“Yes, Trudy told me. But it’s only temporary, isn’t that right?”
“That’s what they say.” Nick polished off his beer before admitting, “But I don’t see it happening. Her coming back home, that is. The dementia seems worse than ever, and physically… she’s not doing so well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Nick nodded and signaled for another beer as Ciera offered, “Your mom’s only a little older than me. She could fight her way back from this.”
“Maybe.” Nick gave it some thought for a minute or two before demurring, “I just don’t see much fight in her these days.” The waitress put a fresh beer in front of him, and he took a gulp before snorting, “What am I saying? She never had any fight in her. If she had, she would have stood up to—” Nick caught himself before he went too far down that road. Even though he knew Ciera probably had a sketchy idea of his past, it wasn’t something they’d ever discussed.
So he was wholly unprepared when she rather matter-of-factly said, “I tell him about you, Nick.”
His head shot up, and he stared at the little nun in disbelief. “What? Who? Who do you tel—”
“Your father, of course.”
The room started spinning around him, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol he’d consumed. Nick finally gathered his wits enough to ask, “How did you know?”
Ciera gave a short, rueful laugh. “You have the same last name, for starters. He’s incarcerated for gravely injuring his wife. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”
The truth was suddenly so obvious, Nick felt foolish for not having guessed before. Ciera ministered regularly at Fayette County Prison. Of course she would have run into his father sometime in the past twenty years. However, she’d kept her silence about Sam Zales all the years she’d known Nick, and he fervently wished she hadn’t decided to break it that night. With barely suppressed fury, he demanded, “Why bother with him?”
“It’s what I do. I minister to everyone because if God doesn’t give up on people—and He doesn’t—then I have no right to do that either.”
“Are you trying to tell me he’s changed?”
“Not that I can see. He’s still very much a violent, angry, bitter man.”
“Of course,” Nick sneered. “So why the hell are you telling him anything about me?”
“Because he likes it, even if he won’t admit it. Because it helps me reach that core of humanity that’s there, even in him.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Which part, that he likes to hear about you or that there’s humanity in him?”
“Neither.”
“If you’re so sure, then there’s no harm in seeing for yourself. Is there?”
“No harm… but no point.”
Ciera looked at him shrewdly and said, “I guess the only point would be if you wanted to see what he has to say to you after all these years. But since you don’t….” She shrugged and finished her drink. “Are you almost done? I have to be getting back to the convent. I hope you’re not planning on driving home tonight.”
Though he was suspicious of the abrupt change of subject, Nick said, “Nah. I’m staying at The Sunshine Motel on Seneca.” However, she didn’t raise the subject of his father again, and he walked Ciera to her car in silence. This time they parted with a handshake.
After picking up some takeout on his way to the motel, Nick let himself into the small room and gratefully flopped on the bed. He rested for a few minutes, running the events of the night over in his head. Finally, his growling stomach demanded attention, so he got up and changed into a sweatshirt and jeans before tearing into his food. All the while he ate, Nick stared at his cell phone lying abandoned on the dresser. He was imbued with an overwhelming desire to call Logan, or even Trudy, but finally decided against it.
In the end, the number he dialed was to his mother’s room in the nursing home. His five-minute chat with her was as frustrating as ever, with Agnes fading in and out of coherence. After complaining that the nurses were trying to get her to eat “six or seven meals a day,” she was lucid enough to ask, “When’re you comin’ to see me again?”
“I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Okay, good night, son.”
“Wait a minute, Mom. There’s two things I wanna tell you.”
“What?”
“The first thing is, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, I can wait ’til tomorrow for your visit.” Without further ado, Agnes hung up her phone.
Nick stared at the dead phone in his hand for a moment before shaking his head and saying, “The second is that I forgive you.”
He started getting ready for bed, ruminating on the conversation with his mom. In the end he decided that it had been fine. After all, that last sentiment hadn’t really been intended for her benefit.
Chapter 17:
Another Heart
The person who tries to live completely alone will not succeed as a human being; the heart withers if it does not answer another heart.
—Pearl S. Buck
SUNDAY EVENING, Nick pulled into the driveway of his house feeling both physically and emotionally drained. When he’d arrived in Pittsburgh five hours earlier, he’d headed straight to the nursing home to see his mom. After his epiphany of forgiveness—for both of them—he had expected the visit to be… different. He wasn’t exactly sure in what way he’d expected it to be different, or significant, but it didn’t really matter since it had pretty much been the same as all his other visits to the nursing home. He, ever the dutiful son, had helped feed his mom lunch and watched some old movies with her, all the while initiating several fruitless conversations with Agnes, who seemed frail, confused, and withdrawn.
Having failed to find the comfort he was looking for in a visit with his mom, Nick rested his head against the steering wheel as a wave of overwhelming isolation swamped him. His mind immediately turned toward Logan, the one man who’d managed to completely and thoroughly breach the lonely shell Nick had spent years erecting around himself. Yet as much as he yearned for Logan, he recognized that there was now a distance in their relationship, a distance Nick had put there when he’d conflated Logan with Norah’s murderer and his own father.
