by RJ Scott
“Yeah, please.” I lifted my arm, and he shimmied under it. If anything could make me feel better, it would be Ryker.
Chapter 9
Ryker
“I don’t know,” Jacob said, which was pretty much all he’d been saying all day. This was Tucson apartment number six, and he’d found something wrong with all of them. The first was too small, second too big. I’m not even sure what was wrong with the third one, but Jacob was very quiet. Apartments four and five were too high up, and this was number six, which was on the fourth floor. It was neither too big nor too small, and was available in four weeks. The Realtor made it obvious that he was confused and quietly pissed, but I didn’t blame him, poor guy. The spec we’d given him had been specific in only a few things. Two bedrooms were a given because I needed a room for all my gym crap. We wanted two bathrooms, one of which could be a half bath attached to the main room, and security downstairs.
The security had been Jacob’s idea because he’d seen firsthand that even though hockey was still the least popular sport in this town, I was known. Part of that was due to Sebastian Brown’s marketing initiative, putting Alex front and center as the face of acceptance and diversity with a sexy spin and shoving me there next to him. The first time he’d seen the huge image of me on the billboard, right next to a poster for the new seasonal variety McDonald’s Chicken Sandwich, his eyes bugged out of his head.
“Didn’t you have clothes that day?” he asked when he saw the vast image of me and Alex, hockey sticks behind our heads, flexing every muscle we could. Sex sells, darling, work that camera.
“They made me take them off,” I’d told him, and then when we were back in the apartment I shared with Alex and Henry, he’d been completely honest with me and told me that it was possibly the hottest poster he’d ever seen and could I get him a copy? He was teasing, and even now, I wasn’t sure he was entirely happy with the whole moving to Arizona and having no farm thing. I’d been there the last day, when the Agri company had locked the gates, and we’d spent that morning at the old cabin, ice still thick on the edge, taking some photos to remember. He hadn’t cried, although he’d held his mom when she had, and helped his choked-up dad into the truck to take them to their new home, a cute two-bed in town with a tiny garden and brand-new kitchen.
That had been two weeks ago, and he’d done what his parents had suggested and moved to Arizona to be with me. Right now, we were sharing my old room, but the plan was to get our own place, at the same time as he applied for all kinds of jobs in the local area. I’d never once said he could wait a while and that I would cover the rent and utilities because I knew my man, and he needed to work. Hard work defined him, and he’d searched through listed vacancies and had shortlisted a couple that were his preferred options, but he applied for everything that even vaguely mentioned agriculture, and I knew that with his degree and his life experience, he’d be like gold dust to anyone who interviewed him.
The one he wanted most, working at the U of A, had held interviews two days ago, and he hadn’t heard yet, and I knew it was playing on his mind. He didn’t have student loans to clear, but he wanted to make his fifty percent contribution to our new home, and I guess that was the real reason he was giving such vanilla responses to each place we looked at. He didn’t hate any of them. He just didn’t love any of them either, and as this was the last one today and my actual favorite, I needed to pin him down and talk. I held up a finger to the Realtor to indicate a time-out, and he nodded before backing away and out of the kitchen-dining-living area. Then I tugged Jacob to the window. From here, the view consisted of the park and more buildings, but if I craned my head, I could see the trauma facility that Henry was in, and the other way, the Raptors’ arena. The commute was okay, the college wasn’t far, we were close to the center of everything, and I wasn’t sure what Jacob was searching for.
“I like this one,” I said and tapped on the window. “See that park there? We can run there.” He leaned his forehead on the window and peered down at Catalina Park.
“It’s not a very big park,” he murmured.
“Then we’ll do laps.” I forced all kinds of positive enthusiasm into my voice, and he glanced at me oddly.
“How much is it again?”
I pulled the sheet of paper from my pocket and made a show of reading it, even though I knew in great detail what it would take to rent this place. It was affordable on my income alone, not easily, but then we’d asked for two bedrooms. Give it another year, and if the Raptors held on to me and I got what Dad called my big boy’s contract, then maybe we could buy outright, but for now affordability was a thing.
