CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kyle was quiet. He had this way about him that was serious and thoughtful, and he was the direct opposite of Jason, who seemed to bounce from one thing to another. But they balanced each other and they seemed genuinely happy.
Jason was Kyle’s right-hand man, and it was Kyle who ran Legacy Ranch and handed out chores. Like today it was Gabriel’s turn to muck out and brush down the horses, all four of them. Including his horse.
Yep. His horse.
Day three, and a man he half recognized from his last abortive visit to Legacy had arrived atop a horse, another on a rein behind him.
“This is Pixie,” the man had said as he’d dismounted. He’d extended a hand. “Jack,” he’d introduced himself. Gabriel had wiped his hands on his pants and shaken Jack’s firmly. “Now, don’t be fooled by the cutesy name, you can blame my youngest daughter for that; everything is called Pixie at the moment.”
“Okay,” Gabriel murmured, because Jack appeared to expect a response, and that was pretty much all Gabriel had. The horse had been big, a dark brown, with huge melty eyes and a twitchy nose. Then it had hit him. Jack wanted him to take the reins and put Pixie in one of the empty stables.
He could do that. It was his third day, and he’d moved up from hating the sight of the horses and the barns to actually stepping foot inside. He hadn’t lasted long in there—the scent of hay and horses, the noises, and all he could recall was pain.
“She’s all yours while you’re here,” Jack had continued.
“I don’t want a horse.”
“Every person who stays here helps out with the charitable side of the ranch, looking out for rescued animals.”
Oh. Now he got it. The broken human got paired with a damaged horse and magic happened. Gabriel had thought at that moment that the chance of a horse doing anything for him was remote.
Day five, though, and he’d managed to stable Pixie on his own, and even allowed her to nudge at him without flinching.
And now Kyle was standing there looking in on him, and he was quiet and deadly serious.
“Clair is here,” he said as he moved the wheelbarrow a little to help as Gabriel worked at the back of the stall.
For a brief moment, Gabriel didn’t know who Kyle meant. And then he did. He moved another pile of manure from floor to barrow, then stopped and leaned on the shovel.
“I’m supposed to talk to her.” Like I’m supposed to bond with my horse.
“No,” Kyle said with a smile, and leaned over the stall wall to fuss at Pixie. He ran his hands over the scars on her flanks; marks put there by owners who’d abused the poor animal. Pixie carried scars that were visible, but under it all she hadn’t lost the ability to trust.
She relied on Gabriel. Trusted him. Showed affection.
How could an animal forgive being shown nothing but pain? He couldn’t forget it, let alone forgive.
“No I don’t have to see her?”
“Not at all. That isn’t what Legacy does. This isn’t forced counseling—this place is all about peace.” He glanced out at the land beyond the barn door and gestured toward it. “A man can get lost in all this space.”
“I used to love the horses,” Gabriel said. Then realized he’d said something that might invite a discussion and he set about shoveling more manure.
“She’s here all day. Jason is giving her riding lessons, which are going well. So if you want to talk, I think she has a ride planned this afternoon, or maybe you can grab her and have a quick chat if you need her.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, because that was the polite thing to say.
“Right. I’m fixing the bathroom in pod eight, so you know where to find me.”
He tipped his hat and left. Pod eight was right next to Gabriel’s seven, and was an empty room. Some girl called Marianna had been and gone the week before he’d arrived. She’d run here, and then run away. He knew, because Jason had told him that Kyle had taken it super personally that she’d left, like he should have known. Before she left, she’d trashed the room—written all over the walls, apparently, and taken an ax to everything inside.
How fucked up was it that Gabriel could understand that kind of anger?
He was consumed by anger and his own self-loathing, and the idea of taking an ax and destroying everything in this room made him itch with need.
His cell vibrated, and like he’d been trained to expect it, he smiled. Cameron had taken to texting him at weird times of the day, stupid little anecdotes about what he was doing, about the hotel, Gidget, and about how Six asked about him.
Probably to make sure he wasn’t coming back, was all Gabriel had thought when he’d heard that last bit of news. He pulled the cell out of his pocket. Reading the text would be a welcome distraction from having to think about Clair and her up-in-the-air counseling.
“Six is grumpy as fuck,” the text began. “Send help.” After that was a selection of emojis, including one of a smiling poop. Not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
He texted back a smile. That was mostly what he sent. There were never questions in the random texts. Never a “how are you” or questions about Stefan. Nope, everything was chatty. Happy. The first time he’d got a text, he’d freaked out and it had taken him an hour to open it, and then he’d had to make sure he was entirely alone in case Cam was texting to tell him Stefan had caused problems.
