Buckland-in-the-Vale and Sandstone Tor Gay Book Club (Inaugural Meeting) by Wiltshire John

Author:Wiltshire, John [Wiltshire, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw, mobi, epub
Tags: gay romance
Publisher: ManLove Romance Press
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

The light was blinding when they pushed out through the doors, colours magnified until the copper beech tree, which towered alongside the chapel, seemed to carry leaves of thick crimson-black blood. Rory could smell a sweet, evocative scent of newly mown grass and hear the faint hum of a machine behind the chapel.

It was love.

He was expanded, swelling in more than merely the physical. All his senses stretched and reached for this unattainable thing he’d been yearning for all his adult life and was here now alongside him.

Adam paused by the door, regarding the dog, now looking purposeful in the driver’s seat. Post-tea snooze apparently conducted successfully, Fat Sam seemed eager for them to be on their way—wherever they were all going—together.

Adam sighed. “Shall we walk him for a while?” He nodded vaguely towards the tops of some trees just visible over the cream buildings, and Rory, too caught up in his own imaginings, simply shrugged his agreement and silently helped lift their new companion to the ground.

Watching the dog limp bravely alongside them, Rory wanted to ask about the kiss, but took the easier road to this unimaginable conversation by asking about the dog’s disability.

“Arthritis.” Adam gave the object of Rory’s concern a nudge with his foot and added, “Because he’s so fat, hey spaniel?”

Fat Sam didn’t seem perturbed by this harsh, if accurate assessment and gave a particularly happy wag of his very short tail.

Before Rory could dig up another topic to keep the terrible silence surrounding the kiss away, Adam added, “We sort of adopted him together—Guy and me. Rescued him. We were in Belize on jungle ops training and he was just a pup in the camp. He was being passed around even then. Everyone kept saying someone or other was getting his rabies jabs sorted and bringing him home, but they never did.”

“So you did?”

Adam quirked a small, sly smile. “Sort of.” He mimed stuffing something into a bag and then added, when he saw Rory’s incomprehension, “He wasn’t fat then. He fit in small spaces…”

“You smuggled him home!”

Adam didn’t respond, sunk apparently once more in some private memory. They’d arrived at the edge of a wood, and Rory suddenly realised it was huge, rearing on both sides as far as he could see and stretching into the distance. Adam didn’t seem disconcerted and stepped into the shade of the tall oaks.

“Did you love him?”

The question was out there. It wasn’t the one Rory had wanted to ask about their love, but he knew that this ghost Guy had to be exorcised to make room for the new.

“He was like a brother. We did everything together. Here together as cadets. Kept getting posted together, and if we weren’t, we met up all the time. Then we had Sam, and we were like a family, I suppose.”

“You loved him?”

Rory wanted an answer to this. It seemed critical and obvious to him that Adam was avoiding the question.

Adam flashed him a quick look then a longer

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