The Ranchers Son (4 page)

“I know who you
are. The rest will follow when your memories return.” He didn’t want to say
that he’d already decided to email the tattoo of the horse to Jen, just in case
she could track down where it had been done. It was a beautiful piece of work,
and likely whoever did it would have it in a portfolio somewhere. Of course, that
was a needle in a haystack. Who knew where Adam had been in the last twelve
years? Chicago, where he was now? Or had he traveled from Montana to another
city?

Adam looked at him,
confused. “You said I disappeared. How old was I when that happened? Fifteen,
you said?”

“You were nearly
sixteen.”

Adam glanced down
at himself, “And I’m twenty-eight now, so what happened in between?” He stood
up and half turned. “You should get them all.”

Ethan did as Adam
wanted, and pulled all the photos into one email, sending the whole lot to Jen
with a particular request about tracking down the artist. Meanwhile, Adam went
into the bathroom, closed the door, and left Ethan staring at the wood.

Why does no one
know I’m missing?

The shower was
hot, the water heavy against his back, and Adam stood for the longest time
under the flow, lost in thought. He had to be careful not to get his face wet,
both because the nurse told him so and because even the softest of touches hurt
like a motherfucker.

Anger warred with
frustration. This Ethan guy, this cop, knew who Adam was, had known him as a
child. So why couldn’t seeing Ethan make Adam recall the past?

Does no one, in
whatever life I had for the last twelve years, even care?

He didn’t have a
headache, and there wasn’t any pain yet today; that only started when he
attempted to find a memory among the fog in his head.

He could have
thumbed into the contacts on Ethan’s phone — he could have opened up Angry
Birds and played. He knew those things. He recognized the cellphone as an
iPhone, knew who the president was, and even felt a weakness for bacon, which made
him smile.

But the rest…

His name, his very
identity. Gone.

Gay. I’m gay.
That’s all I know. Unless the smack on the head made me look at men and women
in a different way from before?

Like Ethan in
there. He didn’t remember Ethan but, objectively, the tall, brown-haired man
with gray eyes dressed in a rumpled suit was a confident, strong-looking man,
one Adam liked to look at.

Fucked.
Completely fucked.

He had to trust
that Ethan would get him wherever he needed to be. To a place that wasn’t the
hospital
or
a prison.

Shit. Why would
I think of prison? What if I’m a criminal? What if I’ve murdered someone? What
if I’m someone people hate?

Guilt and grief
pushed up from inside him. He slid down the tiled wall to sit under the water,
tilting his head so he could breathe.

“Who am I?” he
asked the empty bathroom.

For the longest
time he sat there, until something inside him—some determination that he must
hold in his heart—gave him the strength to stand and squeeze shampoo into his
hand, and forced him to wash his hair and clean his skin.

Until, with a
towel wrapped around his waist, he stepped outside the room. The steam
following him as he walked straight into a fight.

Well, a heated
debate, at least. Ethan was standing, his stance implacable, his arms crossed
over his chest.

The argument
didn’t stop when Adam stepped into the room.

“And I’m taking
him home,” Ethan said. Apparently this conversation covered Ethan wanting to
go.

“He doesn’t even
know his home.” The second man, Adam didn’t recognize. Some official-looking guy
with an angry expression.

“He is under my
care,” Ethan snapped.

“The hospital will
not be held accountable for anything that happens should he leave.”

Ah, so that was what
it was about: administrative accountability. Adam wanted to leave, and he
wanted to be with Ethan, he didn’t know why, but it felt right. Ethan felt
right. In his need to make sure Ethan didn’t rethink his plans, Adam stepped
closer to him until he was right at Ethan’s shoulder. “I’m going with Ethan,”
he said. “I’ll sign any waivers to absolve the hospital of responsibility.”

“The issue isn’t
signing anything. It’s whether you’re mentally capable of signing what we need
you to.”

“You’re saying I’m
mentally incapacitated?” Adam began patiently.

“Possibly.” The administrator
looked triumphant for a second, then frowned. “No one can tell in cases like
this.”

“Then I’ll sign a
form to say it was my choice to leave despite hospital assurances that I’m
incapacitated.”

“Sir, you have to
understand. This is a difficult ethical position for us to be in.”

“I’m arresting
him,” Ethan snapped, “and I need to take him to Missoula for questioning.”

“Arresting him for
what?” the administrator asked, startled.

