Pleased that the meeting was over at last, however pleasant it might have been, Gabe hopped in his truck, and headed down the switchbacks, back to the valley. When he parked his truck and got out, he went to the mess tent to see if Blaze was there. He wasn’t. He wasn’t at Gabe’s tent, nor was he by the pasture.
The last place Blaze might be was in his tent so, heading that way, the dry grass crackling beneath his feet, he came up to Blaze’s tent, and there, yes, sitting on Tom’s former cot, was Blaze.
He was hunkered over, elbows on his knees, hands clasping his head, his dark hair falling lank over his fingers.
“Blaze?” Gabe came into the tent slowly and sat on Blaze’s cot and, hands on his knees, waited a good long moment. “What happened?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
Blaze looked at him with eyes red-rimmed from scrubbing, his lips pale, a kind of shocked white all over his features.
“Are you hurt?” Gabe asked, trying again.
“It’s not that,” said Blaze. “It’s you.”
Gabe sat up straight, shock rippling through him as he reached back over the last two weeks, thinking of mistakes he might have made, the first one being giving into that first kiss. Which he didn’t regret, but maybe Blaze did.
“You,” said Blaze again, his voice wobbling as he scraped his hair back from his face, sitting up. “And this place. And my mom, who just called. She wants me to come home because my brother got arrested for drugs and is in jail. This time, it’s him who got arrested instead of me. But this time, instead of lettinghimrot in jail like they did me, they want me to testify onhisbehalf.”
Anger suffused the air around Blaze’s shoulders, settling on everything it could touch while the sun heated up the overhead canvas, giving the air a warm, musty, still smell.
“As for you and me, you don’t want to be with someone like me,” said Blaze, the words heavy in the air. “My family is nothing but carnies and drug dealers. We’re not good enough for the likes of you.”
“You don’t trust it,” said Gabe, grabbing onto the first thing he could find. “You committed a crime and spent two years in jail, so you don’t think anyone trusts you. So you, in turn, don’t trust anyone else. But I trust you—”
Blaze stood up so fast, he loomed over Gabe, teeth bared, hands curled into fists, face even whiter now.
“I was never guilty, I told you that,” said Blaze in a voice so quiet it belied the tremors in his hands. “My folks made me take the fall for Alex and I know every ex-con says they’re not guilty, but I’m really not. Now they want me to testify so he can get off Scott free. Hell no.”
“You don’t have to do it.” Gabe stood up, holding back from reaching out to touch Blaze by the barest inch. “You don’t have to go.”
“I’m not going, and I’m not doing it,” said Blaze. “I’ll be good God damned if I ever go back to them. But I sure as hell don’t belong here. With you.”
Pushing past him, Blaze walked out of the tent in long strides, as if he couldn’t get away from Gabe fast enough, far enough.
What had he done to earn such anger, that Blaze would mention him and the mess with his family in the same breath?
He followed Blaze, catching up, snagging Blaze’s shirt sleeve with his fingertips, not enough to make Blaze stop if he didn’t want to, but to make sure Blaze knew he was there. Right next to him, beneath the warm sun blazing down on their heads as they stood in a small clearing.
Blaze stopped, turning to look at him, half a second away from turning to go.
If he truly wanted to go, then Gabe would not only let him, he would take him there, however long the distance. But he wanted him to stay.
“I do believe you, you know.” Gabe let go and nodded, wanting Blaze to focus on what was between them, something so newly begun it hardly seemed real. “I didn’t at first, because yes, a lot of ex-cons say they’re innocent when they’re not. But you are.”
“Youdon’tbelieve me.” Blaze’s eyes were frozen, a deep underwater green. “You never have.”
“But Ido,” said Gabe, putting everything he had into the words. “You don’t act like you’ve ever been on drugs—”
Blaze pushed past him, a rough shoulder thumping into Gabe’s shoulder, and though he knew he could chase after Blaze and stop him, he needed to let him go. Which was the worst feeling, a poisonous uprising in his chest, a weightless lack of solid ground beneath his feet.
In his heart, he knew he hadn’t quite believed Blaze when he said he’d been innocent and that he shouldn’t have gone to jail. At least in the beginning. Over time, however, he’d come to know Blaze, the kind of man he was. A good man with a good heart, not some junkie jonesing for his next fix.
And, except for a few wobbles, he’d not questioned his own feelings or doubted what they had between them, as new as it was. Perhaps he should have made more sure of how things were for Blaze, though certainly the phone call from his mom had been totally out of the blue.
He’d always wanted the best for Blaze. He knew he had. He’d thought Blaze knew that. Only now what?
The new parolees would be arriving in a day or two, and Gabe would have to step up to the plate and help Royce set the right tone. That he should be wary, that some ex-cons weren’t to be trusted. That guys like Kurt would seem okay on the surface, but below that, sometimes right beneath the skin, they were not docile. They were wild, and some of them wanted to stay that way.
Blaze had never been like Kurt, not even for a second.
