Burn Zone, page 20
part #1 of Hotshots Series
And so Jacob seethed as they worked. The fire on the state lands continued to burn, ground crews working round the clock. They had another long day—early morning cargo drop to crews already on the ground, then a jump themselves, working through thick smoke and heat to carry out the mission before packing out.
Unlike the day before, he was quiet on the pack-out. His muscles burned with more than exertion. If he started in on everything churning through him, he might never stop. Might say things he couldn’t take back. But more importantly, he didn’t want an audience for what needed saying between him and Linc. Garrick was simply a complication he didn’t want to deal with right then.
He trudged on in the hot, smoky air, listening to the comm set, letting Ray’s directions guide him, tuning out Linc and Garrick’s continued efforts to play kindergarten teacher and keep him from the hardest of the tasks. Whatever.
It was well past dark when they finally made it back to Painter’s Ridge, under orders to rest and hydrate and prepare for another long shift. And he was pretty sure no one would advise heading to Linc’s, spoiling for a fight, when he should be resting. But still, here he was, unable to be anywhere else but turning onto Linc’s long drive, gravel crunching under his tires.
The dogs weren’t out to greet him, and for a moment, he worried that Linc might not be home. Had he gone to Jacob’s trailer? But then he emerged on the porch, still no dogs, arms crossed. The night temperatures had dropped, but Linc was still in the same T-shirt he’d worn earlier.
“Where are your sidekicks?” he asked as he approached Linc.
“Out in their run.”
Great. Apparently, they were back to porch conversations and clipped responses. “I take it I’m not getting a chicken dinner.”
“You really interested in food?” Shoulders slumping, Linc shook his head, answering his own question. He still had traces of soot around his face. “Figured I’d let you say your piece first.”
“More like you’d already said it for me without me even saying a word yet. Already made up my mind for me? Doing my work for me again?”
“You didn’t say a full sentence, the whole shift. Didn’t even look my way. I don’t need it in skywriting to tell that you’re pissed at me.”
“With good reason.” Resigning himself to not getting an invitation into the house, he leaned against one of the porch supports. “Seriously, what the fuck, Linc? Giving Garrick the green light to get in my pants? I had no clue the dude was pan.”
“Wasn’t my information to share.” Linc regarded him coolly, porch light making his eyes glow like iron embers in a forge.
“Yeah. You’ve got a real talent for secrets.” His voice came out snappish with his temper already getting the best of him and he still hadn’t reached his real complaints.
“What did you want me to say?” Dropping his arms to his sides, Linc paced away.
“How about the truth? That you’d rather I not hook up with him? Hell, you didn’t even have to confess everything, just admit for freaking once that you care. But you can’t do that. Can’t risk a single person knowing how you really feel. Even me.”
“I never said I don’t care.” Linc swiveled, scowl still firmly in place. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”
“Maybe everything? If you care and I care, what the hell does it matter who knows? Especially someone like Garrick who already knew your sexuality.” A bitter, caustic thought barreled into his brain. “Oh, hell. Tell me you and him never...”
Linc shrugged in a way that did nothing to ease Jacob’s mind. “Way back when we first were friendly, we sorta felt out that possibility. But we just aren’t compatible like that. So, not that it’s any of your business, but no.”
Making an exasperated noise, Jacob moved to stand directly in front of him. “Of course it’s my business. Come on. You can’t keep pretending that we don’t have any hold on each other.”
“You were the one who said this was simply fucking.” Linc met him hard stare for hard stare. “An itch we scratch until it’s out of our systems.”
“You know perfectly well it’s more than that by now.”
Linc’s silence was damning.
“Hell, it’s always been more than casual between us. You’ve just been too stubborn to admit it.”
“What do you want from me?” Linc threw up his hands before lacing them behind his neck, like he needed restraint to avoid touching him. Jacob understood the impulse—his own damn body couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether he wanted to shove Linc or kiss him until he saw sense.