“Anything. And
I’ll sign the relevant forms. But we are leaving—” Ethan checked his watch. “—in
exactly thirty minutes.”

The administrator
blustered for a bit and then left, slamming the door behind him.
Very
professional.

“Only one
problem,” Adam said.

Ethan turned to
face him, right up in his space as Adam had parked himself so close. “What?”

Adam indicated the
towel. “They cut me out of my clothes. I’ll be leaving in a towel or a hospital
gown.”

Ethan blinked. Adam
could imagine the thought processes going on inside his head.

“So you leave in a
gown and we’ll stop at the first place that sells clothes.”

Something passed
between them. Ethan half smiled and Adam felt lighter. He sat down on the bed,
energy leaving him slowly — pain taking its place. “I’ll need meds, and I don’t
have coverage for medical expenses, or I don’t know if I do….”

“I have it covered,
you have money, and I can get whatever else we need from my savings. You can
pay me back.”

“I have money? And
wait, are you sure?”

“We’ll sort it out
when we get home,” Ethan said.

His tone allowed
for no argument, and all Adam really wanted to do was to get outside, where
maybe he could connect with a memory.

They stopped at an
outlet store on the way to the airport. Ethan bought soft sweatpants and a T-shirt,
along with underwear and fleece socks.

“Is that all right
to start with?” Ethan asked.

Adam nodded. He’d
taken painkillers before leaving the hospital but, after just ten minutes in
the car, he was starting to ache. His chest and muscles hurt, and he would have
happily worn the gown forever if it meant he didn’t have to move at all.

They’d pulled up a
long distance from the store. No one was parked around them, but Adam was sure
security cameras would pick up his naked ass if he wasn’t careful.

“You want some
help?” Ethan didn’t wait for an answer.

As Ethan helped
him, Adam willed away an insistent pressure to blurt out “I’m gay.” It seemed
vital he said this to Ethan, but he couldn’t figure out why. Was it because he
didn’t want the guy to feel uncomfortable as he got up-close and intimate with
Adam’s junk as he helped him dress, or was it something deeper?

Was he trying to
convince himself? Was he gay at all?

“I got you some
sneakers in different sizes, three pairs. Want to try some?”

They’d gotten Adam
out of the hospital in a gown, a blanket and no shoes. The idea of something on
his feet was one that made him happy. Having shoes meant it would be easy to
run if he needed to.

“Adam? Are you
okay? You’ll need to lift your leg. Adam?”

Adam snapped back
to Ethan’s voice. He had completely frozen at that single thought.

Run?

Why would I
want to run?

“Adam?” Ethan repeated
patiently.

Not for the first
time, Adam focused in on the compassion in Ethan’s eyes. “Sorry,” he apologized.

Between them, they
found out Adam was a size twelve and that the other shoes wouldn’t fit. Ethan
slung them into the rear of the car with a muttered comment that he wasn’t
worried about taking them back. Adam didn’t argue with him. Instead, he
attempted to settle into a halfway-comfortable position as they arrived at the
car rental return at O’Hare. Despite Ethan being a cop, without Adam having
valid ID, there was little chance of getting him onto a flight, so they decided
to re-rent the car and drive to Montana.

They’d kept the
same car, as evidenced by the sneakers still on the backseat. The rental firm evidently
didn’t have time to clean it.

They left the city
and took I-90 Northwest.

“Thank you, I know
this is a long way.”

Ethan looked at
him briefly. “Road trip,” he said and offered a smile.

Ethan didn’t seem
fazed at all that they were driving over a thousand miles to a place Adam had once
called home.

The meds kicked in
strongly as they reached the city limits, where Chicago turned into a long,
endless road. Adam closed his eyes.

“Are you still
hungry?” Ethan asked. “Do you need to eat for the medication?”

“’M tired,” Adam
slurred, even though he was hungry. He hoped the queasiness was just car
related and not because the eggs hadn’t been enough to line his stomach.

And, as sleep
claimed him, he realized he didn’t have any choice about keeping his eyes open.
His mind was broken into a million splinters, and he was exhausted.

When he opened his
eyes again, he had about thirty seconds’ to warn Ethan to stop the car, before
kneeling on the side of the road and dry-heaving the sickness inside him.

“I should have
stopped for some decent food,” Ethan apologized. He held out a cracker. “Picked
this up when I stopped for gas.”

