Chapter Thirty-Two
“Idon’t think I can do this, Balta.” Joa hated to sound like a whiny baby, and the nurses had already had him up walking this morning, each tug on his torn muscles pure agony, but if Balta and Raul left him and he had to do all this rehab and travel by himself he might just sit down and die.
“Bah. Of course you can. In a week you’ll feel like a new man.”
He felt new now. New and broken.
“I—” Joa tried, and failed, to summon a smile. “I hope so.”
He tried to focus, to breathe and…shit, think.
“The drugs,” Balta said, and he blinked.
“Whut?”
“The confusion,doce. It’s the drugs. They made you…weird.”
“Weird?” The word sounded so foreign in Balta’s voice.
“Mmm. Make it hard to put words together, hard to sleep deeply. You’re a little—how does Kynan say? Wonky.”
“Wonky?” Joa began to chuckle. He had to. Seriously? His Balta using wonky correctly in a sentence?
“Yes! It’s a good word. I like it.” Balta grinned hugely.
“You…” God, his demon made him smile. “Is someone going to bring me real food soon? Not this stuff? When can I go home? When do you leave?”
“Raul will leave Thursday. You and I will go back to Texas as soon as they clear you to travel. Raul went to get you food.”
“You and…Balta? You don’t ride this weekend?”
“Nao. I think I’ll go to the finals for the fans,sim?”
“Well, I would hope so.” The finals? He didn’t understand. The finals were months away. There were what? Nine events left between? Eight?
“I’ll be staying with you,namorado.” Balta just said it, and for a long moment Joa thought perhaps he misheard.
“Balta? Can you? Can you do that?” For him?
“Why not?” Balta grinned, dark eyes gleaming with the evil Joa knew so well. “Think how easy it will be for Raul to win the season without me to compete with!”
Privately Joa thought Raul had it, with or without Balta, but he had to laugh. “He is lucky.” But it was Joa who was lucky. “Are you sure, Balta?”
“I am,doce. I—we will miss Raul when he is riding, but he will come home every week, and I will go to a few of the events closer to home to see him ride. He wants it so badly. I will not interfere with that.”
“No. No, he can win it.” Joa felt the pang that always came with the knowledge that he wouldn’t. He wasn’t consistent.
“He can. We can look into bucking bulls with yourpapai.” Balta took his hand, the gesture so gentle, so careful.
“He would like that. I would like that.” He wasn’t sure what was happening with him, with the world. “I feel lost, Baltazar.”
“I have you. I know what is right.”
“He does. Even if he is too high-handed about it.” Raul came in, grinning at him, a bag of Taco Bell in his hand. Oh, he looked good in his tight Wranglers and his starched shirt.
“Raul.” He had to smile back, had to. “Are those for me?”
“They are. I had Arby’s.”
