“That’s because he’s an ass**le,” Zane said with a small smile before he huffed quietly. “He just seems to blow things off so easily. It makes me f**king crazy.”
Deuce was frowning harder and shaking his head. “Ty takes things to heart,” he told Zane, his voice losing the light, carefree tone and becoming more serious. “Most things he takes hard for about a minute, then he’s moving on. Other things, they take him longer. Especially issues of fault. Failures hit him hard, but he processes them well. They don’t stick to him. See, some people, they’re sticky like Velcro. You’re sticky. Your problems stick to you like fuzzballs from the laundry; you take them everywhere with you and people can see them plain as day. Ty, he’s like spandex. Nothing sticks to him, and he’s shiny on the outside.”
Zane knew he was staring at Deuce oddly, but he couldn’t stop himself. “You know, I don’t know what’s worse, that you just said that or that it actually made sense.”
Deuce winked at him and grinned. “You just have to pick off the fuzzballs,” he advised.
“I never was really good with laundry,” Zane said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Not really good with dealing with ‘things’, either.”
Deuce hummed in response. “Maybe if you tried doing the laundry more often, you’d be a better partner.”
“Are we continuing the laundry analogy for the laugh factor?” Zane asked as he wrinkled his nose. “If we are, I’ll say I’d rather dump it all at the dry cleaners and forget about it.”
“You don’t want a tiny little Oriental guy dealing with your fuzzballs,” Deuce argued, barely restraining a laugh. “It’s one of my better analogies,” he went on, his grin widening as Zane did laugh. “I should write it down.” He paused for a long moment. “Am I making any headway here?” he asked seriously.
“I hear what you’re saying. But it’s nothing I didn’t already know,” Zane said. He knew what was wrong. He just didn’t know how to fix it, so he’d taken to ignoring it.
Deuce nodded in understanding. “So what you’re saying is you don’t mind being a bad partner to a man you claim is a great one.”
Zane’s face went very still as a flash of pain streaked through his chest. “I’ve been a good partner when it counted.”
“It always counts, Zane,” Deuce murmured gently.
Zane sighed, dropped his eyes, and then closed them for good measure. “Yeah,” he whispered.
Deuce reached out and patted him on the foot. “We went over the whats. You ever want to get into the whys, you know where to find me,” he offered.
After managing to get a breath into his lungs, Zane looked up at Deuce. He thought he should say something, but there just wasn’t anything to be said. He settled on nodding and smiling weakly.
Deuce smiled lopsidedly at him. “Good, now help me up,” he requested as he held out a hand. “Leg’ll let me get down, but it’s no damn help getting back up. I just roll around like a turtle on its shell ’til somebody shoves me with a stick.”
Zane couldn’t help but snort and smile. “I’m not sure I’m in much better shape,” he admitted. “Your dad sets a fast pace.”
“He always has,” Deuce acknowledged.
Zane snorted, got to his feet fairly easily, and then offered Deuce an arm. Deuce clasped his wrist in a hard grip, and he pulled himself to his feet with Zane’s help. He clapped Zane on the back and turned to head for the tree line again to gather more firewood.
Zane watched him limp away. “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” he asked impulsively.
Deuce turned and looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. “What happened to my leg, you mean?” he asked to clarify. He patted his thigh as he turned back to face Zane. “I went over the handlebars of a motorcycle,” he answered with a slight smile. “Got pinned between the bike and a tree. Broke all kinds of bones and tore some tendons below the knee. Couldn’t be fixed to where I don’t limp.”
Zane nodded slowly. Sounded like normal dumbass kid stuff; he’d done his share. It just didn’t end very well for Deuce. Then something clicked. “That’s why Ty hates motorcycles, isn’t it?”
Deuce nodded. “He gave me the bike when he went off to join the Marines. I was sixteen. He blames himself. You know the drill.”
Zane nodded. It fit what he knew about Ty. “Yeah, he must. He doesn’t like me riding my Valkyrie. And he’s made it very clear he never will.”
Deuce clucked his tongue. “Ty’s got to place blame. He’s a very black-and-white type of person. He needed something to blame for it, and instead of accepting that I was going ninety miles an hour on a dirt road and it was my fault, he blamed the bike. And himself,” he explained. “But it all worked out for the best,” he claimed, remarkably cheerful as he spoke about what had to have been a devastating, life-altering event. “I wouldn’t have been a very good Marine,” he mused. “And that’s the route I would have taken, right down the path he did.”
“You love him a lot,” Zane murmured.
“He’s my brother,” Deuce answered, as if that should be obvious.
Zane nodded. “Of course.”
“Do you?” Deuce asked without looking away.
Zane held Deuce’s gaze as his lips quirked into a wry smile, and he had to go with his honest, gut answer. “No,” he said softly, a slight tinge of regret in his voice.
“Huh,” Deuce responded in genuine interest. “I would have guessed otherwise,” he admitted to Zane.
Zane shrugged uncomfortably, unsure of how to respond to that. It was something he consciously avoided thinking about. “I do like having the ass**le around,” he offered.
“That’s more than can be said for most,” Deuce commented in amusement.
“So I’ve been told,” Zane agreed. He rolled his shoulders slightly, trying to shrug off some of the tension. Deuce just watched him closely, narrowing his eyes and smiling. “You look very happy with yourself,” Zane observed.
Deuce glanced off into the woods again and then took a step closer to lower his voice. “Try to be a better partner,” he advised softly.
Zane held his gaze for a long moment. Finally he sighed. “I want him around.”