Garrett smiled slightly then his eyes glanced down and he frowned. So, Justice followed his line of sight. And, oh shit, this was going to be a problem. Because smeared all over Justice’s black shirt was some of the cum that had been all over Garrett’s torso – whether it was Garrett’s or Simon’s Justice neither knew nor cared but he knew that Garrett would be horrified that it was there.
“Oh God, oh fuck,” Garrett cried as he reached out to try to wipe it away but Justice caught his hand and stopped him. And that’s when Garrett tried to look away in shame.
Well, hell to the fuck no on that.
Justice dropped the man’s hand and reached out to clasp his chin, turning his head back until his eyes were forced to look into Justice’s, “No, Garrett, stop it, just stop it.”
“But….your shirt,” he whispered.
“Doesn’t matter. You are what matters. You. Do you think I give a fuck about my shirt or what’s on it? Well, I don’t. Now, let me get you out of here and someplace safe so I can get you cleaned up and I can take a look at that ankle and assess any other injuries you might have, okay?”
Garrett nodded quietly as he stared down at his hands. Justice reached into the duffle bag on the floor at his feet and pulled out a t-shirt and sweatpants, “Here, you can wear these if you’d like.”
Garrett looked up at him, “But….”
“I told you it doesn’t matter, Garrett. I can wash those and there are more clothes where we’re going, okay?”
“Okay.”
Justice stood up and gently closed Garrett’s door then he took a deep breath as he walked around to the driver’s side of the car because….shit just got real for him. This wasn’t someone relying on him to have his back in a firefight or while making shit go boom. This was a human being – a broken, beaten, violated yet beautiful human being who was asking, no, silently begging, for his help in finding his way back to the strong, self-assured and still beautiful man that Justice knew was inside of him. And that scared the shit out of Justice – a man who had never known fear before in his life. But for this man, with the piercing light green eyes staring back at him with their own fear in them – so much fear but it was warranted given what the man had gone through – Justice would swallow down his own fear and do something he’d never done in his life: he’d comfort someone, he’d console them and hopefully he’d help them heal……or he would die trying.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cole’s head was in his hands as he sat on the edge of the bed while Kelly moved around, packing a few items. He lifted it, and his tear-filled eyes found Kelly, “But why? I don’t understand, Kelly. Please make me understand,” he said with a sob.
Kelly walked over and squatted in front of him, “Babe, I can’t just sit around and wait for him to come after me.”
“But bait? Do you know how many agencies he’s got at his disposal?”
“Which is why I need to do this now before he knows that I’m onto him.”
“But what if you….”
Kelly put a finger on Cole’s lips, “I’m not going to get hurt, babe. I’ll have Hawke, Caleb, Cooper & Riley and at least one of Morgan’s guys backing me up. And this is what I do, Cole. It’s what I’m trained for.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t get hurt….or worse,” Cole said with a pout.
“You’re right, it doesn’t. But I won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I know, but I can promise that I will do everything in my power to come back to you. You are my life, Cole. You’ve always been my life. You are the reason that I will make it out of this.”
Cole looked at him, a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago and Kelly braced himself for what was about to come out of the man’s mouth.
“I’m monitoring everything online, Kel, everything. I want an earpiece to hear you, I want access to everything that Billy has access to.”
Kelly opened his mouth to argue but Cole put a finger over his lips as he continued.
“No, I won’t interfere, I promise I won’t. I just, fuck, I just got you back, babe. I need to do this or I’ll go fucking crazy, please?”
Kelly looked at him for a few seconds before he finally nodded his head, “Yeah, okay babe. I’ll make sure it happens.”
“So, how soon?”
“As soon as we drop the hint to him, it’ll probably happen fast, like within a day or two.”
“And you’re sure he won’t just send one of his assassins to take you out?”
Kelly shook his head, “No, the email he’s going to quote unquote intercept will hint that I have incriminating evidence against him personally and that I’m meeting with someone within the Department of Justice to hand over what I have but that I also have backup copies in a safe place that will be sent out automatically if something happens to me. That will be enough to lure him personally. He’ll grab me and then try to torture me into giving him everything that I have. Then we’ll have him on kidnapping, assault and who knows what other charges Drake and JD can come up with.”
“Have they taken out someone this high up before?” Cole asked as he worried his bottom lip.
Kelly smiled at him, “Oh yeah. This entire team was started because Drake and Brent discovered that their supervisor at the CIA was a corrupt asshole and they took him down. Then they started looking into a few cold cases that Drake’s grandfather had stashed in his basement and they realized that corruption like this spanned all agencies, all departments…..and the team was born.”
