“I can go back to my own tent now,” he said, not quite whispering but not quite saying it out loud.
“There’s no need,” said Gabe and if Blaze heardplease, stay, I’d like you to, it was only a voice in his own head, fitful dreaming that he could not seem to stop doing. “You seem pretty shook up and I don’t mind the company. Might be nice, in fact. You’ll help keep the bears away.”
“Are you afraid of bears?” asked Blaze, surprised.
Gabe laughed, a low chuckle, and went to zip the screen shut on the tent, then came back to sit on his cot. The tent wasn’t so big that Gabe was very far away, no matter what he was doing, but Blaze liked it when they were sitting on the two cots, just about knee-to-knee.
“Not really,” he said. “I mean, not realistically. We’re too far out of the mountains and it’s their time to be up at higher altitudes, foraging. And they’d only be little black bears, anyway.” He winked at Blaze and then reached for one of the books from his shelf. He didn’t have very many, and seemed to be able to pick out the one he wanted without even looking, an old-looking medium sized paperback with a mostly gray cover.
“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?” asked Blaze.
“You guys wanted ghost stories, but I didn’t know any, so I got a book.” Gabe waved the book in Blaze’s direction, smiling, proud of himself. “Want me to read you one?”
Blaze had never felt less like reading, let alone listening to a ghost story, so he shook his head, though he had never felt grateful for such a simple gesture.
“Got a Firefox book. Could read to you about spinning and weaving.” Gabe stood up to take off his robe, an unguarded trusting gesture that made everything in Blaze’s body relax.
“Yeah,” said Blaze.
The simple word floated in the air for a minute before Blaze realized how close attention Gabe had been paying to him, and how he settled into his bunk, long legs, those blue cotton boxers, the soft-edged paperback book in his hands. How he waited for Blaze to change into his sweats and, barefooted, climb into bed.
When Blaze was settled, Gabe cleared his throat and began to read.
The words themselves didn’t matter. The rhythm and tone of Gabe’s voice did, deep and soft, warm whiskey, a slow, even cadence.
Those words vanished beneath Gabe’s voice, and un-wove and wove again, into a blanket that settled over Blaze like the tenderest touch. A weight coming down, protective, curling around him.
At one point, he tried to blink his eyes open, to stay awake, but why, why, why when Gabe was on duty, watching over him. Protecting him.
Sleep, when he met it, was a blessing he’d not been prepared for.
Chapter20
Gabe
The first thing Gabe became aware of upon waking up was the energy of another body in the cot across from his.When he did open his eyes and cast them that way, he wondered what he’d been thinking last night, tender feelings pushing up inside of him. Any of which were surely outside the scope of his responsibilities as team lead.
Blaze was a fully grown man, of course, and not all that innocent, but to come upon him in the darkness of the woods, crouched down with his back against a pine tree, had pressed every single one of Gabe’s buttons, impossible to resist.
Now, Blaze was curled under the bedclothes, a sheet and woven cotton blanket, his hair a dark shock on the white pillow, fingers grasping the pillowslip. A soft rise and fall of his ribs as he lay on his side.
Gabe didn’t want to wake him, wanted to look some more and drink his fill. Wanted to imagine what it might be like if they’d met before Blaze had spent two years inside prison walls.
They could have met, would have met, at a county fair. There would have been a cotton candy scent in the air, sawdust, the racket of the Tilt-a-Whirl, and it would not have been Gabe’s scene at all. Too much shouting. Too many people and machines. Too much hustle, barkers calling for folks to lay down a ten-spot for a chance to win an enormous purple octopus. No, not his scene at all.
Would he have stopped to talk to Blaze at one of those booths? Or would Blaze have been operating one of the rides? Standing tall in a colorful vest, his hands on the gears, ready to help Gabe get into a seat on a Ferris wheel, keeping a watchful eye as Gabe rose in the sky?
Fanciful notions, all of them. He wouldn’t have given Blaze the time of day had he happened to meet him at a county fair. Or at a grocery store, for that matter. Gabe would have turned away from the sly grin, the messy hair, the flirty patter.
He would not have been interested, not one little bit. But now, now that the semi-wild wilderness of the valley had broken through a bit of Blaze’s reserve, right through the armor that Blaze had pulled around him in prison, now Gabe was interested and quite unsure what to do with the tender feelings inside of him at the thought of what Blaze had gone through.
“Hey.”
Gabe focused on the now, drawing himself out of the drowse of early morning, to the crisp green of Blaze’s eyes, the hand through that dark hair, the closeness between them, silky soft and unassuming.
“Hey,” said Gabe.
Right away, the single exchange of greetings started Gabe’s mind to working, a desperate attempt to focus on the day’s tasks and projects, an imaginary list furled to its full length. Horses. Those stumps. The delivery of the wood chips that needed to happen that day, or they’d run out of room in the dump truck.
