after that happened the way a storm happens once God decides it's time.

Blake had Evan by the shirtfront before the girls with the catalogs finished their gasp. He walked him backward in three long steps and bounced him off the tack-room jamb hard enough to ring a bridle hook. Forearm across the chest, just south of the throat, enough to pin, not crush. 

"Hey," Jackson said, already there, already on him, fingers catching Blake's wrist, body set sideways to keep pressure from the tender places. "Eyes on me."

Evan's shock turned quick to thrill. He looked from Jackson's hand to Blake's face like a boy who'd licked a battery and found out he liked the hurt. "Oh," he breathed, mouth gone wicked. "So this is the picture."

Blake leaned in until his voice belonged to Evan's bones. "Listen close," he said, calm in the way men are before they put someone through a wall. "You don't lay claim to what ain't yours because you ain't been taught better at home. If your daddy wants to pull a contract over this, he can come talk to me about the difference between sponsor and owner."

"Blake," Jackson said again, firmer. He shifted, put his own shoulder under Blake's forearm and made the angle change, a small, skilled theft of leverage. "Let him go."

Blake's hand unclenched from the expensive shirt like it had to be pried off by a better part of himself. He stepped back one pace, then another, chest rising like a man just remembered oxygen could be a friend. He didn't look away from Jackson while he did it. The room started breathing again, badly.

Evan slid along the jamb and put a palm to his chest where the press had been, eyes shining with an admiration that deserved a better subject. "You two put on a hell of a show," he said, shaky and pleased. "I can see the PR copy now."

Jackson turned his face to him at last. The charm was gone. The mercy wasn't. "Look," he said, level as a levee. "You don't get to write us in your head and then try to make the world read it." He tipped his hat an inch, the gesture carrying more warning than welcome. "Thank you for the banners. That's where your hands stop."

Evan searched his eyes for anything softer than the line he'd been given. Finding none, he smoothed his shirt down with shaking fingers and smiled like he meant to call a lawyer from the parking lot. "My father..."

"...can hear the same truth you just did," Jackson said.

Blake's shoulders dropped their last half-inch. He reached for his hat's brim, found it straight, and let his hand fall. When he finally spoke, he aimed it only at Jackson. "You good?"

"I'm good," Jackson said. He touched Blake's ribs where the temper lived. "Go pull the truck up," Jackson said. "I'll settle the catalog table."

Blake held his gaze a second longer, reading for cracks, finding steel. He nodded once, something like an apology buried in the motion, then turned for the door.

"Blake," Jackson called, light as he could make it and still mean it. Blake looked back. "We'll talk at nine."

A beat. Then the corner of Blake's mouth broke into a line that meant yes without the word. He tipped his brim, a private salute in a public barn, and went.

Evan watched him go, then flicked his eyes to Jackson's belt, where he'd nearly written a worse ending. "He always like that?" he asked, half-awed, half-hungry.

"Only when folks aim wrong," Jackson said. 

That night, at the motel, Blake fell asleep sideways across the bed with his boots on and his hat over his face, like he meant to hide from all the light the day had made. Jackson watched him long enough to count his breath and settle the weather, then slipped out under the eave, where the heat held its breath. 

He found Evan where pretty boys go to sulk, in the long shadow of a banner that still smelled like ink and ego. The crowd's noise had slid to a hum, like a hive at dusk. Evan worried a curl with one hand and a plastic cup with the other, green eyes bright and mean with embarrassment, the way only the pampered get mean.

Jackson didn't come in soft. He came in like Daisy taught him: smile first, truth second, mercy last.

"Evenin'," he said, easing into the shadow, hat tipped, mouth easy. 

Evan's face tipped up like a flower that'd just felt rain, and he chuckled despite himself, color high in his cheeks. "You're trouble."

"I'm a solution lookin' for a problem," Jackson said, and let his eyes linger, brazen and kind all at once. "You still want what you wanted?"

Evan swallowed. The curl slipped from his fingers. "Yes."

"Say it right," Jackson murmured, head cocked. "Wantin' ain't a sin. Lyin' about it is."

"I want you," Evan said, so plain it stepped over shame like a mud puddle. "You know you're...Lord, you're..."

"Pretty?" Jackson supplied, amused. "I'm also busy. Pick a better word."

Evan's breath hitched. "Devilish."

"That's improvement," Jackson said, grin tilting crooked. He slid two fingers under the bottom of Evan's cup, tipped it out of his hand, and set it on the ledge like he had a right to tidy the boy's evening. "C'mon, then."

