Ridge Road, Chapter 2 · The Last Three
The text sat in Sam’s head for a hundred and forty miles.
He drove with it through Colby and on to Goodland, where the last lights of Kansas thinned out to nothing, and he crossed into Colorado a little after midnight with it still there. The state line was just a sign and a change in the road noise. He’d expected more. The prairie stayed black on both sides of him, and every few miles he caught himself reading the words again against the dark windshield like they’d been printed there.
You tell him yet why the last three walked off in Salina?
He’d been a claims adjuster for ten years. He knew what it sounded like when somebody’s story had a hole in it. He’d sat across a lot of kitchen tables from people who were telling him the truth about a fire and lying about the space heater, and he’d gotten good at hearing the difference. What he couldn’t hear yet was Hank. Hank didn’t say enough for him to find the holes.
Behind the curtain, the big man hadn’t moved in two hours. Sam listened to him breathe and floated the gears the way he’d been told and tried not to think about the shower in Hays. That didn’t work either. He kept feeling the tile under his knees. He kept tasting it.
By Flagler his eyes were doing the thing where the white lines slid sideways if he looked at them too long. He rolled the window down an inch and let the cold in. He slapped his own cheek once, not hard, and felt stupid, and did it again. The sign for Limon said thirty-one miles.
Rule six. You don’t lie to me about being tired.
He made it the thirty-one miles, because it seemed wrong to wake a man for less, and he took the exit with his hands sweating on the wheel. The truck stop at Limon was a huge lit island in the middle of nothing, rows of rigs idling with their marker lights on, like a town that only existed at night. He found a spot at the far end of the back row, and backed into it on his second try, which he was proud of, and set the brakes. The air hissed out. The engine settled into its idle.
“Hank.”
Nothing. Then the top bunk creaked.
“I’m tired,” Sam said to the curtain. “I made Limon. I’m parked. But I’m tired, and you said to say it.”
The curtain slid back. Hank had swung down off the top bunk and sat on the edge of the bottom one in his undershirt and boxers, flattening the grey hair that stuck up on one side with the heel of his hand. For once he wasn’t hunting for his reading glasses. In the dash light he looked bigger than he did in daylight, all shoulders and belly. He checked the clock, then looked at Sam.
“You backed it in.”
“Second try.”
“I heard the first one.” Something moved at the corner of his mouth. “That’s fine. You were honest. We’re shut down till six. I’ve got a ten o’clock drop in Commerce City and it’s two hours from here. Come on back.”
Sam unbuckled. He didn’t move.
“There’s something else,” he said.
Hank waited.
“Your phone lit up. Past WaKeeney. I didn’t pick it up, I didn’t touch it, it was just there on the dash, and I read it.” His face was hot already. “It was from Walt. About Salina. About the last three guys. I’m telling you because of rule six. I don’t know if reading it counts as lying but it felt like it would if I didn’t say.”
Hank looked at him for a long moment. Then he reached past Sam, took the phone out of the cup holder, thumbed it on and read the message himself. His face didn’t change at all. He put the phone face down on the dash.
“Walt’s got a big mouth for a man with a bad knee,” he said. “Come on back. I’ll tell you what I can.”
The sleeper felt smaller with both of them in it. Sam hadn’t really thought about that yesterday, lying back there alone with his jeans around his boots. Now Hank sat against the back wall with his legs stretched out and took up two-thirds of the mattress, and Sam sat on the edge with his knees drawn up, still in his quarter-zip, and there was maybe a foot of blanket between them. The cab heater ticked. Outside, a reefer unit somewhere cycled on and whined.
“Three men,” Hank said. “Over six years. Two of them I liked a lot. One of them I didn’t much.”
“And they all walked off in Salina.”
“They all walked off in Salina.” Hank rubbed his beard. “Coming back, not going out. Salina’s about three hours from Tulsa. Close enough that a man can get a bus home, or call somebody. Far enough from Denver that I’m not stranding anybody in the mountains.”
“So you pick it.”
“I pick it. Coming back through, I pull off at the same place every time and I tell them something. Something about me. After that it’s up to them. Two of them heard it and got their bag down and I drove them to the Greyhound. The third one heard it and stayed another month and then quit anyway, and that one was on him, not me.”
Sam wrapped his arms around his knees. “What do you tell them?”
