Loving the Broken Man (The Cowboys of Katydid Farm Book 3)

by Sam E. Kraemer

  "OH…FUCK…NO! I AM NOT doing that to that boy. Do you have any idea how that will FUCK HIM UP? God, Danny, that's heartless," Mickey chastised, harshly. Danny was surprised, but he pushed on.

  "Mick, I love him, I really do, but he's a brain like Tim, okay? The kid had a four-point-oh in high school and got admitted to some top-notch schools, okay? He didn't think he'd get to go because of his daddy who's a stone-cold bastard, but now that his pa's not a problem. I won't be the reason he doesn't go to college. I pray Kayley is smart enough to have her choice of colleges like Jase," Danny explained.

  It was really a shitty thing to say because Meggie would be lucky if she could learn to live on her own with her condition. Danny loved the little girl, but he needed Mickey to back him up.

  He knew Mickey had influence over Jase, and he knew his best friend could talk the boy into college. He had a way about him that he could talk an Eskimo into buying ice.

  "Nice try, but no. I won't do it. I refuse to tell him he can't work and live here, Dan. You have no idea how it is to be homeless. I do. You go ahead and dump him and send him home. Jonny and I'll take care of him. I'm damn glad Jon didn't pull this shit with me," Mickey told him before he hung up.

  "He'll get over it," Dan told himself as he went about the rest of the day. It was going to be awful, but if he had his way, Jase would leave and never look back. The kid had a future as bright as the sun and Danny Johnson was determined he had the stars in his future. It was only right.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "I'm so sorry, Jase, but this just ain’t gonna work out between us. If the social worker finds out…well, you know from livin' with Jon and Mickey, and you know from Matt and Tim. I think it's best if we don't see each other anymore.

  “I got a call from the woman that she's gonna come in the morning to speak to Kayley and me, so I had Adam go to the house and pack your stuff so you can stay at the Katydid tonight. If he missed anything, I'll send it to ya at Mick and Jon's. I'm sorry, but Kayley's my responsibility. I gotta look out for her because I'm all she's got."

  "Sure, Danny. I understand about it. Um, can we…I mean, can I call you? Can we keep e-mailing? I won't bother you too much, but I love you, Danny."

  "You don't know what love is, Jason. Son, you're eighteen-years-old, and we've only known each other for about three months, really. Your life is just startin', and I've got responsibilities you're too young to comprehend.

  “You should be in college, getting a fake ID to slip into bars, and hangin' out with friends. You don't need to worry about how kindergarten is gonna be for some older guy's kid. This has been a good time, really it has, but I think we both need to wake up and smell the co…"

  Jase sat up in bed, feeling the tears on his face, yet again. The whole scene was too much to contemplate, which was why he supposed it came to him in his dreams because, in his waking hours, he refused to think about it…remember it…feel the gut-wrenching pain that made him wish to go to sleep and never wake again.

  Having his heart crushed in his chest and feeling like a fool had been more than enough to make him retreat. After that fateful night, he'd gone back to Wonderland Farm, slipping in during the wee hours of the morning, unnoticed, before hiding away for a week.

  He'd always give Megan credit for knocking on his door every morning and keeping him alive. "Jase? You wanna come outside? We can swim," she'd ask.

  His sniveling 'no thanks, sweetie' would send her little feet scrambling down the stairs. When he heard her yell, 'he's alive', it actually made him smile. He knew Jon and Mickey were worried about him, so after that first week, he crawled down those stairs and went back to work.

  He'd called his mother, telling her he'd come to visit her and he'd gone at Mickey's urging. The visit had been intense.

  "This is nice," Jase told his mother, Ginny when she pulled into the driveway of her house at Ft. Sill after she'd picked him up from the airport in Lawton. His father was away, and his mother told him she didn't know where, but he didn't really care anyway.

  "It seems smaller than Ft. Bliss, but there are actually gay and lesbian… Um, how's things been with you?" she asked as they got out of the car and walked up to the small brick house on yet another Army base where he didn't want to be.

