Read Online Keeping Promise Rock by Amy Lane - Free Book Online Page B

unhappy and turned to picking up Crick’s clothes, wrapping them in the comforter from his bed. “Crick, someday, you’ll get the hell out of here, and you’ll see that I’m just a guy. I’m not that special.
    I’m not the man in the picture. I’m flattered….” He stopped for a moment, and a shudder seemed to pass through him. “I’m more than flattered.

    I’m….” He looked away, and for a moment, he looked unbearably young and terribly vulnerable. “I wish more than anything I could be the guy you drew there. I wish more than anything I’d never have to let you down, but….”
    He looked at Crick beseechingly, and Crick wished they were having this conversation in broad daylight, because he couldn’t for the life of him read Deacon’s face. It looked something like hunger, and it looked something like denial, but mostly it looked like hurt.
    “No one could live up to that picture, Carrick. No matter how bad I wish I could always be your hero.”
    Crick turned a naked face to Deacon, not caring if he sounded or looked weak, not caring if Deacon wanted him or wanted a little brother or just wanted a stable muckraker.
    “Just promise me you’ll always love me, Deacon,” he said rawly.
    “Just promise you’ll never throw my stuff on the lawn and tell me I’m not good enough. You want to be my hero, that’s all you got to do.” Deacon smiled a little, something shadowing his eyes that Carrick couldn’t even guess at. “Sure thing, Crick—as long as you promise to write us when you get the fuck out of here. Is that a deal?” Crick swallowed and nodded, leaning into Deacon’s strong hand on his shoulder. It didn’t occur to him that Deacon expected him to leave. It certainly didn’t occur to him that such an occurrence would break Deacon’s heart.
    Someone once called fate “the only cosmic force with a tragic sense of humor,” and Carrick would have agreed. Once again, the thing, the big obvious thing that didn’t occur to him at the outset, managed to make its presence known in the most painful way possible, with Crick as a witness.

    Making Promise Rock

    IN THE middle part of Crick’s senior year, it all looked golden. Thanks to living at The Pulpit , Crick’s grades had improved, he’d submitted his portfolio to some art schools down south, and he was even looking to get some scholarships to help him out. Parish and Deacon had surprised the hell out of him on his eighteenth birthday in January when they’d presented him with a bank account that they’d been adding to since he was nine years old. (How they’d gotten his social security code from his mother was a story neither of them would discuss, but he would be forever curious.)
    “Did you think you were working for free all that time, boy?” Parish had asked with a laconic smile on his long, weathered face. “We may be running on a shoestring, but we do manage to pay our muckrakers a little something!”
    “A little something” was enough for a couple of years at school, and Crick had wanted to cry.
    So he was unprepared when, about a month later, Patrick skidded the truck into the high school parking lot during passing period, jumped out, and cast wild eyes around the milling students. He just lucked into seeing Crick before he disappeared into the art building, and Crick ran down to him, heedless of the stares.
    He’d gotten used to stares and whispers in the last two years—but no one would touch him, not anymore. The mystique of having a “boyfriend who died” managed—just barely—to put a blanket on the rampant 52

    homophobia running through Levee Oaks High. It had been a lonely two years, but since Crick went home every night to The Pulpit , he’d been able to bear them just fine. In fact, he’d have said they were the happiest of his life.
    “Patrick.” The man’s round, creased face was red and blotchy from tears, and his habitual baseball hat was missing, leaving patchy, sparse hair flying in the