The Cowboy and the Hacker (Farthingdale Valley #5)

28. Zeke

Chapter 28

Zeke

A fter he’d kissed Cal several times with luxurious slowness, Zeke knew they needed to get a move on. The sun was shining and it was a brand new day.

“I think the paddock and pasture are going to need a bit of cleanup from all that rain,” said Zeke, because that was the way his mind worked. “Branches and suchlike.”

“Count me in,” said Cal, turning in Zeke’s arms to look up at him, blue eyes sleepy, his short hair pressed flat on one side. His smile was soft and it nestled inside of Zeke’s heart.

They got ready for the day, Cal wearing yesterday’s clothes with seemingly no concern at all that anyone would notice. Zeke stepped into clothes from yesterday, too, because maybe that would distract everyone from Cal, who had a bruise under his left eye, and who was holding himself stiffly as he waited for Zeke to lace up his work boots.

“You have those Tylenol on you?” asked Zeke. They stood toe to toe as Zeke unzipped the tent flap and Cal flashed the packets from his pockets. “Let’s get breakfast,” he said and realized he felt a little shy.

Where did he go from here? He had no idea how to court another man. Well, there was a solution for that. Stay active.

Cal tipped his head up as if he wanted a kiss, and Zeke gave it to him, quick and sweet, and it did feel a little strange to be doing this in broad daylight like they were.

“I just need time,” said Zeke, his voice more sharp-edged than he’d like. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Nobody does,” said Cal with a smile. He peppered Zeke with another kiss, then stepped back when they heard voices of other men in the valley going to breakfast. “We’ll talk later, yes?”

“Yes,” said Zeke. That much he could commit to, though he could kick himself for being so leery of being happy in a relationship with another man— Cal —that he would hesitate and fumble like some greenhorn at life.

At the mess tent, he focused on breakfast. On the good coffee and plentiful, crisply cooked hash browns. After that, he focused on the pasture and the paddock, on gathering horses to give each one a perfect grooming.

While they worked, he kept an eye on Cal, who seemed a little stiff, but was in good spirits in spite of the bruise on his face. When he saw Galen going by with his team, Zeke ducked out of the pasture and pulled Galen to the side of the path.

“Do you have a minute?” asked Zeke.

“Sure,” said Galen. “What’s up?”

Zeke looked around him and then flushed hot that he was being a coward. On more than one occasion, he’d faced down rough, eight-second rides on bucking broncos, so he could do this.

“I keep thinking about what you said last year when you asked me out.” Zeke looked directly at Galen, at his pretty face and wavy hair, those bright, intelligent eyes. “When you thought I was gay.”

“I didn’t think you were gay, necessarily,” said Galen, quite slowly. “I mean, I did, a little, but I asked you out because I had a crush on you.”

“On me?” With his palm flattened against his chest, Zeke hardly knew what to make of this statement.

“You’re handsome and smart, and yeah, you did give off a few gay vibes. I don’t know what it was about you. Nothing I can define. Just a feeling.” Galen looked at Zeke with careful eyes. “Why are you asking after all this time?”

This was the hard part. Not just what he was feeling for Cal and about himself, but saying it out loud.

Zeke was not a coward and Galen had been kind when Zeke had turned him down.

It was strange to realize that he valued things like kindness and morning snuggles after the rain had stopped, after being a pretty rough and tumble bronc rider for so many years. But he did. All he had to do was admit it out loud, and then he could move on with his life, which would have Cal in it.

“I kept thinking about it,” said Zeke after taking a huge breath. “Over and over in my mind. What did it mean. How did I feel about it.” He laughed under his breath and ran his thumb over his lower lip, remembering Cal’s kiss from just hours ago. “I fall in love slow,” he said. “And always with women, only this time—” He shook his head, then waded right into it. “I fell in love with Cal—I think I have—and I fell fast. Am I crazy? Is this normal for a man to switch it up like that?”