Adam didn’t recall
Ethan stopping for gas, but he took the cracker and bit into the salty dryness.
The sickness subsided as fresh April air with a hint of icy wind filled his
lungs, and he took in everything around him. The road still looked endless, the
landscape no different from what had been there when they left the city.

“Where are we?” he
asked.

“We made it to
Wisconsin, about ten minutes from Janesville. You want to stop there for
today?”

“Don’t you want to
push on?”

Ethan crouched
down next to him and placed a hand on his arm. “No. So we can either stop in Janesville
or another hour or so from there.”

“I can manage
another hour. Can you help me up? Sorry to be so…” He didn’t finish the
sentence. What was he going to say? So pathetic? So ill? So dependent? He
wasn’t the type of man to rely on other people.

Somehow, bone-deep,
he knew that to be so.

Ethan held out a
hand and took Adam’s weight as he stumbled to stand, wincing as every single
muscle pulled and ached and twisted in pain.

“We’re stopping at
Janesville,” Ethan announced when they were back in the car.

Adam opened his
mouth to say he was okay, but he wasn’t. He was tired and miserable, and he
hurt. Stoic heroism be damned, he would do whatever Ethan thought best.

“Thank you,” he
said.

They exited the I-90
at the sign for a Holiday Inn, and parked up as close to the entrance as Ethan
could get.

“You want your own
room?” Ethan asked, and waited for Adam to reply.

Evidently, it was going
to be Adam’s choice, and he considered a comfortable bed, his own shower, no
nurses checking in on him every five minutes…

Then he considered
what it meant be on his own, and something told him he needed Ethan. “No, we
can share. Cheaper that way,” he added in qualification.

If Ethan could see
through that, he didn’t say. He opened the door to go check in.

A sudden thought
had Adam wanting to add one more thing. “You should know I think I’m gay. That
is, I know I’m gay. If that means you’d rather not share…”

Ethan stopped, one
foot out of the car. Very deliberately he sat back around, and with one hand,
he cradled Adam’s face. “Finally he tells me without blushing,” he murmured.
“And, Adam, for what it’s worth, I know.”

“You know.”

“Yep, back in a
minute.”

Then, before Adam
could process what Ethan had said, he left.

Finally
he
tells me? He knew?

What did that
mean?

Ethan wasn’t sure
how he managed to get them checked in without going and sitting in the corner
and sobbing. Adam had looked so troubled when he did his full declaration, as
if Ethan would decide he wanted separate rooms, or that he wouldn’t understand.

He added their last-ever
conversation, that first and final kiss, to the whole slew of things he could
tell Adam but had decided not to.

Signing paperwork,
handing over his credit card, and then walking back to the car was a blur, but
at least Adam didn’t ask any questions when he got back to him.

“Room 65,” Ethan said.
“It’s on the third floor, but we need to go in through the foyer. You okay to
walk?”

Unease began as
they approached the group of people outside the elevators. Ethan recalled Adam
and his fear of small spaces, but would Adam remember?

Adam stopped
absolutely dead outside the elevator. “I can’t do this.”

The doors opened.
The people waiting with them held the door to let them in. Adam didn’t move.

Ethan took him by
the arm and stepped away from the elevators. “We’ll get the next one,” he said
to everyone, his mouth curved in a reassuring smile as he looked at Adam.

“He okay, buddy?” a
tall skinny man asked with concern. “You need medical help.”

“I’m okay, I was
mugged,” Adam said. The man looked suspiciously from Ethan to Adam. Ethan
pulled out ID and flashed it.

“And he doesn’t
like small spaces,” Ethan explained.

As the elevator
doors shut, the man nodded as if he understood. Evidently the ID was enough for
the man not to get involved any further.

Adam gripped
Ethan. “Is that true? Is that something else I forgot?”

Ethan half turned
and released Adam’s hold. Gently he guided Adam to the nearest seats and sat
him down.

“You never liked
small places,” Ethan began softly. “When we were kids, we would explore the
caves up at Silver Pond, and there was one year….” He stopped, evidently
deciding how to phrase this. “You got your foot stuck with a boulder, and it
rained, and the water started rising. We have flash floods, and you couldn’t
get out. You were eight or so, I guess.”

“I don’t remember
that.” Even so, the thought of it was clearly stressing him. He had his hand
pressed to his chest.

“You never went
back into the caves again,” Ethan ended.

He looked at Adam
critically. Adam looked like he was about to keel over; the stairs were out of
the question. “I’m switching rooms to this floor.” With a juggling of reservations,
the receptionist managed to secure them a room on the ground floor, although
she said it might be a little noisy.