They cut the edge of the room where tables made little valleys of shadow and heat. Jackson brushed hello shoulders all the way through and took every glance like a tithe. Daisy's son, through and through, sweet as iced tea and sharp as the glass it sweated on. He kept Evan half a step behind, then half a step ahead, then hip-to-hip, a little dance that made the body listen for instruction.

They found a corner where the light fell shy: burlap sacks stacked thigh-high, a coil of hose like a sleeping snake, a rolled-up banner that read QUALITY in a font that lied for a living. Jackson set a palm to the wall, caging nothing and everything, and breathed in so Evan had to breathe with him.

"You mad at me?" Evan whispered, already leaning.

"I'm mad at bad manners," Jackson said. "You were born better than puttin' hands where a camera can find 'em."

"Teach me good ones," Evan said, reckless, hungry, twenty-two kinds of young.

Jackson's smile went slow and unsympathetic. "Ask pretty."

"May I kiss you?" Evan asked, voice gone careful.

"You may," Jackson said, and tilted his throat like a dare.

Evan's mouth found the hinge below Jackson's ear, the soft, secret place, and pressed there like he'd been saving it. His breath came quick, a little drunk on hope. "You're gonna be a star. You know that?" he said into Jackson's skin.

Jackson said nothing, eyes half-lidded, one hand at Evan's hip to steer the angle and the pace. He let the heat crest a second, let the boy tremble. Then he caught Evan's jaw in his palm and eased him back an inch.

Evan blinked, confused. "What? Did I...?"

Jackson's laugh was soft. "You didn't do nothin' wrong," he said. "But I got a better idea."

He stepped away just enough to make absence feel like electricity, thumb still warm against Evan's jaw. Then he winked, slow, sure, wicked as a promise, and turned his face toward the door.

*

The neon boats were still rowing across the ceiling when Jackson came back. Blake had fallen asleep sideways with his hat over his face, boots on, like a man who'd tried to hide from the day and been found by it anyway. The chain rattled when Jackson slid it back. He didn't knock. He didn't have to. Blake woke like a horse that knew its name.

"What in God's..." Blake started, then saw Evan framed in the flicker, curls lit red at the edges, green eyes trying to look brave and landing on eager.

Jackson didn't step in. He leaned his shoulder against the jamb and let the room take them in slowly. "Hey, cowboy," he said, his voice low and steady. "Phone at nine. Always the truth."

Blake pushed the hat back, ribs lifting carefully against the cotton of his tee. "Right," he said. His eyes cut to Evan, then back to Jackson. The temper that had burned earlier ran a quick flare along his jaw, then turned to caution. "You fixin' to test me?"

"I'm fixin' to write a new rule," Jackson said, and the little smile he wore didn't mean mischief so much as faith. He nodded once to Evan, who shifted his weight like the breeze had changed directions. "Rule's called sharin'. It ain't a lock. It's a door. Only opens if we both turn the key."

Blake's mouth made a line that could've been a fence or a horizon. "I ain't handin' you to nobody."

"You ain't," Jackson said, soft as a hand over a skittish mouth. "Tonight I want you to want him with me. No lies, no vanishin', stop means stop. Eyes on me when I ask. You say no, it's no. You say yes…" He let the sentence lean forward like a man about to dance.

Evan swallowed, hands out of his pockets now, palms open where anyone could see them. "I don't want trouble," he said, looking at Blake, not flinching from the weather in him.

Blake huffed a short laugh that wasn't unkind. He looked at Jackson for the answer like a man who'd fought the road long enough to know which sign to trust. "This your idea or his?"

"Ours if you say it is," Jackson said. "You jealous, say jealous. You scared, say scared. But you don't gotta prove love by lockin' a door that don't need it."

Silence took one slow step around the bed. Blake rubbed his ribs once, more habit than pain, and the fight in his face softened. "Hell," he said, and there was a smile riding the word now, the kind that said he'd just chosen the harder kindness. "Then get in here, both of you."

Jackson eased Evan, grown and bright-eyed, curls riotous, back through the door and into the dark where Blake had sat up. For a heartbeat, nobody moved. The air unit chattered, decided to be brave, and held.

He stepped into the thin neon ribbon and started with the pearl snaps at his shirt one by one, slow as forgiveness. Cotton eased off his shoulders, and moonlight found the St. Christopher. He toed his boots with the heel of the other, press, click, hush, and slid his belt free with a whisper. He wasn't showing off. He was setting a marked and tender tempo like a good lead at a small-town dance.