He was quiet as I listed not only the price but also the pros and cons of this particular property. Set in the older part of Tucson, it was solid brick and not a glass high-rise. It had gardens, and the security was good, so in my mind it was everything he said he wanted.
Only when he’d said that, he’d been positive about jobs, but everything was taking so long, and he was despondent and irritable about the delays, on top of the wrench of leaving the farm.
“Talk to me,” I asked gently, and he turned his back to the view and sat his ass on the low window sill.
“The half that I need to cover, I only have enough for six months, and after that, if I don’t have a job…”
I didn’t sigh. I didn’t immediately say that I would cover everything, because we were a partnership, and we shared everything fifty-fifty. Instead, I fingered the ring at my neck, clicking the joined hockey sticks through it, which had become my new lucky habit, and thought about the best way to approach this. Jacob’s gaze fell to the ring, and he closed his eyes briefly.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, and my heart ached for his confusion and worries. He’d left everything behind in Minnesota, and he had to start all over again to change his life plans.
“You’ll get the job you want. I know you will,” I encouraged and sat next to him, then elbowed him gently. He pushed me back and stayed leaning against me.
“You like this one?”
I cleared my throat, time for honesty. “Out of all of them today, yeah, I do. It’s on a bus route, close to the U, there’re two parking spaces, the rooms are big, and I’ve even thought about where we’d find a sofa big enough for us both. It feels homey, as if it’s been waiting for us.”
He nodded then. “One day, though, I want a house, with a yard, for the dogs and the kids.”
“Same.”
“But right now.” He stopped and hunched a little, only relaxing when I took his hand. “Right now, I just need a job, money, so I can feel like I’m doing my part.”
“I know.”
I genuinely felt my fiancé was lost, and during the last few days, I didn’t know what to do for the best. He sounded so miserable, and I’d noticed his introspective moments were lasting longer as time moved on after leaving the farm. I couldn’t do anything about the job he’d interviewed for. I could only sit and wait with him, and hope everything worked out, and hug him when he was quiet, and be there for the low moments.
“How about this then. We tell the Realtor that we’re not ready yet to make any kind of commitment financially, and we revisit this when I get back from the East coast road trip.” Seven days apart was nothing for us. We’d done way worse, but now I had him here in my life, it seemed like a cruel and unusual punishment to be dragged away from him again. I love what I do, I’m freaking good at what I do, but it wasn’t easy on any relationship.
“No,” Jacob said firmly.
“No?”
“We have to take a chance on our future. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck. This is my favorite today, and even if I end up flipping hamburgers, I will have a job by the end of this week. We can do this.” He stood straight, and I saw focused, confident Jacob peer out through all the insecurities. “Let’s do this.”
I went toe to toe with him, cradled his face, looking deep into his eyes. “You’re sure?”
He lea
ned in, and I slid my hands behind his neck and laced my fingers. “I’m sure.”
So we called the Realtor back in, signed paperwork, and arranged to visit the office with deposits and every single piece of ID we had, and just like that, we had rented our own place. We walked back to the apartment I shared, slowly, taking in the city around us, holding hands and not giving a shit how long it took us to get back, even stopping to sit on a bench in Catalina Park, watching life go by. We were sitting quietly when his phone rang in his pocket, but I didn’t think anything of it until he glanced at the screen and his eyes widened. He answered immediately, standing and blurting out a hello before clearing his throat and starting again.
“Jacob Benson speaking…”
I stood next to him, desperate to ask who it was. He’d interviewed for seven positions, including the coveted U of A job he wanted, and this could’ve been anything. It was possible that whoever was calling was giving Jacob bad news, and I couldn’t make sense of what was being discussed from his side of the conversation.
“Yes… okay, I have those… equine… uh-huh, sorry, yes… thank you… I am, thank you. Monday… I will.” Then he grinned as he spoke, and I didn’t have to understand any of the words because whatever he was hearing was good news. I gave him a thumbs-up, and his beautiful eyes brightened with so much emotion I wanted to yank the phone out of his hand and kiss him senseless. I did a little jig on the spot, which a couple of passersby smiled at, and a few others watched before moving on, and listened to the rest of the one-sided conversation. “I’m so excited… yes… thank you so much for this opportunity. See you Monday.”