Part of Nick wanted to wipe that moment away, to loudly protest to his own conscience that he’d been upset when he’d made that connection, had been merely lashing out in pain, and that no such doubts existed. But he couldn’t. For too long he’d lied to himself, swept all uncertainties under the rug, and now there was a price to be paid for that longstanding denial. If he and Logan were to last—and Nick could admit that he wanted that more than anything—then they had to face those questions together.
Even as he started to face up to that harsh reality, silently Nick protested, Does it have to be tonight? He felt chilled, heart and soul, and he ached for the warmth of Logan’s presence. Having at last decided on a course of action, Nick snatched his overnight bag off the passenger seat and hurried to the house. By the time he reached the entrance, he already had his cell phone out and paused only to flip the hall light switch on before punching in Logan’s number.
Logan answered after two rings, but rather than the “hello” Nick expected, he got, “I know I said we’d be there by now, but we ran into some traffic, Linda.”
“Uh, what?”
“Nick?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Aww, shit. Sorry. I thought it was—girls, would ya pipe down? I’m on the phone here.”
Logan’s daughters could be heard offering not-very-contrite apologies in the background. Since he had no desire for an audience, Nick said, “I guess I caught you at a bad time. Give me a call when you can talk.”
“Sure thing. Won’t be that long.”
Nick stuck his phone back in his shirt pocket, relieved to have made even minimal contact with Logan, and philosophically decided to take the opportunity to unpack and do some laundry. After he started the first load, he headed upstairs to
the kitchen and made a sandwich out of salami that smelled like it was still okay to eat. He started reflecting disconsolately on the empty week that stretched ahead of him when he was blindsided by a sudden thought. Shit! I quit my job. I don’t have another week off, I have… forever off. What the fuck was I thinking?
After Nick was done smacking himself, both metaphorically and literally, he made a vow to call Trudy first thing in the morning and see if he could retract that impetuous resignation. Fortunately, the ring of his cell phone stopped him from dwelling any longer on his possible state of unemployment. A glance at the screen confirmed that it was indeed Logan returning his call. “Hey, Logan.”
“Hey, Nick. Sorry ’bout that earlier. I didn’t bother lookin’ at my phone ’cause I was on the road. Just assumed it was Linda callin’ again ’bout us getting back from Elco so late.”
“Is that where you went this weekend?”
“Yeah. How was your—how’d you make out at Norah’s funeral?”
How the hell could Nick sum up the mixed bag of emotions he’d experienced over the past forty-eight hours? “It was okay. Hard, for real. Seeing her in the coffin and meeting her family sure tore me up, but I’m glad I went.”
“I still don’t think you should’ve gone alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. Ciera was there.”
The silence on the other end spoke of Logan’s surprise, but after a few seconds he breathed, “Oh. That’s good. I guess?”
Not bothering to hide the wonder in his own voice, Nick answered, “Yeah, it was.”
Another awkward pause ensued, and Logan offered, “If you was with Sister Ciera, then I suppose ya had ’nough talkin’ this weekend.”
The halfhearted attempt at humor fell flat, but Nick heard the question behind it—Are you ready to talk to me?—so he answered it. “Not to the right person.” The only answer was a sharp intake of breath from Logan, so he persevered. “I know how early you have to get up for work, but do you think you could come over, or I could come to your place if you just give me direc—”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Great.”
To distract himself from his almost painful eagerness for Logan’s arrival, Nick busied himself with more laundry and other chores. He was in the basement hanging up some damp shirts when he was startled by the blast of a horn from outside. Nick ignored it at first, thinking it was for a neighbor, but when the sound repeated, he jogged up the steps and peered out the front room window.
In the dim glow from a streetlight, Nick could make out the Thunderbird—as he’d never seen it before. Every other thought flew out of his head. He banged out the front door and ran up to his now shiny red car. He and Logan stood across from each other, separated by the car, twin grins of pride and satisfaction illuminating their faces. Nick was nearly speechless. He ran a reverent hand across the hood, saying, “I can’t…. I can hardly believe it’s the same car.”
Logan stared down at the gleaming sports car, nodding in apparent agreement, but then squinted up at him. “It ain’t, thanks to us.”
“Damn skippy,” Nick answered with a smile. And suddenly he was moving towards Logan, who was already on a collision course with him. In seconds, he was hugging the solid warmth of that man to him with a fierce, desperate need. Nick buried his face in Logan’s neck, knowing that their problems loomed as large as ever but also knowing that this feeling, this solace, this rightness was worth fighting for. With one arm slung over Logan’s shoulders, he said, “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
THE GREETING was everything Logan could have wished for, especially when Nick kicked the front door shut behind them and immediately pushed him up against the wall, diving for his mouth. All Logan could do was sag back against the ancient wallpaper and go with the flow. He groaned into the kiss as Nick’s tongue demanded entrance and greedily plundered his mouth before moving to plant a series of sucking kisses along Logan’s stubbled jaw.
Abruptly, Nick pulled back and trained on him a laser-intense flash of eyes gone black with intensity. “You know we gotta talk later, right?”
