Page 69 of Ransom
I'd asked for every piece of it.
The recognition wasn't new. I'd had it last night with him asleep on top of me, the comforter half-thrown off, and I'd had it the way a man has a thought in the dark when he knows nobody is going to hear him. This was the morning version. Daylight on it. My body keeping the receipts where I could read them, and the knowledge sitting plain in my chest that I would lie down for it again. I'd lie down for it sober. I'd lie down for it in the cold light of a Tuesday afternoon. I'd lie down for it knowing he was gone behind the eyes and using me to hold himself together, and I'd thank him for the use.
Winston, I thought, you old selfish bastard.
The thought didn't hurt. That was the part I couldn't get over.
I propped up on one elbow and looked at him. The marks were on me, and he was the one breathing easy. His face had gone soft in sleep, and the knight tattoo between his shoulder bladescaught the thin light, the scar running through it old and faded. There were others on his back I'd missed in the dark. A man could spend his life in bed with another man and still find new scars if he looked hard enough.
I leaned over and kissed the place between his shoulder blades, slow, and meant it.
He didn't stir.
My head pounded. I needed water. No, scratch that. I needed a good, strong coffee. I needed to brush my teeth and find my hat, and figure out how to be a functional human being after the amount of tequila Eduardo had served us.
I kissed lower, down to the dip at the small of his back where his spine curved into his hips. I pressed my tongue flat against his skin. His hips rolled into the mattress, and his breath caught.
"Mornin'," he murmured into the pillow.
His voice was wrecked, thick with sleep and the hangover.
"Mornin', cowboy," I said and kissed him again.
He coughed. "Hold that thought." Then he was up, off the bed, weight slamming into the bathroom door, and the door slammed shut behind him.
A second later, the sound of him being sick came through the bathroom door.
I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling, and laughed once. The man could put a Texas Ranger on his knees and get him to lick a dead man's boot, but he couldn't hold his liquor.
I gave him a minute. Then I sat up, found my jeans on the floor, pulled them on, and went to the bathroom door.
"I'm gonna run down to the drugstore," I said through it. "We need toothbrushes. Maybe a priest."
There was a pause. "Get the cheap toothbrushes."
"Yes, sir."
I picked up his boots from the foot of the bed and set them upright by the door for him. Then I found my hat, found mysunglasses, and walked out into the parking lot in last night's shirt.
The drugstore was two blocks down. I bought two toothbrushes, one tube of toothpaste, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a roll of antacids. Next door there was a little place that did coffee and pastries for the truckers coming off the interstate. I got two large coffees, mine with honey, his black, and grabbed a fistful of every flavored creamer they had on the counter and dumped them in the bag. He could pick. I'd ask him to teach me which one once and never forget.
The doughnut case was right at the register. I stood there with my coffees, looked at the doughnuts, thought about being a Ranger and about every joke that had ever been made at my expense, and bought a half dozen anyway. I am, among other things, a man who knows what the bit is.
I added a cinnamon roll on the way out. The thing was the size of my fist, which was almost as big as they made them in Texas, but not quite.
The walk back, the sun was high and mean. It was barely ten o'clock and you could already cook an egg on the sidewalk. My head still hurt, but the coffee helped just by being warm in my hand.
Ransom was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his boots on when I came in.
He'd washed his face. His hair was wet at the temples, jeans on, shirt on, the man putting himself back inside the man. He glanced up when I shouldered the door closed, and for half a second he just looked at me, and something crossed his face that wasn't on the menu of expressions Ransom Lanza usually offered the world.
Then he went back to his boot.
"Coffee," I said, and held it out.
He took it. "Black?"
"Black. Got you a bouquet of creamers." I tossed the bag of packets onto the bed beside him.
