Rebel Yells (Apishipa Creek Chronicles) by Rain Carrington
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Rebel Yells
Copyright ? 2014 Rain Carrington
All rights reserved
Warning: This book contains scenes of sexual situations between two or more consenting men. There are also scenes of BDSM. Please to not attempt any of the activities in this book without knowing how to be safe.
Chapter 1
The crinkle of the paper bag was loud in the closed up, otherwise empty white sheriff’s car. Inside of the bag was a lunchmeat sandwich on toasted honey oat bread and an apple. It had been the same meal for seventeen years, well except for the green apple. Sometimes it was a pear if they were available at Sid’s Corner Grocery. If not there were always apples.
He poured a hot cup of coffee then put his big hand in and pulled out the sandwich wrapped in a cheap sandwich baggie.
“Are you still eating those? The diner is ten minutes away.”
The voice didn’t scare or make him jump from surprise because he was expecting it.
“It would cost me a fortune to eat at the diner every day,” Jack Colton said casually before taking a bite and slowly chewing.
Martin snorted a laugh and countered, “You have no debt. The house is paid for; the old pickup is long since paid for. You have plenty of money. I left you everything.”
After taking another bite and chasing it with a drink of the cooling coffee he swallowed and shook his head. “That was your money. I told you not to leave it to me.”
It was a sore spot for Jack. His wealthier partner of 16 years had left him the money he’d saved all the years he was a CPA. Martin had put it in his will without Jack knowing because he knew Jack would have raised a fit.
Jack was the sheriff for San Isabel County, a small county between the foothills and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He didn’t earn much but the big man was comfortable enough.
Never wanting his lover’s money and never expecting it, when Martin’s cancer finally took him and the lawyer had told him that he’d left Jack all of his money, Jack had gone on a bender. The money wasn’t anything to him; he wanted Martin back so the end of the drunk, when he was waking up on his couch with nothing but his two day old boxers on, Martin was there.
Jack figured it was in his mind. He wasn’t stupid, didn’t think he had any psychic gifts. He knew he would see Martin, speak to him until he didn’t need the comfort anymore. They had been together long enough that his mind already knew every response the beautiful, classy and smooth-talking man would make. It was easy. Well it had been easy. The longer it went on the harder it became.
“If you would just move on it would get easier,” Martin admonished. Eventually Jack looked over. Framed by the changing leaves of the aspens behind him, was a glowing Martin, his sympathetic blue eyes were shining, wet with tears.
“I can’t.”
Nodding Martin said, “You will when you find love again. When you find a man to claim your heart and make you whole I will fade away.”
Jack looked away again. The heavy weight in his chest reminded him of the hole in his heart that Martin’s death left. Martin always said that. When Jack was once again whole, whatever the fuck that meant. He shook his head and moved the cowboy hat back off of his forehead. “I don’t see that happening. I miss you Martin. Miss you every single day.”
The hand reached out for him. As it drew close enough to touch Jack’s knee it disappeared and in the distance Jack heard the rumbling of a motorcycle speeding through the winding highway coming toward where he had pulled into the trees to have his lunch.
The Sheriff could tell the bike was speeding. That was just something that came with the many years of being on the job. He started to put his sandwich back into the paper bag even as he looked up just in time to see the man coming towards him on an old motorcycle. He flew around the corner, leaning hard into the curve and Jack hit the lights and siren before he pulled out of his quiet lunch spot to give chase, the gravel shot out behind his tires as he went.
The road was too curved to drive over the speed limit. Jack didn’t like giving tickets and didn’t like stopping people for bullshit but when he saw blatant disregard for the limits put in place to save lives he couldn’t let it pass. As he got closer he saw the shoulder length hair whipping out behind the motorcyclist. The rider wore a beat up brown leather jacket that looked as old as the decrepit bike. The mirrors showed the blurred reflection of the man. Jack could tell he was smiling as he led Jack through another mile of road before he pulled over. Jack parked behind him, turned off the siren and then car. He got on the radio and called Patsy.
“Hey Pats, I have a motorcycle pulled over here. Got him for speeding. Kansas plates, YK196.”
The voice came over the radio chipper and high pitched as always, “Sure thing Jack. I’ll give it a once over and see if you can’t catch yourself a serial killer.”