"Now help him," he told Blake, and he obeyed, heat held on a short leash. 

Blake turned to Evan with hands that had done hard work all their lives. There was no yanking, no claiming, just patient, deliberate courtesy. He found Evan's cuff first, thumb at the pearl, unfastening it like he was opening a book he meant to read slowly. He smoothed a sleeve from forearm to wrist like a man checks a fetlock for heat. Evan shivered and laughed once, surprised by how much gentleness could bruise, in the good way.

"Here?" Blake asked, voice low, fingers at the first button of Evan's shirt.

"There," Jackson answered, and he felt Blake's want flare like dry grass and then settle to a candle. He watched Blake's knuckles, scarred, competent, travel button to button, the fabric ease, and Evan's breath find a new rhythm under another man's care. When Blake reached the last, he didn't tear. He lifted, parted, and laid the shirt aside like a thing meant to be used again.

"Belt," Jackson said, and Blake's mouth tilted in a humor that had remembered how to live. He slipped the tongue, tugged the leather free, slow enough to be kind and quick enough to be honest. Evan's eyes fluttered shut. Blake pushed a curl from his brow as if to say I see you, not I own you.

Jackson stepped close then, between them, among them, palms settling on Blake's ribs where the old crack lived and the new weather rose. "This is what I meant by sharin'," he murmured, and the words did their other job, too: they reached past Blake's skin and undressed what lived under it, the boy who'd learned to snarl when he meant stay, the man who'd mistaken possession for prayer. "You ain't got to hide the wolf. You just need to teach him manners."

Blake's jaw worked, the fight and the surrender braiding up his throat as Jackson thumbed the notch above his hip, the two-beat rise of his breath, the square of his chest that had stood in a hundred doors and chosen right more often than not. As he undressed Blake, he kept talking, not to fill the quiet but to hang lanterns in it. "You ain't a lock. You're a room I come back to. You hearin' me?"

Blake's eyes softened. "I hear you."

"Say it."

"I'm a room," Blake managed, almost laughing at himself. 

"That's right," Jackson said, and turned to Evan, who waited open-palmed and bright, hunger made polite by rules. "You good?"

"Yes," Evan said, breathless but steady.

"Then show him your yes," Jackson said, steering Blake's hand to Evan's jaw.

Blake's thumb traced a trail behind Evan's ear. His other hand skimmed the line of Evan's shoulder like it was something alive he meant to gentle, not break. Evan leaned into both like a plant leaning toward late light. When Blake's mouth finally met Evan's, it did so softly first, then sure. Jackson stayed at their edges, one palm on each man, conducting heat like a ground wire, tugging when pace wanted to run, pressing when doubt tried to sneak in. He was building a corral big enough for the animal he'd named out loud, want, and he was keeping the gate where he could see it.

"Truth time," Jackson said, voice a thread through breath and shoulder. "How's it feel?"

"Like I ain't lyin' anymore," Blake said, raw around the corners, before he delved his tongue inside Evan's mouth again.

"Good," Jackson said. "Keep it slow. Keep it honest."

They moved as instructed: hands that asked, mouths that answered, the bed taking weight. When anything sharpened, Jackson put words to it. When anything dimmed, he lit it back. His choices weren't about spectacle, passion, or desire but about letting love be bigger than fear and lust be better than secrecy.

At the threshold of the bed, Blake looked to Jackson one last time, the old habit, the new vow. "We square?"

Jackson laid a palm to Blake's cheek, then to Evan's, then to his own chest. "We square," he said, sure as Sunday.

He took a few steps back and sat on the armchair by the wall, the motel lamp throwing a nickel halo where St. Christopher lay. He'd set the tempo, and now he held the room quietly like a lead rope through two sets of hands. "Go on," he murmured, more permission than command.

Blake turned first, that big-shouldered presence suddenly alert. Eager and clear-eyed, Evan, now that the rules had been named, lay back against the pillows, cock hard, curls damp where Jackson's fingers had smoothed them. Blake's hands, the same hands that had tied a thousand knots and gentled a dozen colts, came to rest at Evan's waist.

"Eyes on him, now," Jackson said, and Blake obeyed, meeting his gaze before he bent down. The first kiss he gave Evan wasn't a conquest. It was a test of temperature. Slow pressure. A lift. A wait. Evan answered with a small, unafraid moan, his fingers finding the square of Blake's shoulder as if that was the page the sentence lived on. 