Ethan didn’t care;
he just couldn’t face making Adam use the stairs.

“I never lost that
fear, then,” Adam said.

“An instinct that
primitive, maybe you never would. Like a fear of spiders or something.”

“Or maybe whatever
I did the last twelve years was enough to make me scared all the time anyway.”

“Are you
remembering something?” Ethan asked. He didn’t understand what Adam was saying.

“No. Fuck.” Adam cursed,
more to himself, but Ethan nodded. He understood the frustration behind the words.

They made their
way to the room. Adam wheezed a little and was über-slow as he walked. Ethan patiently
waited for him, a helping hand on his elbow, and between them they managed to
get to the room.

The inside was
nice as far as rooms went. They hadn’t stopped at a no-tell motel; this was a
good room with two large beds and a view of the I-90. Okay, so the view wasn’t
that
good, but the beds looked alright.

Adam yawned and
Ethan helped him onto the nearest bed. “I’m going to get food.”

There were many
places around the hotel that sold food, and menus were stacked in a neat pile.
All Ethan got from Adam was “Anything,” before he closed his eyes and seemed to
be asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Ethan debated for
a while about whether he could leave but, in the end, he wrote a note on the
hotel’s letterhead and left it next to Adam on the bed. Then, cell in hand, he
made his way out of the hotel and to the nearest restaurant, connecting to Jen
as he walked.

“Allens, what the
hell?” she snapped as soon as it connected. “You’re driving how far?”

“You got my email,
then.”

“Chicago to Missoula.
What are you, mad?”

“I need you to get
my personal leave extended.”

Silence.

“Okay,” she
finally offered. “But you couldn’t get a flight?”

Ethan sighed.
“Look, Adam doesn’t like small spaces, and also, no ID, okay.” Then he changed
the subject. “Did you get anything on the tattoos?”

“Nothing on
databases, no matches. I put some feelers out on the images.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay,” she said
and then changed direction. “How is he?”

“Exhausted,
hurting, absolutely no memories of anything. What I mean is, he recognizes the phone,
knows how to use it, but has no idea who he’d want to contact. He doesn’t
remember Montana, and he doesn’t know what he’s been doing the last twelve years.”

“Fuck. Poor kid.”

Ethan crossed the
road. Adam was far from being a kid. When Adam announced he was gay, like it
would mean something to Ethan, it took Ethan such willpower not to kiss the man
Adam had become to see if his lips tasted the same as they had at fifteen.

“Yeah” was all he
said in the end.

“Listen, Ethan.” Jen’s
voice lowered and he got the sense she wanted to say something private. “I’m
sorry it wasn’t Justin. Sorry your brother is still missing.”

“It’s not easy,”
he said. And it wasn’t. “But get this, if Adam is alive and has been living a
life all these years, then who’s to say Justin isn’t out there as well.”

“That’s what I was
going to say.”

And she would have
said that, and he would have accepted the assurances, because she knew him,
knew he always carried hope inside him.

“I’m getting food.
We’re staying in Janesville.”

“What’s your ETA
for here?”

“God knows. Adam
only made it two and a half hours in the car today. By the end of the week,
maybe.” Today was Monday. Ethan was hoping to be home by Thursday at least, but
that wasn’t looking so good.

“Stay in touch,
Ethan.”

“And you.”

Armed with food—both
Mexican and steak—he juggled the bags to open the door and hip-checked it to pass
through. Adam was still asleep; he looked like he hadn’t moved at all.

They’d given him
the food in foil wraps, so at least it should stay warm, but he could always go
out again. For the longest time, he stood at the end of Adam’s bed. In an entirely
focused way, he stared at the man who was the boy he’d once known, only moving
when Adam shifted in his sleep.

By the time Adam was
fully awake, Ethan was sitting at the small table by the window, watching the
trucks on the I-90 and eating steak.

Adam rolled up off
the bed, cursing under his breath and stumbling into the bathroom without
saying a thing to Ethan.

When he came back
out a few minutes later, with his hair slicked back and his face wet, he still
looked like death warmed over. The first thing he did was go over to the desk
and get the bag with the tablets he needed, but he didn’t take them. Instead he
placed them on the window table and sat very carefully in the seat opposite
Ethan.

“How you feeling?”
Ethan asked. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Like shit, but
thanks for asking,” Adam groused.

“You never were a
morning person,” Ethan pointed out with an accompanying smile.