  He thought about telling her how his heart had been torn apart and how he'd been humiliated beyond compare in a few short months, and then he thought about telling her how he'd sat one night with a razorblade in his hands and thought about just ending the pain because he didn't think he was worth anything to anyone…not his father, not her, and especially not Danny Johnson.

  He finally decided if he did himself in, there'd be nobody to even care which pissed him off so much, he tossed the blade in the trash, dried his tears, and vowed to never look back.

  "Yeah, well, it's nice. What do you want, Mom? You know HE's never going to approve of having a queer son, so this is for what?" Jase asked, trying to get to the bottom of it.

  She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes with big tears in her own. "This is for ME, Jason. I love your father, but I believe he's wrong in this. I've been going to meetings with a group on base. It's called PFLAG. If your father knew, he'd be upset, but I needed to understand, and since they repealed DADT, the Army is more accepting of homosexuals. Unfortunately, older people like Dad have a hard time with it," she explained.

  Jase was taken aback for a minute, but the fact she was doing it behind James' back told him the real story. When the saber-tooth tiger's away, the mouse will play. He didn't want to fuck up his mother's life, so he simply nodded.

  "Okay, Mom. Anyway, I'm here. What's there to do in Oklahoma?" he asked. She proceeded to show him around the new base and even introduced him to some of the other women on base who had families with soldiers deployed. Some of the kids were pretty great and reminded him too much of a little girl with a crooked ponytail who he was missing very much.

  The day he was to leave, his mother drove him to the airport and parked in a departure lane with a look of worry on her face. "I have something for you, Jason. I love you so much, and I wish things were different, but we have to play the hand we're dealt, I suppose. Anyway, after Grandma and Grandpa Cooper died, they left me a little bit of money your father doesn't know about. I want you to have this," she told him as she handed him a large-sized, yellow check. He looked at it to see it was a cashier's check for fifty thousand dollars with his name typed on it. He was in shock.

  "Mom, they had a little piece of shit farm…" he began.

  "No! I know it didn't look like much, but they lived on a little patch of land with more acreage around it than even I knew, and it sold for a tidy sum when Grandma passed. I had the lawyer put it in a trust for me so your father would never know about it, and I contacted the attorney after we moved to have him dissolve the trust and send me the remainder after all expenses were paid. I want you to go to college, Jase. You have the gift of intellect and it shouldn't go to waste. Use this to fill in for the money your dad refused to help you find, okay? Please?" she begged him.

  When he got on the plane to go home, he actually cried because he felt like he was robbing from his mother, but he'd always wanted to go to college. The money she'd given him would be enough if he was careful and took advantage of work/study programs and grants and scholarships. It just might work.

  He heard his bedroom door open, so he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. "Shit sakes. Get your lazy ass up," his roommate ordered as she bounced her foot on his bed in the closet he called a bedroom of their three-bedroom apartment.

  Brittany leased the place, having lived in the dorms and hating it her freshman year. He'd met her at a coffee shop near the college where he was applying for a job, and she'd actually been a lifesaver for Jase when he first hit the campus and became dismayed with his freshman roommate, a total homophobe. Her abrasive personality had been trying over the three years he'd been enrolled at GT…Georgia Institute of Technology…but they'd come to
appreciate each other over little things.

  Jase liked to get up early in the morning to review notes before class, and he made the coffee. Brit wasn't a morning person at all, and when she trudged into the kitchen without saying a word, he handed her a full cup without the woman even having to open her eyes.

  Jase did the grocery shopping and cooked the food. Brittany in return would leave money on the table with a note of thanks.

  Jase was afraid of spiders, and in the old place where they lived, there were a lot of them. Brittany had no such phobia and would delight in killing them with a grand curtsy when she walked out of his bathroom as she killed the spiders and flushed them. The two of them were nearly a match made in heaven aside for the fact she was a lesbian, and he was a gay man.