“That’s the part you get in Salina.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Hank agreed. “It’s not. But I don’t tell it in Colorado. I tell it when you’re close enough to home to walk. That’s the only fair I’ve got.” He was quiet a second. “Walt thinks I ought to tell it up front. Walt thinks a lot of things.”
“Were they,” Sam started, and stopped, and made himself finish. “The three guys. Did you do with them what you did with me? In Hays?”
Hank turned his head and looked at him. The dash light was behind Sam and full on Hank’s face, and Sam could see the grey in his eyebrows and the deep lines by his eyes, and the eyes themselves giving away nothing.
“One of them,” Hank said. “The one I didn’t like much. And that was a mistake, and I knew it was a mistake while I was doing it.” He held Sam’s eyes. “This isn’t that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I liked you before Park City.” He said it flat, like he was reading off a bill of lading. “You said the rules back wrong, then got them right, and your ears went red. Tonight you backed my truck in on the second try and told me about the first one anyway. I’m fifty-one. I know what I like.”
Sam’s heart was going so hard he could feel it in his throat. He didn’t know what to say. So he did the thing he’d wanted to do since the shower, since the yard if he was honest, and leaned across the foot of blanket and kissed him.
It was clumsy. He came in too fast and his nose bumped Hank’s, and Hank’s beard was rougher against his mouth than he’d expected. For a second Hank didn’t move at all, and Sam thought, oh God, I’ve done it wrong, and started to pull back.
A big hand came up and cupped the back of his head and held him there.
Hank kissed him back slow. He opened Sam’s mouth with his own and licked into it, unhurried, the way he did everything, and he tasted like cold coffee. Sam made a sound. He couldn’t help it. Hank’s thumb moved behind his ear, and Sam’s whole body went loose and hot at once, and he ended up half in Hank’s lap with no memory of getting there, his hands fisted in the front of that undershirt.
“You didn’t kiss me,” Sam said against his mouth. “In Hays. You didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wanted to find out if you’d do it.” Hank’s hand slid down to the back of his neck and squeezed. “Take this thing off. You’ve been zipped up in it since Tulsa.”
Sam pulled the quarter-zip over his head and the T-shirt with it, and then Hank had him on his back on the mattress, and the whole sleeper tipped with the weight of him coming down. It knocked the breath out of Sam, and he didn’t want it back. Hank’s chest and belly pressed him flat into the mattress and his thighs pinned Sam’s open, and he was warm as a stove, and the grey hair on his chest scraped Sam’s nipples when he moved.
“Too much?” Hank said.
“No. God, no. Stay there.” Sam got his hands up under the undershirt and shoved it up, and Hank grunted and pulled it off the rest of the way, and then it was skin on skin from the waist up, Sam’s soft stomach squashed under Hank’s big one. Sam ran his palms up that broad furred back and felt the muscle move under the fat. “Stay right there. Just like this.”
Hank kissed him again, harder now. He kissed down Sam’s jaw and bit him under the ear, and then lower, on the side of his neck, sucking until it stung. Sam arched up into him and felt Hank’s cock through two layers of cotton, thick and hot and already hard, pressing against his own.
“Oh fuck,” Sam said. “Oh, fuck, you’re hard.”
“Been hard since you said ‘second try.'” Hank rolled his hips down, slow, grinding their cocks together through their shorts, and Sam’s eyes went wide. “That. You like that?”
“Yes. Do it again.”
Hank did it again. He braced his forearms on either side of Sam’s head and rocked down into him, long and heavy, like he had all night, and Sam wrapped his legs around the backs of those thighs and hung on. The mattress creaked in rhythm. The whole truck rocked a little on its springs. Sam thought of the rows of rigs outside, all those drivers asleep in their own bunks, and some of them maybe not asleep, and the thought went straight to his cock.
“The truck’s moving,” he gasped. “Hank. People can see the truck moving.”
“Let ’em.” Hank bit his lip, not gently. “Anybody out there awake is jealous.”
Sam laughed, and it broke apart into a moan when Hank ground down hard. He reached between them and shoved at his own briefs, and at the waistband of Hank’s boxers, and Hank lifted his hips enough to let him. Then it was nothing between them at all. Hank’s cock lay against his, heavy and uncut and slick at the tip, and when Hank moved again they slid together, and Sam heard a high, helpless noise come out of him that he didn’t recognize.
