Afire Page 21

  “Jesus. How were they killed?” Do I really want to know?

  “Some bloke hung them from the banisters in their home. That old bloke’s been alone ever since. Poor old fucker. I just didn’t know what to say, you know?” Lee huffed out a breath. “Wasn’t much I could say.” He sighed and stuffed his hands under his armpits, as though he needed a hug and couldn’t have one because Ryan was driving.

  “Yeah. One of those times when you don’t say anything at all, I reckon.” Ryan scanned ahead, looking for a turn off. A road branched to their left in the distance, and he accelerated, wanting to get there before Lee broke down. And it sounded like he might.

  “I mean, how the fuck do you go on after something like that, eh?” Lee asked.

  In his peripheral vision, Ryan saw Lee shaking his head. “I suppose you just would, but when Greg shot you… Fuck, I thought you were going to die, and I’ll admit I wanted to die right there with you.” Shit. Blurry eyes are not good when you’re driving. He flicked the signal switch and veered onto the side road.

  “I know what you’re saying. I felt the same when Harry… Shit. Yeah, when…yeah.” He sucked in a breath. Released it in a whoosh. “I can’t live without you, man. I mean that.”

  Lee sniffed, and it took Ryan all he had not to slew off the road through lack of clear sight. He blinked, letting the tears fall, and pulled over onto the hard shoulder, uncaring that the car’s rear end jutted out at an angle. Some things just weren’t important.

  He wrenched up the handbrake then leaned across, gathering Lee into his arms and squeezing him so tight he had to remind himself of Lee’s condition. Releasing his hold a little, Ryan buried his face into Lee’s neck, tears hot on his face. Yeah, he might look a weak bastard, crying on his lover’s shoulder, but it beat not being able to do it. It beat having to cry alone when your lover was gone, never to return.

  He pulled back and cupped Lee’s cheek with one hand, staring into wet eyes that told him Lee’s emotions were running riot just like his. He brushed his mouth over Lee’s lips, whispering that everything would be all right, that they’d get through the coming months and come out the other side smiling. Both of them had needed this release for such a long time, and fuck whether the cars driving past beeped their horns at Ryan’s haphazard parking. Fuck it if the drivers saw two men kissing. They needed to get a damn life and mind their own pissing business.

  They sat kissing for a while, fingertips exploring faces and heads, a gentle time of nurturing and letting each other know that yes, they were in this for the long haul. Coping with the good and the bad. They hadn’t talked like Ryan had hoped, but he knew now that somehow they didn’t need to. It was all there in the touches, the swirling of tongues and the soft pecks on lips. They understood one another. No need for words or explanations.

  Ryan ended their kiss and pulled his head back so he could look into Lee’s eyes. They were moist, red-rimmed, and clearer, as though Lee had come to a point where the words he’d spoken were enough to release the build up inside him. Ryan reckoned counselling might work for both of them. Not for anything to do with their relationship, but more for talking to someone with no emotions invested, someone who could remain objective and help them deal with the trauma they had been through. Whether Lee would agree was another matter, a topic Ryan could broach another day. And if Lee wasn’t up for it, that was okay. Ryan would go alone—he felt he needed to; maybe him doing so would encourage Lee to do the same.

  “We’d best be getting home,” Ryan said, reluctant to pull away but knowing they couldn’t sit on the roadside indefinitely.

  “Yeah. S’pose. Be nice if we could stay here like this all the time, know what I mean?”

  Ryan smiled. “Yeah. I do.”

  He sighed and stroked Lee’s cheek one last time before starting the car and nosing back onto the road, heading back to the one they’d turned off of. He thought about when he’d first gone to Biddingford to tell Lee his old lady had killed herself, and how Lee had driven them back to the town they’d lived in all their lives. Despite the grimness of where they were headed back then, the uncertainties of what might happen, they also had the knowledge that they’d started the first leg of their life’s journey together. Ryan felt much the same now, except they were on their way back to a different place, to the cabin where they’d made their home, to a place where Ryan had once felt safe and now…didn’t.

  “Reckon we ought to move out of the cabin and start again somewhere else?” Lee asked.

  Startled that Lee had read his mind again—though he didn’t know why, because hadn’t they always had this thing between them?—Ryan nodded and listened to Lee as he put forward suggestions as to where they would go.

  “We’ve still got the majority of my old dear’s money. We can use it to pay six month’s rent up front. Find jobs. Just…live. No worries. Come on. Pick a town or village, a city even, and we’ll look into it once we get back. Anywhere you like.”

  Ryan smiled, caught up in Lee’s enthusiasm, and thought of where he’d like to go. “What about Ireland? Heard it’s nice there. Laid back kind of life out in the country.”

  “Sounds good. Like I said, wherever you want.”

  “We’d have to check we could go there,” Ryan said. “You know, with the trial and whatnot.”

  “Can’t see why we can’t. It’s not like we’re leaving the country, is it? Not as though we have to stay here, like we’re the ones who’ve done something wrong.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Lee leaned forward and switched on the radio, selecting an easy listening station. His fingers tapped against his legs, and a shimmer of desire flickered in Ryan’s cock. He loved this guy so damn much it hurt, wanted to spend the rest of his life with him, would travel to the ends of the earth if it meant they’d be together. Live in a fucking shack in the arse end of nowhere.

  Bound, that’s what they were. Tied together by love and circumstance. An eternity of togetherness waited for them, and Ryan stared ahead, to the right, at the rolling countryside that looked like a painting. It spread into the distance, trees and fields blurred against the horizon, the smudge of an artist’s chalk.

  Ryan glanced at Lee, who looked back at him, a big grin tweaking his lips.

  “You know we said all that romance shit wasn’t for us?” Lee’s cheeks reddened.

  “Yeah…”

  “D’you reckon I could say just one thing? You know, just blurt it out, and then we can forget I ever did it.”

  “You could do.” Ryan held off a smile, not wanting Lee to think he found this funny. Lee’s blush made it clear his lover was struggling to show a side of himself he’d always sworn didn’t exist.

  “Oh, right.” Lee cleared his throat. “Okay. Well… Fuck. Um, I…I just wanted to say, um…”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, it’s just that I…wanted to, ah… Oh, fuck it.”

  Ryan released his laughter. “Face it, man, it’s just not going to work.”

  “Might come in time, though, eh?”

  “Might do.”

  “I’ll try again. Right. Here we go. I…I want… Ah, fuck it. I give up.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” Ryan laughed again, loving the sound as Lee joined in.

  Once composed, Lee said, “Ryan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fucking love you, man.”

  “Love you too, mate. Always.”

  The End

  About The Author

  Sarah writes in many genres. Her love of fantasy and historicals often features in her work, and she leans toward the highly erotic. She lives in England with her adorable husband and children.

  www.sarahmastersauthor.wordpress.com

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