The Leaving Kind, page 1
Riptide Publishing
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Burnsville, NC 28714
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
The Leaving Kind
Copyright © 2023 by Kelly Jensen
Cover art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com
Editor: Carole-ann Galloway
Layout: L.C. Chase, cchase.com
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ISBN: 978-1-62649-985-0
First edition
September, 2023
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-1-62649-984-3
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Without heart, there is no art.
Cameron has been running for years—from responsibility, disappointment, war, and loss. Despite his fatigue, his body and mind refuse to rest. Returning home and supporting his younger brother helped, until Nick proved he no longer needed Cam’s care. But before Cam can decide to move on again, he meets someone else who could use a little help.
Victor is done with love. He’s done with men. He’s also done, apparently, with being a brilliant, if temperamental, artist. Now he’s just temperamental and would rather watch his gorgeous handyman dig in the garden than paint. It doesn’t take long, however, before Cam’s face—replete with stories—has Victor itching to pick up a brush again. If only painting people wasn’t fraught with sad memories.
Neither plans for more than friendship, but it quickly turns to sex, and then feelings intense enough to send them both running. Only by risking their hearts and sharing the pain of the past can they turn this love into the staying kind.
For Susan. I wish you could have met Victor. I think you would have loved him.
Stop leaving and you will arrive.
Stop searching and you will see.
Stop running away and you will be found.
—Lao Tzu
About The Leaving Kind
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Explore More
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
Also by Kelly Jensen
About the Author
Enjoy More Like This
Spent firecrackers littered the gravel lot outside Shepard’s Tree Farm. Brightly colored plastic cones and cardboard rings. Scorched and ragged boxes. Dozens of slender lengths of wire, one end blackened. Cameron steered his niece’s car around the largest clumps of debris and parked near the gate. He hopped out, key in hand for the padlock, and jumped about a mile in the air as a lost popper detonated beneath his shoe sole.
“Jesus. Fuck!”
Seven in the a.m. was way too early for that kind of startlement.
Cam stood still a moment, as he waited for his breath to slow. Then he made for the gate, eyes glued to the ground. The next popper, hidden under a curl of paper, jacked his pulse back up, but he didn’t jump.
“Damn kids.” That it could have been him thirty years ago—no, make that thirty-five—wasn’t lost on him. He’d done his share of sneaking out on a holiday weekend. Setting off firecrackers in empty lots. Tossing the odd cherry bomb in a dumpster and running like a rabid dog was biting at his heels to make the corner of the Dollar General where Gerry and Nate had been crouched low, waiting for him.
God, that boom. Always sounded like a bomb going off. To them, it might have been a real bomb.
Cam winced at the memory. If only they’d known. The sound a real bomb made? It varied. But the feeling of it . . . The nanosecond of surprise, the punch of air. The way the earth kicked and bucked. The screams.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Breathe. In and out.
July Fourth was not his favorite holiday. The detritus strewn across the parking lot put him on edge. Back on edge. Shading his eyes against the rising sun, Cam gazed across the highway toward the housing development on the other side. Rows of houses nestled beneath low trees. Siding mostly the same color, the pitches of the roofs almost soothingly even. Beneath those eaves rested the punk-ass kids who’d left him all this extra work.
They weren’t the same folks who’d terrorized his own neighborhood last night and the night before, but Cam scowled at them anyway. Then he dropped his hand, dropped his shoulders, unlocked the gate, and got back in the car.
The drive to the farm wound down a long slope, through a quarter mile of fledgling trees. Spruce and pine on one side, sweet gum, honey locust, and dogwoods on the other. Apples and pears too. Small parking bays lay off to each side, spaces for customers who liked to wander the rows and pick their trees right out of the ground. A popular pastime late in November and early December.
Cam drove past the collection of small buildings at the bottom of the slope—the store and indoor plant nursery—and pulled around to the rear of the premises to park beside a pair of green pickup trucks, both printed with Shepard’s Tree Farm and the unimaginative Christmas tree logo. It was what it was.
His boss’s car was already there. Sometimes he thought Luisa Narvaez slept on the couch in her office. But she did have a shorter commute than him, living only five minutes away on the other side of Dingmans Ferry. Cam had to drive down from Milford. Took him about seventeen minutes on a quiet morning.
Well, sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds, on average. If he wanted to be precise, which he did not. That was his brother Nick’s thing. Cam preferred a life with rounder edges.
