Read Deliverance - Hooch and Matt's Story for Free Online

“If I told you that I wanted to spend my days and nights with you, live with you, as my partner, because out there, in Hell, I realized that you mean the world to me? If I told you that you are my sanity, my laughter, my lust, my love, my comfort, my day and my night, my heat and cold and everything? If I told you all that, would you think that translates to ‘convenient’?”
    Matt swallowed, staring at Hooch wide-eyed. “N...no.”
    “Damn right. Now shut up, Donahue, and tell me that you’ll spend the rest of your life with me.”
    Matt pronounced his next words very carefully:
    “I do.”

1998
     
    Late Summer 199 8, Fayetteville, North Carolina
United States of America
    It smelt of wet carpet and of tile grot. Of crumbling plaster and fresh paint the realtor had hastily slapped on in a spirit of forlorn hope to make it look slightly less depressing. A large building that had once been a furniture workshop and showroom, most of it double-height, though there was office space on the second floor that had been used by the managers and could be easily converted into a small apartment  well, small to civilians. For a former Marine, it was going to be positively palatial compared to some of the places he’d lived in. Even with the addition of a roommate, his Delta-instructor best bud who happened to be moving into the spare room.
    Despite its run-down state, the building itself was solid. It was cheap, well located in a decent part of Fayetteville, it had a large parking lot and it was his .
    Matt dumped his rucksack down onto the ground and walked around, kicking up swirls of dust. He picked his way around the space, the morning sunshine flooding down from the windows set in the clerestory-style roof. There were smaller offices and storerooms on the first floor, the pipes already in a good position for the wet areas, and the wide expanse of space, dividable in so many ways, which filled in his mind’s eye with fitness equipment, a sound system, and the long shopping list of gym gear living in his head. Or, more reliably, on the new laptop computer in his bag.
    The other man in the room had been silent as Matt moved around. He was so still and unmoving, he seemed to barely disturb the air. Specks of dust settling in his dark hair, Hooch stood, slightly leaning on a cane, dark eyes tracking Matt’s movements.
    Matt took a deep breath and turned around. Despite the times he had visited here to inspect the building, the long hours spent on the phone with the realtor, the bank, the insurers, the builders, the architect and what appeared to be every single remotely responsible local government body in Fayetteville possible, the realization that he had only taken the first steps towards his new dream had set in. His name on the title deed. A frighteningly large amount owed to the bank. Pages and pages of sketches and plans and specifications and a team of guys ready to start work the following day. “Well? What do you think?”
    “It’s big,” Hooch commented. “How much did you pay?”
    Money. The question of money again. The only time they had fights over the last months at Matt’s apartment was over money and the fact that Hooch tried to pay his way in a manner that infuriated Matt, and Hooch just wouldn’t get it.
    Matt hoped his sigh was inaudible. While overflowing enthusiasm was probably out of the question, it would have been nice to have some sort of appreciative comment. “It was a bargain, actually,” he said, voice level.
    “How much?” Hooch repeated, dark eyes in line of Matt’s sight, like a sniper rifle.
    There was that feeling again, the one he’d had far too often in the recent months as Hooch recovered. The feeling that he was being inched into a corner. Matt said the figure. It wasn’t something he needed to keep a secret, but the fact that Hooch had pushed for it, that was the bit that stung.
    They never told you about this part of living with someone. Or else nobody else had a