Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (29 page)

Aiden laughed a little and blushed. “So you think if we’re married, we’d be okay?”

Jeremy winked at him. “We’re okay
now
,
boy, except we’re running late for our own shebang!”

They’d spent most of the day setting up the pub, making it pretty, displaying the blankets, which, thank you Jesus, they’d finished. Craw and Ben’s showed Ben’s recent initiation to knitting, and it was a bit smaller than Aiden and Jeremy’s, so it was in the piles of gifts that had been donated for the raffle. But Jeremy and Aiden’s blanket? Oh, that was a masterwork right there. Aiden’s most gorgeous yarn, Jeremy’s eye for which colored square went where, coupled with their exacting, nearly identical stitches—that there was a thing of beauty, and Aiden didn’t think he was being vain to say so.

That was displayed in all its glory right next to a painting the likes of which Granby had never seen before.

Those two things, Aiden just knew, were going to be the draw for a raffle that had sold nearly five thousand tickets and counting. Between that, the donations box, and the portion from the food, they were hoping to have ten thousand dollars in the fund for Ariadne and Rory. That money would go for travel expenses, hotel expenses, copayments, antibiotics, speech therapy when Persephone got older—the list of things that small family needed got bigger and longer with every trip to the doctor. And yeah, insurance was good for some things, but some things—well, a baby with needs could leave a family in a powerful debt.

And yeah, tonight was going a long way to help them out.

But the benefit didn’t start for another hour and a half. Even though he’d been the one hustling Jeremy away from his new best friend (and Jeremy was Bluebell’s person if ever a dog had one), Aiden thought maybe he needed five more minutes of westering spring sun.

The dog usually had the run of the yard, especially since they’d brought her home in the spring. She spent her evenings chasing birds and cloud shadows on their lawn, her days keeping a close watch on Craw’s stock, whom she loved as much as Jeremy did, and her nights on the floor next to their bed. Since she was roughly the size of a tricycle even at fourteen weeks, Aiden had been trying to get her to sleep on the floor at the
foot
of the bed, the better not to trip on her when he got up in the middle of the night to pee, but mostly it was a satisfactory arrangement. But they’d still bought her a doghouse for times like this when they had to leave her outside, and she was tired enough after a full day to turn around and curl up inside for a nap as soon as Jeremy turned away.

Aiden watched him walk to the car, filled with purpose and vigor and health, and he was almost gratified to have to run to catch up.

“Hey, Jer,” he said, irritated at the quaver in his voice.

Jeremy turned toward him, the little brackets at the corners of his mouth crinkling like they did when he was
almost
smiling. “Boy?”

For the first time ever, Aiden felt impatience at the nickname. “I’m twenty-one,” he said with dignity. “And after this winter, I think I’m older than ‘boy’, don’t you?” He was close enough by now for Jeremy to fuss with the lapels on
his
suit, which was stretched across his chest because he’d filled out a bit in the past three years.

Jeremy’s smile blossomed, but it was wistful. “You always have been,” he said, staring at his hands on Aiden’s tie. “You’ve always been older’n me. You know that. Calling you ‘boy’ is the only thing I’ve got to say I’ve earned you.”

Aiden nodded and swallowed, suddenly nervous in a way he didn’t think he could be. “Okay, then,” he said, his throat thick. “You keep calling me that. You know, when you were talking about seeing the world, we can leave Granby without leaving it for good—we can visit other places, you know that, right?”

Jeremy looked up and grinned. “You mean like looking for parts?” he asked with a wink.

Aiden wanted to bang his head repeatedly against the top of the car, but he manfully refrained. “I mean like
vacation
!” he said impatiently. “And, you know. Those places that let us get married. New York, Boston, Hawaii, San Francisco—those places. We could visit one of those someday.” He swallowed again. This was stupid. It wasn’t like he was
proposing
, really. He was more like suggesting. Putting it out in the air. Seeing if it would be acceptable. He openly acknowledged his lack of sentiment—this was just a way of seeing if it was something
Jeremy
would want someday.

Jeremy gazed at him with wide eyes and parted lips. “Boy, are you
proposing
to me?”

