feeding the horses, had showered, pulled on clean boxer briefs, and fallen on the couch. He’d put on a random police procedural that held his attention, even if it wasn’t always factually correct, and pigged out on pulled pork and potato wedges. Two beers after that, he’d passed out. Even on the couch, with no blanket and all the lights on, he’d slept through nine hours by the time the alarm went off at five a.m.
The morning feeding was fairly quick, the horses happy to see a person with food, though they hadn’t been cooperative when he was trying to muck stalls. But when he finished he still had an hour to shower, shave, dress, and drive the forty minutes to the sheriff’s department in Abernathy.
Jase didn’t mind the commute. He’d had to do it his whole life. The perks of ranch life were not having neighbors for miles and having tons of space to fool around. Then of course you had the shit side, which required driving almost an hour to the nearest grocery store.
Looking at the time before shifting his view and pressing the gas pedal to pull on the main highway, Jase was happy to see he might actually have a minute to grab a coffee from Starbucks. His accent might be thicker after a few years back home, but he hadn’t lost all his worldly vices in those three-and-a-half years. He still liked snobby coffee, pretty boys, and expensive jeans. Fuck anyone who had anything to say about it.
Except the pretty boys part. The family was disappointed in him enough to not talk to him, even on their deathbeds, over his not staying home. The bisexuality thing hadn’t seemed like a fight worth having. And who needed to anyways? He’d not talked to them in forever, didn’t look like they wanted him around for more than their whipping boy for years. He hadn’t had anyone special enough to make it an issue over yet. Living so far away, not even girlfriends had done the meet-the-parents bit in years.
Not like he’d had one important enough to either come out or meet the parents. It seemed silly to make a big announcement unless he was in a committed relationship.
That’s what he’d like to tell himself. He’d like to think if he found someone special and that person were a man, he’d be proud to be with that person. He’d literally fought for the right to be with whomever he fell in love with, so far as he was concerned. But he’d seen the negative side of that. And he didn’t even just mean with his parents. Or Ase. He shuttered that thought real quick.
He’d also heard some of his fellow soldiers’ families turn away same-sex partners when they found out posthumously their child—someone who’d died a hero—was gay.
Of course, he didn’t even have a girl to be proudly in a relationship with, so the whole thought process was moot. And Lord knows the last place he’d find anyone was here. No way, no how was he getting stuck in Hope Springs or Abernathy. Because even if he was with a woman, he’d want her to know he was bisexual. He’d want her to accept that side of him. That was one reason he had liked Christa when they hooked up. She’d been cool about it. Until she hadn’t. And he had the feeling that would be exactly how it’d play out with anyone else in this area.
Again, not something worth thinking on.
He passed into the city limits of Abernathy and fist-pumped happily that he still had fifteen minutes to grab a coffee and drive the quarter mile to the sheriff’s department. Oh, the exciting life you lead.
Jase was just glad they’d gotten a damn decent coffee place, even if it was a chain, in Abernathy while he was gone. They usually did get chains in Abernathy, though, it being a decent-sized college town about an hour and a half from Austin. As far as yearlong residents, it wasn’t big enough to know a lot of people in town, especially if you’d lived there your whole life. The population during the school year was much larger, but he knew most of the professors by face, if not