Hard Ride (Clean Slate Ranch)

by A. M. Arthur

  He swallowed a groan. “Let me guess. Wes?”

  “Yup. Apparently, Wes overheard Reyes saying something to Miles about you being in Slater’s hospital room this morning and weird vibes between you two. Naturally, he blabbed to Sophie, who now wants answers.”

  “Look, whatever Slater and I are, it’s extremely casual. The guy nearly died. Of course I went to see him.”

  “Because you hooked up at the weddings?”

  Derrick let out a frustrated breath. “Yes. We did. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Dude, you really need to stop fucking those cowboys. All they do is break your heart.”

  “No one broke my heart.” Maybe he’d come close with Robin, but Derrick hadn’t completely fallen for the handsome cowboy before Robin had declared himself off-limits and in a relationship with Shawn. Close to falling, but not completely. No, most of that hurt had come from Robin not even telling him he was seeing Shawn, casually or not, until that night at Club Base.

  Maybe Conrad was right, though. He should keep whatever this thing with Slater was completely platonic so he didn’t revert to type and fall for another unavailable cowboy. “Whatever. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “I owe you, bro.”

  Derrick hung up, grateful to have Friday evening plans with a beautiful lady—even if said lady was only three weeks old and would probably sleep most of the night. The distraction would keep him from thinking too hard about the laid-up cowboy with the sexy smirk...

  * * *

  Reyes hated delegating his own ranch duties to others, but he owed Slater. So he was there when Slater was taken into surgery, and he sent text updates to both Judson and Miles as he got them. Miles was busy at the saloon, or he would have been there to keep Reyes from jumping out of his skin.

  Miles had been a rock this week, standing strong whenever Reyes thought he might fall apart. He still couldn’t get the image of Slater falling out of his head. It haunted him at night, in the dark when he couldn’t sleep. Not even Miles’s lean body wrapped tightly around his helped him relax. Reyes had, at Miles’s urging, made an extra appointment with his therapist for the beginning of the week, so he could talk about the accident before the nightmares got worse. He liked his therapist, who’d been helping Reyes unpack the mistakes of his youth since last fall. Reyes needed to get this latest failure off his chest.

  Judson showed up with a thermos of coffee from Patrice. “It’s a work-related injury and I’m his supervisor,” Judson said. “Some of the other boys wanted to come, but I told them to wait until we see how Slater’s feeling. He might not want a bunch of visitors tonight.”

  “Good call.” Reyes poured rich, dark coffee into the thermos’s cap. Patrice had an industrial coffee maker for both hands and guests, but she also had a smaller machine for when she wanted to pamper one of her boys. And she made the best coffee.

  “Hear anything new?”

  “Not yet, but we’re getting close to the time they said it would take. Can’t imagine it’s easy putting steel rods into someone’s ankle. Not with all the little bones they say are in there.”

  “Poor man will probably set off every metal detector in town after this.”

  Reyes snorted and sipped the coffee. “True story. Could have been so much worse, though.”

  “I know it, son. I know it.” Judson lightly clapped him on the shoulder. They’d all been in a state of panic on Tuesday, until Judson finally got confirmation from the hospital that Slater was alive and in relatively okay condition, considering the length of his slide down the summit.

  Still...they’d both needed to see Slater with their own eyes.

  “I’m a little sad he isn’t coming home to the ranch,” Judson said. “But I do understand his reasons for being closer to the city.”

  “Same.” Reyes had shared some of this morning’s conversation with Judson over the phone earlier, but he’d left out the part about Slater and Derrick hooking up. That wasn’t his gossip to spread to everyone who asked. “Can’t fault a guy for not wanting to feel like a burden to the entire ranch.”

  “It wouldn’t be a burden but I do understand the man’s point of view. Slater has to do what’s best for his recovery.”

  “Yeah.”

  Judson chuckled. “Slater better watch out, though. Our hands shacking up with other people has led to quite a few new relationships around the ranch lately. Yourself included, Mr. Arlington.”