“I, I guess that makes me feel a little better.”
“I’ll have two tracking devices, babe, both embedded but that Billy can turn off remotely if I’m being swept.”
“But you’re still going to get hurt,” Cole said with a pout.
“Won’t be the first time. But this time I have you the nurse me back to health and kiss all my owies.”
Cole smiled as his eyes lit up, “Yeah you do.”
“So, you’re good now? I can go tell them to send the email?”
Cole nodded, “Yeah, right after you tell them that I get to have the same access to everything during the Op that Billy does.”
Kelly chuckled, “Okay, babe. Let’s go set you up, okay?”
He stepped back and held out his hand. Cole threaded their fingers together and stood up. He could do this, he could sit on the sidelines and watch as Kelly took this fucker down.
At least he sure in the fuck hoped he could…..
Chapter Thirty
Justice glanced over at the sleeping man in the seat next to him. Well, sleeping wasn’t exactly the right word. More like the twitching, mumbling, crying out, trembling man.
Garrett whimpered again like another nightmare was beginning to overtake him and Justice slowly reached out a hand. He closed it over Garrett’s and whispered, “Shhh, G, it’ll be okay, you’re safe now.”
Garrett inhaled a sharp breath and his hand flipped around to clasp onto Justice’s so hard it almost hurt. But that was okay, that told Justice the man was fighting, that he was a survivor.
That made him proud as hell, but also terrified at the same time. Because Garrett was relying on him for help to get through this. Him. Justice Thyme. A man who used to boast about how selfish he was, because that was pretty much the only quality he had that he could boast about even if it was bad. The rest of him was just an asshole and he knew it. And yet here he was trying to, no, needing to, help Garrett overcome the ugliness that he had endured.
Maybe it was because he didn’t want Garrett to end up like him.
Because Justice had spent his entire life buried in ugliness and he knew what it had done to him, he knew that he’d never be able to get rid of the blackness in his heart. It was embedded there, permanently….like a tattoo.
But it didn’t have to be that way for Garrett.
But was Justice really the man to help him?
He was beginning to doubt himself again when Garrett squeezed his h
and again and whispered, “Please don’t leave me,” as he curled up in his seat.
“Never, butterscotch, never,” he whispered.
He saw the turn up ahead for the road leading to his place – a home he hadn’t been to in, fuck, four years now? They’d be surviving on canned goods, soup and freeze-dried foods until Justice felt it was safe enough to leave Garrett to go to the store. Lucky for him his place was prepared for just such a scenario, stocked with enough products for the two of them to survive for up to six months if necessary.
He drove down the mile long, somewhat hidden road, noting that he needed to get back sometime soon to trim some of the trees and branches that were encroaching over the road, until he pulled up to the locked, iron gate.
He put the car in park and squeezed Garrett’s hand, “Hey, can you wake up for a second?”
Garrett gasped and his eyes went wide as he looked around outside.
“Shhh, you’re safe. This is my place. Nobody else is here. I just need to get out for a second to unlock the gate, okay?”
Garrett nodded his head jerkily as he swallowed, “Yeah, okay, s-s-sure.”
Justice opened his door but just before he climbed out he turned back to Garrett and said, “Don’t go anywhere without me,” then he smiled and winked at the man.
And Garrett smiled and blushed back. And fuck if the man wasn’t the most beautiful thing that Justice had ever seen.
It almost made him fall onto his fucking face when he stepped out of the car. But he managed to catch himself before he went over. He walked the six feet up to the latch on the gate and pulled the lock out from where it was hidden in the bushes. He pushed back the protective rubber cover and spun the lock to put in the combination until he pulled and it fell open. He unthreaded the heavy chain and walked with the gate until it was wide open then he walked back to the car. He climbed in, drove until he was past the gate then said, “Want to lock us in, okay?”
“Please,” was the one word response from Garrett an it nearly broke Justice’s heart.
He made quick work of relocking the gate and he was glad he did because when he climbed back into the car, Garrett’s hand swooped out and grabbed onto his arm, almost like he was a man falling off of a cliff and Justice was the only thing there to keep him from going over.
He turned in his seat to face Garrett as he closed their palms together, “Hey, shhh, it’s okay. I told you, I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
“I hurt.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
Garrett frowned, “But I’m not afraid of you. Why don’t you scare me?”
“I have no idea.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“Never, Butterscotch.”
Garrett blushed, “I like when you call me that.”