Fuck. Ignoring those competing impulses, Jacob sagged against the porch pillar, letting it dig into his shoulder, not that the pain provided any comfort or courage. “Everything.”
“Don’t be flip.” Linc’s tone was biting, and he resumed pacing after making a disgusted noise.
“I’m serious. I want everything. I’ll settle for what the fuck ever you want to give me, but I’m done pretending.” And he was. He’d buried this truth all spring and summer, shoved down real demands in favor of getting his dick’s needs met, all to have a stolen sliver of Linc’s time. And it wasn’t enough. “I want everything. I want a real relationship. The one we’re actually already having—date nights and staying in and doing stuff for the family and memories we make together. Say what you want, this isn’t just sex. It’s not. We’ve got something good going, and I want it real. Not secret. Not temporary. I want the future we deserve.”
“We can’t have that.” Scrubbing at his buzzed hair, Linc closed his eyes.
“Says who?” Screw Linc’s obvious discomfort. Jacob was done taking his fast denials. “Your conscience? Your fears? Some ancient promises?”
“I don’t expect you to understand.” Linc’s long-suffering tone torched Jacob’s last shred of patience.
“Oh, I understand. A little too well. Like I said yesterday, everyone else comes first for you.” And probably always would, a realization that left Jacob breathless and more than a little dizzy, world shifting on him despite his best efforts at denial the last few months.
“That’s not fair.” Stopping his pacing, Linc actually had the gall to sound offended.
“Oh? How about you try making me some promises then? Or yourself? Why did Wyatt get the best of you? He’s gone. Not coming back. Not here to spew his hateful positions and theories.”
“You don’t get to talk like that.” Angry Linc was back, the mad, hard man who had banished Jacob after the funeral. Guess that answered where his loyalties lay.
“No? He was my goddamn brother.” Jacob could meet anger with anger if that was what Linc wanted. “And he’s been between us for years now. I sure as hell think I get an opinion on you hiding behind some promise you made a homophobic bigot—who yeah, had a nice side too—but you’ve used him as an excuse for years instead of admitting what’s right in front of your face. What’s in your heart.”
“What do you want me to say? That I care? You know that.” Linc made it sound so obvious when it was anything but, Jacob relying far more on his actions than his words. “But it’s not simply Wyatt. I’ve been wrestling all damn summer with letting him down, but it’s not just that promise. There’s the rest of your family. I can’t risk losing them too. Not with everything else gone. Not if it might mean them mad at you too. I promised your mom to keep you safe. You and me shacking up on something approaching a permanent basis isn’t what she or any of them want for you.”
Despite everything, hope flared, a little hot spot in a cold forest of lost chances. Linc even thinking permanent was a start.
“So why not test it and see? God knows I love my family, but if they want to follow Wyatt’s stupid theories or get mad about something minor like an age gap—”
“Ten years isn’t minor—”
“It is too. Screw them. If they cut us off, at least we’d have each other. Or am I not enough?” The flicker of hope faded as quickly as it had arisen. His anger was an almost palpable, prickly thing because he was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that question, and it pierced every soft part he had left. Linc had considered a future together and found it lacking in some fundamental way, had decided that others were worth more than Jacob, had determined that old promises trumped any fresh potential.
“It’s not that—”
“Save it.” Turning away from Linc, he rested heavily on the porch rail, fighting the urge to simply pack it all in right then, head for his truck.
“It’s that you deserve more than me. You do.” Linc’s voice was pained, but Jacob couldn’t bear to discover if his face matched.
“These are tired, tired reasons, Linc.” He spoke to the scrubby little bushes on the side of the porch. “Truth is that you just don’t want me as much as I want you, and I’m the stupid fuck who took six years to figure that out. You care, but not enough. You like what we have, but not enough. You trust me, but not enough. Whatever this is, it’s not enough to keep you. And that fucking hurts.”