Blake smeared his shaft with spit and pushed himself into Evan. Slowly. Patiently. Until Evan's pupils finally tilted back from the precipice of pain into the safety of pleasure. And then, Blake began fucking him.

From the chair, Jackson watched the animal in Blake step into serenity. He could see it, the quickening under the ribs, the flash along the jaw, and then the thing he loved most: the moment manners took the reins. He'd asked Blake to teach the wolf a porch, and here it was, the snarl turned to breath, the grab turned to hold.

"Good," Jackson said, voice like molasses and fence wire.

Blake's palm slid up Evan's sternum, notching there for a second, feeling the speed and calling it down. He went back to Evan's mouth, jaw, the soft notch under the ear, the path Jackson had drawn for him a half hour ago, reverent and steady. Evan bloomed under the attention the way late light pulls a field to honest gold. Jackson could feel the gratitude even from the chair. It warmed the room better than the old unit ever had.

"Fuck," Evan whispered, cheeks flushed, eyes flicking between them like he was learning a new alphabet and delighted by how it spelled his name. "Fuck, yes."

Blake didn't hurry. He never had, not when he was paying attention. His mouth learned Evan's pace and then improved it. His hands translated want into something that didn't bruise. Jackson watched that translation happen and felt its complicated ache, pride and possession, forgiveness and proof, like a chord played cleanly.

He leaned his forearms to his thighs, letting his body angle closer without leaving the chair. "Blake," he said, low. "Breathe."

Blake did, chest widening, muscles cording under skin, the wolf easing another notch. He lifted his head to check Jackson's face. Jackson nodded once, and the next touch Blake gave Evan was gentler for it, deeper for being gentler.

The bed took their weight and gave it back in small waves. The sheets whispered. The rhythm they found wasn't the one bars sing about. It was the one porches remember: a sway, a pause, a return. Evan's hand slid out blind and gripped the sheets tight at the bed's edge. He squeezed it once and set it back on Blake's shoulder like he was putting the star back in its sky.

"Talk to him," Jackson said. "Tell him how it feels."

Evan's voice came hushed, roughened by yes. "There. That...yeah. Slower," he begged as Blake's tip nudged his sweet spot. "You...I like your hand right..." He guided.

Blake followed.

And Jackson smiled because nothing in the world was prettier than a man figuring out what he wanted and saying it aloud. Blake's head tipped, and Jackson, knowing precisely what he was asking, answered with his eyes. 

I see you. The man. The boy. The animal. All of you.

There were moments when the old heat licked high, the curl of Blake's fingers, the press of his hips, the way Evan arched like he'd just remembered his body was a house with more than one room, and every time, Jackson gave a small cue. He could feel his own pulse in his throat, in his palm, in his groin, in his name. Jealousy walked up to him once and looked. He looked right back at it and let it pass. This was the rule made flesh: not a lock, a door. He'd opened it, and by God, he'd keep watch at the hinge. 

He didn't feel small. 
He felt present.

And Blake's gaze never left Jackson's. Even as he gave himself to the work his body had requested, he kept returning for permission, pride, and the ridiculous, saving fact of being seen.

Evan, under him, let out a laugh that sounded like a pane of glass catching sun. "Lord," he whispered, his body being drilled down the mattress by Blake's pumps. "Nobody ever...fucked me like this."

"Get used to it," Jackson said, smiling. "We do things slow and right in this tent."

Blake's head bowed again. Evan's hands framed his cheeks as if to hold the moment there, as if to tell another man: you're good. The motion became motion, the rhythm a tide that gathered what the day had scattered and returned it warm. Jackson felt the swell coming like weather: breaths shortening, sounds losing their words, the bed learning a new song, and he let it come. 

He grabbed his own cock and started jerking.

When it broke, it broke quietly. Not a spectacle, just a long exhale into safety. Blake's forehead found Evan's shoulder. Evan's hand found Blake's back. Jackson's hand found the edge of the chair and gripped it like a rail, not because he was falling but because he meant to stay seated, to bear witness, to hold his post at the door he'd opened.

The loads came.

Blake inside Evan.
Evan between Blake.
And Jackson on himself.

Silence collected between the four walls with the grace of water in a clean trough. Eventually, someone laughed, nervous but grateful. It might've been Evan, who knows? Blake turned his face and looked over, his eyes glassy with more than heat. An old question lived there: Do I still belong? Am I still yours?

Jackson let his mouth go soft at the corners. 

Blake nodded once, that deep, country nod that says a vow has found purchase. "We square?"

