20. Seth

Chapter Twenty

SETH

Seth hadn't used an alarm since he was a kid. His body instinctively knew when it was time to wake and only ever failed when he pushed himself beyond exhaustion. He hadn't slept a wink last night but was more energized than he'd felt in years. His body hummed. It had been a very, very long time since he'd gotten laid. He'd almost forgotten how good it felt. Or perhaps he hadn't forgotten; maybe it had never felt like this. He'd certainly never taken anyone home when his sister was there.

He was already awake when the first predawn light began to filter through the curtains. He lay on his side, arm pillowed beneath his head, counting the individual lashes that fanned shadows across the tops of Aiden's cheeks.

It was so rare to see him lying still. His expression wasn't exactly peaceful, but something about it wrenched Seth's heart. He looked vulnerable; he was vulnerable, more than he would ever acknowledge. His vivacious good cheer was little more than a protective shell to keep people from targeting his soft underbelly like his mother constantly did. His need for love and approval would always be his Achilles' heel.

Seth brushed one fingertip lightly down the bridge of Aiden's nose, smiling when Aiden twitched and scrunched up his face. It seemed brutally unfair that Seth had to climb out from beneath the warm blankets and leave Aiden alone so soon after discovering the taste of his skin. He wanted to stay in bed all day, gorging himself on this new familiarity, but animals needed to be fed. They always came first.

Besides, Tessa would be awake soon, and Seth wanted to be dressed when he answered her questions.

He felt a pang of regret as he pulled away, slipping out from under Aiden's weight as gracefully as he could without waking him. Aiden would join him in a heartbeat, but Seth didn't see any reason they should both suffer. Besides, it pleased him in some primal way to know his lover would be waiting for him, warm and naked, after a morning of back-breaking labor.

He'd never had a lover—not a real one. It was a spot he'd only ever wanted Aiden to fill.

Seth moved around his dark bedroom with the ease of old routine. He could have taken the master bedroom after his father died, but he'd never seen the point. He knew the precise number of steps to his closet, the exact spot his boots sat beside the door, every creak and shadow. This was his room—his place. Taking his father's bedroom would feel too much like replacing him, and Seth would never be even half the man he was.

He tugged a thick sweatshirt over his jeans and boots, grabbed his hat from a hook beside Aiden's Stetson, and slipped silently into the hallway.

The house was steeped in gloom. The stairwell was so dark he could barely make out the familiar faces of his family from behind the picture frames on the wall. Smiling faces; good people. His mother had been a real beauty. It was a shame Tessa barely remembered her. She was the spitting image of their great-grandmother, laughing out from a sepia-toned photograph while she shucked corn on the front porch. Seth liked to think he was making them proud, putting up a good fight when it would have been easier to give up and sell the land. Then again, maybe they were looking down on him and shaking their heads, wondering how they'd ever raised such an idiot. The kind of sentimental fool who had sacrificed his inheritance for someone else.

He descended the stairs carefully, avoiding the steps he knew would groan under his weight. Strong arms engulfed him suddenly from behind, and he almost jumped out of his skin.

"Jesus!" he yelled, tripping a step before catching himself on the banister.

Aiden's husky chuckle rumbled in his ear. "This is the weirdest walk of shame I ever saw," he murmured, nuzzling the back of Seth's neck with warm kisses.

"No sense in both of us freezing our nuts off out there." Seth gripped Aiden's wrist, lifted it to his mouth, and pressed a kiss to the veins beneath the thin inner skin. Aiden's fingers flexed and then curled in response.

"Just what kind of man do you think you bagged here? Some soft city boy who can't function without a latte and Wi-Fi connection?" Aiden rasped. His voice was amused but still full of sleep.

Seth turned in his arms, momentarily disarmed by the height difference from standing on a lower step. Aiden's eyes were pink-rimmed and puffy from sleep, and his morning beard held flecks of gold even in the dim light. He looked rough but so damn handsome. While Seth was hiding up in the mountains, licking his wounds, Aiden had changed from a scrawny young boy into a rugged, blue-eyed devil of a cowboy.

Seth couldn't resist grabbing a fistful of his shirt—a borrowed shirt from Seth's closet, baggy through the shoulders—and tugging him into a morning kiss.

"I wanted to give you a day off," he admitted.

Aiden looked pleased. A touch of color crawled up his neck. He cleared his throat awkwardly and said, "Hell, this is a day off. You get to roll out of bed and right into the barn. I've got to wake up in the pitch dark, scrape ice off my windshield, and make the twenty-minute drive to the Triple M just to get there by daybreak."

"No rest for the wicked."

