Chapter 8

Everyone was going to know.

Lito gave Spot a good few minutes of attention before getting out of the car the next afternoon at practice, mostly because it was an excuse to delay a bit longer. Surely Dave wouldn’t have gone and announced anything (“Hey everyone, just to let you know, that gay dude I invited to the team totally put out for me last night so we should be nice to him because he’s got a cute ass”) but that didn’t mean nobody else would be perceptive.

He needn’t have worried. The whole team showed up on time, for once, and the sole topic of conversation was how Steve and Nikita found Grayson White. Everybody had already heard the story, or some variation of it, but Steve cheerfully rehashed it for Lito when he joined the crowd around the picnic table.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Steve said for about the fifth time since Lito got within earshot. “Kid was sitting there, huddled up against the rock and wrapped up in half a dozen blankets. Didn’t respond when we were calling his name, so when I first saw him I assumed the worst, but he was actually just most of the way through a bottle of his mom’s rum and didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Told Dave to fuck off. Nikita was prancing around—she knew she done good. I emptied the whole damn treat bag and chirped all big and happy at her until she finally gave me this look like ‘okay, really, I know you’re faking it.’ Twit.”

Nikita paused in her mock-wrestling with Scratch and Sniff to look up at him, a hopeful “Are you talking about me?” on her face, which made Rick laugh.

Dave was smiling too, which warmed Lito’s heart in a way he didn’t want to examine too closely. The man had a gorgeous little-boy smile. It should have been incongruous with his build, but somehow it fit him. He didn’t do it all that often, but when he did it always felt like they were sharing a secret—or that they’d just done something naughty and their teacher was going to find out sooner or later. Lito treasured every one of those smiles he’d earned over the course of their acquaintance.

“Since we’re all here and ready to go,” Dave announced, “I’ll make the official team debrief quick. Y’all did a fantastic job yesterday, and I’m really proud of you. Ditto for Nikita, Scratch, Cheerio, and Zeus. That was tricky terrain in the dark and everyone came prepared to give it a hundred percent. It showed too—I’ve gotten several comments from other rescue squads congratulating us on our find. I also got an update from the sheriff last night to let us know that Grayson is home and doing fine. The EMTs treated him for mild hypothermia and dehydration, and they monitored him at the hospital for a while just to be safe, but other than that he’s in perfect health. So really well done, everyone.”

There was a general round of whoops and cheers.

“I do want to remind you all to make sure you’ve got backups for both you and your dog—food, water, and batteries for your flashlights—and also to make sure you have a phone charger in your car just in case. We didn’t end up being able to use GPS on this one anyway, but next time we might and a half-dead phone does nobody any good. That’s not a criticism of anyone except me.” He wrinkled his nose. “I only realized my phone was almost dead after I got home so I figured it was worth a mention. So in short—good job, y’all kick ass, and Steve and Nikita win the prize.”

“Literal or metaphorical?” Lito whispered to Scooter. Scooter just winked and tilted his head toward the parking lot. Lito looked over just in time to see Sharon pull something out of her van and toss it to Rick, who then lobbed it at Steve’s chest.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Steve laughed, then held the object up for everyone to see. “You got her a chew toy with what, eight squeakers in it?”

“Ten. Because I know how much Nikita loves to annoy you.”

Steve flipped Dave the finger, which only prompted laughter from everyone else.

“It’s not an every time thing,” Scooter explained in a low voice, “but Dave, Rick, and Steve all like to razz each other whenever they get the chance. And Nikita really does go nuts for squeaky toys—Steve says she can’t sleep until the noisemaker is destroyed, which means he doesn’t get to sleep either.”

Spot had never particularly cared for noisy toys one way or the other, but Lito nodded knowledgeably anyway.

“So with that out of the way,” Rick said in a louder voice, “let’s run the pups who didn’t get their exercise in yesterday. That’s Spot, Sniff, Lumpy, Woozy, and Zeus. Y’all have a preference who goes first, or where?”

“I’d just as soon do a run on the south trail,” Sharon volunteered. “I haven’t had Sniff down there in ages and he’s due for a good, solid, ground scent.”

Steve raised his hand. “I can do that. How far do you want me to go, and how complicated do you want the trail?”

“Let’s say a pattern of seven minutes walking and three sitting and we’ll see how long it takes to catch up? Simulate a lost dementia patient?”

“Got it.” Steve broke off from the group and started walking toward the far side of the parking lot. “I’ll text you after the first ten,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Dave?” Rick asked. “You want to take one of yours up the north side, or do you want to work with Lito and Spot first?”

They’d been running Spot for a good hour at almost every practice, and Lito abruptly felt a bit guilty that he hadn’t realized the concentrated attention meant Dave wasn’t getting to do much with his own dogs. Some team player I’m turning out to be. “I don’t want to take up all your time,” he said. “And Spot and I really have been, haven’t we? Go ahead—your dogs are probably getting jealous of all the fun Spot’s had recently.”