Pocketing his keys, he ducked into the rear of the shop and stopped at the coffee station. He helped himself to a cup from the pot Luisa had already started. Judging by the volume, she hadn’t gotten herself any yet. He grabbed an extra mug, poured it half full, topped it up with cream, and added three sugars. After giving it a stir, he carried both mugs into the back office and set one on Luisa’s desk.
She looked up with a smile that quickly faded. “Caray! Did you pull an all-nighter?”
Cam snorted. “No, the kids in my neighborhood did.” He slumped onto the couch, setting his mug on the armrest. “Plenty of adults out there too. All yelling and screaming, as if setting off fireworks until one in the morning wasn’t enough noise.”
Luisa studied him closely for a moment, and Cam met her gaze with a lift of his chin, meaning, I’m cool. Don’t worry about me. If he weren’t so tired, he’d add a wink and a playful smile. She’d see through the ruse, though.
Luisa would know what the Fourth must feel like to him. She’d lost a husband to war. She knew all about the scars war could leave on a person’s body and soul. Her eyes were slightly glassy as she turned toward the computer monitor. The ache of loss never ceased.
She hit a few keys.
“Only two deliveries this morning.” Business had slowed a little after the large chain hardware store opened in Dingmans Ferry earlier that spring. Lately, though, it seemed to have ground to a halt.
She lifted her gaze, briefly. Cam kept his features as far from wince territory as possible.
; Attention back on the computer, she tapped another key. The printer on the credenza chuffed to life. “More might come in. I’ll text you.”
“It’s always quiet the week after a holiday,” he noted.
Luisa met his gaze again. “Not this quiet. At this rate, I’m not sure whether I should be reordering mulch and soil. We might have sold all we’re going to sell for the season.”
Cam reached for the smile Luisa would definitely need now, and a yawn cracked his jaw open. Man, he was tired. Still, his deficit of sleep over the weekend had one thread of silver on the underside: tonight, he’d crash out as though a train had hit him.
He could not wait. Deep, dreamless slumber was addictive. The more he got, the more he craved. Mother Nature seemed disinterested in letting him have his fair share, though. Like she thought it wasn’t good for him.
Outside, gravel crunched under tires as another car pulled into the lot. That’d be Jorge, the large, quiet man who did a lot of the heavy lifting around the farm. A car door squeaked open and squawked closed. Jorge drove a Mercury Cougar that had probably graduated from high school the same year as Cam. Jorge’s somber step paused by the coffee maker a moment later, then his shadow darkened the doorway to Luisa’s office.
Cam lifted his mug in a morning salute.
“Good morning,” Luisa said.
Jorge returned the salute and slurped at his coffee. Cam took another mouthful of his and Luisa sipped hers. The three of them shared a long, silent moment where presumably their thoughts wandered in different directions. But Cam guessed they were all thinking pretty much the same. It was just the three of them now. There was a weekend manager, and a couple of college students on summer break who worked weekend shifts, but on a Tuesday at the beginning of July? Just them. Should have been more. Last year, there had been more.
Cam drained his mug and stood. He grabbed the printouts from the tray and glanced at the orders. Gravel and sand to an address down in Bushkill and trees and mulch to a house halfway between here and Milford. So, the opposite direction. He couldn’t fit both orders in one truck, anyway.
Bushkill first. He handed the slip to Jorge. “Want to load the sand and gravel? I’ll start cleaning up the mess around the gate.”
Silently, Jorge took the delivery slips. With another slight lift of his mug, he left. Cam took no offense from the wordless exchange. That was Jorge. Cam hadn’t been sure he could speak until they’d been working together for four months. He got it, though. Jorge was another vet. Like him.
Or maybe not like him. Jorge was . . .
Cam shook the thought away. Degrees of damage didn’t really matter. It was how they were now. How they related to the real world. Sensing the weight of Luisa’s gaze again, Cam glanced over his shoulder. He shot her his most confident smile and raised his now-empty mug.
She smiled back and then busied herself at the computer.
His brother called while he was on the road to the second delivery. Cam tapped the dash-mounted phone and answered, “Nick.” For a long time, Nick had been Nicky, his little bro. But that had been decades ago, and Nicky was now Nick. A man. A somewhat odd but very talented craftsman. “What’s up?”
“I only have two minutes to talk.”
“All right.”
“I’m on a break.”
“Breaks are good.”
Nick’s partner, Oliver, had insisted Nick break his day into more than two halves. The rationale, as Cam remembered it, was to give Nick additional opportunities to engage outside of his work. To make phone calls and entertain visitors to his small gallery.
