Marie Sexton - Promises

I kept feeling things crawling on me, but nobody seemed to notice. I finally managed to catch one of the nurses and said, “Bugs on my skin.”

She patted my hand and said, “It’s the Oxycodone.”

I heard the words but had no idea what they meant. I was trying to break the sentence down. It was definitely in English.

I fell asleep again before I got any further than that.

THE time finally came when I woke up, and the world made sense again. The fog in my brain had receded and become only a cloudy blotch in my memory. I was relieved that, at that moment, the only person in the room with me was Matt. He was leaning against the wall, looking out the window.

“Oxycodone makes me itch,” I said. Well, maybe there was still a little bit of fog left. I wasn’t exactly sure why that was the first thing to come out of my mouth.

His head whipped my direction. “What?”

“The painkiller they were giving me. It makes my skin crawl.”

He smiled and came to sit on the bed next to me. “That explains a lot. You kept saying ‘bugs.’”

“Next time I get shot, tell them I want Vicodin instead.”

“I will.” But then his face became serious. “You look like hell. How do you feel?”

“Like I need a shower.” I was looking around a little more and realized there were flowers everywhere. “Who are all those from?”

“Mostly your students and various members of the Coda Police Department. The school. Mr. Stevens. A lot of them are from people I don’t know. You’re a hero, you know?”

“Do I get a cape? I want red.”

“The way the story is being told, you bravely jumped in front of Mom and me in order to save our lives.” His eyes were crinkling at me, and his voice was light. “You took a bullet for us.”

“What am I, the secret service? I was just trying to get your attention. I wasn’t planning on getting shot.”

He smiled. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

We didn’t talk for a minute, and I started thinking about the scene at the table, before the incident in the front yard. Matt had actually told his dad about us.

“Why did you do it?”

He must have been thinking about it, too, because he didn’t have to ask what I was talking about.

“That day, I just kept thinking about the choices I had made in my life. Some of the hardest ones were decisions I knew he would hate if he knew about them. But they all turned out to be good. First, I decided not to join the military. And I think that was the right choice. Second.” He was ticking them off on his fingers as he talked. “I decided a few years ago to quit dating. I’ve already told you that my life got a lot easier after that. Then, I decided that your friendship was more important to me than what my coworkers were saying. And that turned out to be a good decision. And then when Cherie died, I decided to accept the fact that I wanted to fuck your brains out.”

“And that,” I interjected, “was a very wise decision.”

He smiled and winked at me. “It was.” His face grew serious again. “So we were all sitting there at the table, and he was screaming. And I was thinking about all of those decisions and how they had brought me to this place in my life where I was really, truly happy for the first time ever. So I asked myself, what’s the worst he can do to me? And I knew the answer right away—he could disown me. And I wasn’t really sure anymore why that seemed like a bad thing. It was like the solution was right there in front of me, and I was just being too fucking stupid to see it.” He was looking down at where our hands were clasped together on the bed by my side. “It’s actually a relief. I don’t have to waste another second of my life trying to make him happy.”

“What about your mom?”

He brightened a little. “Once she calmed down, she told me that she had suspected all along.” Funny how that works, I thought, remembering my conversation with Brian so many years ago. “I can’t really say that she’s happy about it, but she knows I’m happy. And that means something to her, I think.”

“I thought she was here.”

“She was. She delayed her flight and spent a couple of days here. Turns out with Dad gone, she and Lizzy and your mom are like three peas in a pod.”

“She’s gone now?”

“She is, but she’ll be back.” His eyes tightened a little, and he frowned. “She’s leaving him. She went home to get her things in order. Lizzy offered to let her live with them for a while. She said she could use help with James anyway.”

“Like a nanny,” I said quietly to myself, as one piece fell into place.

“Yes.” He was smiling again. “She’s so excited to have a surrogate grandchild; I think she would leave my dad for James alone.”

We were quiet again as I thought about all that he had said.

“Matt, I’m so sorry. You lost your family, all because of me.”

He looked at me with alarm. “What? No! You’ve got it all wrong.” He leaned forward on the bed and put his hand on my cheek. “I didn’t lose my family because of you. I have a family because of you.”

