Galen would blab or consult one of the other team leads or whatever. Didn’t matter. Bede was going to leave the valley first chance he got, so he would never have to live through this moment again.
“I went for a swim,” said Galen, his voice as calm as if he’d just come across Bede waiting for the local bus. And while somewhat astonished, as the bus didn’t run through the valley, he seemed completely unperturbed by Bede’s presence, or his emotional state.
“In the middle of the night?” Bede didn’t even bother to lower his voice, and heard the echo of his quiet rage across the surface of the lake, bouncing back from the gray ridge beyond. “The fuckingmiddle?”
If there’d been moonlight, maybe Galen would have seen the tracks of tears on his face, but since the moon was only a silver fingernail brushing across the trees, that part would remain known to him alone.
Or maybe Galen had seen Bede’s face in the light of the flashlight. Plus, his voice was thick, he could hear his own sorrow ringing in his ears. Embarrassment flurried hot around the back of his neck, along his cheeks.
Galen stepped forward. Instinct kicked in and Bede shoved Galen in the middle of his chest, which sent Galen’s clothes flying.
“Hey, back off!” Galen’s voice was strident and as loud as Bede’s had been. “What is your fucking problem?”
Keeping his balance, Galen was silver-shouldered and slender, in dark-colored skimpy briefs that looked like they’d be dry like the rest of Galen’s body, at least the part that Bede had shoved with his palms. Galen’d brought a towel, now snagged in the grasses, and probably had dived into the water stark naked, because who would want to walk around in wet briefs? Nobody.
Naked. Galen had swum naked in the dark lake. Unconcerned equally about who might be watching, or what might lurk in the lake’s depths, waiting to eat the next human who dared trespass its waters. Rubbing himself dry with a towel before donning those briefs again. Collecting his clothes so he could enjoy the cool night breezes.
Bede stepped back, but not away, and in an instant, they were grappling, like two junior high boys with the impulse to fight over something that wouldn’t matter come lunchtime, and who didn’t quite know how. Pushing and pulling, with grunts, up close, and while the fight was a decoy for Bede’s own sorrow, he had no idea what Galen’s deal was.
Anyone else would have backed the fuck down when Bede Deacon stepped up for a fight.Anyoneelse.
Up close, Galen’s skin was scented with lake water, and was warm in the coolness of the night air, the damp ends of his hair sticking to his cheeks as he clutched at Bede’s shoulders. Tearing his shirt. Growling, likehewas the wild beast in the woods, and not bears.
In an effort to get away before his body betrayed him, Bede stepped back, which sent Galen tumbling to his ass, pale legs sprawling in a come hither manner, one boot flying, leaving his foot bare, and Bede just had to look away.
“Seriously,” said Galen. “What is yourfuckingproblem? I just came for a swim to be alone for one damn minute, and you’re acting like I caught you jacking off or something. Man.”
With a groan, Galen started to get up and, on impulse, Bede grabbed his forearm, curling his fingers around Galen’s elbow, hauling him all the way to his feet.
His chest heaved, and he didn’t even know how to ask himself what the fuck was going on, though there was a voice shouting in his head. It was making his head hurt, and he felt bad about what he’d just done to Galen. Galen would ache in the morning, and he didn’t deserve that.
Galen was up close again, their arms still clasped, forearm to forearm in the dark. Galen’s eyes tracked across Bede’s face, and one eyebrow dipped. Then he pulled his arm free.
“Didn’t your mama tell you it’s rude to shove people?”
Bede’d never had a mama, though he’d had his Aunt Lorraine. She’d raised him as best she could, which still left him exposed to bad elements in the neighborhood, and allowed him easy access to drugs and crime and the lifestyle he’d enjoyed for many years.
Until he’d gotten arrested in that alleyway when he’d lost everything that meant anything to him. Leaving him with thoughts that jerked forward and back as he sank beneath waves and waves of jagged images, of Winston bleeding out, of the alley smelling of cordite, dying because of Bede’s insistence that they could make so much money. Of the cop in the driver’s seat, unconcerned that Bede’s heart was breaking, sayingI’ve got the main drug dealer in custody, cuffs on.
He let go of Galen and Galen stepped back to pick up his flashlight, and it was at that ordinary motion, so familiar, of a man collecting himself after a scuffle that tears spilled out of Bede’s eyes again, rolling like hot mercury down his cheeks.
Horrified, Bede clapped his hand to his mouth to stop the gasp that followed, the hitched breath, a barking gasp, as he tried so hard to stop. And failed. And failed. Andfailed.
“Are you crying?” asked Galen, and then a second later, “Oh.”
Galen moved closer, his fingers brushing Bede’s hand, still clamped over his mouth, a gesture he’d probably not meant to make.
“Hey.” He paused, blowing out a slow breath, then turned away, nonchalant, as if he’d not just caught the valley’s most hardened criminal sobbing his eyes out like a little kid.
“You know.” He grabbed for his jeans and pulled them on, zipping and buttoning up like it was just another day at the gym. “It’s got to be hard coming out of prison after five years.”
He tugged his snap-button shirt back into place, and fiddled with the snaps, looking down at his hands before lifting his chin to look at Bede again. “I don’t think I could have lasted one minute behind bars. But you did. And now you’re here. It’s going to get better, I promise.”
Galen slipped his boots on over his bare feet and slung his towel over his shoulder. As he picked up the flashlight from where it’d been shining a stream of white light across dried pine needles, he said, “I was in Torrington for two weeks for the training. They even took us on a tour of the place. You were probably there. In that yard with—everybody.”
Bede knew how those prison tours went. Wanting to make the best impression, visitors were shown a fake version of the prison, all cleaned up, devoid of trash and smell, even prisoners. Meanwhile, everywhere else was crowded and dank and smelly and noisy.
The thought of white-bread Galen trotting around the shiny-floored halls of Wyoming Correctional, being shown the nicer parts of the prison, getting little glimpses of one-man cells, empty and tidy, ready for their next occupant, was almostsurreal. Or the dining hall, clean and swept between meals. Even the yard, but only when it was empty—the thought just about made him bark a loud laugh.
