Free Forever Promised by Amy Lane Page B

sworn as long as his heart kept pumping, he wasn’t ever going to let anybody down, ever again.
    But it sure did feel good to have Crick behind him, shoring him up when he felt all that self-sufficiency like a steel vault resting on his shoulders. With Crick it was bearable, and for this moment, he succumbed.
    Crick lowered his head and nuzzled Deacon’s ear, and Deacon smiled and ducked his head, feeling shy, which was something he’d never be able to completely conquer, not even in front of Crick, no matter how many soccer teams he coached.
    “Deacon?”
    “Hm?”
    “How come you don’t want my sister to have this baby?”
    Deacon stiffened, but Crick pulled him right back into the cradle of his shoulders, chest, groin, and thighs, and Deacon had to fight not to relax completely. There was some shit Crick just didn’t need to think about.
    “I told you,” Deacon muttered, keeping that core of iron rigid in his spine, even when Crick was licking the back of his neck. “She needs to live her own life, raise her baby—”
    “You love that baby,” Crick reminded him, but Deacon knew that, he was prepared for that spike of pain.
    “So do you. But we had our time with her in our house. It’s time for them to go be a family. It’s only healthy—”
    “C’mon, Deacon. You’ve said this before. That’s not your reason, or not”—because he must have felt Deacon stiffen to protest—“your whole reason.”
    “My whole reason is my own,” Deacon said. He made to turn around, to walk away, from the haven of Crick’s body, from the comfort he was offering, but Crick held him in place.
    “You want to know why I want this baby?” Crick asked conversationally.
    Deacon twisted his mouth. “So you can tell people your sister had your husband’s baby, and watch them lose their fucking minds?”
    Crick chuckled evilly. “Yeah, well there is that, but the more important reason?”
    Oh God. Yes. Of course Deacon wanted to know. Seven and a half years ago, they’d made love at Promise Rock for the first time, and Deacon had thought he’d seen everything to see about the boy he’d grown up with. But he’d been wrong—there was a strength and a resolve he’d missed at that moment, and since then, there wasn’t a damned thing about Crick that Deacon didn’t want to see.
    “Thrill me,” Deacon muttered, thinking he really was thrilled, and that was damned embarrassing.
    “I want to see if he’ll have your eyes—”
    “It could be a girl.”
    “—or the shape of your nose—which is unfairly small, you know.”
    “That’s not unfair on a girl.”
    “Shut up, I’m on a roll. I want to know if he’ll have your voice—because you’ve got this really amazing, unexpectedly deep voice—and be as smart as you, and if he—”
    “Or she!”
    “You’re being a pain in the ass!”
    “I’m stating a fifty-fifty chance!” Deacon was laughing now, though, which may or may not have been an improvement.
    “Yeah, well, let me finish. I want to know if he or she has your ability on a horse or your smile—” Crick started to get choked up, because he was a lot like Benny in that they both wore their hearts on their sleeve. Either way, it was a time to put a stop to this.
    “Or my shyness,” Deacon interrupted, his voice serious, “or my alcoholism, or my goddamned heart defect. Don’t get romantic about my gene pool, Crick, it’s more like a pig wallow, and you know it!”
    Crick stepped back and gasped like he’d been struck.
    “That’s it !” he screeched, loud enough to make the horses grunt and shift and stamp in their stalls. “ That’s the reason you don’t want this baby, isn’t it?”
    Deacon stepped sideways and kept his vision firmly fixed on Flower Princess. “Go tell Benny no, okay? She didn’t seem to want to hear it from me.”
    “Deacon, turn around, goddammit, and face this like a man!”
    Deacon did, and met Crick’s furious gaze with his own. He wasn’t sure what Crick