His Kind of Love by Kate Hawthorne (24)

 

 

 

The door slammed closed and Gabriel dropped his weight onto his heels, the floor biting into his knees.

Thomas clapped his hands together, breaking the silence left by Joel's departure. “Well, that was fun. Now, let's have a little chat about how you,” he pointed down at Gabriel, “know my wife, and what the fuck you two have been doing behind my back.” He glared at Madeline.

Gabriel unfolded himself from the floor, wiped his eyes, and sighed. “I have never owed you an explanation for anything and I'm not going to start with one now.” He crossed to the wet bar, poured himself two fingers of whiskey, and swallowed it down.

“I'd love a drink, thanks Gabriel.” Madeline sat on his couch, staring expectantly across the room at him.

Gabriel took down a clean glass, poured two fingers of whiskey into it and crossed the space between them. He stood in front of her, glancing at her outstretched arm, and drank the whiskey, then handed her the empty glass. “I'm certain you would.”

Sitting in an armchair, Gabriel shifted his attention to Thomas. “Your wife sent me Christmas cards for the past six years. I missed the last one, must have been because the return mail forwarding was up on my old address.” Gabriel sighed and watched the way the muscles in his feet shifted as he flexed his toes into the carpet. He thought about Joel's feet, delicate and slender, and the way Joel’s skin had tasted in his mouth. Gabriel closed his eyes, his entire body going slack and drooping back against his seat.

“You've what?” Gabriel heard Thomas speak, but recognized the question was directed at Madeline so he kept his eyes closed.

“He has money, Thomas. Of course I would reach out to him. That's what family does. They share their wealth. He should have shared with us.” Madeline answered Thomas as though he was an idiot and her explanation made perfect sense.

“We aren't family.” Gabriel and Thomas echoed each other with their responses.

She eyed them both before continuing, “Either way, Joel needed to be sent away and we couldn't afford it. He was out of control, letting that little queer from school fuck him.”

“Why do you think I never talk about my brother, Madeline? Because he’s an older version of the boy who fucked Joel. It’s what he did when we were in school, and he had no shame and didn’t care who knew! I don't want his fucking money. I don't want anything to do with him. If it weren’t for your faggoty little son, I wouldn’t even be here.” Thomas spat the words, laced with anger and resentment, at his wife.

Gabriel was surprised to feel a sharp stab in his gut. After twenty years, his little brother could still slay him with his vitriolic words. He kept his eyes closed.

“That's not practical, Thomas,” Madeline interjected. Gabriel opened his eyes and Thomas stepped toward her, pointing a shaking finger in her face.

“I'll tell you what's not practical, Madeline. Marrying my dead best friend’s wife and getting stuck raising her faggot son. That's not practical. Having a wife who thinks her missing brother-in-law, who is fucking queer, mind you, can do something to fix her worthless gay son. That's not practical.”

Thomas was cut off as Madeline threw Gabriel's empty whiskey glass at him.

“Oh, you were such a fucking martyr to marry me, weren't you? God, you're such a fucking asshole.”

Gabriel stood from his chair, the sounds of Thomas and Madeline arguing fading into white noise. He poured himself another glass of whiskey and drank it at the bar, then deciding against the extra work, took the bottle back to his seat.

It had only been minutes since Joel left and Gabriel was certain if he looked down, there would be a gaping hole in the center of his chest. He had feared that his lie would collapse his world around him in spectacular flames, but never imagined the match would be struck by his own brother. With his free hand, he rubbed his chest, trying to press his fingers into his sternum to make sure there were no physical holes. Gabriel could feel his pulse in his throat and he was overwhelmed with how much he hated himself right then.

The look on Joel's face before he’d left was permanently etched into Gabriel's memory. The clenched jaw and red-rimmed eyes, the tears tracking down his cheeks. Gabriel should have gone to Joel when he’d fled to his bedroom, but like a coward, he’d stayed and listened as his sweet and perfect Little Red fell to pieces alone no more than forty feet away. He had been paralyzed with fear and regret, unable to will his limbs to do what his heart begged for.

“Gabriel!” Thomas's voice snapped him back into the cold reality of the situation. Gabriel raised his eyes to his brother, feeling his shoulders stiffen.

“I asked you a question. Did you fuck my wife's son?” he demanded. “Fuck. That sounds filthy, doesn't it? How appropriate.” He chuckled derisively.

Gabriel had spent the majority of his youth being verbally abused by his father, and his late teens being judged and ridiculed by his brother. He’d been free of their hate for over twenty years, and as a thirty-eight-year-old man, he was most definitely not going to stand for it in his own home. He inhaled a steadying breath and stood from the chair, only showing a slight wobble from all the whiskey coursing through his bloodstream.

Gabriel was tired of lying, and tired of deceiving. Most of all, he was tired. He raised a hand to point at Thomas, swaying on his feet.

“Let me tell you a story, brother. You should have a seat.” He closed the space between them in four short steps before shoving Thomas on the shoulder, forcing him into a seated position. “When I was thirty-five, I met a man at a bar. Thomas. His name was Thomas. Ironic, no?” Gabriel paused, recognizing the slur in his words. His head shifted heavily around his neck as he willed himself sober enough to continue, “I brought him home, and I tied him to my bed. I called him a twink, a queer, and a fag, and I fucked him senseless, Thomas. I fucked him all night and then I cried over him, about you. Pathetic, don’t you agree?”