  Atlanta, Georgia, had become his home for the last three years after the devastation that rocked his soul when Danny Johnson dropped him like a bad habit. As a result, Jase had fast-tracked his education because he had limited funds and a goal to get through school and still have some money left to be able to eat and maybe have first and last months' rent for an apartment somewhere.

  He'd already accepted a job in Rockville, Maryland, for a cyber-security firm that contracted with the Securities Exchange Commission in Washington, DC. The company had corporate housing available until he found a place of his own, and the salary was good. He could actually work from anywhere, but Maryland seemed like as good a place as any to settle since he had no real ties to anyone or any place.

  "You're a cunt," he told the woman shaking his bed, hearing her loud cackle which always made his blood curdle over the time he'd known her.

  "I let your little playmate out. God, you pick twinks afraid of their own shadows," she complained. It was then Jase remembered picking up a sophomore from a bar near campus and bringing him home. After the blowjob the kid had given him, Jase passed out and didn't even remember the guy’s name. He felt bad for about a minute, but then it passed.

  "I'm not a dyke. Everybody's not a raging lunatic like you. I like my men submissive," he explained as he rose from the bed, not bothering to cover up his semi-hard cock.

  "Oh, gross!" Brittany groaned before she turned away.

  "This is a no-pussy zone, and you know it, Brit. Did you turn on the coffee pot?" Jase asked as he strutted across the small room to the communal bathroom he shared with her and their other roommate, Bryan, 'with a 'Y' you see,' he'd told them.

  It had seemed important to the man when he’d told them, so they began referring to him as 'Y', kind of like 'Q' from the Bond films they watched on movie nights.

  "'Y' didn't come home. You don't think he's fallen into any mischief, do you? He's supposed to be here through next term, and he has a lot of shit in his room," Brit complained, which was constant in Jase’s mind.

  Brittany was in a perpetual state of hatred for everyone around her whether they deserved it or not, as far as Jason was concerned. She'd actually toughened him up as well…and she'd made him attend yoga with her over the time they'd shared the house. He'd become very nimble over the years, and while it should be a 'plus' on his dating resume, he didn't date, thus no one had experienced his agility.

  Jason came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist in deference to her sensibilities when it came to the male form. "I'd guess he got laid. I wouldn't send out a search party just yet. So, how long will you give me to move out my shit? I mean, I'm sure this closet will go for top dollar while you're in grad school," he taunted, hoping to piss her off. He loved nothing more than arguing with his landlady.

  She laughed. "God if you had tits and a pussy, we'd be a match made in heaven. You get as long as you need, Sprout. Pack this crap up and I'll make sure it gets sent to your new address as soon as you give it to me. I reserve the right to come visit, by the way," she told him which led him to believe something he'd always known. Brittany didn't hate him as she often claimed. It gave him some comfort.

  "Thanks, Mom," he teased as he shoved her out of the small bedroom so he could dress. It was his graduation day, and he was actually excited to get on with his life.

  For so very long he hadn't cared about his life, but that was now semi-ancient history. In the words of the great Celine Dion, "There are two days you can't worry about…yesterday and tomorrow," or something like that. He might have been a little high when he heard that interview because one thing he loved about Brit…she had a hook-up for some of the most exquisite herb he'd ever had in his life. It was, however, time to put it all behind him and move on to the future.

  When he strolled out of his small bedroom in a suit he'd been able to buy with some of his nest egg, he felt like the king of the world. He had the blue and gold tie loose around his neck because it was hot as fuck in the house and he still had an hour before he had to show at McCamish Pavilion.

  He already knew his mother wasn't coming because after his father returned from his deployment, he hadn't heard from her again. For six months, they'd become best friends and had visited each other. She’d loved Atlanta and all things southern, so most of the time she'd come to him while he was in school.

  Jase went to Oklahoma a couple of times, but when his father returned from the Middle East, it was back to business-as-usual. Jase couldn't really hold it against Ginny because it was the life she'd signed up for twenty-two years earlier. He didn’t really expect her to change.

