Chapter 14
Things went from bad to worse. Deacon wanted Rafe to stay, but Rafe wanted to go. He shied away every time Deacon went to touch him, and shut himself in his room for the best part of Thursday and Friday.
He was fixated on a single point, that moment when he’d walked into his uncle’s house, kept repeating that if he hadn’t been there, then Deacon could have got to Felix, Chumo and Arlo earlier. Then Felix wouldn’t have killed anyone. The logic was so flawed, but Rafe wasn’t listening. Breaking point came when Rafe wouldn’t even let Deacon cook him dinner on the Friday evening.
“You don’t need to cook me anything.”
“It’s no bother,” Deacon said, and pulled out the pasta and meat.
“No, I don’t want you to. I’m going home tomorrow.”
“I’m cooking for myself.”
Rafe cursed under his breath. “Doesn’t mean you need to cook for me. We’re done here.”
That was when Deacon lost it, big time. He’d been trying to talk, to hug, to kiss, to reassure, and all Rafe wanted was silence and alone time.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Just because I won’t take you home you’re sulking like a child who doesn’t get what he wants for Christmas!” Deacon wished he could have pulled the words back as soon as he’d said them.
Rafe scrambled to stand, awkwardly with his leg, bracing himself on the wall. “Fuck you, Deacon, just…fuck you.”
Then he hobbled out of the hallway and through the door to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Deacon knew he’d handled that horribly; he’d just wanted to say something that would ease the pain in Rafe’s eyes, and had made it worse. He knew that he saw things in black and white, but this was different – this was all the colors in between, and Rafe was suffering from it. He stood and brushed at his pants, anything to delay the inevitable, then opened Rafe’s door.
“I’m sorry,” he said from the doorway before Rafe could tell him to go fuck himself again. Rafe was on his bed, sitting on the side, hunched over. All Deacon wanted to do was go over and hug him, try to make him feel better, but his form of comfort wasn’t cutting it in this situation.
“I think you need to leave me alone,” Rafe said tiredly. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay, I thought we had…something.”
“You don’t have to worry anymore.”
“I don’t understand this. What happened?”
“Proximity,” Rafe mumbled. “I got way too close too fast and forgot who I was. You don’t have to worry about me anymore. You didn’t want me before – proximity pushed us together, and now we’re done.”
Deacon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Cautiously, he moved closer. “You think just because Felix is dead that I want to draw a line under what we had going?”
Rafe threw him a quick look. “It was just sex.”
Deacon shook his head. “No, it was more than that back when we first met, and it’s more than that now.”
Hope flickered in Rafe’s expression, and Deacon forged ahead with more. “I didn’t sleep with you because you were here. I did it because I can’t imagine a life where I don’t get to touch you, or think about you, or just know that you’re mine.”
Deacon let out the breath he’d been holding to say all that and crouched in front of him.
“I want more,” Rafe said. “I’m not sure I deserve it… I don’t…” He stopped and closed his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“All those people dead. I should never have gone to that house.”
“I killed a man,” Deacon murmured, the story inside him welling up from the dark place he’d hidden it. He moved to sit next to Rafe, not touching him but close enough that he felt as if he could share the secret quietly. “A year back, I was at a gas station that was being held up. I had a gun, he saw it and he took a hostage, used her as a human shield. She was terrified. I shot him between the eyes, right over her head. The department designated it a clean shot, but I never got my head around that one thing; what if I’d not been armed? He would have taken what he wanted and left us all alive. He just wanted money. He didn’t want to die.”
Rafe unclenched his fists on the quilt and moved one of them closer to Deacon, nearly close enough to touch but not quite. Deacon wanted to take his hand, but he didn’t want pity, he just wanted to explain.
“So I quit.”
“You were doing your job.”
“That wasn’t what made me quit. There was an internal review and I was taken off active cases for two months, and in those two months other people were hurt, or died. Drugs made their way onto the streets, and I felt responsible for it all. I took that all on me, everything going back to that single moment when Edgar Mackie wanted money and responded to seeing me armed.”
“You felt as if you had to save everyone?”
“Yeah, and it took me a while to get my head out of that spiral. You’ll find your way out of this one day.”
“I wanted to find evidence that my uncle killed my mom, and then my dad. That was all I wanted; not justice for everyone in the entire world.”
Deacon thought they were talking at cross-purposes, and he debated telling Rafe about the people he’d saved after the family had trusted him, after he’d shot Rafe and gained their twisted respect. Maybe he’d save that for another day.
“I’m tired,” Rafe said quietly, and bumped shoulders with Deacon.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” Deacon said into the quiet of the room.
“Uh-huh?” He wasn’t listening now, he was more than done with everything.
“I’d like you to have a tracker on you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Rafe, are you listening to me?”
Deacon sounded stressed, and Rafe looked up to Deacon holding something out to him. A small black disc.
“Put it in your pocket, just in case.”
Rafe took it, but stared at it, not quite knowing what to say. “Why?” he asked.
Deacon shrugged. “Humor me?”
Rafe nodded, he could do that. He slipped it in the pocket of the jacket he’d borrowed from Sam. No point in putting it in his jeans; nothing was going to happen to him here with Deacon next to him. Anyway, Sam had said he could keep it, and he liked it, so decided he would. He’d wear it anytime he wasn’t with Deacon, problem solved.
Seemingly happy with that, Deacon scooted back to rest on the pillows, and pulled Rafe back with him until they were spooning on top of the quilt. Maybe they should have rethought that, got undressed and under the covers? There was a blanket at the base of the bed, and Deacon hooked it with a foot and pulled it over them.
Rafe pushed back into him, wriggled a little to get comfy, but there was nothing sexual about it. Rafe needed a hug, Deacon needed to hug him, and together like that, they slept.