Whiskey Dreams by Ranae Rose

Author:Ranae Rose [Ranae Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781476323398
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 13616936
Publisher: Ranae Rose
Published: 2012-05-04T14:00:00+00:00

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Brom was not superstitious, and had never been one to carry a good luck charm, even during war. But Henry had been different. The green ribbon Brom held in his hand now had never left Henry’s pocket during their time in the army, except for when Henry had prayed each evening. His prayers had been those of a soldier: brief and to the point, entreating God for just enough mercy to keep his family safe and sheltered while he was gone. When he’d asked for those things, he’d taken the ribbon out and wound it around his fingers, where the rich green had stood in contrast to his suntanned skin.

Protected in Henry’s pocket from the elements, the ribbon had remained vibrant and relatively clean. It had faded after his death, when Brom had doused it in water from his canteen and later washed it in a stream, scrubbing it more times than he’d been able to count in order to remove the blood that had stained one end of it, having soaked through Henry’s jacket when he’d been fatally wounded.

Morbid as it seemed, Brom would have been tempted to let the stain remain, where it would have faded to a dull wine color that would have served as a vestige of his lost lover – a part of Henry, however pitiful. He didn’t want to see Henry’s spilled blood, but he couldn’t get it out of his head anyway, and the fact that Henry would never bleed again had made each red drop precious.

But Brom hadn’t intended to keep the ribbon for himself. No, he’d meant to take it to Henry’s family, and return it to Henry’s younger sister, who’d taken it from her hair and given it to him before he’d left to enlist in the army. So he’d scrubbed away the blood, used cold water to soak out the heat of Henry’s body and rubbed away all evidence of Henry’s touch. Then he’d finished his period of enlistment with the army and returned to New York.

Henry had come from the New York countryside as well, and it had been that fact that had originally sparked his and Brom’s friendship – and soon after, their deeper connection as lovers. Brom had gone to Henry’s home, to his family, but when he’d reached them he’d found that Henry’s sister had died of a fever a month before. So he’d returned to Sleepy Hollow, and brought the ribbon with him, tucked in his own pocket.

Though he’d kept it in the drawer of his bedside table instead of on his person, he’d developed a nightly habit much like Henry’s. Most evenings, he took the ribbon out, only instead of praying, he went inside his mind, forcing himself to confront the memories it conjured, as if facing them before bed would somehow make his nightmares less of a shock.

This would be the last night he’d indulge in that habit. It hadn’t been effective in the first place, and today, he’d slipped inside his mind without meaning to and had harmed someone else as a result.

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