Madeline shifted her gaze between the two brothers, Gabriel wavering on his feet, and Thomas frozen on the couch. The atmosphere in the condo was combustible and one wrong word would ignite all of them.

“He said, ‘go find your brother, Gabriel, it will be okay.’ I kissed him and apologized and I decided to find you. I had your address of course, because your wife had been sending me Christmas cards for years by then.” He lowered his head and mock-saluted Madeline with the bottle of whiskey still clenched tightly between his fingers.

Thomas glared daggers at Madeline, and she had the decency to drop her gaze to the floor.

“So I pull up to your little house and what do I see? Nothing less than a bright-haired fucking child being verbally berated by none other than you, darling brother.” Gabriel spat the words in Thomas’s face. “And do you know what else I saw, Thomas? I saw you, so much like our father, and I saw Joel and,” he stopped, swaying as tears began to slide down his cheeks once more, “Fuck, he was perfect. He is perfect. He is deserving of so much more than any of us.” Gabriel took a swallow from the bottle. “And I decided then to keep him safe, to make sure he was safe from you, Jesus, from both of you. And I did it because someone needed to, and then I realized I loved him. I fucking love him. So yes, Thomas, I’ve been fucking him. I’ve been fucking the man I love.” Gabriel's voice tapered off. It was the first time he had said the words out loud, and they weren’t even directed toward Joel.

The silence stretched between the three of them, heavy with Gabriel's confession.

“And it’s done now.” His voice was soft, even more slurred than before. “So can you go, please? I’ll give you everything I own if you’ll please get the fuck out of my life and never come back.” With a clatter, Gabriel set the whiskey bottle down on his coffee table and stumbled to the front door, pulling it open and dramatically waving his arm out into the hallway, gesturing for Thomas and Madeline to leave.

After entirely too long, they both stood and walked out the door, Madeline first, and as Thomas passed by, Gabriel grabbed him by the collar and shouldered him against the door frame. Thomas grunted in pain, the door latch digging into his spine.

“And, Thomas, don’t you ever fucking speak to Joel again. You leave him be. I don't even know what the two of you are doing here, but I swear to fucking God, you don't know the lengths I’ve gone to during the past three years to keep watch on him, but they're extreme, brother, and I promise you now, if I find out you even drove down the same street as him, I will fucking end you and your wife.” Gabriel shoved him harder into the door before releasing his shirt and stepping back.

Thomas shook his shoulders and straightened his shirt, staring up at Gabriel with utter contempt. Gabriel flexed his hands into fists and leaned toward his brother with an eyebrow raised in challenge.

“It's money, Gabriel. It’s always money. The trust Mark left for Joel is about to mature and I think that him signing it over to us is the least we deserve.” Madeline spoke with no regret in her voice.

“Give me the fucking paperwork. He may not be speaking to me, but I know how to get it to him. But you're out of your mind if you think you’re owed a penny of what his father left him.” Gabriel held out a shaking hand and Madeline shoved a manila envelope into it.

Thomas stepped back and followed Madeline down the hallway after she turned to stomp away. Gabriel's weight was suddenly far too heavy for his bones and he collapsed, sliding down the door, half inside and half out in the hallway.

Gabriel stared at his hands, the tops and the palms, the length of his fingers and his cuticles. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the way they looked dancing across Joel's skin, grabbing his thighs and spreading him open. He ran a finger across the nails of his other hand, remembering how soft Joel's hair had felt beneath his fingertips as they lay together, covered in each other's sweat.

Twice. That was all Gabriel had been allowed. Twice, he had been able to sink inside Joel's tight, warm heat and Gabriel hoped it would be enough to hold him over for the rest of his days. Because in this moment and for the rest of his life, there was no one else he would ever love the same as he loved Joel. He pressed into his eyes with the tips of his fingers, sucking in a wobbling breath as he hoisted himself from off the floor. Moving into the condo and closing the door behind him, he stumbled to his office and turned on his computer.

He immediately pulled up the tracking functions on Joel's phone, needing to know where he was, needing to know he was safe. The map zeroed in to Beverly Hills. Joel had left his phone behind.

Fuck.

He checked the security feeds on Joel's apartment, and found it was still very much under construction. He was blind, and for the first time in over a year, he had no idea where Joel was.

He’s with Athena, you fucking fool.

Of course he was with Athena. For a moment, Gabriel hated that Joel was gay, not bi, because the only person who could ever come close to caring for him enough was Athena, and if it couldn’t be Gabriel, at least it could be her.

It would be her.

Athena was his best friend. Things like romantic love and sex would never get in their way. Athena was lucky, she would never know the pain of losing Joel like this.

Gabriel stared at the blinking GPS indicator on his screen and then he picked up the laptop and threw it across the room. It slammed into the security monitor on the wall in a symphony of shattering glass and metal. Gabriel braced himself on the desk, body heaving and breaths catching in his throat. He dropped his head and watched as tears splattered against the naked wood of his desk.

A life without Joel was something he didn’t want to imagine. But deep down in his heart, he understood he couldn’t go after him. His kind of love had been painful enough for Joel. His love had done enough damage.

Back in his living room, he finished off the bottle of whiskey, picking up the two volumes of Les Misérables and dropping himself down on the floor, his back against the couch. He reached blindly for his phone and dialed up a courier service.

“Hello, this is Gabriel Hunter. I have a package I need couriered to a Mr. Joel Reading, care of Ms. Athena Smith, please. Yes, I’ll hold, thank you.”