  Reyes smiled at his wedding ring, amused by the last name teasing. He and Miles hadn’t made any big plans about taking the other’s name or hyphenating. Not yet. Although Reyes did think Arlington-Caldero rolled off the tongue smoothly.

  And Judson wasn’t wrong about forced proximity leading to romance. It had happened for Reyes and Miles, Colt and Avery, and most recently, Shawn and Robin.

  “Big difference,” Reyes said, “is all those romances happened at the ranch. There’s something special about that land. Not sure Derrick’s apartment has the same magic.”

  “True, true. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  They did wait and see, and ten minutes later a nurse told them Slater was in Recovery and the surgery had gone well. Judson sent a mass text. Reyes took a chance on Miles being able to speak for two minutes and called him, simply to hear his voice and express Reyes’s relief to his boyfr—husband.

  He was still working on remembering the husband part. Tomorrow was their three-week anniversary already.

  Slater was groggy when they entered his room a while later, but also coherent and glad the surgery was over. “Are you in pain, son?” Judson asked.

  “Not much.” Slater seemed enamored of his own fingers for some reason, and Reyes silently chalked it up to not being used to anesthesia. “Not from my ankle, anyway.”

  “We aren’t going to stay long, because you need your rest,” Reyes said. “But we wanted you to know we were here, and you aren’t alone, brother. No matter where you go, you’ll always have family at Clean Slate.”

  Slater blinked hard several times, and it left his eyelashes wet. “Thank you. It means a lot.”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Sure.”

  Reyes disliked leaving his friend behind, but the worst was behind them. Now Slater had to do everything the doctor told him to do so he made a full recovery. Any other outcome was unacceptable.

  * * *

  Slater watched his bosses leave, his mind still a bit muddled from being under and not liking the feeling. His brain was already mildly scrambled from his skull fracture, and they’d put off the surgery to decrease the chances of him reacting badly to the anesthetic. He was glad they’d knocked him out instead of doing a local, but now he kind of felt like he had the flu. At least the near-constant ache in his ankle was only a very distant throb.

  The surgeon had come by earlier and told Slater exactly what they were going to do, but Slater had only half listened. He didn’t care which rod replaced which bone or strengthened what muscle group, or whatever. He’d simply wanted the procedure over so he could start to heal. Afterward, in Recovery, the surgeon said everything went smoothly. With time, patience and ample physical therapy, he would walk again.

  Music to Slater’s ears.

  He dozed for a while, in between the occasional nurse check, and when he woke a while later, it was dark outside his room’s small window. Slater reached for his cell. After eight. Damn. He was supposed to call Derrick. It wasn’t too late, was it? Nah, not if the stories he’d heard from Colt and Robin about Derrick’s fondness for late-night clubbing were true. It was Friday night.

  So he found Derrick’s contact and called him.

  “Hello?” Derrick’s slightly suspicious voice replied after four rings.

  “It’s Slater.”

  “Oh, hey. I wasn’t sure. The name on my phone said Kendall Stamos, so I thought it
might be a wrong number.”

  Slater flinched. He’d had to put his legal name on the paperwork for his cell, and it was why he always texted the other hands. Never called. “Yeah, that’s me. I just go by Slater, though.”

  “So you’re like the Pink of the cowboy world?”

  “Minus the incredible music talent.” Slater liked that Derrick wasn’t picking on him for his first name. He’d gotten earfuls of teasing from other boys, and even a few girls, as a kid—until the first time he punched a bully in the nose. His father hadn’t even been upset that Slater had gotten three days of detention for it. “Speaking of music, I don’t hear any. Aren’t you a weekend club hound?”

  “Not tonight. Tonight, I am lying in bed next to a beautiful lady.”

  Irritation rippled across Slater’s skin—which made no sense since he had no claim on Derrick’s time or attention. “Pre-planned date? She mind you talking to me?”

