Page 19 of Regret Me Not
“No,” Pierce told him—but sulkily. “I try not to hurt the people who help me. Usually.”
“So that means there’s some danger,” Hal said, just to make sure. “That’s good to know. You can protect yourself if you know the dangers.”
Everything in Pierce’s brain backed up and fountained out his ears. “You can’t,” he said fervently, because this suddenly seemed important. “You can’t. A relationship isn’t like that—you can’t protect yourself, even if you know the dangers. You protect yourself and you’ll just… it’s like a circuit. You can’t make a circuit with the vinyl still on the wires. You either strip the protection off to make the circuit complete and hope it doesn’t explode, or nothing ever happens.”
Hal paused, kneeling at his feet, his hands warm on Pierce’s calf. “That’s… well, off topic, actually. And I’d love to know where it came from. But for right now, I just need to know if you’re going to kick me in the face.”
He rubbed Pierce’s calf absentmindedly, his hands warm and strong and capable. The taut panic wire that had been zinging up Pierce’s spine since he’d realized that no, he couldn’t really bend far enough to put on his shoes yet, and how embarrassing that was when this young, attractive man was… was putting himself at close range—that panic wire stilled, muted, the charge of embarrassment dampening until Pierce could breathe again.
“No,” Pierce whispered huskily. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Hal blinked a couple of times, looking up at him. “How do you strip the wires?” he asked, the absentminded rubbing turning into a caress.
The question made Pierce’s eyes burn. “I have no idea.”
The corners of Hal’s mouth turned down, and he stopped touching Pierce and made quick work of the laces. “We’ll figure it out,” he promised. He stood, offering Pierce a hand up, and Pierce took it, then accepted the hated cane so he could make his way through the house.
Once he got outside, the cold and humid breeze took his breath away. He kept walking, expecting Hal to catch up at any moment, but he was surprised when he’d gone nearly a hundred yards before Hal trotted up to his side. Hal zipped up a windbreaker of his own before handing Pierce a zippered hoodie.
“It’s frickin’ cold out here!” he called, and Pierce grimaced.
“You guys are a little spoiled,” he said through the wind. He remembered going running in the chill of a Sacramento winter, when it got down to the thirties.
“Yeah, well, humor me.” Hal stood solicitously and helped him on with the hoodie; then together they soldiered through the loose sand that formed a pathway through the rushes toward the harder sand of the beach. Hal’s hand hovered under his elbow for a few steps, and Pierce, eschewing his pride for once, paused and took his hand, putting it firmly under his arm.
“People will think we’re a couple,” Hal said, and he had to talk over the sound of the surf, so it was hard to know if he was flirting or embarrassed.
“I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Hal squeezed his elbow in response, and they hit the harder-packed sand of the beach proper.
Pierce swung toward the pounding surf and paused. The waves were decent-sized but still small compared to high tide in Monterey or Half-Moon Bay, and the horizon tinted toward gold instead of gray-blue.
But still, it was a great unfathomable deep, and since he’d hauled his limping ass out here, he wanted a good look at it.
“Why are you stopping?” Hal tugged on him, and Pierce bit his lip, standing still.
“Because,” he said, having trouble raising his voice. “It deserves our respect, don’t you think? If you don’t respect the ocean, or time, or fate, or the big things in the world, you sort of have it coming when they knock you on your ass.”
Hal stopped tugging and drew up even with him. Shyly, with tentative little pauses and jerks, he put his arm around Pierce’s shoulders.
Pierce let him.
“Does it make you feel alone?” he asked, voice throbbing with a loneliness he rarely showed but Pierce had guessed at.
“Yeah,” Pierce said, wrapping his arm around Hal’s waist. Comfort, right?
Maybe.
“Then why do we keep coming here?”
“Because it’s great and vast and holy,” Pierce told him, unexpectedly moved by having it right there, in front of him, when he’d ignored it for the better part of two weeks. “And it lets us touch our toes to its surf and play.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be able to strip the vinyl off?” Hal asked quietly. “Let your wires touch?”
Pierce swallowed, although the question wasn’t unanticipated.
“I have to know I’m strong enough to take the charge,” he answered. Oh, he liked this metaphor. It was another layer of vinyl between him and the pain of the divorce, and his bitterness, and of loving someone enough for the love to hurt.
