Killy pulled the other chair out from under the two-seater table and plopped down. “Mind if I hear?”
Tex dipped his head, the shyness from yesterday reappearing. “I don’t rightly know if I ought to. I mean, you being you and all.”
“I’m just a man. Isn’t that what you told me yesterday?” The melody lodged in Killy’s head, and already chords formed in his mind, a keyboard and drums joining in.
Fingers strumming softly on the strings, Tex closed his eyes and began to sing. Images formed in Killy’s brain, staring outside through a window, waiting for the rain to stop to get on the road again, eager to escape a love gone belly up. He tapped out a beat with his fingers on the tabletop. Oh, man! If he put in a run here, and there he’d add… “I need my guitar. I’d go get it myself, but…” He waved a hand toward his naked body. Normally, he tried to hide his vivid scars. Tex looked right through them.
“That’d make the neighbors talk. Hold this.” Tex handed Killy his guitar and traipsed out the front door, only to return a few moments later with Killy’s guitar case.
Killy ran through a quick tune up. When Tex started playing again, he joined in, adding harmony to Tex’s melody on a whim. As in the bar, their voices merged like they’d sung together for years. He didn’t want the song to stop, for then the spell might break and he’d return to his aimless wandering, a shell of who he used to be.
For a little while two lonely men didn’t have to be alone—until the music ran out. They played the whole thing through three times before Tex gave him a rueful smile. “We’re both just borrowing time, aren’t we?”
Nice to know Killy wasn’t alone in his thinking. With a sigh, he put his guitar away. He gazed into his host’s eyes. What could he say?It’s been nice? See ya ‘round?
Tex placed his guitar aside, watching Killian the whole time. “We need to get dressed.”
What the fuck? Was Texas tossing him out? “What time is it now?”
“Two thirty.”
Fuck. He’d planned to be on the road by four AM. Hell, they probably hadn’t gotten in until three.
Still, something deep inside longed to stay here, never leave.
No. He couldn’t.
Heart a painful weight in his chest, he asked, “Can I borrow your shower?”
Fuck all if the words didn’t mark the beginning of the end.
The few feet from kitchen to bathroom might have been the hardest journey of Killian’s life.
He didn’t really have to leave today, did he?
19
This time at the diner Killian treated his cowboy to hamburger steak and thickly cut French fries, at the back table they’d claimed for their own.
Wait!Hiscowboy? Since when had he started thinking of Texas as his?
“So, what’s your plans?” Tex asked.
A man and woman shuffled over to their table. “Sorry, to bother you,” the man said, “but we were at The Stallion last night and just wanted to say how awesome you were. Ted done cost Merle a lot of his customers, since he can’t sing for shit, but you two? Damn, what the hell are y’all doing in this nothing of a town? You should be making records. Playing at big, sold-out shows.”
The woman remained silent, but nodded at her man’s words as she tucked herself under his arm.
“Well, that’s mighty kind of you, sir.” What else could Killian say?
“Can we get a picture?” the woman asked, holding up her cell phone.
Oh fuck. Should Killy allow photographic evidence of his survival? Tex arched an eyebrow in his direction, leaving the decision up to Killy.
“Sure, why not.” No one would recognize him, and Tex deserved a bit of star treatment.
“You damned sure made their night,” Tex said when the two ambled off. “Wanna stay a while longer? Make a few more people happy?” Something on his plate suddenly called his attention. “I… um… it’s small, but my bed fit us pretty good last night. If you don’t have somewhere else lined up to stay,” he hastened to add.
Play again? Like last night? Go home with Mike for more sex and someone to hold him in the night?