“No!” he protested—and then, honestly: “Yes! Maybe! Sort of! Jesus, just fricking asking if someone wants to go on vacation, ’cause, you know, it’s not like we’ve ever
been
on vacation, and, you know, two birds with one stone, rig—”

Jeremy pulled him in for a kiss, and it started out hard and fairly humorous, a laughing kiss, because for once Jeremy was trying to shut
him
up, but it softened, grew sweeter, became a blessing.

“You know,” Jeremy said soberly when the kiss ended, “If we do ‘take a vacation,’ I might finally get a last name instead of an alias.”

Aiden took a gulp of moist spring air, and then another, and tried to still the spots in front of his eyes. “I could
give
that to you,” he said, almost devastated by the magnitude of the idea. “I could
give
you—” He couldn’t even finish it. Jeremy Stillson—Jeremy Rhodes.

Jeremy laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corners, and Aiden suddenly cursed their timing. Yeah, sure, the spring sunset was romantic and all, but dammit, they had somewhere to
be
right now when where he wanted to be was in this man’s bed, claiming him one more time, calling him by his own name.

“What’s so funny?” he asked hoarsely, smoothing his hands across the loose brown wool at Jeremy’s shoulders.

“’Cause I already told you, boy. You
are
my home. The name would suit me fine.”

Aiden closed his eyes and kissed him again, because he had to, smelling aftershave and rabbits and the damned dog and the flowers Ben had planted in the fall that were blooming now and the roses against the back of the house that had come alive when the last of the snows had melted.

He pulled back, thinking they really
were
going to be late, but Jeremy held on and buried his face against Aiden’s shoulder.

“You okay?” Aiden asked him hoarsely.

“I’m so happy I could fly.”

Aiden’s throat was too thick to say it, and it would have sounded stupid anyway, coming from him. But he thought it.

You already have. You took your broken wings and your sunken eyes and now you can fly. It took a home to set you free.

J
EREMY
COULD
not stop looking at the picture Rory had painted.

For one thing, it was huge—a full four by six feet, it took up the center of the little portable stage that the band let them use.

Rory had unveiled it in the light after moving it in at the very end of the setup, and it featured the parts of Granby Jeremy loved most—the jagged horizon of the mountains on all sides and the vast aching sky above.

The sweep of the painting was impressive considering that the perspective was focused on a trio of jackrabbits, sized like a family, eating sweetgrass and wildflowers at the base of the Rockies.

Between the rich greens and browns of the earth, trees, and meadow, and the gold and blue of the sky, Jeremy fathomed he could stare at that painting for hours, practically smelling the moist purple air of the late spring twilight.

And the significance of the rabbits was not lost on him either.

Fortunately for Jeremy, he and Ariadne were working the raffle itself, and the television was up to the right of the painting. Every ten minutes, Ariadne would draw a number and flash it up on the television screen with a picture of the item the number had won, and Jeremy could glance at the painting on the way to looking at the television to make sure the info was still there. The television was a really good idea—Jeremy’s idea, actually, since they were going to have live music and everything and the emcee couldn’t call the numbers all the time.

“People sorta tune that out after a little while anyway,” Jeremy said that afternoon as they were strewing crepe paper and setting up stacks of personalized napkins and placemats that the printers had donated for the benefit. “So this way, people can see the raffle number first.”

Junior had shown Jeremy how to work it that morning, and Jeremy, in the interest of
never
wanting anyone to say he didn’t do things honest, had given Ariadne the task of choosing the item and pulling the tag. All he did was take the picture and upload the number into the computer. They’d started the raffle about a half an hour after people started arriving—they had nearly fifty items on the list, and even doing the items two at a time, they didn’t have time to dillydally.

Aiden and Craw were still selling raffle tickets and running the house-ends to Ariadne every so often so she was pulling from the full pot. The demand for tickets had gone up tremendously after Ben and Craw’s blanket was given away in the first round, and since that was Aiden’s idea, Jeremy was damned proud.