A small part of Gabriel wanted to know what Stefan was doing. Had Six scared him off? Threatened him? Buried him in some remote Texas field?
But mostly he wanted to know for sure that Cam was safe.
Another text came in. “I want to take you to dinner,” it said.
“What?” Gabriel said out loud, Pixie looking at him and huffing at his shoulder. Idly, he patted her coat and re-read the text. Those seven words made him feel weird. Really weird.
And he had nothing to say.
So he finished his chores, ignored his cell, and went inside for lunch. Only Clair was in there, sitting at the big table with papers spread out in front of her. She looked hot and red in the face, her long, dark hair pulled back from her face in a messy ponytail.
She looked up at the door and smiled. “Hello, Gabriel.”
“Hi,” he said. “I’m making lunch.”
Everyone was responsible for their own lunch here, and that was part of the day Gabriel enjoyed. His appetite was still for shit, but he liked rummaging in the fully stocked fridge for ingredients to make up sandwiches.
“There’s coffee there I made earlier.”
He nodded and opened the fridge, pulling out salad and ham, then found the bread, and all that time Clair was reading through papers and tutting and sighing. He almost asked her what was wrong, but he didn’t. Instead he thought about it being lunchtime, about making his lunch, and about her maybe not having eaten.
And that was the thought process that led to his first session with Clair. He offered her lunch, and before he knew it the clock showed four p.m. and they’d filled the entire time talking.
“No two relationships are the same,” she summarized as they sipped fresh coffee.
“So why do I feel like I miss Stefan?”
“Because you still feel like he saved you from a fate that was so much worse. He was better than the options you had, and maybe when he first took you from that corner, he had your best interests at heart.”
Even knowing that wasn’t true didn’t push away the insistent nag of need he had to see Stefan again.
“What’s unhealthy in one relationship may be abusive in another. Maybe he never went far enough for your brain to register abuse.”
“He checked my cell phones. Hell, it wasn’t even my cell phone. He was always angry and jealous, never had a kind word to say, and his temper scared me.” He counted off the things that Clair had helped him identify in the toxic link he’d had with Stefan. “He hurt me, so badly at times that I couldn’t work, and then he’d be angry that I couldn’t work. I had a friend once—he was a porter at a hotel we had this standing booking at. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him. He was possessive and erratic.”
“Today is a start,” Clair said. “You now need to let it settle. I’m back tomorrow if you want to talk.”
“You know what scares me the most?”
Clair shook her head slightly and waited for him to expand.
“I’m terrified I left to make myself a better person for him. Because I felt like I’d disappointed him.”
“I understand that. You mean it wasn’t because you’d come to any realization that you were better off away from him.”
“I could have run off so many times and I didn’t.”
She reached over and clasped his hand. “It’s okay.”
Gabriel wished it felt okay.
Marianna, the girl who had trashed her place with an ax, arrived back at Legacy some days later without fanfare, appearing in the kitchen, her face a mess of crying, her eyes ringed with darkness. Kyle was on his feet before she could even speak, and he pulled her in for a hug. She was sobbing so hard that Gabriel didn’t know where to look. So he took out his cellphone and re-read messages that Cam had sent him. They made him feel better, and when Kyle and Marianna moved from the doorway, he slipped out.
She only lasted another day, wouldn’t stop crying, and he knew how she was feeling. Like her whole world was gone, destroyed. Kyle didn’t spot her leaving—neither did Jason.
He did.
God knew what made him do it, but he followed her, caught up with her about a hundred feet from Legacy, and moved to block her way.
“Hey,” he said, because it seemed like the right place to start.
“Get out of my way,” she said, her expression dead, her eyes sad. She took a step to move around him, but he blocked her, and she shoved at his chest.
“You can’t leave,” he said. Even though he’d wanted to leave a hundred times, he owed it to himself to stay, to make himself better for Cam’s faith in him. He didn’t want to stay—hell, half of him wanted to take Marianna by the hand and walk off this damn land.
But where would that leave him? Where would he go? What would he do?
Abruptly, he knew he had to make Marianna stay.
How do I do that?
“Who hurt you?” he asked gently, aware he could spook her with one wrong word. Green eyes widened, and she stepped back like he’d hit her. Then the shock vanished and instead the mask of control slipped down.
“My cousin raped me. I was ten. He hurt me, and no one believed me, and he did it again and again.”
She was trying to make him feel something. Disgust, maybe. But he had stories.
Gabriel didn’t have to think what to say. “When my mom died, the guy she worked for, he would lock me away and bring me out for parties where I was forced to suck men off, and they would rape me and hurt me and I couldn’t get away.”
“I tried to get away. My dad dragged me back.”
“I tried to get away. They broke my legs.”
“I cried every night.”
“And all day.”