“They’d get jealous of a ham sandwich. And then forget about it two minutes afterward.” Dave scrubbed a hand through his short hair, but nodded. “Yeah, okay. Let’s… Janet, you want to walk with Sharon and I’ll take Scooter and Lito for a two-man find? Or would you rather hide?”

“I need the exercise.” Janet sucked in her stomach and shimmied her not terribly large breasts. “Going line dancing with a guy from Scottsboro on Friday night, and it’d be nice to not be winded after two dances.”

“This the insurance guy?” Sharon asked. Janet’s love life was impossible to keep track of, but she had almost no TMI filter so it was hard not to overhear. Lito already knew way more about the problems involved with heterosexual sex after forty than he really wanted to. The insurance guy with the fabled giant cock (as told to Janet by some previous woman he’d dated and then related to the team in between practice searches) had been the flavor of the last few weeks. Luckily, Sharon and Janet ducked off to the side to chat about line dancing and hot dates and big cocks so Lito didn’t have to hear the rest. For all Janet’s enthusiasm about men and sex, she’d probably faint if she knew what happened on an average Friday night at any of the more entertaining gay clubs in Atlanta. (And on the heels of that thought…had Dave actually said he went clubbing in Nashville? He was probably mobbed in less than a minute, if so, because damn.)

“Guess I’ll take Lumpy out for Scooter and Lito, then,” Dave said. “If y’all are okay with that? We can do Spot and Zeus as a second round and I’ll run Woozy at the end with whoever has the time to stay late.”

Scooter nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Lito didn’t have the first clue how a “two-man find” was supposed to work, other than the fact that it probably involved finding two people, but Scooter gave him an overview as they searched for a good spot. “Nobody’s walking with him?” Lito asked. “I thought we were supposed to always do this in pairs.”

“Eh.” Scooter shrugged. “Dave’s dogs are too old to go on real searches anymore—Lumpy is nearly blind in one eye, and Woozy’s arthritis doesn’t leave her enough stamina for the long stuff these days. He mostly just brings them to practices so they can socialize with the rest of the pack.”

“They don’t act their age, then,” Lito said. The memory of the two Rottweilers chasing each other at top speed around the field before practice was still a vivid one, given that they did it practically every week. “Crap. I didn’t push Dave into running them today, did I? I mean, Rick brought it up—”

“Dude, it’s fine. Chill.” Scooter stepped over a large downed tree trunk without even breaking his stride. Lito had to do a much less graceful straddle-and-hop to clear it. “He does still run practice searches every once in a while, mostly to keep himself sharp. And I’d like to see you try to bully Dave into doing something he didn’t want to do. He’s like twice your size.”

Lito would have been more eager to argue if the damn log they were climbing over—well, that he’d climbed and Scooter had stepped over—hadn’t just reinforced the point. And, okay, maybe Dave wasn’t twice Lito’s size, but he did have a good ten inches and probably eighty pounds on him and those eighty pounds were all muscle. The idea of pushing the guy around a bit had some serious appeal, though. Straddling him in the dark was one thing, but to really do the job right…

“None of us are really in a great position to give him pointers, other than Rick,” Scooter added, oblivious. “He doesn’t need anyone to shadow him and Lumpy, though, so it’s really not a big deal. I’ve got your cell number and I know he does too—text one of us if something goes wrong. Or if it’s after midnight and he hasn’t found you yet.”

“Oh ha ha.” Lito paused next to another fallen tree, this one probably two feet across. It was propped against its neighbors at a low angle but had a huge root ball still stuck to the end. The resulting wall of dirt was big enough to easily hide either of them. “Behind this, maybe?”

Scooter shook his head. “I wanna screw with him,” he said with a grin. “Keep him from getting lazy. How are you at climbing?”

Lito had absolutely zero experience climbing trees so the answer turned out to be “not very good.” They did manage to get him installed about eight feet off the ground, where the top of the tree had gotten tangled up in a larger one when it fell. Eight feet looked a hell of a lot higher from a tree than it did from anywhere else. Christ, he was going to fall if he didn’t keep completely still and hang on tight.

“You’re fine,” Scooter assured him, politely not saying anything snarky about how Lito was clutching one of the larger branches. “High finds are great—your scent comes down in a cone shape like this, see?” He delineated a vague curved line several feet away. “It makes a circle around you and drifts outward as it falls but doesn’t actually go straight down. Confusing as hell for the dog, so it’s the handler’s responsibility to be paying attention and to look up. I think on my last one I did four or five laps of the tree before Sharon laughed out loud and I finally saw her. Really damn embarrassing, but it’s a good reminder to always pay attention because your dog can’t do all the work for you.” He stepped back and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Anyway, you good up there?”

Lito nodded. He hadn’t broken his neck yet, at least.

“I’m gonna find me a ground spot a bit further on, then. I’ll text Dave when I’m ready—probably five minutes or so.”

Lito maneuvered gingerly into a fork between two of the still-living tree’s branches and hugged his knees to his chest. Something solid on each side helped quell the I’m-going-to-tip-over-and-crack-my-head-open feeling. He was wearing olive jeans and his favorite dark brown jacket, not the fluorescent green NALSAR team coat, so he’d be camouflaged and hopefully not too cold. And now that he was settled in his makeshift nest, all he could think about was that Dave wanted to get naked with him again.