Galen smiled at Zeke, a low, private smile as though Zeke had finally stumbled upon a secret that everybody else already knew. But no matter what Galen said, whatever his response, Zeke knew that what he’d said was true. He’d fallen for Cal in so many ways that all of his feelings spun around inside of him.

“How do I know it’s real?” he asked, feeling a little desperate.

“It’s real because you feel it,” said Galen. “I saw something in you that made me feel like you might say yes if I asked you out. And maybe you’re seeing it now, as well.” He paused. “What matters is how you feel about each other. And to hell with the non-fraternization rule. Leland doesn’t follow it, which makes it null in my book.”

“As long as it doesn’t get in the way of the program, the work,” said Zeke.

“As long as it doesn’t,” said Galen in agreement. “Whatever happens is between you and him. Whatever you guys want it to be. There’s no rule book, unfortunately.”

There was no rule book. Zeke knew that. Which meant that he needed to think about this in a different way. He needed to focus on how he felt about Cal, and how Cal seemed to feel about him.

Cal was the one he needed to be talking to. And once they did that, and after the summer was over, and the Fresh Start Program had drawn to conclusion, he and Cal would be free to do whatever they wanted.

“You’re a classy guy, Zeke,” said Galen as he looked over his shoulder to where his men were patiently waiting. “You’re not going to make a bad decision about this. It’s not in you.”

“Thanks,” said Zeke, rather faintly as he watched Galen march off to whatever tasks awaited him and his team. He had the answer he wanted, and maybe he’d known the answer all along.

Nerves rolled in his belly, like the time he and Betty Lou went to the mall to pick out rings. But it felt better now that he’d talked with Galen. It buoyed him up and settled him at the same time.

Still, he wanted to make a gesture. A courtship gesture, because that’s the kind of man he was. Maybe he couldn’t say the words out loud, maybe he couldn’t discuss his feelings in plain words, at least not just yet. But he could make a gesture, something sincere and sweet.

He was an old-fashioned man, and that’s how things were done. But what kind of gesture?

It was that afternoon when a truck and a flatbed full of hay bales showed up that he got his answer. Work was like that. He could focus on the physical labor, the eight-second ride or, in this case, the heavy work of shifting the hay bales, crisp and green and new, to a spot just outside the wire of the pasture, and the answer would come to him.

The rain started coming down. Zeke was at the head of the line to grab each bale, leather gloves curled around the bailing wire, hefting it to toss the bale down so someone could grab it and lug it to the growing pile.

They had to hurry on the count of the rain might spoil the hay. It needed to be covered before it got too wet, when the idea struck him. He’d borrow a truck after dinner, and head into town to the bodega off Main Street. The bodega in Farthing carried a bit of everything, including bouquets of flowers.

He didn’t think Cal would laugh at him when Zeke handed him a small nosegay, something that smelled nice and looked bright, wrapped in thin green paper with a bit of stiff ribbon hanging down.

But fate had other ideas for him because when he jumped down from the trailer, just as the last bale had been piled and the whole stack covered with a large tarp, he caught his foot on something.

Instead of stepping down, he just plain fell down, until, sprawled in the grass, his back felt like it had been slammed, which it had, and his left leg was screaming at him.

He winced against the pain and the hot, clammy feeling all over him.

Cal was over him in an instant, helping him up, giving him the once over, his eyebrows high in his forehead.

“Anything broken?” asked Galen, coming up to them both. “That was quite a fall.”

“Just wrenched my leg, is all,” said Zeke.

It was more than that. He was out for the count if Cal decided to visit his tent later that evening. Plus, with Cal hovering as he was, there was no way he was going to be able to slink off to the bodega to buy anything for Cal, let alone a bouquet of flowers or even a party-sized bag of Bugles.

Zeke stiffened and tried to stand up on his own, but his thigh muscles had stretched in the fall and now they were clamping down as if they meant never to let go. He felt the rain down the neck of his shirt and saw his cowboy hat in the mud.