  He’d sent e-mail invitations for his graduation to Jon and Mick, along with Ally and Ham, his extended family. Savannah and Andy were going to Italy for a summer abroad course between their junior and senior years of college, having left as soon as their classes ended, so he knew they wouldn't be attending.

  As he sat in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, he did something he rarely allowed himself to do…he thought about Kayley and Dan. He knew Dan's brother, Zach, had married his college sweetheart, Amy, and they had actually moved to New York when Zach got a promotion at his job. Over Christmas, they had a baby boy, as Mickey had told him when they had a regular call. Mickey had heard the news from Tim Moran, which surprised Jase. Mickey never told him about a discussion with Danny and it had him puzzled.

  The adoption of Kayley had been finalized without incident, which made Jase happy and sad at the same time. Danny still worked at the Circle C, he and Kayley still living in the little house in Holloway. His heart ached as he wondered what they were up to, and much to Jase's shame, he still missed them every fucking day he drew a breath.

  Meggie was in the third year of her special school in Richmond, and she was doing quite well. So well, in fact, Mickey and Jon were considering mainstreaming her when she got to middle school level. Having visited the family over the years when he had forced breaks from school, he could see how she'd grown and matured, so he was sure she'd do well in whatever course her life took.

  Terry was a junior in high school at seventeen, and he was a football powerhouse. From what Jon told him during their phone calls, Terry had been scouted by some of the top colleges on the East Coast. Jase was happy for them all and looked forward to the two weeks he'd planned to spend with them before he moved his ass to Maryland and took the next step into his future.

  Jase sipped his coffee and looked around the shabby apartment they'd all shared in Atlanta, smiling at a few choice memories. There had been guys over the three years, but they were only temporary and he’d refused to fuck…either way. On occasion, he'd take a cock into his mouth, but he'd become quite selective. Only sandy-blonde, shorter men with muscular builds had been his choice, and he didn't dismiss the reasons why.

  He couldn't help himself. He'd always love Danny Johnson, though they hadn't been in contact in three years. It was for the better. Jason's heart couldn't take another hammering.

  Jason Langston sat in the uncomfortable, metal chair inside McCamish Pavilion. He looked around seeing a lot of parents who seemed to be happy, and he smiled a little at the sight. He hoped they were supportive of their kids who were graduating from college,
and he blocked out things circling his own head about wishing happiness for himself. It wasn't in the cards.

  Jase Langston was destined to be as miserable as his father seemed to be, he was sure, so he resigned himself to it and decided he wouldn't be bitter about it with outsiders. He'd accept the unhappiness which seemed to be his destiny. It was the best way to be…resigned.

  When his row was called, he stood and glanced around the large auditorium to see no one he knew which wasn't really a surprise. He was a footnote in the world of the people in Virginia he'd met one summer, so why he'd hoped they'd come was simply embarrassing.

  He got into the line and listened to the names called before his, clapping for his classmates. He'd done his degree in three years, and he was proud of himself even if nobody else in his life gave a shit.

  "Jason Eric Langston," he heard called as he slowly strolled across the stage. He heard a loud cheer and turned toward the sound, seeing several signs held in the air, which stopped him in his tracks.

  "Congratulations, Jay," he heard from his adviser who pulled him around to move him off the stage with a handshake. He shook hands with Dr. Sanders, the dean of his school before he made his way to the stairs. He had no idea who the hell was cheering or who had made signs with his name on them and "Congratulations" in large, capital letters, but he wanted to know, so he pointed to the corner of the room and gave them a ‘thumbs-up’, hoping they knew he wanted to meet them after the ceremony.

  "Come on, Mate," Jason heard behind him as he turned to see Thomas Leeds with a handsome smile on his face as he pulled him down the stairs. The Aussie was one he'd have liked to get to know, but it seemed the guy was straight…though Jase wasn't exactly sure about the diagnosis by his group of classmates from his program. Perhaps it was wishful thinking on his part to hope the man wasn't? The man certainly had a look about him that could lead on a gay boy.