CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gabriel hurt. From the top of his head, which he knew had contacted the wall, to the little finger of his left hand, which he thought could be broken. Stefan hadn’t stopped, he’d been furious, and when Gabriel had come around, woken from whatever safe place his mind had escaped to, he’d known he had to leave until Stefan calmed down.
Only he hadn’t known where to go.
He’d disappointed Stefan, and he’d needed to go somewhere and make himself better, and all he’d been able to think had been that Kyle had a safe place for him. Legacy Ranch. They would help him, and he could go home and Stefan wouldn’t see him all broken up.
There were two men outside the main structure, one tall and rangy and blond, the other shorter with dark hair, and as they got closer Gabriel could make out a third man, partially obscured. He recognized that third man. Kyle. He wasn’t going to forget any details about the trial, and he certainly recalled stoic Kyle.
It was Kyle who stepped forward, an expression of puzzlement on his face, but it was Tall and Blond who spoke.
“Cam?” he said.
“Riley,” Cam said from Gabriel’s side.
“Is everything okay?”
Then realization dawned on Kyle’s face and he hurried to the other side of Gabriel, which was a good thing, because all the energy was leaving Gabriel in one big rush. Part of him didn’t want to let Cam go, but Cam was actually handing him to Kyle, and why wouldn’t he? Gabriel was just a mess of problems and issues and a tangled knot of pain.
Kyle didn’t say anything, just supported Gabriel and helped him inside the large structure, taking him through a kitchen and to a room at the back.
“Can I see?” he asked carefully, and Gabriel knew what he meant. Slowly, he eased off his shirt, the pain in his left shoulder hindering him. Kyle didn’t move to assist, and that was okay; he could do this himself.
Until he couldn’t.
“Can you help?” he asked, and Kyle moved quickly to tug the shirt off and help Gabriel with his jeans. In boxers, he deliberately turned around so Kyle could see his back, then half turned to expose the bruising on his side, and finally faced him so that every mark on his body was obvious.
This was mechanical, and he was beyond caring what another victim like Kyle was thinking. He was sure Kyle had suffered the same way he had at the hands of Hank. Why would anything he saw now be a shock?
But Kyle’s eyes were wet, like he was holding back tears and it wasn’t quite working.
“I just need somewhere to stay for a few days,” Gabriel said, shoulders back, however much that hurt. “I don’t want any questions, or a doctor, or any shit like that.”
Kyle nodded. “The man who helped you here—”
“Is no one.”
Kyle crossed his arms over his chest and looked concerned. “Is he the one hurting you?”
Just the idea of Cam hurting anyone with hands or words made Gabriel snort a laugh, which hurt like a freaking bitch.
“No, he’s nothing to do with me,” Gabriel lied.
Kyle narrowed his eyes. “He looked pretty invested in your welfare,” he said.
“He’s a fucking mark, okay? He’s nothing to me. Tell him to go.”
Thankfully, a knock at the door stopped the discussion about Cam, and also, abruptly, shame coiled inside Gabriel. He didn’t want anyone else to see him nearly naked, with every mark on his body on show. He didn’t know how to voice that, though.
“Gabriel? It’s me,” Cam called through the door.
Kyle looked at him expectantly, but Gabriel closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t want to see Cam, couldn’t handle questions. It was bad enough he’d fallen asleep on the man’s shoulder.
His head hurt. Stefan should be here; he’d be able to calm the pain in his thoughts, and kiss every bruise like it was a badge of honor. Cam was just the mark he’d used to get here; fucking man wouldn’t let himself get sucked off for money to get a cab, no, he’d insisted on bringing him here.
What if Stefan found out?
That didn’t bear thinking about. He’d be so disappointed in Gabriel. The pain in his body seemed to reach right into his heart and his defiant stance slumped a little. Kyle was still standing there watching and likely had his own opinions about what was happening in Gabriel’s head.
“Don’t let him in,” Gabriel said.
Kyle nodded. “Do you want me to call the police?”
For Cam? Was that what Kyle meant? Did he not believe that Cam had nothing to do with this? That Cam had rescued him? Or at least badgered him into accompanying him here. That wasn’t so much rescuing as getting into the middle of things he shouldn’t be involved with.
If Stefan found out…
“No. Just tell him to go.”
He was asking a lot of Kyle to have to deal with the man outside the door, but he didn’t want to see Cam.
“I’ll be right back,” Kyle murmured, then slipped out the door. Gabriel could hear the low rumble of voices, but the doors were thick wood, and anyway he didn’t want to hear Cam’s do-gooder shit right now.
