Chapter Sixteen
Sully
“Are they always likethis?”
Sully nodded, tugging the blanket tighter over them as they snuggled in the truck bed.“Sure,” he said, arm wrapped tight around Dean’s neck as he lay his head on his shoulder.“Don’t you have them back at Storm River?”
“I mean, I’m never really out at night I guess,” Dean mused, still peering up at the black and blue night sky.“Plus all the dorm and campus buildings, plus downtown, and the trees.Trees everywhere, it seems.I’ve just ...never seen a sky so clean and big before.”
Sully followed his curious gaze up at the stars, literally twinkling in the clear night sky.“Come to think of it,” he marveled, tugging Dean closer as their bodies nestled under one of the extra blankets he’d packed in the backseat, just in case things went according to plan.“I can’t remember the last time I’ve stayed out late to look at the stars like this.”
“See,” Dean teased, despite his promise not to tug at Sully’s stupid, stubborn, sappy heartstrings.“I’m already a good influence on you.”
“I never said you weren’t, City Slicker,” Sully mused as they continued to wriggle deeper under the blanket.It wasn’t just the stars and how clear they were on a soft, spring night, but the temperature.It had dropped a good ten degrees since the sun set!It didn’t help that neither of them had bothered to get dressed after their latest sticky, tongue drenching, finger licking go-round.“But you have to admit, this idea of mine was pretty good, right?”
Dean merely nodded, sighing contentedly as, beneath the covers, his ankle slid across Sully’s.“I wouldn’t want to spend tonight any other way,” he insisted.“Or with anyone else.”
Sully beamed.“Same here,” he sighed, wishing they could stay like that forever, naked and warm, tucked away from the world and all by their lonesome, sticky and gooey beneath a blanket of stars twinkling just for them.
They lay and watched, breathed and nestled, safe and warm under cozy blankets and perched atop a sea of pillows.The charge on his Bluetooth speaker had run out, but they no longer needed a soundtrack to their love story.Confessions and pounding hearts would do just fine, thank you very much.
The silence stretched, comfortable and surprisingly familiar.There was no need for small talk or stilted conversation with Dean.Never had been, as far as Sully could tell.Their discourse was lively, quick and straight to the chase.Suddenly, though, Sully felt the need to talk.To explain.To comfort.
“It’s not you,” he announced, apropos of absolutely nothing.
“I hope not,” Dean snorted.“But what isn’t?”
“My grouchiness,” Sully explained.“About ...love.”
“I know that.”
“You do?”
“Duh,” Dean huffed, pushing slightly away so that he could peer back into Sully’s doubtful eyes.“You grew up out here, Sully.Not a cowboy, exactly, but a country boy.Your kin are landowners.Settlers, really, since they kind of hail from Gravel Gulch.Buying up land, chasing the American Dream and, more than likely, hammering into you all those tired, old American values.The old-fashioned kind.You know, guys like girls, girls like guys.The thought of us out here, doing what we’ve done, naked under these sheets, happy and content, probably never entered into their imaginations.You probably didn’t even look at another guy twice until your father passed, am I right?”
“He would have killed me,” Sully mused, picturing the grizzled old man and his ever-present tractor company ballcap and dip cup.“Right on the spot.Or disowned me.Or both, more than likely.”
“So you’re thinking to yourself, right about now, as we lay here under the stars, sticky and wet, how’s this going to work, right?”
“Go on,” Sully mused, smirking in the dark.
“I just did,” Dean chuckled.“That was it.That was my brainstorm, so I wouldn’t take the sting of rejection so personally.”