“That’s the one,” Hank said. “I’ve been waiting all night for that sound. Go on, give me more of it. Nobody’s making you be quiet now.”
He got one big hand between them and wrapped it around both of them at once. His palm was so wide it held them both easily. He didn’t stroke, not yet, just held them together tight and rocked his hips, so his cock dragged along the underside of Sam’s inside that rough fist, back and forth. Sam’s hips came up off the mattress to chase it.
“Hank. Oh my God, Hank.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s so fucking good. You’re so big. You’re all over me.” He was babbling and couldn’t stop. “I can feel your whole weight. I can feel you leaking on me. Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
“Wasn’t planning to.” Hank’s breathing had gone heavy and rough. He pressed his forehead to Sam’s. “Now listen. You hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing goes in you tonight. Not my dick, not my fingers. Not before Denver.” He rocked, slow, and Sam whimpered. “I want it. Don’t you think I don’t. But that’s mine to decide and I’m deciding it, and you’re going to let me. Say it.”
“You decide,” Sam said. His voice shook. “You decide when.”
“That’s right.” Hank kissed him once, hard. “Everything else, though. Everything else I’m having.”
He let go of their cocks and slid down Sam’s body, and the mattress groaned under his knees. He kissed Sam’s chest, licked one nipple and then bit it until Sam yelped, and then went lower. His beard dragged down Sam’s soft belly, over the stretch where Sam had always been self-conscious, and Hank stopped there and put his mouth on it and sucked a mark just above the navel, like he meant it.
“I’ve got a gut,” Sam said, stupidly.
“So do I. Hush.” Hank nuzzled lower. His breath was hot on Sam’s cock. “Been thinking about this since you were back here yesterday making all that noise. What you’d taste like.”
He took Sam into his mouth and Sam’s whole body jackknifed.
He’d been sucked before. His wife had done it, sometimes, quickly, on birthdays. Hank went down on him like he’d skipped every meal since Tulsa, took him all the way to the root without any fuss and held him there with that hot wet pressure closing around him, and hummed. Sam grabbed the edge of the bunk with one hand and Hank’s hair with the other and heard himself shout.
Hank pulled off, slow, with a wet sound. “Quiet down some. There’s a man sleeping twenty feet away in a Kenworth.”
“I can’t,” Sam said, panting. “I can’t. You can’t do that and ask me to be quiet.”
“Then don’t be quiet.” Hank grinned up at him, and it was the first real grin Sam had seen on him, a wide pleased flash in the grey beard. “I was just seeing what you’d say.”
He went back down. He sucked Sam slow and sloppy, working the head with his tongue, letting spit run down to his balls, and then he took the balls in his mouth one at a time while his fist kept stroking, and Sam lost track of what he was saying. It was Hank’s name a lot. It was please and fuck and I’m going to and Hank would stop, every time, just short, and squeeze the base hard until the edge went away, and then start again.
“You’re mean,” Sam gasped the third time. “You’re so mean.”
“I’m thorough. You’re leaking all over my blanket, and I’m not near done with you.” Hank sat back on his heels. His beard was wet. His cock stood up thick and dark out of all that grey, dripping onto the blanket. He put a hand on Sam’s hip. “Turn over.”
Sam went still.
“Not that,” Hank said. “I told you. Turn over. Trust me.”
Sam turned over. He lay on his stomach with his face in Hank’s pillow, the one that smelled like him, and he felt Hank’s big hands settle on the backs of his thighs and slide up, over the curve of his ass, and spread him open. The air was cool back there. He felt his whole body clench with embarrassment and want at once.
“Christ,” Hank said quietly. “That’s pretty.” And then, before Sam could say anything, Hank bent down and licked him.
Sam’s mouth opened on the pillow and nothing came out.
Hank licked him from his balls all the way up, one long flat stroke of his tongue, and then did it again. Then he pressed his face in, beard scraping the tender skin, and licked right over the hole in slow circles, around and around, and Sam finally made a sound, a long broken moan into the pillow. Nobody had ever touched him there. He hadn’t known it could feel like anything. It felt like being opened up without anything going in, like Hank was keeping his promise and breaking him in half anyway.
“Hank,” he said. “Hank, oh God, what are you, oh God.”