For the longest time he sat on the bed, looking out the window. Beyond the glass and to the left were some stables, and every so often he caught a glimpse of movement inside. His eyesight was a little blurry, but he was tired, right? He opened and closed his eyes a few times, but the blurriness was morphing into a prism in his eyes. So he closed them completely and lay back on the bed, but the pain chased him even in the darkness.
“Gabriel?” a voice asked him, but he didn’t know who it was. He wanted to open his eyes, but that hurt.
“I think we need… doctor…”
I can’t afford a doctor. I’ll be okay.
“Gabriel, can you hear me?”
Go away.
“Gabriel? My name is Clair…”
“I’ll stay with him.”
“You need to wake him…”
Light woke him, not bright like the ones in the night, or day, or whenever they’d insisted on shining something into his eyes. This was a softer light, and the pain in his head had subsided. He needed to get up; sickness roiled inside him, and he leaned on his side groaning, unable to stop the vomit that forced itself up out of him.
Someone held him, and he half opened his eyes, shutting them immediately. He didn’t know who was holding him, didn’t recognize him at all. Someone had their hands on him, and he hadn’t agreed to that. He struggled to get away, but nothing worked, and every molecule of him hurt.
That same person who was supporting him gave him ice chips and helped him to lay back.
Next time he opened his eyes, it was Kyle sitting next to the bed, leaning back in the chair, his fingers laced and his hands on his belly. His hat was tipped forward, hiding his eyes, and he looked completely at peace. There was water on the side, and Gabriel reached for it, but Kyle was there helping when he couldn’t quite make contact with the glass.
He allowed Kyle’s help, then shuffled back and away.
“How are you feeling?” Kyle asked, concern in his green eyes.
Gabriel blinked. He felt okay, his eyesight wasn’t blurry, and the pain was at a manageable level, or at least at a level he could handle from experience.
He needed his clothes, and to get out of there. Stefan would be wondering where he was.
“Did he call?” Gabriel asked a little desperately.
“We didn’t find a phone on you.”
Fear gripped Gabriel, then he recalled what he’d done with it and he groaned out loud. His only lifeline to Stefan was at the bottom of the river. Why had he done that? He was so fucking stupid. It wasn’t like Stefan had meant to take things so far this time, and he’d had every right to be angry after all the time he’d looked after Gabriel. He pushed himself to sit up, moving to set his feet on the floor.
“What do you need?” Kyle asked immediately, and reached for him.
“My clothes,” Gabriel said, peering down at the floor where he seemed to recall his clothes had dropped.
“You need to stay in bed for a while.”
“No, I need to get back home.”
“The doctor says you should stay here.”
Horrified, Gabriel looked right at Kyle. “I can’t afford a fucking doctor. I told you no fucking doctor.” How much of his saved money was that going to take? He’d been so close to his target, and every cent would probably be gone once he saw the invoice.
“Legacy has medical insurance.”
“I’ll still owe someone.”
“No. You won’t.”
“I need to go.” He used the bed as a point to lean on as he tried to stand. Kyle held his arm, to support him or stop him, Gabriel didn’t know. All he did know was the panic that gripped him and made it hard to breathe. “Stefan will kill me,” he blurted.
Kyle didn’t let go, but his hold gentled even more. “Does he know where you are?”
Kyle hadn’t asked who Stefan was, or why Gabriel was so desperate to get home, but he’d asked the one question that sounded more like an accusation. Gabriel pulled his arm free of Kyle’s hold.
“No,” Gabriel said, “he doesn’t know, and he’ll be frantic.”
“This is your friend? A friend, I mean, not someone you’re scared of.”
“I’m not scared of Stefan. He looks after me.”
Something poked at the back of his thoughts, an insistent press that called him a liar. He wasn’t scared of Stefan, he was scared of disappointing the man who’d taken him in. That was all.
“Is he abusing you?” Kyle asked, oh-so-fucking gently.
“What?” Gabriel’s temper began to grow. “No.”
“Okay.”
And that was it. Didn’t matter about his headache, his temper blew. “He found me on a street corner and he took me in.” Gabriel shoved Kyle, and his voice was rising in volume to match his need to defend Stefan. “He paid for me, looked after me, and I was the one who fucked up, okay? I didn’t tell him I took a booking with someone he’d warned me against. Okay? He told me he needed to know if I went back to Cam, and I didn’t tell him. No wonder he was fucking pissed.”
Kyle didn’t retaliate even as Gabriel shoved him back against the wall. He didn’t look scared. Hell, why would he be scared? Gabriel was a pathetic mess without Stefan looking out for him.