“Apart from the
fact it’s getting dark outside, which means it isn’t morning, is that right?
That I’m not good in the mornings?”

He looked so
hopeful for a scrap of information.

“You were fifteen
when I last saw you. No teenager gets up early.”

That earned him a smile,
which turned into a grimace when Adam shifted a little. Yes, he looked
exhausted; yes, he was in pain; but
God
, he looked good sitting there, a
reminder that Justin could still be alive as well. More than that, he was a
connection to Justin, and Ethan had that vague hope to cling to.

Adam sniffed the
air, pausing only briefly before lifting the foil from a wrap and holding it to
his nose. “Smells good. And if it smells good, I probably like it, right?” He
sounded determined, but he was still looking to Ethan for confirmation.

“I guess so,”
Ethan said. “Try it.”

Adam hesitated and
looked like he might have questions. Probably along the lines of
Did I like
this stuff when I was a kid?
Ethan steeled himself for the questions about what
Adam had or hadn’t liked, but he didn’t need to worry as Adam simply took a
small bite of the spicy wrap and chewed experimentally. For a second, Ethan
waited, watching as Adam closed his eyes and a smile curved his lips.

“We can add that
to the list of things that make up me,” Adam announced before finishing off the
wrap in short order.

The protective side
of Ethan wanted to get Adam to slow down eating the spicy food—he’d
had
nothing but
hospital food for the week he’d been in there—but the part of him that was just
thankful he was sitting opposite Adam held his tongue.

“I’m not eating
more of what you got.” Adam cast a rueful glance at Ethan. “Sorry, I don’t
think I’m up to anything else.”

“Take your meds
now,” Ethan said gruffly. “I need to make a call.”

He left Adam where
he was sitting, pulling the door shut behind him and leaning back on it.

That look—the one
that apologized, the cute look with the eyes, the one Adam had used to get him
and Justin out of so much trouble when they were kids…. Ethan didn’t need such a
strong reminder of the boy Adam used to be.

The boy he’d
fallen in love with.

Adam wasn’t sure
what he’d done or said, but Ethan left in a hurry and with an expression that
screamed discomfort, or anger. Adam wasn’t entirely sure which. Maybe he had to
make an emergency call and just
had
to leave at that moment.

Or not.

Maybe it was
something I said.
He
thought back to what he’d talked about,
food
, or done,
eaten said
food
. Nothing stood out.

He levered himself
up out of the chair, wincing in pain; aches and hurts everywhere. He swallowed
some more tablets, coughing as they caught in his throat and drinking more
water to get them down. He crawled onto the queen-size bed he’d chosen. Sleep
would make everything better… but when he got there, he couldn’t relax. He felt
like he wasn’t right in his own skin, turning slowly this way, then that,
trying to find a position he could handle. In the end he pulled all the pillows
on the bed into the middle and made a nest, and finally managed to get halfway settled.

Sleep wouldn’t
happen until the pain edged to something he could handle, but he closed his
eyes and went through all the exercises the hospital suggeste
d
. He cleared his
mind, relaxed every muscle he could, and wriggled to get comfortable. The fire
in his chest reminded him that moving was not something he should be doing.

“Fuck me,” he
muttered under his breath.

Okay. Breathe.
In. Out. In. Out….

“What is your last
memory?” Dr. Armitage had wanted him to answer that. Every single time he only
had one answer.

“When I woke up
here” was his fixed answer.

“Think back, farther
away, your childhood. What do you remember from when you were five?”

“Does anyone
remember being five?”

Dr. Armitage had
tutted at him, made a note on his pad, and then sat back in his chair. “Scents,
pets, a blue sky on a sunny day. All these things leave marks on our minds as
much as the tattoos you have on your skin.”

“I remember the
sun.”

“That’s a good
start.” Dr. Armitage tapped his pen on his notebook.

“I saw it this
morning from my window.”

He hadn’t been
able to resist that comment, and even opened an eye a little to see the doctor’s
reaction.

Dr. Armitage had merely
raised an eyebrow and looked at Adam with that pointed look that spoke volumes.

And now, lying
here, Adam could replay the conversation, syllable by syllable, but the idea of
recalling five-year-old him was a foreign concept.

He concentrated on
the sun, something that had been rare in Chicago when he was in the hospital.
It would sometimes peek out from behind clouds that scudded across the sky and
dropped April rain on the people walking on the emerald grass a few stories
below.