“There’s so much I want to ask you,” Lance murmurs when the sky is getting dark, and the hayloft with it, since they haven’t bothered to turn on the lights. Lance’s cheek is pressed against Robbie’s chest. Robbie has been teasing one of the short curls at Lance’s temple. For several minutes, it’s been silent between them as they’ve watched the snow and the darkness lying two silent blankets down over the trees, like the whole world is being tucked in.
“Me, too,” Robbie says quietly.
Lance’s parted fingers slide through his chest hair, absently, and Robbie, now convinced Lance wasn’t teasing about having a thing for the dark body hair that has always made Robbie self-conscious, feels his already compromised heart turn over yet again.
“Maybe,” Lance says, almost whispering, “we could trade. You answer a question, and then I’ll answer one.”
“Okay,” Robbie agrees, hoping he doesn’t sound too eager. Then, Lance is quiet for so long that Robbie almost thinks he’s fallen asleep.
But he hasn’t. Finally, Lance asks, “Why are you still here?”
It hadn’t occurred to Robbie that Lance could ask questions Robbie wouldn’t want to answer. He’d only been thinking, eagerly, of being invited to ask Lance some of the questions that he’s been holding back for days.
But this question. This question. Robbie takes a deep breath, remembering there’s a somewhat easy answer, even if it’s incomplete. “Because someone has to be,” he says. “There’s a really weird provision in my grandfather’s will. It says that my dad’s kids get the ranch if at least one of us lives here, continuously, for twenty-one years after my dad’s death.”
Lance twists around under Robbie’s hand to blink up at him. “Seriously?”
Robbie smiles wryly. “Yeah.”
“That’s like something out of a movie.”
“Yeah.” Robbie smiles grimly and leans his head back.
“A bad movie. A bad TV movie.”
He laughs. “No argument here. My dad told me about it in vague terms. He didn’t really think it would be relevant, I guess. He was like you; he thought it was too absurd to hold up in court. He had a lawyer working on it off and on for a couple of years. But then, he died, and it—it didn’t turn out the way he’d thought it would. So, we’d lose the ranch if I ever moved.”
“It has to be you? It couldn’t be Johnny or Danny?”
Robbie shrugs, his gaze skating away from Lance. “They have lives somewhere else. I don’t want them to be tied here.” He darts a quick look at Lance and finds that his expression is a little pinched.
“That’s not fair to you, though.”
Robbie pushes back the tightness in his chest and strokes Lance’s hair off his temple. “Where else would I go, anyway?”
Lance looks like he was about to say something, then changed his mind. He settles back down with his head on Robbie’s chest. “There’s no way out of the twenty-one-year thing? I mean, no loopholes?”
Robbie just shakes his head, exhausted at the thought of summarizing all of the various research trails his father’s old, talkative lawyer got excited about over the years, all of which came to nothing. “No. It’s technically the property of my grandfather’s trust, and if we don’t meet the condition, it all goes to my uncle instead.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It is.”
“But what about your uncle? Does he…?”
“That wasn’t the deal,” Robbie interrupts hastily. “I answered your question, and now it’s my turn.” He strikes a compromise between what he most wants to know and what he thinks might not send Lance running. “Why did you come back here?”
Lance sighs. “My dad’s dying. For real, this time. I already needed an excuse to get out of Chicago. So, when the hospice people called, I just drove.” Before Robbie can comment, he says briskly, “My turn. What happened with Megan?”
“I think me and her both just realized something we should have figured out a lot earlier. We’re friends, you know? That’s all it ever really was between us. What do you like better—taking pictures or being in them?”
Lance rolls over so his head is on Robbie’s thigh and grins up at him. “Will it make me vain if I say ‘both’?”
Robbie pulls a shocked face. “Lance Taylor, are you admitting that you know how pretty you are?”