“I’m sorry.” It was the worst two words Linc could have chosen. Not a quick denial. Not an explanation. Not a fumble. Just a quiet apology. “I’m a bastard—”
“No shit. You know what you really are?” He didn’t wait for Linc to answer. “A coward. We could have...so much. But you refuse to choose it, and your reasons all fucking suck. Which leads me to think that you’re a cowardly bastard. And I’m an idiot.”
“Jacob—” Linc reached for him then, placing a warm hand on Jacob’s chilled arm, but he shrugged it off.
“Unless you’re about to tell me that I’m all wrong, don’t Jacob me.” Please tell me I’ve got things wrong. Unspoken wish clogging his throat, he stared off into the cold, dark night.
Not surprisingly, Linc said nothing. Still, though, his silence sliced through Jacob, made it hard to take his next breath.
“About what I figured. I’m done here.” With that, he jumped the porch rail, not even wanting to brush by Linc to use the steps, not caring as he stumbled on his way to the truck. He heard the sound of his name, but he didn’t turn around. Couldn’t.
Once in his truck, he spent several long minutes with his head resting on the steering wheel. Long minutes where Linc could have come after him but didn’t. Instead, when he finally looked up, the porch was empty. Fuck. How had this gone so south so fast?
As he drove home, his brain kept churning with that question, replaying their last two arguments, trying to figure out how they went from sneaky and happy to...nothing at all. Shattered pieces of an illusion. The only real conclusion was that it had all been fake. He’d seen what he’d wanted to see, believed Linc capable of more than he was, read more into things than was real. And even if it wasn’t fake, it didn’t matter. If Linc didn’t care enough to fight for them, it didn’t really matter what he felt about Jacob. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. And that meant that all Jacob’s certainty for years that there was something potent and important between them was now a lie. It wasn’t simply a matter of getting Linc to give in to their attraction. Not enough. It all came back to that. Jacob and what they had together wasn’t enough for Linc and fuck all what the reasons were.
His insides had been sandblasted, everything dry and crackly, one stiff breeze away from turning to dust. His eyes, too, burned, and only muscle memory ensured that his truck actually made it to his trailer in one piece. The clock flashed an absurd hour, a reminder of how they were supposed to be sleeping so they could—
Work. Damn it. Somehow he was going to have to drag himself and his half a heart into work in the morning, face Linc again, and try to not crumble with the force of wanting someone who had never been his to begin with.
Chapter Eighteen
Sunrise was a little after five, a lightness to the sky that Linc took as permission to give up pretending sleep would come and to go check on his plants. The garden would produce most of its bounty in August, when the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers came on, but there was still watering to be done, weeds to pull, herb seedlings to coax along. It was mindless, methodical work, the sort he could do in his sleep. Or in his sleep-deprived, grief-riddled state with only the faint light for company, as the case might be.
He’d had the notion that the weeding might center him enough so that he could start his shift without the worry of falling apart the second he saw Jacob. But maybe falling apart was inevitable because the more he worked in the vegetable beds, the less together he felt, skin and bones rattling like an old Ford on a gravel road. The dogs had come with him to check on things, giddy with the freedom outside their run, sniffing and wagging and generally making pests of themselves, but even they weren’t enough to replace this heaviness in his heart.
Letting Jacob go had been the right call. He was sure of it. Continuing on meant an even greater likelihood of hurting him. Jacob said it himself—he wanted everything. Everything that Linc wasn’t sure he could ever offer anyone, let alone Jacob, with whom he wasn’t supposed to have anything, let alone the everything Jacob apparently wanted. Jacob, who wanted a future. How had he put it? Memories we make together.
Linc already had too many memories burned into his neurons. Jacob’s birthday. Building the play set. Their first kiss. Each one after that. The satisfied tilt to Jacob’s mouth after really good sex. His playful smile in the shower. His furrowed forehead when he concentrated, trying to help cook. His too-long eyelashes on his pale cheeks when he slept. The smattering of freckles on his shoulders. More memories than his heart could hold right then.
