Read Online Coda Books 01 - Promises (MM) by Marie Sexton - Free Book Online Page B

sit on the back of it behind him. “Take off your shirt.”
    “What?” He twisted around and looked at me in horror like I had just suggested he strip naked and dance for quarters.
    “Settle down.” I smacked him on the back of the head. “I’m good at this. I used to do it for my mom. She would get knots in her shoulder from painting for hours at a time.”
    “I’d rather not.”
    “Look, you don’t need to feel weird about it or anything.” He looked skeptical. “I’m not making a pass at you, I swear.”
    “Okay.” Maybe a little less skeptical now.
    “It hurts, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So stop being freaked out and take off your shirt, you baby. This will help. Trust me.”
    There’s nothing as good as calling a big tough guy a baby to get him to do what you want.
    He thought about it for a second and then shrugged a little. “Okay.” He pulled his shirt off and turned back to the TV. “Nothing below the belt.” He said it so I knew it was at least halfway a joke, and I laughed.
    “I promise.”
    He was still sitting forward on the couch, not leaning back against me, which made it easier. His back was broad and very muscular. It was certainly nothing like rubbing my mom’s small, lax shoulders, and I quickly started to appreciate how strong a person’s hands would have to be to do this for a living.
    He was tense at first, but as I worked, he started to relax. His head fell forward, and he made a low rumbling sound almost like purring as I worked at the knot, carefully avoiding the huge bruise on the other side from our last bike ride. There was an old scar midway down his back, from his left side to just past his backbone. I had seen it before but never asked him about it. I brushed one finger over it and felt him shudder a little.
    “What happened?”
    “I was climbing through a barbed wire fence on my grandpa’s ranch.” He stopped short, and I thought he was done, but a minute later he started talking again. “I was just a kid. It was Easter, and my mom had me dressed up in my nice clothes. I wasn’t supposed to go into the pasture, but I wanted to see the horses. I figured she wouldn’t ever know, but I kind of tripped going through the fence and got caught on the wire. Ripped a huge hole in my new shirt and got blood all over my pants. I thought for sure my dad was going to tan my ass for that one.”
    “He didn’t?”
    “No. My mom sure was mad, but for some reason, my dad just laughed.”
    “Really?” That was surprising.
    “Yeah.” He was quiet for a second and then said quietly, “It was a long time ago.” And I knew by the way he said it that he didn’t want to talk about his dad anymore.
    “Brian and I once managed to knock over the entire rack of bulk nails at the shop.
    Hundreds of loose nails, all different sizes, all over the floor. Maybe thousands, I don’t know. A fucking lot of nails, I know that much.”
    “Did you get in trouble?”
    “Dad was pissed as hell, but my parents were always big on the idea of punishment fitting the crime.”
    “So what happened?”
    “We spent the next five hours picking them all up and sorting them back into the correct boxes. Customers would come in and see us and start to help, and my dad would say, ‘they made that bed of nails themselves, they can clean it up themselves too!’”
    Matt laughed a little, and I kept rubbing. His skin was darker than mine and, except for the scar, completely flawless.
    “Your grandpa has a ranch?”
    “ Had , past tense. It belonged to my mom’s parents, but they’re gone now, and the ranch went to my uncle, and he sold it. I had so much fun there as a kid with my cousins. But we didn’t go there often. My mom’s family never liked my dad much.” It seemed we kept coming back to his dad tonight without really meaning to. “For two years, we lived less than thirty miles away from them, and I got to see them almost every weekend. But then we moved again. We never stayed anywhere