Jack chuckled and got out of the car slowly walking along the narrow shoulder. As he approached the rider got off of the bike by swinging his leg over and then sat sideways on the seat. He turned his head and Jack stopped in his tracks. He was fucking beautiful. The cocky smile alone made feelings awaken in Jack that he had thought he buried with Martin. He pushed them away. Those feelings belonged to Martin and only Martin.
“Hey officer was I doing something wrong?”
The smile never wavered as if the fucker really didn’t care if he had or hadn’t. Jack put one hand in the pocket of his jeans and said, “It’s Sheriff not officer and yeah you were speeding.”
The smile turned into a fake frown and he waved his hand over his rusted gas tank. “I don’t have a speedometer. How fast was I going?”
Jack hadn’t clocked him and Jack didn’t lie so he said, “Fast enough to get yourself killed on these roads.”
Mocking laughter came from the pouty mouth of the younger man and he said, “I doubt that.”
“I need to see some ID.”
Mr. Harley Rider stood up and reached into his back pocket, twisting his lean long body a little, he cocked his hip to the side just a touch. Jack’s mouth filled with saliva so he looked down the road to nothing in particular just so he could avoid the beauty in front of him. The man handed him the ID and Jack took it looking over it quickly. It read the man’s name was Rebel Marino. Who the fuck named their kid Rebel? Shaking his head he read over the rest. Light green eyes, Light brown hair. The ID fit the man right down to the cocky smile on his face in the model perfect picture. He memorized the number and handed the card back.
“Everything in order Officer?”
As pretty as the man was Jack took an instant dislike to him and he looked down the road again instead of at him. “It’s Sheriff,” Jack stated again, knowing full well that Rebel Marino had heard him the first time. “When I make sure you have no warrants, if you’re clean I suggest you get on that thing, hope it runs long enough to get 15 miles and out of my county.”
The man named Rebel gave an arrogant grin and his head cocked to the side before he asked, “And if I don’t?”
Jack smiled back just as brashly. “You don’t want to find out.”
He left the punk and got back in the cruiser and on the radio. “Pats, anything for me?”
“It’s registered to a Rebel Marino. He’s had some run-ins but nothing recently and there is nothing outstanding for him.”
“Thanks Pats.” He got out once more and said to Rebel, “Get back on your bike, get down the road and don’t let me see you again.”
Laughing, Rebel shrugged. “We’ll see about that.”
oooOooo
The end of the day found Jack in front of the television with a beer in his hand. Martin was there of course but Jack didn’t speak to him right away. He loved the feeling of having his lover there with him in the quiet light of the early evening. Martin had other ideas.
“You liked that kid.”
“He wasn’t a kid,” he replied while he scratched over the thick stubble on his jaw. Since Martin had died he didn’t wake up to shave every morning like he used to. Most of the ladies in town thought it looked good. Frankly he didn’t care how it looked.
“Well maybe not but you are still twelve years older than him. He was something wasn’t he? That attitude? Man I just bet he reminds you of me in the old days before you put me in my place.”
A smile ghosted Jack’s lips as he thought of Martin in his youth, the smart assed way he spoke. The way he goaded Jack into their first date. “You were beautiful too but you were also submissive deep down. This guy isn’t.”
Martin laughed as he said, “Well it’s too late now. You ran him out of town.”
Jack finally gazed Martin’s way and felt his heart hurt like the man had just died. Martin’s silly grin, his laughing eyes and his graying blonde hair. He was perfect. Maybe not perfect in the conventional sense but perfect for him. There would never be another man that could touch his heart like Martin had and that is why he didn’t even look for one. It was no use.
Once he’d tried to fuck someone. He’d gone into St. Martin to a gay bar about six months after Martin died. It had been a long time since he’d had sex. Even before Martin passed away he was sick for a long time and as much as Jack’s heart hadn’t wanted it, his body screamed at him for another human being’s touch and he had found someone pretty fast. He was a good looking guy, tall and built well and he’d never had trouble attracting men or women. But this guy was a college student, too young for him but legal and ready to be fucked so Jack got him into his pickup and headed to the nearest motel. As he drove through town he looked up at a banner that was strung across the street. It announced St. Martin’s street fair coming up in three days but the wind blew the banner and it folded so that when he looked up all he could see was the name Martin. He pulled over and started to cry, sobbing so loud his body was consumed with it and the poor kid had freaked out, first trying to help him, give him some kind of comfort but finally deciding that Jack was crazy so he got out of the truck and ran back towards the bar.