Still grinning, Lance bats his lashes, which should be ridiculous, but instead makes Robbie feel a tingle of interest between his legs. “I don’t know,” Lance says then, laughing. “But I love self-portraits. I guess because I can make all the decisions. The light, the angle, the expression on my face. Maybe it wouldn’t be so appealing if I was better at telling other models what to do while I shoot them. I even did a whole series of self-portraits, and it’s probably the closest thing I have to a success. My turn.” His smile fades. “Why isn’t Johnny here with you?”
Robbie feels his smile slip away, too. He shrugs. “He’s off having adventures. Can’t blame him, can I?”
Lance’s eyes narrow. “I don’t know. Can you?”
Puzzled, Robbie just looks at him, uncomprehending.
“Does he know about the whole inheritance thing?”
Technically, it’s a second question, but Robbie rubs his jaw and nods.
Lance presses his lips together. “Then you definitely can blame him.” He looks at Robbie cautiously from under his lashes. “That makes it your turn.”
The moment feels too heavy already. All of the questions Robbie still has, he doesn’t think the link between him and Lance could bear without breaking. So, he pushes Lance into the blankets and kisses him until they’re both smiling again.
“I’ll save my turn for later,” Robbie says.
The two days since their ride in the woods have passed in a blur of talking and sex, with brief pauses for food and longer ones for sleep. They trade questions, but Robbie is too afraid of breaking the soap bubble they seem to be inside, spinning and afloat, to ask anything too serious. So, instead, he now knows that Lance doesn’t like tea, except when he’s sick, and that the gym he’s a member of in Chicago is called Fit Place, and his favorite kind of cookie is a ginger snap.
And he knows more serious things, too—like the story of the first photograph Lance sold, and that Lance has a penchant for stealing things, little things. He gives them back, sometimes. Of course, Robbie already knew something about that.
“Danny used to call you a magpie.”
Lance, who’s been sprawled over Robbie’s chest with his face next to his heart, in what seems to be one of his favorite positions, pushes himself up, giving Robbie a fairly solid blow to the solar plexus in the process. While Robbie gasps, Lance looks down at him with narrowed eyes, apparently unrepentant. “You remember that?”
Robbie’s grin turns into a softer smile. “I remember everything, sweetheart.”
They look at each other, Lance’s expression changing so fast, like it can’t settle between worry and affection and happiness and uncertainty. After a moment, he slowly lowers himself back to Robbie’s chest. “Magpie. Well, that’s a nicer word than other people have used.” Then, after a few long moments pass, he adds, “You haven’t asked me when I have to go to court.”
Of all the things about “court” that Robbie would have thought to ask, somehow that—something so purely logistical—hasn’t crossed his mind. He carefully traces a line up and down Lance’s back with his palm.
“I have to go tomorrow,” Lance continues. “I’m scheduled for one o’clock, at the courthouse.”
“Do you want me to help you call lawyers?”
Lance just shakes his head. He’s going tense, which is easy to feel when he’s draped all over Robbie, but he puts his head back down and doesn’t roll away, so Robbie dares to push.
“I know a few. All that stuff with my grandfather’s will, remember? I could…?”
“Not yet,” Lance says forcefully. Robbie isn’t exactly sure what he means, but he pretends that Lance distracts him by kissing his neck, and lets it go. And a few minutes after that, gasping while Lance pushes aside the blankets and sits up to straddle him, rocking so their cocks slide together, he isn’t just pretending to be distracted anymore.
But he remembers later, in the dark. And Lance must, too, because he turns to Robbie so they lie facing each other on their sides, and he laces their fingers together.
“I’ve done some stuff I’m not very proud of,” he tells Robbie.
So have I. So have we all, Robbie wants to assure him, but he knows how fragile the moments are where Lance will share things like this, so he doesn’t dare interrupt.
“I promised myself I’d tell you, before tomorrow. I have—I was—seeing someone, I guess. In Chicago. His name’s Niall.”
Robbie tells himself he shouldn’t be surprised. And he definitely shouldn’t be hurt. He definitely shouldn’t be panicking. He just holds still and listens over the noise of his own pulse, a thudding in his ears like a drum signal of impending doom.