Aiden's laughter was soft, and Seth knew he was trying to keep his volume down so he wouldn't wake Tessa at the end of the hall. Seth still hadn't decided what he would say to her. He didn't know how to explain that whatever was happening between him and Aiden was more than a fling. It wasn't a fit of desperation born from loneliness. It was always supposed to be this way.

Aiden's eyes drifted over to the old family photos lining the wall. "You know, I used to come up these stairs every day just to look at these pictures."

"Yeah?"

He nodded. "Mom has some photo albums, but they're all people I never met. Cousins from other states and whatnot. She hated her parents. They blamed her for getting pregnant and moved to Florida when I was just a baby. She didn't talk about them much. It was just the two of us." He smiled slightly and reached out to wipe a smudge from the glass on the portrait of Seth's grandfather. "I always felt like the people in these photos were keeping an eye on me. Making sure I was doing right by this place, you know?"

Seth considered the portraits. He was surprised Aiden's feelings mirrored his own so perfectly, but he shouldn't be. They'd always understood each other. "I like to think they're watching over everyone who takes care of this place. It's more than just a piece of land. It's our legacy. I can go out there and rest my hand on a water pump installed by my great-uncle before he was killed in Vietnam. History like that matters."

Aiden's throat flexed when he swallowed. "I know it's not my family,” he admitted with an embarrassed rasp. “Not my history. But it feels like I'm a part of it, you know? The Double Jay was the first place that ever felt like home to me. I wasn't on edge all the time. I could walk in the door without an argument waiting around every corner. Your dad taught me everything I know—and you, too. You made me feel like I belonged. That's why it sucked so bad when you pushed me away."

Seth's guilt was so thick it was a bitter taste in the back of his throat. He'd tried so hard to do right by everyone counting on him, and in the end, he'd let them all down.

Aiden must have noticed the misery in his expression. He did a quick double-take, and then he grinned. "Aw, don't go looking like that on the morning after. It'll have me questioning my technique."

"Wasn't much technique involved," Seth said wryly, cupping Aiden's ass in both hands and stroking it gently. "I was too rough. It's just that I'd been dreaming of that—of you—for so long that I couldn't stop myself. I just… couldn't wait anymore."

His balls began to tighten at the memory. He could almost feel the steamy air in his lungs again, the armrest digging into his hip and Aiden's weight on top of him. The tight, silken sheathe of his body and Aiden's delicious, stifled noises of discomfort. The way they had melted into moans of pleasure.

"I'd have stopped you if it was too rough," Aiden assured him with a helpless chuckle. "It was hot as hell. I never came hands-free before. Not even when I was a teenager."

"I have," Seth admitted.

Aiden's eyes lit up with delight. "Tell me."

Seth huffed out a quiet laugh. "Not much to tell. I used to wake up in the middle of the night from a dream about that time we all went skinny dipping to impress Marla Hatch?—"

"And her magnificent knockers of doom," Aiden interrupted, grinning fondly at the memory.

Seth's smile was faint. "All I had to do was remember how you looked that day, all wet and tight, and I'd just lose it. Didn't touch myself once. I washed so many sheets back then. My dad must've thought I had a sudden obsession with cleanliness."

Aiden's laughter was filled with joy. He wrapped his arms around Seth's neck and kissed him hard. "God, if only I'd known," he said, eyes twinkling. "What a wasted opportunity."

"Story of my life," Seth muttered.

They stopped in the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, bathing in the quiet comfort of each other's company. The silence might have felt oppressive if not for the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room. Instead, it felt peaceful. Familiar. Precious.

Aiden grabbed a muffin from the breadbox, trailing crumbs behind him as he shimmied into one of Seth's spare jackets and stepped out onto the porch.

"Did I ever tell you the joke about a cowboy who walks into a bar?" he asked, licking crumbs from his thumb. His breath was a puff of steam in the icy morning air. "He walks in, sits down at the bar, and orders a beer. The bartender asks why the long face, and he explodes, 'I've been hanging gates so long that I'm still hearing voices!' The bartender says that's rough and slides a beer across the bar…"

Seth shook his head, grinning as he tugged on his gloves, fingers already stiffening from the cold. His gaze drifted over the landscape as Aiden prattled.

Ponderosa pines mingled with Douglas firs along the distant edge of north pasture. It looked like an artist had taken a paintbrush and smeared a deep green line across a white landscape. Rabbit tracks crisscrossed the snow, and frost clung to clumps of sagebrush, glittering like crystals on the silvery leaves. A few hardy clumps of bunchgrass poked out of the muddy, churned-up snow at the barn door, and the horses greeted them with soft, waking nickers. The barn stood like a lodestone in the center of the property, more important than even the farmhouse and filled with even more memories.