And the tears started. He couldn’t stop them as they spilled out of his eyes and trickled down his face, and all that time Kyle simply looked at him with a steady gaze that didn’t hold any sympathy, only a hell of a lot of understanding.
“What do you know?” Gabriel shouted in his face, and shoved him so hard that Kyle let out an exhalation of shock. Still he didn’t fight back, didn’t defend himself, just looked at Gabriel all calm and tight with control. “You found this place, and your fucking boyfriend, and horses, and you didn’t need help from anyone, so what do you know about how Stefan helps me? Huh?”
He shoved Kyle again, and the tears still flowed.
“It’s okay,” Kyle murmured. “I know.”
If it was possible, temper went up another notch in Gabriel’s pained head. “You don’t know fuck all. You were there for such a short time; I was there years. You get that, right?”
Somehow the conversation had become a very different thing, not about Stefan but about what had happened back at the Bar Five, about Hank Castille and Yuri Fensin.
“I should have said something,” Kyle said, and he sounded wretched. Finally there was something in those green eyes—regret, maybe?
“And Stefan, he took me, and he helped me, and he made me so I can make my way forward.”
“He didn’t,” Kyle said firmly. “He’s hurting you.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing! You don’t care!” That was it; he curled his fists and wanted to hit Kyle, but someone was there, holding him back, strong but not hurting him as he attempted to wriggle free. Someone was talking to him, right in his ear, whispering, telling him everything was going to be okay.
And even though nothing would ever be okay, Gabriel had no choice but to relax.
“That’s okay,” the voice continued. “Let’s get you dressed and get some food in you.”
“Hmmm,” Gabriel murmured, suddenly devoid of any strength or emotion.
Kyle helped him dress in soft sweats and a loose T, then showed him the bathroom.
For the longest time, Gabriel stared at himself in the mirror. His face was bruised, and he had a cut with small butterfly bandages on it. He hoped it wouldn’t scar; clients didn’t want to see scars and blemishes on what they’d bought.
“You okay in there?” Kyle called in.
Gabriel stepped out, and Kyle guided him to a large wooden table in the kitchen. It was daylight. Had he slept around the clock, or was it the same day? Somehow he’d expected Cam to be sitting there, but the only movement was from a dark-haired man; he must be the one who’d held him.
“I need to check on the horses,” Kyle said, and leaned over to press a kiss to the other guy’s lips. Then he left, but not before he’d looked at Gabriel and then back at the man with the spatula. “Call me if you need me.”
The dark-haired man scooped eggs onto a plate and put it, along with a plate of crispy bacon and toast, onto the table.
“I’m Jason,” he said. Jason had impossibly dark eyes and a ready smile, and he pushed a plate over to Gabriel. “No one can resist bacon,” he added, and handed over cutlery as well. “Would you like juice? I’d offer coffee, but the doc said you might want to avoid stimulants for the next few days. Having said that, do you know if there’s anything in orange juice? Who knows these days, when it’s out of a box?”
Gabriel just blinked at Jason and tried to filter through all the words. “Juice is fine,” he finally said. He was hungry, and Stefan would want him to eat—he’d be pleased if Gabriel was looking after himself.
He picked at some eggs and ate a strip of bacon, then swallowed some headache pills with the sweet orange juice. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.
“So, I sucked off guys in the park for money,” Jason announced after he’d chewed an entire slice of crispy bacon that he’d folded to put in his mouth in one piece.
“Sorry?” Gabriel had only caught the end of it properly.
“I did it for money,” he said. “There’s no shame in doing what you need to do to live.”
Gabriel looked at Jason, at the smile and the compassion, and shook his head. “I suck men off to earn money. It’s my career and I’m good at it. There’s no shame in sex as a career.”
Jason grinned at him, a wide smile that reached his eyes. “Yeah, you do what you have to.”
“I didn’t have to do it. I had a choice.” Stefan had said he didn’t need to have sex for money if he could find another way to pay the rent.
I had a choice.
“Then you’re one of the lucky ones. I was too young to get hired anywhere. I didn’t have a choice. It was either blowjobs or back into the system, and I was done with that. I’m here and safe and with Kyle. You met him—he’s the strong, silent one who sat by your bed all night.”
All night implied it was now the next day. Which meant it had been two days since he’d seen Stefan.
“Yeah, you were pretty out of it, but the doc kept an eye on you, and we took it in turns sitting with you, although Kyle took the bulk of it. He’s a good guy, you know, and he’s watched you now for four days.”
“A good guy wouldn’t take my clothes and stop me from leaving,” Gabriel snapped. And this was day four? Jesus, he needed to get hold of Stefan.