It was really hard to decide whether that was a surprise or not. Before the call-out, Lito had been confused as hell by Dave’s signals—the dude read “straight-arrow, redneck, macho Army type,” but he hadn’t once pulled a “no homo” even though Lito had literally been wearing a rainbow-shaped earring stud and a tight pink shirt the day they met. Maybe it had just seemed too much like wishful thinking, to imagine Dave being into dudes. Especially dudes like Lito, so much his polar opposite in so many ways. And yet.

And yet.

They’d gotten each other off while lying in the back of Dave’s Jeep, watching the stars together. They’d practically cuddled afterward. How cliché could they get?

Thanks to the uneven terrain and the fact that the trees were only just—now that it was November—thinking about shedding their leaves, Lito couldn’t see the source of the crashing he gradually realized he was hearing. Lumpy wasn’t exactly subtle, though. Being half blind obviously didn’t slow her down much. She was on her third full-speed pass across Lito’s limited field of vision when Dave caught up to her. Lumpy bounced in a circle around him, paused to touch her nose to his hand, then took off at a much more sedate speed to run laps around the base of the tree. As close as she could get, at least—the downed tree plus the underbrush beyond it made for some extremely large and lumpy circles.

Lito held himself very still, trying to not even breathe loudly, but it didn’t matter. Dave watched Lumpy’s confusion for only about a lap and a half before looking up and catching Lito’s eye.

“Nice,” he said, amusement and approval clear on his face. “Give her a sec to catch on.”

Lumpy did, eventually. It was fascinating to watch a fully trained dog work, aging nose or no—she was clearly adjusting her path based on Dave’s body language, even while he was deliberately not “finding” Lito yet. Eventually she looked up, saw him, and screeched to a halt. She then launched herself at Dave’s waist.

“Oof.” Dave doubled over, avoiding what would probably have been a painful two-paw shot to the groin, but stood up again immediately. “Where is he?” he asked in a sing-song voice. “Show me!”

Lumpy ran another, tighter lap of Lito’s tree, then sat and stared at Dave until he came over and reached up to touch Lito’s boot.

“Good girl! You’re such a good girl!” He pulled a treat from his pocket and cooed at her excitedly until she’d had enough. When she shied away from the ear scratches and started wandering off to sniff things all on her own, Dave heaved himself back to his feet and looked up at Lito critically. “I know you and I haven’t covered high finds yet,” he said with an easy hand on his hip, “but you picked a good one.”

“It was Scooter’s idea,” Lito admitted. “And my first tree-climbing experience. City boy, remember.”

“I get to be your first? Aww, that’s sweet,” Dave teased. “Am I wrong in guessing you may need help getting down?”

The angle of the fallen tree didn’t look any more welcoming in reverse than it had on the way up. “Probably not”

“Mmm.” Dave’s grin turned wicked. “What do I get if I volunteer to help?”

That definitely sounded like flirting, and was much more familiar territory than climbing trees would ever be. “I may be stuck up a tree,” Lito countered, “but I can still blow up your phone from here if you walk away and leave me. The signal’s not that terrible.”

Dave laughed, which drew Lumpy’s attention again. “Was going to hold out for a kiss, but I guess threats work too. How’s your balance?”

They ended up with Lito inching back out onto the angled trunk and dangling his feet over the edge. Dave could just about reach Lito’s knees while standing on tiptoe.

“Come on, jump.”

Lito eyed the drop. “I’m gonna kick you in the face with these big honkin’ hiking boots you made me buy,” he warned.

“I can take it.” Dave adopted an exaggerated leer, spoiled by the fact that he couldn’t quite keep in his laughter. “Always wanted to rescue the damsel in distress. Come on.”

Damsel? “Screw you.”

“Deal.” Dave tugged at Lito’s ankle just as Lito shifted his weight forward, which meant Lito toppled off the tree facedown instead of executing the graceful jump he’d been envisioning in his head. Dave caught him under the armpits and smoothly swung him down to the ground…and then further, so Lito was bent backwards over Dave’s knee like a fainting medieval heroine. “The screwing is for after dinner on Friday, though,” Dave murmured. “In the meantime a kiss would be appropriate, don’t you agree?”

Their faces were only inches apart. Dave’s breath smelled like peppermint. Lito didn’t even bother nodding, just yanked Dave’s mouth down to his own and did his best to kiss the living daylights out of him. It was going pretty well until there was suddenly a warm, wet something directly in his face.

“Blech! Lumpy!” Dave sputtered. He did help Lito back to his feet, though. Lumpy licked Lito again, totally unrepentant—although this time she only slobbered on his hand, which was an improvement.

“Thanks,” Lito said, straightening his shirt. “Could have done without the surprise finish, though.”

“Oh, I’m not finished with you. Not by a long shot.” Dave’s expression promised all sorts of wicked fun. “We’ll have to come back to this later, though, or Scooter will come searching for us. He’s not as good at it when he doesn’t have Cheerio along.”