“Eating your ass,” Hank said against him, blunt as a tire thump. “Push back if you like it.”
Sam pushed back. He pushed back hard, shameless, and Hank made a pleased rough noise and held his cheeks wider and worked his tongue against the hole until it went soft and wet and fluttering under him. He didn’t push in. He pressed right up to the edge of it and stopped, pressed and stopped, over and over, until Sam was grinding his own cock into the mattress and sobbing into the pillow, and Hank growled against him, “That’s it. Hump my bunk. Get it good and wet for me.”
“Feel that?” Hank said, his breath hot and wet against him. “Feel how you’re opening up for my tongue? That’s what’s waiting for you. Past Denver. You’ll be this wet for my cock, and you’ll beg for it just like this.”
“I’ll beg now. I’m begging now. Hank, please.”
“I know you are, sweetheart.” It slipped out of him low and rough, and Sam heard it and felt it land somewhere under his ribs. “That’s why it’s so good.”
He licked Sam until Sam was shaking all over, and then he turned him over again, not gently, and climbed up his body and lay down on top of him, and took both their cocks in his fist again, and this time he stroked. Fast and tight and slippery with spit and pre-come, his hips driving into his own hand, his belly slapping against Sam’s. Sam wrapped both arms around his neck and held on.
“Come with me,” Hank said into his mouth. “I want it all over both of us. You hear me? I want to smell you on me when I drive into Denver.”
“Yes. Yes. I’m right there, Hank, keep going, please, just keep going.”
“Eyes on me. Not the ceiling. Me.”
Sam opened his eyes and found him, at the flushed face and the wet grey beard and the eyes gone dark, and that did it. He came so hard his back came off the mattress, spurting up between them, and Hank grunted and swore and followed him, pumping hot and thick over Sam’s belly and cock in long, heavy pulses, his whole big body shuddering down against Sam’s with each one. It went on long enough that Sam was laughing by the end of it, breathless and wet and stunned.
Hank collapsed on him. For a minute he just lay there, crushing Sam into the mattress, and Sam didn’t mind at all.
“Paper towels,” Sam said finally, into his shoulder.
“Cabinet by your head. You know where they are.”
“I’m not moving. I can’t move. You’re on me.”
Hank laughed into his shoulder, and the bunk shook with it. He didn’t move either.
They slept tangled together on a mattress built for one, Sam half on top of him in the end because there was nowhere else to go, his cheek on Hank’s chest and Hank’s arm heavy across his back. He woke once when the reefer unit outside cycled on, and Hank’s hand moved on his spine, slow, up and down, and he fell back asleep before it stopped.
At five-forty Hank’s alarm went. At five-fifty he was in the driver’s seat doing his logs with his reading glasses on and a fresh undershirt, like nothing at all had happened, except that when Sam climbed forward into the passenger seat Hank reached over without looking and put his hand on the back of Sam’s neck and left it there while he finished typing.
“First hour,” Hank said. “Nobody talks.”
“I know.”
“You broke it yesterday.”
“I know.”
“Don’t break it today.” He took the glasses off, like they’d done something to him personally, and started the engine. “I want to see if you can.”
Sam didn’t break it. He sat with his hands in his lap and watched the dark lift over the plains, flat and gold and then suddenly not flat, the long blue line of the Front Range coming up out of the ground ahead of them like weather. He’d never seen the mountains. He’d lived thirty-six years in Oklahoma and never driven the ten hours to see them. He wanted to say something about it and didn’t, and Hank glanced over at him once, at his face, and then back at the road, and Sam knew he’d been seen anyway.
His own phone buzzed in his jeans pocket at six-fifty-two. Eight minutes before the hour was up. He didn’t take it out. He sat on it, feeling it there against his hip like a hot coal, until the dash clock said seven exactly.
Then he looked.
It was a number he’d only texted once, three weeks ago, to say thank you for the lead on the job.
Walt here. Saw on the tracker you two made Limon and sat all night. Good. Now answer me honest. Did he kiss you? He never kissed the other three. If he did, you call me before you get to Salina, because there’s something he won’t tell you right, and you ought to hear it from somebody who was there.
Sam read it twice. Then he put the phone face down on his thigh, the way Hank had put his on the dash.
Beside him, Hank drove with both hands on the wheel, easy, the mountains filling the windshield, and said nothing at all.