And there was more truth in that than Aaron wanted to admit.
* * * *
“Aaron? You in here, kid?”
Aaron jerked away, his heart beating frantically as he twisted to look at the other side of the bed. But Quinn, and all trace of him, was gone.
“Aaron?” Uncle Will called again, and opened the door. “There you are. I bought you a breakfast burrito.”
“Okay,” Aaron said. “Give me a second here.”
“I’ll put the coffee on.”
It took Aaron a while to get his leg attached and to pull his boxers on. He stood, wincing at the pain in his stump. His crutches were in the den, he thought. He’d take his leg off after Uncle Will left and use them for the rest of the day. Give his stump a break.
He walked out to the kitchen, hating the awkwardness of his gait.
Uncle Will was making coffee like he promised. “You look like hell.”
“I actually slept okay,” Aaron said. It wasn’t even a lie. “Brody came over yesterday and helped with the rest of the wallpaper in the den.”
“It’s looking good,” Uncle Will said. “It’ll look a hell of a lot better once you paint.”
“Yeah.” Aaron sat down at the table and unwrapped his burrito. “What’s going on with the MacGregors, Uncle Will?”
Uncle Will sighed. “How about you leave the MacGregors to me, kid?”
“It’s going to come to a head between Jimmy and Quinn, isn’t it?”
Uncle Will dragged his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. He had more gray these days, but he carried it well. He was a handsome guy. He had a movie star smile that didn’t belong in somewhere as shitty as Spruce Creek. Aaron had crushed on him when he was a kid, which was embarrassing to think about now, but he figured that probably half the town could say the same thing.
“Probably,” Uncle Will admitted at last. “That’s Brody’s opinion, is it?”
Aaron shrugged, because he didn’t want to admit he’d talked, and more, to Quinn.
“Well, it’s no secret,” Uncle Will said. “Jimmy’s a hothead. He’s trouble, and he’s sure as hell not happy that Quinn’s back in town, because some of the MacGregors’ boys will be whispering that Quinn should be first in line to take over.” He shook his head as he carried Aaron’s coffee over to the table and set it down. “You know, a man can talk until he’s blue in the face, but people like the MacGregors? They don’t listen. There’s going to be bloodshed, because the MacGregors don’t know any other way. All I can do is hope to keep enough heat on them that doesn’t spill over outside the clan.”
Aaron sipped his coffee. “Do you think it will?”
Uncle Will closed his eyes briefly. “Hell, I hope not, but if history’s any indication…”
Aaron’s chest ached as he thought of his dad. “Yeah.”
Spruce Creek was nothing but a shithole town in the middle of Nevada that most people had never even heard of. It didn’t matter a goddamn to the outside world, and its underbelly was full of redneck meth dealers who thought they were gangsters. Kick over a rock in Spruce Creek and you’d uncover a dozen little scorpions that didn’t look like shit. They could still kill you though.
Spruce Creek had killed the best man Aaron had ever known. It was almost a foregone conclusion it’d kill another man he’d once loved.
Quinn wasn’t a fool. He’d come back to town with his eyes open. He’d made his choice.
In the end, the bitter, hard, closed-off man with flashes of vulnerability that Aaron had fucked in his bed last night would be just another distant memory, just like the boy from that golden summer was now. A memory for Aaron to love and to regret and to mourn, and nothing more.
Chapter 11
Just like that summer a decade ago, Aaron had given Quinn exactly what he’d needed before Quinn himself knew what to ask for, exactly.
When he’d slipped out of bed just past five, it was the most relaxed he’d been in…well, months. Of course, it wasn’t just the amazing sex. That would’ve been a stupid thought to have—Quinn could get that anywhere. No, it was Aaron.
When Quinn was a teenager and had started to figure out the constant low-level danger his family lived in because what they did for a living, getting rid of an equally low level of alertness and fear had been rough.