  “No, it was a very last-minute hookup, and I doubt she minds at all since she can’t speak yet.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m watching my niece, Mia.” Derrick chuckled, and that deep sound shouldn’t have been as attractive as it was. “Conrad called me to babysit because Sophie needed some time away. I can’t imagine they get much alone time with a newborn in the house.”

  “I bet.” The mental image of Derrick caring for a newborn baby was...kind of adorable. And since when had Slater started thinking of dudes in terms of being adorable? What the hell had that fall done to his head? “So, uh, I should be discharged Sunday before lunch.”

  “That’s great. I bet you’re ready to blow that joint.”

  “Beyond ready, trust me. I hate being cooped up like this. Used to take walks around the property all the time, and I feel like I’m back—” Back in a prison cell dangled off Slater’s lips but he swallowed the words. “I hate not being able to just walk out of here.” He also hated having to spend another full day cooped up in here without sunshine on his face, but the doctor was still watching his...kidney? Blood pressure. Something.

  “I hear you, man. I crashed my bicycle when I was twelve and had to live in a leg cast for most of the summer. Indoors. It sucked ass—I mean donkey ba—crap. It sucked.”

  “Let me guess. Trying not to cuss in front of the baby?”

  “Bingo. I know she doesn’t understand a word, but Sophie would read me the riot act if she caught me.”

  Slater smiled at the thought of big, bad Derrick being scared of someone as small as Sophie Massey, even while his brain took the idea of ass sucking to a whole other level. Did Derrick enjoy rimming? Generally, if Slater was in the mood to have something up his ass, he wanted it to be a nice hard dick, not a tongue. But the few guys he’d rimmed in the past had seemed to enjoy it a hell of a lot. His dick gave an interested twitch at the mental images, but Slater couldn’t quite get it up.

  It also didn’t matter if Derrick liked being rimmed. Slater didn’t want or need a sexual relationship with Derrick right now, especially while they were getting this whole living-together situation sorted. “So am I still going home with you on Sunday?”

  “If you still want to, then my door is open. We’ll have to drive to Clean Slate to pick up your stuff, though. We’re close in size, but I can’t imagine you want to wear another guy’s underwear indefinitely.”

  Slater snorted and the gesture hurt his nose. “Ow. Yeah, I’ll need to pack up my stuff. Reyes and Judson know I’m going to be living with you for a while. Told them a few hours ago.”

  “Okay. I actually already told my next-door neighbors. They’re super chill people. I think you’ll like them.”

  “Great. Uh, what exactly did you tell them about me?”

  “Just about hurting your ankle, that we hooked up once but are super casual, and I offered you a place to make your recovery easy. All the truth.”

  Tell them just enough of the truth so you aren’t caught in the lie.

  A lesson Slater had learned quickly and well his first month in prison, so he could navigate life without bringing the ire of the guards down on his head.

  “Speaking of your recovery,” Derrick continued, “what are you going to be using to get around? I can move some stuff around if you’ll have a wheelchair.”

  “As far as I know, they’re sending me home with crutches. My internist doesn’t think I’ll need a wheelchair, and I don’t think the ranch’s insurance will pay for any of those fancier devices.”

  “Fancier devices? Like what?”

  Slater shrugged, then remembered Derrick couldn’t see him. “Dunno, Wes was saying something about them the other day. Or this morning?” Had Wes visited him today? He couldn’t remember. “Doesn’t matter, I can figure out crutches.”

  “Okay. Uh, do you have any favorite junk food or anything? Like I said, I don’t cook but my food app game is on point. I keep beer in the fridge and basic snacks like chips and salsa and shit.”

  “I’m a fan of Cracker Jack. Sweet stuff, I guess, more than salty. Or a mix of the two?” Slater missed his days of thinking clearly so damned much.

  “Got it. To drink?”

  “I like beer, but I’ll be on pain meds for a while. Plain cola is fine. Or root beer, too, I guess.”

  “Cool. Did I ask if you’re allergic to cats? I can’t remember.”

  Derrick can’t remember something? Join the club.

  “You have a cat?” Something about this sounded vaguely familiar. Had they had this conversation already?