Since that night he hadn’t tried again. If he needed release he just jerked off in the shower and went to bed hugging Martin’s pillow which, even after 3 years and many washings, still smelled like him. Jack changed the channel to news and said, “Well it was better for the town to get him moving. You know as well as I do he was trouble.”
Scoffing Martin said, “Trouble? Seems to me that is exactly what you need in your life is a little trouble.”
oooOooo
Maybe his mother had been a kook and named him Rebel as some kind of sick joke but he’d always thought his middle name should have been Trouble. He didn’t mean to get into all the trouble he did but trouble always found him. His first arrest had been for stealing his neighbor’s lawn decoration when he was thirteen. A stupid pink flamingo he had spray-painted blue because that was his mom’s favorite color. Well that and because he thought that that would disguise it.
Stupid.
Yeah, he thought as he’d pulled into his aunt’s yard, maybe he should have been named Stupid Trouble. Rebel Anthony Marino was his name but Stupid Trouble Marino fit him much better.
Aunt Candace stood in the doorway, which was odd because she had died two months before and left him the house and everything in it. She was the only one who’d ever really gotten him and his heart hurt as he saw her standing there, in her grubby faded jeans and her long white braid smiling but in the smile was the same mischief he saw in the mirror every day.
“Auntie I don’t know why the hell you left me this place. They already don’t like me here.”
He knew what she would say then. “They will honey. What’s not to like?”
He climbed off of the bike he’d bought with some of the money she’d left him and stretched. It had been a long ride from Kansas but the mountains had been the worst. The scenery was great but all the twists and turns had taken a lot out of him. He went to the rock under which Aunt Candace had always kept her key when she’d bothered to lock the door. He grabbed the smiling hippie frog keychain and went for the door.
As soon as he entered the house it brought back so many memories. He hadn’t been there for years, since he was a kid but it still smelled like patchouli oil, pot and cookies. Aunt Candace had a way about her, an old hippie left over from a long ago era. Her garden was full of not only vegetables but herbs and things for healing, and in her kitchen they were hanging all around the ceiling so they could dry. It was a big airy space with old wood cabinets, the windows had handmade plaid curtains and the big thick wooden table was where he had spent the most time when he’d visited. They had long talks at that table. It was the first place he had admitted out loud that he was gay.
She hadn’t even been surprised but then again to him she seemed to know everything. It was she that warned him not to tell her niece, his mother, about his orientation but he hadn’t listened. He wished he had.
The floors were the same red and white checkered tile that usually had dog prints from old Farley who had died a few years before Aunt Candace. The same dog that had its chin resting on Rebel’s leg when he’d made his confession to Aunt Candace.
He walked into the living room and saw the wall hangings, framed posters of Woodstock where Aunt Candace had spent three days in 1969, flags of the old ERA movement, peace symbols and one that had shown up the summer after his confession, the rainbow flag.
“Auntie you were one crazy hippie.”
She walked around the corner with her big straw hat on that she wore when she gardened, dirt smudges on her face and white t-shirt and said, “And you are more like me than you want to admit.”
As he laughed he had to nod and admit to the truth of it. “At least they didn’t try to chase you out of town,” he chuckled. Aunt Candace shook her head.
“You thought he was good looking. Quite the fox.”
It was the same thing she’d said when he met Jason Addle back when he was fifteen.
The cop…or sheriff or whatever the fuck he called himself was indeed the best looking man he’d seen in a long time. The way he walked, that casual slow stroll you only saw but in laid back places like the mountain towns or out of the way prairie places he’d been through from Garden City. The facial scruff lining his squared jaw was sexy. Man that was something he’d like to get some whisker burn on his thighs from. Those dark eyes, now those were crazy hot. Unfortunately the man hated him. Rebel wondered how long it would be before the prick threw him in jail for some trumped up bullshit.
Well he wouldn’t be there long anyway. He’d get the house fixed up and ready to sell then he’d use the money to move somewhere and start his own garage. He loved fixing old cars and bikes and he had a knack for it. It was one of the only things he knew how to do well and one of the only things he wanted to do.
“You forgot his ass. Don’t tell me you weren’t looking. Those jeans fit nice on him right?”
A hippie and a perv oh yeah his aunt had been something special. “Yeah nice ass and from what I could tell nice body to go along with it. But he hated me. Wanted me gone.”
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Well you are sticking around so maybe you can change his mind.”