“You can go if you want, anytime. I can call you a cab.”
“Yeah, do that.”
Jason fished a phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. “I need a cab… Legacy Ranch… Dallas… Thanks.” He ended the call and looked expectantly at Gabriel. “An hour,” he announced.
“An hour? What the hell?”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, dude,” Jason said with another one of his smiles. “So chill, and we’ll make sure you get taken care of.”
Gabriel relaxed a little. They weren’t making him stay, and he could get in the cab and go back to Stefan and explain this away somehow. Four days missing and a doctor’s tab wasn’t going to be easy to explain, but he’d do it. Stefan would likely be angry, but he could handle that.
The main door opened and daylight flooded the inside of the kitchen. A woman stepped in, and for a second he couldn’t make out her features with the sun behind her, and his chest constricted. She was small, like his mom, her hair long and loose, like his mom’s.
Only after she shut the door did his breathing ease. Of course it wasn’t his mom; she’d died a long time ago.
“Hi, my name is Clair,” she said, and held out a hand to Gabriel. He took it, because he had manners, then wriggled a little in his chair as she sat down in front of him. Jason gave her coffee, offered breakfast, which she declined, then grabbed a to-go cup, made his excuses and left.
That had to be the most poorly executed maneuver he’d ever seen. Clearly this woman was there to meet him.
“What?” he asked suspiciously when she said nothing at first.
She placed her cell in the middle of the table. “Would you like to phone someone?” she asked. “Feel free to use it—my phone plan covers all kinds of eventualities.”
Gabriel’s fingers twitched with the need to connect to Stefan, but he didn’t touch the phone and couldn’t work out why.
“Thank you,” he said, politely. He looked at the woman more closely. She didn’t look much older than him.
“I wanted to come in and talk to you, see how you’re doing.”
“What are you? A shrink? I don’t need to talk to a fucking shrink.” He winced as he said that. His mom would have had a fit if she’d heard him cussing like that in front of a lady.
“I’m not really one of those, just a friend of Legacy Ranch,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I guess I’m the one who makes sure you want to be here and helps you to decide what you want to do next.”
He’d come across this sort of do-gooder before, mostly attached to one religion or another, horrified that a boy wasn’t willing to turn to their particular deity, or some such shit they were peddling. Whoever God was, he’d taken Gabriel’s mom and left Gabriel at the Bar Five to get hurt.
“I want to go home. Jason called a cab for me.”
“Wonderful,” Clair said, and reached for her coffee. “Kyle said you were in an accident?”
Gabriel tensed. An accident? Was that an attempt to get him to tell her what had really happened? Was she implying it hadn’t been an accident? Stefan didn’t mean to get so angry, it just happened.
Then why did you go to Cam? Why did you run here?
“No, I pissed off my friend and he hit me.” He was aiming for shock value, and waited for the gasp of horror. There was nothing. She nodded and took another sip of her coffee.
“How did you piss him off?”
“Fuck off if I’m talking about this with you.”
“It’s fine, you don’t have to, just seems to me if he’s a friend he wouldn’t be hitting you, is all. Is he actually a boyfriend?”
Gabriel didn’t want to admit that at the start that was exactly what he’d thought Stefan was to him. The older man had shown him such open affection, getting him tested, feeding him, buying him clothes. That had been what Gabriel’s definition of great kindness was, and sue him if he hadn’t fallen just a little bit in love with him.
Completely inappropriate, as Stefan had explained when Gabriel told him. They had a relationship based on sex, and Gabriel should be satisfied with that.
And mostly Gabriel was.
They weren’t married or anything like that. If they were, like Sophie and Mitchell, then that would be abuse, because when you’re married you should be in love and everything should be fair.
“Just a friend. A person like me doesn’t have boyfriends, or even deserve them.”
“Gabriel—”
“I might as well not be here anymore,” he said, rambling without purpose. What was the point of any of this? What was the purpose in fighting?
“Are you having suicidal thoughts, Gabriel?”
“No,” he lied. It wouldn’t be suicide; it would just be sleeping and not having the mess in his head. That was all.
Shakily, he reached for the phone, waiting for her to snatch it back, and pressed the screen to see the time. Eleven fifteen, and the taxi had been called about ten minutes ago, he guessed, or thereabouts at least.
“I need some air,” he announced, and stood up, gripping the table when he had a rush of blood to the head.
She didn’t fuss over him or reach for him, but he made it to the door still feeling like the hounds of hell were at his heels.