Logan emerged from his daze of lust just long enough to answer, “Yeah, I know.” But he didn’t let go of Nick’s arms. In fact, he held on tighter. There was no way he was letting go, not when he finally had this man right where he needed him after being too long apart.
Nick leaned back into the embrace, rumbling in his ear, “The operative word being ‘later’. Now is for—”
“Fucking,” Logan growled back.
“And there was a time I thought you weren’t so eloquent.”
Logan barely noticed the joke, since the jester was dragging him up the stairs as he said it. Soon they reached the bedroom, and Nick immediately tore his oxford off and started to work on Logan’s snap front shirt. Logan let him have his way, since his own hands were busy yanking Nick’s jeans open. With singleminded intent, they managed clumsily, haltingly, with frantic kisses drawing the process out, to get rid of all bothersome clothing. When he pushed Nick’s naked body down on the bed and climbed on top, Logan felt like he’d found the oasis in his own personal hell of a desert.
Nick was groaning, “Need you bad, babe. I gotta—”
Logan cut him off with a kiss before whispering in his ear, “Me, too. Gotta have you inside me, all I been thinking about.” Recognizing Nick’s intent to move, he pushed him back with a none-too-gentle shove, mumbling, “There’s somethin’ I been wantin’…. I wanta try….” Never articulate to begin with, Logan found it almost impossible to spell out his plans for their coupling.
A wanton grin slid across Nick’s face as he murmured, “Okay, we’ll do it your way.” He leaned up and kissed Logan before saying with a sexy smirk, “Whatever that is.”
Logan answered by using his body to pin Nick flat against the bed, enjoying the skin-to-skin contact, sweat-damp, strong bodies glued together from chest to thigh, both panting from the electric charge as their erections pressed together. They gasped and moaned in each other’s mouths, Nick pushing up desperately, sending a spike of increased arousal through Logan.
With a shaking hand, Logan fumbled for the lube in Nick’s nightstand and prepared himself as quickly as he dared. Finally he crawled up his lover’s body until he was straddling him. Logan levered himself up on strong thighs before sinking down, tortuously slow, onto Nick’s engorged cock. The sear of heat and stretch of fullness was everything Logan had been dreaming about, though the look of surprise and wonder on Nick’s face was better than any dream he’d ever had.
The friction Logan felt riding Nick this way was painfully wonderful in its intensity, and he increased the rhythm of his movements as he leaned in for another bruising kiss. When Nick started working Logan’s cock, the pressure was already building, and shudders of desire went through his body. He was faintly aware that he wasn’t going to last very long, but he kept pistoning up and down, harder and more frantic, grabbing at Nick’s sweaty, slick skin for a grip.
Nick pulled him down for another kiss, biting at his tender lips, rougher than before, answering Logan’s own burning need. Nick’s eyes glittered with hot, dark desire, and something else, something he’d never recognized in those depths. The realization caused him to gasp for air. Logan leaned his forehead against Nick’s and stilled for a moment, trying wordlessly to let Nick know: Me too. It’s more than just this for me, until moving became an imperative and he went back at it, even more frantic than before, almost uncontrolled.
Nick threw his head back, arching up as he came, a white-hot flood pushing up into Logan, who couldn’t help but follow, coming so hard his world narrowed to just him and his blinding orgasm until he collapsed onto Nick, their bodies forming a sweaty tangle, heartbeats thudding a matching tempo, both shuddering with aftershocks as they came back down to earth.
WHEN NICK woke, he found half of his body covered by a slumbering Logan. Extricating himself from the position proved tricky, since the two of them were glued together
by a mixture of dried sweat and semen. When he did push away, it felt like two pieces of Velcro pulling apart, and either the sound or the sensation served to awaken Logan.
Nick smiled into those sleep-dazed, lust-sated eyes. “Hey, I was gonna get a drink. Want somethin’?”
“Yeah,” Logan rasped. “I’m pretty parched.”
“Guess we both lost a lotta fluid,” Nick answered. “How does a beer sound?”
“Sounds good.”
Nick dashed downstairs and grabbed two IC Lights out of the fridge. When he returned, Logan was sitting up against the headboard, looking much more awake. Sliding in next to him, Nick passed one of the beers over, then opened his own. He took a long swallow before getting down to business. “Did you go to Elco just to get the car painted, or was there something else?”
Logan fortified himself with a taste of his beer before replying, “I mainly went to talk to Daisy.”
“’Bout what?”
“Jerry Sievers.”
Though Nick wasn’t sure what he had expected as an answer, that was a surprise. “What did you…. So what happened?”
“I told her that she had no right to blackmail me into keepin’ quiet about what Jim did to my friend.” Nick nodded in agreement, about to voice his approval, but Logan plowed ahead, his tone and face growing more agitated with each word. “I said she’d been covering up for Jim his whole life and it’s time for her to stop. And….” Logan shook his head and swallowed hard, as if it was too difficult to continue.
“And?” Nick prodded.
A shaky breath, and then he answered, “And I told her how mad I been all these years. Mad at Jim, sure—but her, too.”
“How’d she take it?”
“She was hurt, tried to push it all away—pretended it didn’t matter anymore—but I kept at her, and she finally admitted that she’d been wrong. She even apologized.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 126
