Page 9 of Sheep Calm and Merry On
“Thanks.” Devon still found it difficult to feel pride in his recovery, but against all odds, he did love the sheep. Even the demon dick. Speaking of—“I should go out and do my last check of the night. You need anything?”
“Uh, water, maybe? And painkillers if you have them? I don’t have a migraine yet, but I can kind of feel it coming, and I left my meds in the car.”
Shit. “There’s a pitcher of water in the fridge, glasses in the cupboard. I don’t have anything stronger than Advil or Tylenol, though.” For obvious reasons.
“That and water will be perfect as long as I can get some rest tonight,” Noah said. “Uh… sorry for having to ask. Kinda didn’t think about that.”
Devon waved him off, happy to just forget about it. Or at least stop talking about it. “Not a big deal. Tylenol’s in the kitchen too. Come on, I’ll show you.”
TRUTH TOLD, Devon probably didn’t have to check on the sheep. But he did need to get out of the house for a minute to regroup.
The snow had finished falling, at least for now, so he fired up the tractor in the pole barn and cleared the driveway and the paths around the paddock while he mulled things over.
It had been a long time since he told anyone his story. He expected it to feel raw, the way it had every other time. Instead he just felt tender, like he’d spent half an hour under the elbows of a very determined massage therapist who had a personal vendetta against the knotted muscles in Devon’s chest.
Was that the effect of time? Or the fact that he was, for once, telling his story to someone he knew would understand?
Or was Noah just that easy to talk to?
Maybe it was none of those things. Maybe it was the fact that they were stuck together by circumstance and the storm had knocked out most of the entertainment options, and now they had to make small talk.
Not that a summary of Devon’s struggle with addiction could really be called small talk.
He finished with the snow, put the tractor away, and stomped into the barn.
The barn smelled like sheep. Sheep smelled like sheep shit. These were just two facts of life on a farm. By this point Devon barely noticed, especially in the winter. He topped up the water troughs and checked the feed, made sure nobody was limping or looking poorly.
One of the summer lambs nudged his hip looking for a treat—apple or carrot—and Devon gently shooed it away. Its ear tag had a daisy on it. “Sorry, Flower. No snacks after sunset. You know the rules.” Maybe it was superstition, but Devon swore someone always escaped if he fed them treats when it was dark out.
Maybe Noah had a point about the demon-sheep thing.
Flower bleated pathetically until Devon petted her head. “Tomorrow,” he promised.
Nelson had finished rounding up the sheep for the night, and now he was sitting patiently by the door, pointedly shifting his gaze between Devon and the sheep. “Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” Devon grumbled, but he closed the doors to the pasture and then ducked into the office in the building’s interior to grab his guitar.
FOR THE first few seconds Noah thought he was hallucinating. It had been a long day, he was on the edge of a migraine, and the last time he was this tired he’d had the excuse of a traumatic brain injury.
But now that the snow and wind had stopped, the night was quiet. Sound carried, and the house was old and probably not very well insulated. Noah could hear the occasional sheep bleating.
So it made sense that he could hear the music too. But this was a live rendition of, if Noah was not mistaken, “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.” Being sung to sheep. At bedtime.
Maybe he was having a stroke.
A few minutes later, when he’d finished his third glass of water, Devon came in from the cold, humming under his breath. Nelson trotted in after him.
Fuck it. “Did you call the guitar Waylon?”
Devon’s cheeks were already red from the cold, so Noah couldn’t tell if he was blushing. “Don’t be silly. Guitars are female. How’s the headache?”
Noah wagged his hand back and forth. “Not worse. Not better. I should go to sleep, probably. That should fix it.”
He hoped that would be a big enough hint—please tell me where to sleep. Noah didn’t want to go snooping through the rest of Devon’s house looking for the right bed. Well, he did, but he didn’t want to get caught and make things awkward.
“Right. You want to give me a hand with the pull-out?”
That would work. “Sure.”
“Normally I just leave it as a couch when the power goes out,” Devon said as Noah helped him move the armchairs farther away from the woodstove so the sofa could move forward. “The generator doesn’t have enough power to run the heat, and the bedrooms get pretty cold, so it’s sleep in here or wake up stiff. But I don’t snore, or if I do, Nelson hasn’t complained.”