He ended the call, and for a few moments, he stood in silence.
“Which one?” I prompted and jabbed him in the side. “Which one, freak?”
“I didn’t get the U of A technician job I wanted,” he began, and my chest tightened because fuck, that was the one he wanted.
“But you said… on the phone…”
“They said they see all this potential, that with my real-life experience, hell, Ryker… Jeez…”
“What? What!”
He blinked at me, clearly in shock. “U of A actually offered me the manager trainee role, the one that I didn’t think I was experienced enough for. It’s ten K extra. It starts on Monday. I said yes.” He sounded as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying, and then he picked me up and swung me around in the bright sunlight, and we whooped and hollered until we were hoarse.
I speculated how many of our future neighbors were looking out of their windows and wondering who the idiots were in the park.
I bet it was all of them.
Epilogue
Jacob
Arizona was weird. Weird in a good way, of course.
I’d been living out here for over a month now, and I still couldn’t get used to it being March and there being no snow. It was weird to wear shorts and sandals near Valentine’s Day. Also, the cacti were peculiar. People had them in their yards as we Minnesotans had maple trees. I was just waiting to see a tire swing hung off one of those pokey, skyward arms. Also, what was up with the yards? Where was the grass? I mean, sure, some folks had grass, but lots had rocks. Rocks. In your yard. Back home, we tossed the rocks out of the yard so we could mow the grass. Here, they had landscaped yards full of rocks, sand, palm trees, and cacti of various shapes.
Then there were the animals. I kind of missed seeing moose sauntering down the road. Out here, they had things that snuck into your shoes at night that would kill you if you crammed your foot into your sneaker. That was wrong on multiple levels. Scorpions, spiders the size of dinner plates, Gila monsters, and African bees. We didn’t have African bees in Minnesota. Back home, the animal that killed the most people were deer, and that was caused by them dashing in front of your car, not by hiding in your shoe. On occasion, a trapper would run up on a disgruntled wolverine, or a hunter would piss off a bull moose, but none of them hid in your Nikes. The whole death-waiting-for-you-in-your-shoes thing freaked me out.
Aside from the weather and the lethal critters, I liked Arizona. My job was fantastic. I got to work with some really cool people while learning about agriculture in this part of the country. We worked in conjunction with the university and were doing research on various aspects of farming, such as irrigation and crop water requirements, cotton production and propagation, soils and crop fertility, insect management, equine and bovine studies, and weed control.
I was on a good salary with benefits, would be eligible for paid vacations, and had a chance for rapid advancement. There was also the opportunity to return to school for my Masters, and then I’d be looking at higher-level management opportunities, but for now, I was happy working the land and coming home at night to Ryker. Not that he was there every night, but after spending so much time apart, a few days to a week of him being gone was nothing.
My days off were spent either in bed with Ryker, and those were my favorite kind of days off, or out with the guys on his team. He’d gotten close to quite a few of his teammates—Ryker was that kind of guy. The one all the girls wanted and all the guys wanted to be. The guys wanted him too because the man was Not to mention Colorado Penn, the goalie who was half-tender and half rock star. Talk about sexy. If I wasn’t madly in love with Ryker, I’d have been drooling over Colorado. Oh, and the big Russian captain, Vladislav Novikov. He was older than most of our friends but seemed to be showing up more and more. Which was cool. The guy’s dry wit was funny as hell.
When we had time, we hung out and sported as we were all jocks, aside from Alex’s man, Seb. But the handsome Brit seemed content to sit in the shade, whittle at his work, take pictures of the Raptors’ bare, glistening chests, and toss out bon mots about any number of things from life to shoelaces to the proper temperature for a bottle of red wine. It’s fifty-five, according to Seb.