I leaned into his touch. “I want to go home. When are they letting me go?”

“Tuesday afternoon. I work the two to ten that day, but I’ll get it off.”

“Don’t. Mom or Brian or Lizzy will give me a ride.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“I’m sure. I’ll be waiting for you when you get home.”

“Will you be naked?” he asked with a wicked grin.

I laughed and pushed him off the bed. “Just wait and see.”

IT TURNED out to be mom who took me home from the hospital. I was surprised to see that the large front window was covered by plywood. I had forgotten that, prior to showing up at Lizzy and Brian’s, Dan had ransacked our house.

“They’ve ordered the glass,” Mom told me. “I think Matt said it would be installed next week. We cleaned up inside as well as we could, but you’ll probably need to have the carpet in the living room replaced.”

When I got inside, I found that the damage wasn’t bad at all. I also found that Matt’s bookshelf was now in the bedroom and his home gym was taking up most of the dining room. He had apparently moved the last of his stuff into my house while I was in the hospital.

I went to bed early, settled happily into sheets that smelled like him. I was asleep when he got home. I woke up to him sliding into bed behind me. He carefully cuddled up to my back and wrapped himself around me, making sure not to touch the bandage on my side. I settled back against him with a sigh.

“I’m glad you’re home,” I told him.

“I’m glad you’re home. I missed this. The whole week my parents were here, I was sleeping at my apartment. And then this past week, you weren’t here. This bed seemed awfully big and empty.” His hands were wandering, and he started kissing the back of my neck. “Did the doctors say you’re healthy enough to resume all activities?”

“They said no sex for six months.”

He froze until I started laughing. Then, as his lips brushed my neck again, he said, “That’s not funny.” But I knew he was smiling.

“They said to be careful and make sure we don’t disturb the stitches.”

“I’ll be very gentle.”

And he was. He lined us up, the way he always liked, and stroked us off together, very slow and passionate, kissing me deeply right up until the end when he pulled back to watch me come. And although it still surprised me, it was watching me that sent him over the edge, and he said again in my ear, “God, I love to watch you.”

Afterward, we lay tangled together in the dark.

“Jared?” His fingers were playing gently in my curls.

“Yes?” I was more than halfway asleep, perfectly warm and content, back in my own bed. With him.

“Say it for me.”

“You’re heavy.”

“No.”

“You’re a manipulative bastard.”

“No.” He was laughing.

“You’re right.”

He gave one hard tug on my hair. “That’s not it either.”

“I love you?”

He sighed contentedly. “That’s the one.”

I lay there, hearing his heartbeat in my ear, feeling his fingers moving through my hair, his smooth skin under my fingers, his legs entwined with mine, and I couldn’t imagine anything better in the world. I smiled, although he couldn’t see it, wrapped my arms tighter around him, and said it again, only really meaning it this time. “I love you.”

It had been less than a year since he had first walked through the door of our shop. It was hard to believe my life had changed so much. And looking back, I had to laugh when I realized one simple thing: the whole thing started because of Lizzy’s Jeep. 

Zach Mitchell is stuck in a rut. His college boyfriend left him ten years ago, but Zach still lives in the same apartment, drives the same car, and feeds his ex-boyfriend’s ungrateful cat. His Denver business, A to Z Video Rental, is struggling. He has annoying customers, eccentric neighbors, and an unfulfilling romance with his landlord, Tom.

A combat boot-wearing punk with an attitude, Angelo Green was raised in foster homes and has been on his own since he was sixteen; he has never learned to trust or to love. He doesn’t do relationships, so when Angelo takes a job at A to Z Video, he decides Zach is strictly off-limits.

Despite their differences, Zach and Angelo quickly become friends, and when Zach’s break-up with Tom puts his business on the line, it’s Angelo who comes up with a solution. Together with Jared and Matt, their friends from Coda, Colorado, Zach and Angelo will find a way to save A to Z, but will they be able to save each other too?

MARIE SEXTON was always good at the technical aspects of writing but never had any ideas for stories. After graduating from Colorado State University, she worked for eleven years at an OB/GYN clinic. She quit the clinic at about the same time she started reading M/M romances. At some point in the ensuing months, the static in her head cleared, and her first story was born.