Jackson tipped the chair back down, rose, and came to the bedside. He put his palm to Blake's cheek, then to Evan's hair, and then to his breastbone to settle his heart back where it belonged. He let his hand slide to the sheets like a gavel closing court, not because judgment had been passed but because order had. 

He bent and kissed Blake once, quick and sealing. Blake smiled up at him, tired, forgiven and forgiving. The wolf lay down. Jackson slid into the bed and set himself between the two like a man keeping his manners close.

"Yes, sir."

*

The room was black as a shut barn. 

Blake slept naked on his stomach, one arm flung over the empty side where Jackson had been, now occupied by Evan's naked pale form, nudging itself closer as he moaned, half asleep, the sheet dragged carelessly to his hips. 

Jackson eased off the bed. He found his jeans by touch, stepped in quietly, thumbed his phone from the charger, and palmed the St. Christopher so it wouldn't clink. He stood in the doorway and watched Blake's ribs slowly lift in the dark, then slipped out, soft as a prayer a man says so he doesn't wake the house.

The breezeway held a damp breath. The motel's pool lights burned nickel-blue under the water, bleaching the concrete to bone. The surface had that late-hour skin a man wants to touch and doesn't. Jackson padded to a sunbed and sat, then lay back as if somebody had told him to rest and he meant to try. 

He picked up his phone and scrolled to a name his thumb knew better than his eyes. Let it ring. 

Once. 
Twice. 
Almost three, then a click.

"Yeah?" Cash said, voice low, rough with sleep.

Jackson didn't say anything. He couldn't get the gate of his mouth to unlatch. He listened to the hush on the line, the small static like summer rain far off. His own breath came back to him through the phone a half-second late, like proof he existed.

"You know I can hear you breathin'," Cash said.

Silence. 
Jackson swallowed. 
The sound was loud in his own head.

"You all right?" Cash asked.

"I don't..." Jackson started, then lost the rest. He set his palm flat on his stomach, under the waistband, to quiet the ache there. It didn't.

"Okay," Cash said.

Jackson let his hand move. Slow. Careful. Not to finish anything, just to match the pulse in his ear. He turned his head and pressed his cheek to the cool vinyl, eyes closed.

"Say somethin'," Cash murmured.

"I miss you," Jackson said, and the words fell out naked, no boots on.

A long exhale on the other end.

"I ain't..." Jackson swallowed again. "I ain't lonely."

"Yeah...you are," Cash said. No mean on it. Just the truth set down on the table. "You with him?"

"Yeah."

"You safe?"

"Yeah."

"All right."

The pool light wavered, throwing fish-back shivers along the underside of the eaves. Somewhere, a machine kicked on.

"Cash?" Jackson whispered.

"What?"

"You remember our kiss?" he asked, small and dangerous as a match in dry grass.

Silence. Then, steady. "How could I forget?"

"Tell me," Jackson said. "Please."

Cash took his time. He always did when the right words were heavier than the quick ones.

"I remember...hay in the air," he said, voice dropping into the bottom register he saved for when he told the truth. "Dust risin' up. Lamp hummin'. Your mouth..." He blew a quiet breath that Jackson felt on his own lips. "You came in like you was askin' permission. Shakin' a little, then not. I put my hand right here..." Jackson could feel the ghost of a knuckle at the back of his jaw, angling him gently. "We was...salt where a man's soft, and warm where winter lives."

Jackson's eyes stung. 
He tried to keep it tidy and failed. 
A sob slipped, small and mean as a wire under skin. 
He pressed his wrist to his mouth to muffle the rest.

"Hey," Cash said. Not sharp, not scolding. Just there. "Stretch your hand out."

"What?"

"Off the side a' that chair you're layin' on," he said, certain. "Let it fall down there. Where I can get to it."

Slowly, Jackson let his fingers slide blind over the edge of the sunbed until they dangled, palm open to the dark, nails catching blue from the water. The night took them and didn't bite.

"I got you," Cash whispered.

Jackson nodded before he remembered Cash couldn't see nods.

"You feel it?" Cash asked, softer still. "You feel my hand?"

He nodded again, harder. "Yeah."

"Good," Cash said. "We can just breathe now, if that's what you got."

They lay there like boys who had outlived their boys' rooms, one on vinyl, one in a dark house two counties and four years away, hands threaded through a line that carried breath better than talk. 

The pool sighed. 
The world turned over.

Jackson stared up into the black and let the quiet stand for every sentence he couldn't say without breaking. 

The phone warmed him. 

Cash didn't hang up. 
And neither did he.

(To be continued...)

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