And he had an obligation to not steal Jacob’s future in the pursuit of more of those moments.
The way he saw it as he ripped out more prickly weeds, he was either a man of his word or he was nothing at all. And he hadn’t kept his word, a concrete pylon of guilt weighing him down all summer. Jacob deserved more than him, and even if Wyatt had lived, had somehow found his way to more tolerant views, Linc couldn’t believe that he would have condoned him being with Jacob. And maybe he’d stumbled with the whole “get it out of our systems” plan, but he couldn’t give Jacob what he wanted without feeling like he was letting down Jacob’s family, letting down an obligation to keep Jacob safe, give him the best possible future, which wasn’t Linc.
Everything he owed the Hartman family, Wyatt especially, plowed through him, guilt and grief in equal measure.
“Saved you a seat, Linc.”
“It’s okay. You can share my lunch.”
“Easy there. You almost fell off the edge.”
“I’ve got this.”
“Stay away from my little brother.”
All the echoes of Wyatt through the years wound through his thoughts like tendrils of pea shoots. Wyatt, young and fearless. Wyatt, gangly and giving. Wyatt, hard and mean. Wyatt, gone. He knew Jacob missed him too, but it was different. He’d never known the Wyatt Linc had grown up with. Never seen the guy who’d saved Linc’s ass so many times in the field. He hadn’t been there at twelve when Wyatt brought extra lunch for a solid six months because Linc was so often without. Or at fifteen when Linc almost took a one-way trip down one of the rock faces. Hadn’t been there the night Wyatt met May, seen his whole body light up. No one could infuriate Linc more, and no one could take his place.
But who’s going to take Jacob’s place? The niggling question poked at him, thorn to every one of his good intentions. Instead, fresh grief kept smacking into him. Goodbye to more sleepy smiles and lingering touches and jokes he only made with Jacob. Wyatt might be irreplaceable but so was Jacob. The way Linc figured it, Jacob would get over this, the way he had that Tyler kid. He’d find someone to take Linc’s place soon enough, someone he could be proud to take home to his family, someone without complications. And—
Fuck. Without thinking, he’d moved, crushing a young tomato plant under his knee. It was toast now, crumpled beyond saving. Damn it. It had been a new variety of cherry tomato, one he’d hope to share with—
Breathe in. Breathe out. He’d known better than to go building castles in the air. Future plans were a one-way trip to disappointment. Planting vegetables for the guiltiest secret he’d ever kept was the height of stupidity. And yet, here he was, all wilted hopes and broken stems.
And fucking hell, if there wasn’t an active fire to worry about, he’d call in today. He’d had time off pushed onto him when Wyatt died, but otherwise hadn’t ever missed a shift, had worked through twisted ankles and summer colds and wrenched shoulders, but this, this hurt.
Left with no other option, he showered, headed to the air base. And such was his fucking luck that the two people he least wanted to see were deep in conversation with each other, Garrick and Jacob, standing over by one of the towering trees near the headquarters. For several long minutes, he sat there in his truck, watching them.
This was going to be his life now. Watching Jacob move on, move away from whatever they’d had, knowing he had no pull over him, no right to demand he stay away from Garrick and anyone else who might be interested. He had to force himself out of the truck, each step feeling like a solid mile of a pack-out test.
Say what you want, this isn’t just sex. It’s not. Jacob’s pained words echoed in his ears. And God, like Linc had needed that declaration to know in the very marrow of his bones that this was the very opposite of casual, no matter what either of them said. The certainty he’d had back in the garden returned, a smothering blanket of loss. He wasn’t ever getting over Jacob.
Jacob’s gaze left Garrick, darted across the parking lot, landed on Linc. The pain in his eyes was enough to make Linc stop, take a step back, like that could fix anything. Am I not enough? That question still lingered between them. That he’d come to that conclusion was entirely Linc’s own damn fault. Hell, one might even say it was by Linc’s design, part of the necessity of pushing Jacob away for his own good.