“I lived with him. He’s older. A photographer. And he took care of everything, so when we had a fight, and I left—” Lance breaks their handhold and rubs his head; Robbie feels the movement of his body—can even hear the soft rasp of his hair on his palm. “Well, he turned off my phone and reported the car stolen. When I walked out of the care home after I saw my dad, there was a patrol car pulled up behind me in the parking lot and they were running the plate.”
Of all the things Robbie wants to say, he settles for, “Is he an idiot? Didn’t he know what would happen after he reported the car stolen?”
He feels Lance flinch before he answers, “He was mad. I don’t know what exactly he thought would happen. Actually—he probably did know. And he probably thought I’d call him after I was picked up and beg for forgiveness.” Lance rolls onto his back and a small, bitter laugh escapes him. “He wasn’t completely wrong. I did think about calling him. But I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it. Niall is…I don’t know. We had some pretty good times, I guess. But the bad times got to be too much for me. I told you I got that call about Dad, being in hospice, at just the right moment for me to get in the car and drive, didn’t I? Well, they called when Niall had just thrown my favorite camera out the window.”
His tone is so matter-of-fact. The tone of someone accustomed to abuse; raised with it. Robbie knows he shouldn’t reach for him, but he can’t stop himself. “Lance.” His fingers brush Lance’s arm, and just like that, Lance is darting away from him like a bird out of a thicket. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed so that his back is to Robbie, lit with a silver glow from the moonlight in the window, and Robbie can see the knobs of his spine.
“I didn’t love Niall or anything. I was there for the stuff. The money.” His voice is hard, like he’s challenging Robbie to—what? Judge him for having been in a transactional relationship?
Just as he sensed he shouldn’t reach for Lance before, he knows he should wait, and let him talk, rather than speak up himself right now. But he can’t stop himself. “I don’t care about any of that. I just care about you.”
Lance wraps his arms around himself and doesn’t turn. “I thought it was worth it. And for a long time, it was. Niall knew people. He helped me get work. And I love working. I love my friends. I really thought I belonged in Chicago.”
“You need to talk to a lawyer.”
Lance glares over his shoulder. “That’s not—aren’t you listening to me?”
“I’m going to give you a few names you should call. And you can use my phone. You can use my phone for whatever you need it for. And—”
“Robbie,” Lance interrupts again, his voice sharper now. “Are you listening?”
Robbie sits up slowly, the sheets pooling in his lap. His expression will be almost invisible to Lance; the room is dark and all of the feeble moonlight is on Lance, highlighting the impatient gleam in his narrowed eyes, the sweep of the bridge of his nose, and the curve of his back and shoulders. “I’m listening. But what needs dealing with is tomorrow. The rest of it—”
“Don’t you think I deserve this, at least a little? I was basically—I told you I was only with Niall because he kept me.”
Robbie thinks about it. “I only care that you don’t go back to him.”
“You should hate me,” Lance insists.
“Lance. I’m never going to hate you.” An image of Lance as a wide-eyed, scrawny boy running through the woods flashes in his mind, and he smiles. “I’ve known you since you were nine years old. You’re family.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. He realizes this at once, but he can’t grasp the reason why. Lance’s expression shutters, and he’s off the bed and six feet away, still hugging himself, naked and barefoot and suddenly as untouchable and unreachable as if he were back in Chicago already.
“I don’t want to talk about this. I’m tired, and tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
“I’ll drive you,” Robbie says immediately, even while, in the back of his head, he’s panicking at the broader implications of this moment. “One o’clock, you said. I’ll have you there at twelve-thirty.”
Lance nods stiffly. “Thanks.”
“You’re not sleeping on that couch,” Robbie says. “Come on, Lance.”
Lance doesn’t move, and Robbie feels a flare of desperation. Maybe he’s always sensed this was a stolen time between them, but he didn’t realize he’d have no more than a few minutes to prepare to lose it.
“Get back in this bed,” he says quietly, defeated, and climbs out of the place where they’ve passed so many perfect hours, the memories suddenly leaving him cold. “I’ll sleep on the air mattress.”