Marianna looked at him, and her mask slipped, her green eyes filling with tears. “Why did he want to hurt me? What did I do?”
Fuck. Gabriel wished he had an answer, that he could stand there and tell her that everything was okay and there was a reason for the insanity that had hurt her. He had nothing. Instead he answered with a question of his own.
“Why did those men think it was okay to use a kid so badly?” he murmured.
She nodded. They understood each other’s pain.
“I don’t want to stay,” she said, and thumbed back at the ranch. “They try to make me stay.”
The words were heavy with meaning, and abruptly Gabriel felt something shift inside him.
“They said I could leave anytime I wanted,” he said. “They didn’t try to make me stay.”
Marianna looked at her feet. “They say that,” she mumbled. “They don’t mean it.”
Gabriel held out a hand, and she grasped it, hard, their fingers lacing.
“Let’s go talk to them.”
She tugged at his hold, but he didn’t let go, and she wasn’t pulling hard. Maybe she needed someone strong enough to help her. Maybe he could be that person one day?
“Let’s go find Kyle,” he said.
“What if he tries to make me stay?”
“I won’t let him.”
They walked back to the ranch, their hands still clasped, and found Kyle with the horses. He gave them all his attention as soon as he saw them.
“Hey guys,” he said, looking at them and then at the clasped hands. “Everything okay?”
Gabriel cleared his throat, and Marianna edged closer to him so their elbows knocked. She was looking for support, and he might not be the right person to give it, but he could at least try.
“I wanted to leave,” Gabriel began, “so you got me a cab and you let me leave.”
Kyle wiped his hands on his jeans and nodded. “We did.” He sounded like he was looking for a reason why Gabe was talking about that.
“If Marianna wanted to leave, you’d call her a cab, right?”
Kyle frowned, and Gabriel tensed. Right here and now, Kyle’s answer was vital.
“Yeah,” he said. “I would want her to stay so she could feel like she had a safe place, a home, but if she wanted to leave, we would help where we could.”
Next to him, Marianna relaxed a little—he could feel it in the way her grasp on his hand lessened. She wouldn’t entirely believe Kyle, because she’d been hurt like he had, but this was a start.
Right there and then, Gabriel felt a tiny piece of his heart shift. Was it possible that one day he could be a person that someone actually needed in their lives?
The text from Cam the next day was a picture of Gidget and the caption, I ate a bar of soap. Next to Gidget was a soap wrapper, one of those tiny hotel ones, and Gidget had the biggest doggie grin.
“Uh-oh,” Gabe sent with a quirky smiley face.
“Then she was sick over my shoes,” Cam texted. “I didn’t see it, but I could smell it.”
“Poor Gidget.”
“Poor shoes.” Cam added the usual emojis, including the poop one.
That was the end of the conversation apart from one final text. “Did you think about dinner?”
Gabriel ignored that. Yes, he had, but sitting opposite Cam after everything that had happened, with all those weird feeling of attraction inside him, was more than he could bear thinking about.
“So he keeps suggesting we meet for dinner,” Gabriel tagged on at the end of the latest session. They’d been talking about how there was a difference between naïve and eternally optimistic. That had come about because they’d spent most of the hour talking about Cam.
“Will you?” Clair asked, and rested her chin on her fingers.
“What? See him?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re still tied to Stefan in your head,” Clair observed, and Gabriel couldn’t argue. He couldn’t get Stefan out of his head; well, not entirely, anyway. The man was like a poison that made you feel the best you ever had before killing you. What was Stefan to him? Not a friend, that was for sure.
“I think you should meet Cam for dinner.”
“I’m not ready.” To leave Legacy, to face other people. He was safe here with Marianna and the horses, and these chats with Clair.
“Get him to come here. Make him lunch. That way you won’t be away from Legacy and you could see what’s there between you.”
“What if there’s nothing? What if that kiss meant nothing? What if me getting hard is nothing?”
There weren’t many secrets between them now; after all, they’d been talking for three weeks on and off. He texted Cam right there and then, extended the invitation for him to come to lunch tomorrow or the next day. Or any day. Preferably a few months into the future.
He pressed send. “Tell me again what you said.”
“What part?”
“The part about self-worth.”
Clair hesitated momentarily. “You don’t need to hear it again. You know it word for word.
“Then if I know it, why do I still feel like I’m worth nothing?”
She didn’t answer, simply looked at him steadily, and he closed his eyes.
As long as I believe I deserved the abuse, I won’t feel worthy to have a relationship
He wished he could get over his fucking head. Sex was the only currency he understood, and he didn’t want to meet up with Cam and fall back on that.
Cam replied in less than ten minutes, suggesting the next day. And that was it. Done.