Aiden’s old high school crush was playing damned good music—a mix of old and new rock, Southern style, with two lead guitars and one bass. Eli, the kid who looked like a badly groomed alpaca, had a voice sweet as honey and dark as coffee. If Jeremy wasn’t still all glowy from what he had to admit had been nearly four-fifths of a marriage proposal, he might have felt a little jealous that Aiden and that kid had sort of a history. But Jeremy was going to wear his boy’s name like a banner of honor one of these days, and they were going to go to a big city and see things he’d only read about in books.

And when they were done, they were going to come right back here to where their home was, with their dog and the people who loved them.

Jeremy had spoken from the heart that evening—he and Aiden, they didn’t have anything anybody could take away.

The band finished up with a funny rendition of Nickelback’s “Rockstar,” and when the crowd quieted down, Ben came up and spoke.

It was
strange
seeing Ben McCutcheon without his hipster’s stubble, but he’d shaved it just to look respectable for their little endeavor. “Heya, folks,” he said, sounding smarmy and sincere at once, which was, Jeremy was free to say it, a talent his daddy would have given a testicle for. “Let’s give it up for the Alpaca Hats Band! They’ve been playing pretty nonstop, and I think they get themselves a break for half an hour while Junior mans the DJ, you all think?”

The mostly packed bar gave a big cheer, and Aiden’s friends returned the applause with sweaty bows and stashed their equipment.

Aiden sauntered up next to Jeremy and winked. “They’re good, aren’t they?”

They must have been—even Rich, dressed up in a nice shirt and slacks, had gone up on the platform and danced with Mrs. Fullmer’s dark-haired, dark-eyed sarcastic daughter. If the band could get
that
guy to loosen up, they must have been pulling their weight.

Jeremy nodded and moved subtly, just enough to brush Aiden’s shoulder with his own. “Yeah. They are. What should we do to thank ’em? I think they helped draw a real good crowd.”

Aiden tilted his head and watched them with measuring eyes. “You know, they picked that name as sort of an in-joke with me during high school—you know that, right?”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I figured.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if we knit them all hats, they can wear them for the performances, you think?”

Jeremy grinned, picturing the band wearing soft rainbow-colored beanies. “I think that’s a real good idea,” he said, nodding over it. “Genius.”

Aiden snorted. “Obvious as hell, but thank you. Anyway, how we doing?”

Jeremy looked to where Ariadne was setting out the raffle prizes and the lottery numbers so Jeremy could take the pictures.

“We about got it worked out,” he mumbled. He took three pictures really quick, clicked Send, and then checked to see the photos appear on the screen before he copied the number from the tag Ari had just handed him. “And….” He tapped at the computer for a minute, proud of all that time he’d spent doing the ordering and inventory and communicating with vendors and such, which made him pretty comfortable with the big magic glowing box that had probably changed the face of a con man’s game while he’d been out of it. “And there we go!” he said with a grin. Above Ben’s right shoulder, the first number and picture popped up, and someone out in the bar gave a squeal and a cheer.

“Good,” Aiden said, and he caught Ben’s eye and pointed at Jeremy. “’Cause you and Ari are on.”

Jeremy shot him a glare. “What in the fu—”

At the same time, Ben said, “Now folks, I got elected to be emcee here because I’ve got a pretty face, and if I could charm the socks off of Rance Crawford, they seemed to think I’d be civil enough to chat with you all!” There was a general laugh, and Ben went on. “But most of you know—and if you don’t know, you should—that I’m not the driving force behind this here soiree. Jeremy, you want to come on up?”

Jeremy grimaced at Aiden, suddenly terrified of the suit that was too loose and the scars that seemed to come and go in his mind, and of the fact that standing up there, with everyone knowing his past, was like standing up naked when he looked as bad as he’d ever looked in his life.

Aiden scowled at him. “Don’t be stupid,” he muttered. “You look fine. Ari? He’s calling your name next.”

“Oh hell,” Ariadne snapped, just as Ben said, “And coming up with him is the lovely Ariadne Mitchell, whom we have all missed the hell out of while she was holed up in Boulder.”

Jeremy glared at them both, and Ari shook her head and glowered—and then grabbed Jeremy’s hand.

He found himself being hauled up in front of what felt to be half the town while Ben incited a riot.