Page 56 of Torch Songs

The enormity of what Guthrie had done for him, for April, was still settling in. Who… whodidthat? Who left a job theyneeded to follow a woman as unstable as April had undoubtedly appeared into the wild blue yonder after a man he’d slept withonce.

Apparently, Guthrie.

Tad had been hopeful before, but this went beyond hope. This was perilously close to the human connection of a lone sweet voice reaching through his heart, through a velvet black void.

This emotion, this attachment, thisneedcouldn’t be taken back. It couldn’t be countered. It was like getting shot and falling off a cliff. One minute you were standing there, taking in the lay of the land, and the next the bottom dropped out of your world, and God knew when the pain would hit, but you knew it had to be coming.

And he couldn’t help it. He fell anyway.

Not on his ass this time; that would be too easy. He knew exactly where the pain would be when he hit bottom. Wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it.

As his eyes fluttered shut and he succumbed to exhaustion and the painkillers and the things his body was doing to heal, he suddenly realized why Sam had left. Tad had never really loved Sam. He couldn’t have.Thiswas what falling in love was like.Thiswas the fear it wouldn’t ever be returned.

This, in all its fear and its adrenaline and its glory, was why Guthrie was so terrified.

Tad got it now, and he could only pray that Guthrie was there with him like he’d been the night before. He wasn’t sure he could survive this fall if there was nobody out there to save him from the cold dark void.

He wasn’t sure how long he was out, shivering in his sleep. He knew the nurses came in and checked on him, but their touch was impersonal, and he could ignore it. But suddenly there was a quiet around him, and a comforting smell. Someone putsomething warm around his shoulders and… gah! It smelled like Guthrie. Tad used the hand not hooked up to all the tubes and shit to burrow under it, shifting even more to his side than he had been in an effort to be comfortable.

He saw a vague figure standing across the room.

“Move closer,” he slurred. “Sit.”

“If you like,” Guthrie told him, his twang leaching into Tad’s bones and soothing some of their ache.

“Who hauls a freaked-out woman two hundred miles to sing to a man under a starry sky and hides in the back of the fuckin’ room?” Tad mumbled, although the answer to that should be obvious.

Guthrie approached and sat down in the chair April had vacated, gazing at Tad with those mournful brown eyes. “You didn’t ask for that,” he said softly. “I didn’t want you to feel obliged.”

Jesus save him.

“Seriously?” Tad groused. “No, idiot, give me your hand. I’ve been dreaming about you for two weeks, and you’re just going to sing to me and leave? God, you suck.”

He heard Guthrie’s amused chuff of air but, even better, felt the roughness of guitar-callused fingers as they twined with his.

“Well, I wasn’t leaving until tomorrow,” Guthrie told him, like it was a secret, “but I was planning to come back.”

“What’s tomorrow?” Tad asked, squeezing his fingers.

“April’s home needs her back,” Guthrie said. “And I was going to leave my keys at my own place so the girls I’m going to apartment share with can get them and move in whenever they want.” He squeezed back. “And I may stop at a friend’s apartment and get him some clothes and shit to make staying in the hospital easier.”

Tad shuddered under the sweatshirt, which smelled like somebody else’s fabric softener but Guthrie’s skin. “I think yourfriend wouldsoappreciate it,” Tad mumbled. “God, so much. Some pajama pants and some T-shirts and some underwear. You have no idea. Eventually, I’ll get out of this johnny, and I’d like to look good.”

Guthrie used his other hand to brush the hair back from Tad’s forehead, and Tad closed his eyes, savoring the tenderness.

“You look good already,” Guthrie said softly. “You’re alive. You’re mending. You keep looking alive, I won’t be able to resist you.”

Tad chuckled. “But all bets are off if I’m dead?”

There was a sudden stillness, and for a moment Tad thought he’d gone too far. Then Guthrie took in a sharp breath and let it out.

“Probably. I can’t stand a man who smells worse than I do. But right now, you’ve got a while to catch up.”

Guthrie had driven all day yesterday, then slept in the back of his truck, and then picked up April and come to the hospital to wait for Tad’s surgery. What Tad found to be comforting could probably be damned embarrassing for a man who was only comfortable on stage or in the quiet of his own home.

Tad relaxed, thinking he’d escaped scaring Guthrie with the morbid joke, when a suspicious sound broke the quiet.

After a startled moment, Tad focused on Guthrie’s face and saw what Guthrie had probably been hiding while leaning against the wall, what he hadn’t wanted Tad to see when he’d come to visit.

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