The day was warm, the sun high, and the scents of the ranch hit him worse than they had yesterday. An attack of animals, and straw, and the sounds of horses, and someone looking at him. Kyle again.
“Hey,” Kyle said. “Want to meet Mistry? This way.”
Blindly, not sure what the hell he was doing, he followed Kyle to the barns, the itch of memories just out of reach. The last time he’d been on a ranch, he’d been left to bleed out, he’d been left to die, and he couldn’t walk, and the pain… God, the pain. He kept walking now, just as he had then, only this time he was heading right for the scents and noises of things he’d sworn to forget.
“This is Mistry,” Kyle said, and crooned at the big quarter horse. He held out a handful of feed, and Mistry snuffled at the hand, puffing air, and it was all Gabriel could do not to run. “We had a run-in with the guy who said he owned Mistry again yesterday. I had to get Jack down here.”
Interested despite himself, Gabriel looked expectantly at Kyle. “What happened?”
“He’d brought a trailer and papers, just like we’d said he should, but they didn’t look right to me, and then Jack arrived, and I’ve never seen anything like it.” Kyle shook his head and scratched Mistry’s face, smiling when Mistry butted his hand for more food. “Jack stood between the guy and Mistry and refused to move. Said that this stranger should call the cops, because no one was messing with a Campbell-Hayes horse. I swear the guy went pale, but he was blustering about ownership rights, and Jack listed off the fact that the horse had been abandoned, and was underweight, and hell, an entire list of issues.”
“I bet Jack laid him out.”
Kyle looked at him with an unreadable expression, then his lips thinned. “Jack doesn’t go around hitting people, he just has this way about him, and the guy backed off. Took his trailer and left the ranch.”
Silence, and cautiously Gabriel reached out and stroked the wiry mane, twisting his fingers into it a little. Sense memory of time with horses consumed his thoughts, and for the longest time he stood there and soaked it all in. The closest he got to horses in the city was the mounted police that he saw sometimes. Mistry nuzzled him, and for the first time in a long time, at least that he could recall, Gabriel smiled. Seemed to him the last time he’d smiled had been thinking Stefan would be proud of the money he’d brought in from Cam.
“Do you ride?”
The question was loaded—not so much do you ride, more have you ridden since you left the Bar Five.
“Not anymore,” he said truthfully.
“If you want to ride today, we could arrange something. Doc said to take it easy, but…”
“No, my cab will be here soon.”
Kyle nodded. “Jason said you’d asked him to call one.”
“I need to go home,” Gabriel said quickly. “To go back,” he corrected himself. Home had been a cabin on Bar Five land with his mom—home wasn’t with Stefan, not really. Home was warm and safe.
I’m safe with Stefan. He doesn’t let anyone else hurt me.
He hunched over at the pain in chest as his breath hitched, and he was fucking crying again, for god’s sake. Kyle placed a hand on his arm, then slowly drew him closer until Gabriel was leaning into him and crying. He didn’t know how long he stood there, but Kyle knew what it had been like; he’d been hurt by those men at the Bar Five, he’d given evidence at the same trial.
They had an association. A horrible, vicious, unacceptable connection, but it would always be there.
“You can stay,” Kyle said. “There’s work here, your own room, and you’ll be safe.”
Indecision gripped Gabriel, and that was the first time since Stefan had helped him that he’d doubted his path in life.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice a little broken even to his own ears.
“Don’t go back,” Kyle murmured. They were still hugging, and Gabriel was still crying, silently. “You don’t have to go back.”
Gabriel eased himself away. “Stefan will find me…” he began.
“We’ll protect you, but it won’t be easy…”
Gabriel’s heart shattered at that moment. He didn’t deserve this, he wasn’t ready for this, and he knew what it was that he couldn’t make Kyle understand.
“I don’t deserve for it to be easy,” he said. He stopped crying then, because what was the point in any of it?
When the taxi arrived, they didn’t stop him leaving. They didn’t touch him. Instead, Kyle and Jason stood hand in hand and watched him go. Legacy was covering the cost of it, and thank fuck for that, because he had nothing on him except the keys to Stefan’s place.
Not even his phone, which he’d thrown in the river.
There was no sign of Clair, whoever the hell she was, and the last view Gabriel had from the side of the car was of Mistry, turned out in the field and watching him leave.
Or was that just him being fanciful?
The cab dropped him outside Stefan’s building, and Gabriel didn’t hesitate or think it through. He climbed the stairs and let himself in. Stefan was there, sitting at the table, nursing a coffee, but he scrambled to stand. In an instant, Gabriel was in his arms, and Stefan hugged him close.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “So sorry.”
And for Gabriel, that was enough.