“Are you free on Saturday?” Nick asked.
“Probably. I didn’t think Oliver was doing a market this week?” Two weekends a month, Oliver paid Cam to run a second farmers’ market stall up in Milford for him. Used to be every weekend, but logistics and the growth of Oliver’s catering business had reduced the number of markets he attended. Cam didn’t mind that it meant less cash for him. Running the stall had never been about the money. It was about staying busy.
“I’m delivering a dollhouse to a client in Doylestown and would like help getting it into and out of the truck,” Nick said.
“Oh, sure. Text me a time and a place and I’ll be there.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re—”
Nick had disconnected the call. Cam chuckled. His little bro wasn’t big on small talk. The drive down to Doylestown would give them the opportunity to catch up, though.
With the empty hours of his Saturday potentially filled, Cam smiled his way along Milford Road as he looked for the turn off. There, Raymondskill Road.
He’d made a delivery somewhere along here before. As he navigated the dips and turns, Cameron studied the houses, mostly hidden behind the trees. Was it that place? No—that one. He slowed the truck as he passed a place set closer to the road. Yeah, that one. He recognized the house but not the garden. It seemed kinda sad, as if the owner had stopped caring for it. That was a shame. As he remembered, the garden, while small, used to show years of labor and love. It had resembled the garden back at his place—the house he was babysitting while his niece finished college—established so long ago that even the weeds knew where they were supposed to grow. Here, the weeds had gotten out of hand and the grass was way too long. The barberry bushes lining the driveway had merged into an unruly mess, and there were broken tree branches gathered into messy clumps and not cleared away.
Huh.
Wasn’t his business. This wasn’t the address for the delivery he had in the back of the truck: three cubic yards of hardwood mulch and four trees, two firebirds and two cloud nines. The firebirds were pretty, with a dark pink edge to the leaves that would darken to a fiery red in the fall. Cam had planted one at the corner of the drive last year and enjoyed watching the foliage change throughout the seasons.
He drove on.
Half a mile later, he caught sight of a mailbox printed with the house number and name from his docket. 693, Ness. The name rang a distant bell, which happened sometimes. Cam had grown up here.
He turned into an almost hidden driveway that rose in a long curve around a gentle slope. Midsummer had the trees on either side almost meeting overhead, creating a tunnel of green. Low beds flanked the drive, thick with the spiky fronds of lilies, a few orange heads still bobbing in the afternoon heat. The drive flattened and widened at the top, opening out into a broad circle of gravel with a water-stained fountain at the center. The lilies continued around the outside, breaking for paths that led off into trees on the right, rolling lawn and flower beds on the left.
As pretty as the garden was, though, the drama taking place on the small front lawn quickly drew all of Cameron’s attention. The grass was littered with objects: Boxes, garbage bags, and stacks of what might be clothing. In the middle of it all, two men screaming at each other. Actually, only one was screaming. The other held a defensive posture with an arm held up across his forehead as though to fend off an attack.
The reason why became apparent as the other man stooped to pick something up, cocked his arm back, and made an attempt to toss it. Whatever it was resisted his efforts, however, being perhaps too light for any sort of dramatic momentum. He overextended his arm, yelled—shrilled, really—and spun three-quarters of the way through a circle, the robe he wore fluttering open in an arc around him.
Cam blinked at the sudden exposure of skin. A lot of skin. Pale, as though the owner hid from the sun. With his cap of almost colorless hair, hiding was a good idea. He’d burn in no seconds flat. Was he Mr. Victor Ness?
Thankfully, he wasn’t completely naked. Tight black briefs covered his junk, worn under an insubstantial robe of purple with swirls of teal, blue, and green, as though peacock feathers had been woven together to form a material. The way the sun sparked through the fabric, it might be silk.
Okay, then.
The other man stepped forward, as though to offer a hand.
Mr. Ness screamed again and made a very definite gesture, using a single sweep of the hand. Even over the grumble of the engine, Cam heard his words.
“Get out! Go. And never come back.”
This was not how it was supposed to happen. But when had his fantasy life ever lined up with reality?
Victor drew in a breath and tried to hold it this time. To not let it go like the last one, the echo of which still battered his ears. Or maybe his ears were ringing. His head felt a bit like a gong, and the universe—or reality, the snarky bitch—had one of those little hammers. Blood pounded across his temples and over the back of his skull, down his neck, and into his chest. When he placed a hand there, his fingers curled across bare skin.