Familiar surroundings from his earliest memories, but he was suddenly looking at it with new eyes. This was his land, his duty, a way of life passed onto him by a father who'd always understood they were a dying breed. Droughts came and went, cattle prices dropped each season, and the world he'd been born to vanished bit by bit. It was hard, lonely work…but he remembered when it had felt hopeful and fresh and right with Aiden by his side. They weren't those boys anymore. Now, they were two weather-beaten men trying to hold onto a world that felt like it no longer existed. They'd wasted so much time.

"Then the cowboy hears a voice that shouts…Seth?"

The change of pitch in Aiden's voice pulled Seth back to the present with a jolt.

"Seth? You okay?" Aiden asked, giving him a narrow-eyed look of concern.

Seth nodded, but it was impossible to ignore the sense of melancholy swelling inside his chest. As he looked at Aiden, disheveled and lively, but stronger and harder than the boy from his memories, he was gripped by a profound sense of longing for simpler times. They'd both discovered who they were, sweating together in the hot summer sun. Aiden had learned the confidence and skills of a man, and Seth…he'd learned that he would do anything for someone he loved.

"You're spooking me, man," Aiden said, resting a hand on his shoulder and turning Seth to face him. Aiden's fingers were cold as they cupped the side of Seth's neck. "Talk to me."

Seth swallowed hard and said, "In all these years, you know when I missed you the most?"

"When?" Aiden asked, bewildered and nonplussed by the sudden change in Seth's demeanor.

"Those nights when I was on predator watch, just me and a rifle and a herd of needy cattle. You know what it's like. So damn cold you shiver all night, listening to howls that always seem closer than they were a minute ago."

"Loneliest feeling in the world," Aiden acknowledged knowingly.

"Yeah," Seth said, taking a deep breath and ignoring the sudden pounding of his heart. "But you always have a way of making even the hardest times feel lighter. I even missed those stupid jokes of yours. I'd lay in my sleeping bag and repeat them to myself, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't you."

"Stupid jokes are my one and only talent," Aiden said, trying to lighten the mood with a playful grin. "It's why everyone loves me."

"Not me," Seth replied, reaching up to cover Aiden's hands on his neck with his own. He squeezed Aiden's fingers and said, "That's not why I loved you back then."

Aiden's eyes widened, and for a moment, he looked terrified. His fingers flexed in Seth's grip, but Seth refused to allow him to pull away. He looked so young and uncertain, unable to meet Seth's eyes, searching the ground beneath their boots as if he could find some reassurance there. Not for the first time, Seth despised Aiden's mother for planting the seeds of insecurity so deep in him.

Aiden nervously licked his lips. "Just…back then?"

"Then. Now. Always." He curled a finger beneath Aiden's chin, nudging it up so he could look directly into those summery eyes. "I think I was on my way to loving you before I even pulled over that day, back when you were just some underclassman running through the halls like a hyperactive puppy. I'm not open to very many people. But you? There isn't anybody you don't like. You were the kid who caught attention everywhere you went with that loud laugh and sunny smile."

"Yeah, I know I'm too much sometimes," Aiden said with a self-deprecating laugh. He glanced down at his feet, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.

Seth threaded his fingers in Aiden's hair and tugged his head up, forcing him to look at him. "That's your mother talking," he said fiercely. "You'll never be too much. You aren't too loud. You aren't too needy. You're allowed to take up space exactly the way you are."

Aiden stared at him, open-mouthed, and Seth hesitated. But he'd already come this far; there was no sense hiding how he felt anymore. So, he forged ahead, saying haltingly, "I know that I've gotten on your case too much, made it seem like I want you to change…but I don't. I know your faults, I know the ugly parts of you, and I love you, anyway. I loved you before I even knew how or why, for no other reason except that you're you."

"Damn," Aiden whispered. His smile wobbled, and he struggled to inject levity into a voice that cracked with emotion. "You don't need to go that hard. I'm already yours for as long as you want me. That's always been true."

"Then tell me you love me," Seth demanded.

"I already did," Aiden said with a chuckle. "You heard me, even though you pretended you didn't."

"I know," Seth admitted with a pang. "But say it again, anyway."

Aiden rested his hands on Seth's waist and tugged him closer until their bodies were flush against each other. Seth felt Aiden's burgeoning arousal pressing against his belt buckle, and his own body began to respond in kind. Slowly, Aiden leaned in and nuzzled the bridge of his nose against Seth's chin, across his jaw and ear. He nibbled at Seth's earlobe, just hard enough to sting, and then whispered into the shell of his ear, "I love you, Seth McCall. I'd burn the whole world down for you the second you asked. Never doubt that."