Cal bent to pick it up and held it between two hands, looking at Galen the entire while. As if waiting for the moment when Galen would step aside and Cal could take over.

“Don’t fuss.” Zeke almost snapped the words at Galen, then paused. “Sorry,” he said. “I just need to lie down for a bit, is all.”

“We’ll have Cal help you to your tent,” said Galen. “Got any muscle relaxants?”

“Yeah.” Now the word was ground out, because he’d be alone with Cal, and if Cal hovered and worried about him, that would be just fine with him.

“I’ve got him,” said Cal as he gently placed the hat on Zeke’s head.

He was shielded from the rain then, but not from Cal’s big blue eyes looking him over, those hands reaching out to take Zeke’s arm and loop it around his waist.

It was when Cal put his arm around Zeke’s back, a solid, firm embrace, and Zeke could finally take a full breath.

Cal would help him back to his tent, and then Zeke could recover in peace. This had happened before, and he knew what to do. Take those muscle relaxants, lie on a bed or sit in a chair, whatever felt best, and wait it out. By morning, he’d be fine. It’d happened before. He’d be fine.

Much to Zeke’s surprise, supporting him the whole way, Cal guided him to his tent as the rain picked up, and a cool wind whipped the air. By the time they got to the tent, they were both soaked.

“We need to dry off,” said Zeke as he sank onto his cot, dripping everywhere.

“Dry clothes, those meds,” said Cal, a little bossy, though his hands were gentle as he unbuttoned Zeke’s shirt.

Zeke batted Cal’s hands away, and undid the shirt himself, stood to peel off his boots and wet jeans, and sank onto the cot again.

Cal brought him a dry t-shirt and some sweatpants that he’d dug out of Zeke’s box of clothes, and then stood handily by as Zeke changed into them. Never once did Cal make Zeke feel like an inconvenience. He found Zeke’s pills, under Zeke’s direction, and brought over the arnica cream he’d found.

“That’ll be for the morning,” said Zeke. “Thanks, though.”

“I’m going to get you some water for those pills, and also a little dinner.” Cal stood close and wiped the rain out of Zeke’s hair with a towel.

“Just go to dinner,” said Zeke. “I’m fine.”

“I’ll get you set up first,” said Cal, and that’s exactly what he did, in spite of Zeke’s protests.

He settled Zeke in the cot, then ran to get a bottle of water, and after that, he ran again—all of this in the rain—to bring a to-go box of baked lasagna for Zeke’s dinner. “They had ice cream, if you wanted some.”

“No, I’m fine.”

He was fine, even if his leg was killing him, the length of his back sticky with sweat. Even if he felt a tad overwhelmed at the tenderness of Cal’s concern.

This wasn’t the first time Cal had taken care of him though, and, as he’d taken care of Cal, there was a balance. A good one. But he didn’t want Cal to neglect himself, either.

“Go get your own dinner,” he said, pointing the plastic fork at Cal. “I’m all good here. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay,” said Cal. He carded his fingers through Zeke’s still-damp hair and kissed his forehead. “See you in the morning.”

But Cal didn’t leave him for very long.

After Zeke ate his lasagna and gave up on brushing his teeth, he crawled into bed with the bottle of muscle relaxants and the half-drunk bottle of water close at hand. Reached at the last to pull the chain on the light and then realized the tent was unzipped.

Fine. Let it be. He listened to the sound of the rain on the roof of the tent, and dozed on the pillow. He was about to sink into sleep when he heard someone come in.

It was Cal. Of course it was. He came into the darkness, and zipped the tent closed as quietly as he could. Then he got undressed and crawled into bed with Zeke, wrapping his arms around Zeke, using him for a pillow.

“This okay?” asked Cal, low.

“Yes,” said Zeke. He curled his fingers in the crook of Cal’s arm and sighed, and felt as if he’d not been able to relax until that very moment. “Always.”

If this was his life now, he was very, very happy.