  “The building has a cat. The landlord says the cat came with the house when she bought it, and it stuck around during and after renovations, so she named him Lucky and he’s just part of the place. Goes from apartment to apartment using our toilets and being a general nuisance.”

  Okay, Slater’s head wound was fucking with his hearing. “Did you just say the cat uses your toilet?”

  “Yup. You’ll be living with a toilet-trained cat.”

  “How the fuck do you toilet train a cat?”

  “I asked the same question when I first moved in, so I searched online. Apparently, there are methods that work. Someone took the time once to train Lucky, so it kind of surprises me he’s a stray.”

  “Yeah. And to answer your question, no, I’m not allergic.”

  “Good thing, or I’d be stocking up on antihistamines and tissues, because now that you’ve agreed to move in and be my fake boyfriend, you’re locked into the deal.”

  Fake boyfriend. Right. Slater studied the boring artwork on the wall across from his bed, trying to remember why—oh, yeah. Wedding season. That’s why he was moving in with Derrick temporarily.

  Stupid bruised brain.

  “Then I guess you’re stuck with me,” Slater said. “You’ve locked me into five weddings, if I recall correctly, but I do have one stipulation of my own.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I have to be somewhere in June, and it’s non-negotiable that I attend. I’ll likely need a ride, but you aren’t obligated to stay, or to go as my date.”

  “I’m intrigued. Do I get to know ahead of time what this obligation is?”

  Slater contemplated his answer a beat. “Not yet. Look, I’ll text you when I have a firmer release time.”

  “All right. And I agree to your stipulation. I’m intrigued. Good night, Kendall.”

  Slater groaned. “You tell anyone about that and I’ll make sure Lucky learns how to shit in your bed. There’s a reason the only people I call on my cell are Reyes, Judson and Arthur.”

  “Don’t worry, I can keep a secret. Night.”

  “Yeah, good night.” Slater ended the call and hooked it up to the power cord Hugo had brought for him from the cabin a few days ago. He’d kind of miss living with the kid, who was earnest, eager to please and exceptionally good at problem-solving. He’d definitely miss the ranch and his
fellow horsemen. But he wasn’t saying goodbye on Sunday, just “I’ll see you later.”

  On Sunday, a brand-new adventure began.

  And Slater would never admit out loud that he was kind of terrified.

  Chapter Six

  Slater purposely gave Derrick a pickup time fifteen minutes later than what he actually expected, so he’d have a few moments to himself. Well, sort of to himself. The orderly who’d wheeled him down to the lobby and pickup area stood casually nearby, apparently unable to leave his charge until someone else showed up.

  He fingered the crutches perched across the arms of the wheelchair, unsure how he felt about them. They’d been adjusted to his height and reach, and he’d practiced walking with them yesterday and this morning a bit but still felt unsteady. They made his bruised ribs ache like crazy, but he’d deal. His headaches were almost completely gone, and he hadn’t had a dizzy spell yet today. Part of him wanted to see if his doc would write a prescription for a wheelchair, in case the dizzy spells came back. The last thing he needed was to pitch over and bang his brain around more.

  Just gotta get used to the new normal.

  A new normal in which he lived away from the ranch he loved, with a guy he was attracted to, and then pretended to be his boyfriend for a couple of months. A new normal where his ankle was tender and sore, his ribs still hurt and would for a long time, especially with using crutches. And he had a lot of scabbed cuts that needed ointment frequently so they didn’t leave scars.

  Not that Slater gave too many shits about scars on his body, but he’d like to at least help his face heal back to normal. Didn’t want to scare future ranch guests, after all.

  A blue, four-door sedan trundled up to the curb, and Derrick sprang out of the driver’s side. He didn’t notice Slater was already in the lobby until he walked in the automatic doors. “Hey, am I late?”

  “Right on time,” Slater replied. Derrick’s jeans hugged his hips and package, and the half-tucked-in band tee was almost too tight. “Wouldn’t have taken you for an Aerosmith fan.”