Today we were packing Henry’s things for the moving company arriving tomorrow. The small band of close friends Ryker, and now I, had made were there aside from Henry of course. He was still in the rehab facility a few blocks away, but his release to a place that Adler Lockhart owned was imminent.
“I can’t believe I’ll have this whole place to myself,” Alex lamented as we tossed Henry’s clothes into a trash bag. “What the hell will I do with myself after I get home from games?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps you could spend that time with your handsome beau,” Seb said, plucking the sweatshirt Ry had whipped into the bag out and folding it neatly. Alex leaned across the bed to steal a kiss from his man. They were a cute couple. Well-suited, as they said in the old days. Pity they felt they could only be this demonstrative around close friends and family. I mean, I got it, but it was still a shame people had to hide who they were. On a purely greedy-ass level, I was thrilled not to have to hide what Ryker and I had. I ran my hand over the small envelope in my front pocket for the thousandth time and whispered a silent thank you to my mother yet again.
“I think this whole thing is most odd,” Vlad chimed in, hoisting a box filled with books to one shoulder as if it were packed full of confetti. “Why is Henry moving into a new house? Why does he not go home to be with his family?”
“Well, there are issues with him and his family,” Ryker explained, handing a balled-up shirt to Seb for proper folding. The Brit rolled his eyes but shook out the shirt and folded it neatly.
“I feel like Henry’s valet,” Seb muttered but refused to let us pack the fast way.
“Hmm,” Vlad said, the big Russian staring at the nearly empty room. “In Russia, family holds the highest importance. Not just our parents and siblings, but the extended family as well. It’s a concept that I’ve had trouble grasping about America.”
“The house he’s moving into is huge, but it’s all on one floor and is owned by the Lockhart family, who have houses all over the world,” Ryker explained to our captain. “Adler Lockhart is kind of like family to me; he’s been with the Railers for years. Seems there’s an old frien
dship between Henry’s older brother and Adler, so he’s opened up his Tucson mansion for Henry to use.”
Vlad contemplated this, then nodded once. “I understand that bond. Still, I wonder why Henry refuses to let his mother nurse him. That would be the traditional thing to do.” I enjoyed hearing Vlad speak. His accent was subtle, and his English quite good compared to Stan’s, the only other Russian I knew well.
“It’s not always easy with family. Traditions sometimes have to take a back seat to being true to oneself,” Alex stated before switching from what was a touchy subject for him to talking about food. The food talk led to food consumption. After a massive takeout meal from two local places, one Mexican and one Korean, we all went our separate ways. Vlad home to his trendy condo looking over Tucson, and my man and I to our new place overlooking the park. Night had fallen on the city and when we got home, instead of flopping onto the couch to watch whatever was on the DVR, I led Ryker out onto our small but homey balcony.
“Come here. I want to show you something,” I told Ryker, tugging him to the railing.
“But there’s a new episode of Impractical Jokers,” he whined and gazed at the TV set longingly.
“Sal, Q, Joe, and Murray can wait for like ten minutes,” I countered, pulling him up to stand beside me. The city was stretched out before us, the park lit up, and the mountains standing majestically in the background. “We should do some serious camping in the mountains,” I said while discreetly sliding my hand into my front pocket.
“Yeah, that would be cool. Are we done here because…” He waved a hand at the apartment. I ignored his whining and held out today’s mail. He blinked at the small blue envelope that now lay on his palm. “What’s this? Did your mom send me more recipes?”
“Open it.” I stepped closer, slipping my arms around him, my thumbs hooking causally in the belt loops of his baggy cargo shorts.
He cocked an eyebrow but ripped the padded envelope open and shook the contents into his free hand. It was a tiny square of cloth. I lifted it from his palm, unfolded it, and then held up his engagement ring. The ring I had bought and sold a few months ago. The ring that had been liquidated when the jewelers back home went out of business after Christmas. The ring my mother and I had desperately searched for before finally tracking it down last week at one of those large shopping mall jewelers. Yet another small business driven out by corporations. Shaking off what would be an eternal sadness in my soul, I let the joy on Ryker’s face help wipe away the doldrums that thinking about selling our farm always brought.