Justice tried not to frown because that’s not what this was about for him, not at all. In the past, he would’ve been all over a guy who looked like Garrett. But first of all, the man had been brutalized – both physically and sexually – sex should be the last thing on the man’s mind. And second, he had been told that Garrett wasn’t gay. So, calling the man tender names hadn’t been a way of flirting for him, not at all. It had been his way of being gentle, of trying to soothe and console.
But somewhere in there Garrett had felt it differently. Not that he wouldn’t want to flirt with Garrett. He would, god he would, so badly he could taste it. But he hadn’t. Or, at least he hadn’t meant to.
But, telling Garrett he wasn’t flirting might also hurt the man in a different way. And that was completely unacceptable to Justice.
So, he kept his mouth shut and nodded out the windshield, “The house is just up ahead about a half mile.”
Garrett melted back into the seat as his fears crept back in. Justice squeezed his hand, “Hey, I told you, you’re safe now. I swear to you, you’re safe.”
“I feel like such an idiot,” Garrett mumbled as a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Why?”
“It was supposed to be a Grindr hookup, my first Grindr hookup,” he said, whispering that last part.
Justice’s head whipped around, “Your first? You mean?”
“Yeah, I was kind of late to the party when it comes to coming out, or even admitting to myself that I’m gay.”
“Why now? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“No, it’s okay. I guess I just got tired – tired of fighting it, tired of ignoring it, just tired of not being….me.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“So, there I was in the bar, waiting for my first Grindr hook up to show up when in walks fucking Simon Foster. We recognized each other immediately and then we talked for a bit and I realized he was my hook up, how weird was that?”
“Not weird at all considering he had targeted you to get to Tiny.”
“Yeah, I know that now, but I didn’t then. So, we talked for a bit, had a few drinks and then I agreed to go to his place. It felt kind of weird since I knew him from before but also more comfortable at the same time, ya know?”
“Makes sense.”
Garrett’s hands started shaking just as Justice parked the car in front of his small two-bedroom cabin with the wraparound porch so he reached over to clasp his hands and said, “Hey, that’s far enough for today, okay? How about we go inside, get cleaned up and get some food in our bellies?”
“Did you stop for food?”
“No. You’re going to have to settle for canned stew, canned bread and canned vegetables for now.”
“Oh, that’s fine.”
“I need to go turn on the propane, water and electricity at the side of the cabin. Do you want to wait here in the locked car or inside the cabin?”
Garrett looked around, “Is anyone else inside?”
“No, it’s just us.”
Garrett chewed on his cheek for a second as he thought, “Still, I think I’d feel safer in here with the doors locked if that’s okay.”
Justice reached over to gently grip his hand, “Of course it is, butterscotch. I’ll be back in just a minute, okay? Lock the doors behind me.”
He stepped out, taking the keys with him, and closed his door behind him, waiting to hear the locks click before he stepped away. He walked over to the shed that housed the propane tank and all of his electrical connections. He pulled his personal keychain from one of his pants pockets and unlocked it. He noticed, by reading the tag on the propane tank, that the company had been by four months earlier, used the key that they had and had noted that the tank was still full. That was good since they would need it now. He shifted the valve to the on position then moved over to the power box. He opened that and moved the main power switch from off to on. Last was the water valve, which he cranked all the way on to get the water flowing into the house. Then he locked up the shed and made his way back to the car.
Rather than using the key himself, he waited for Garrett to make eye contact with him and for him to press the button to unlock the door. Then he pulled open the passenger door and squatted down until he was eye level with Garrett. He placed a hand on his knee, “You ready to go inside now? There’s a comfortable couch you can wait on until the water is hot enough for bathing.”
Garrett looked away, “I, I, I’m afraid to sit anywhere because I’m so dirty,” he whispered and Justice knew that he meant the word dirty in more than just the filth on his body and Justice was having none of that. He suppressed his need to growl as he reached up the clasp Garrett’s chin and force his gaze back to his own, “There is absolutely nothing dirty about you, Garrett. If you need me to, I’d be happy to hold you on my lap until the water is ready.”
Garrett stared at him for a few seconds, “Couch is fine,” he said with a smile.
“Couch it is then,” Justice said as he flung the strap of his duffle bag over his shoulder and arm so that the bag sat on his back. He grabbed the clothes off the floor that Garrett hadn’t been able to put on yet
because of his injuries – and that he had dropped when he fell asleep - and then he slid his arms underneath Garrett and lifted him up. As he did, the blanket that was over him fell open, putting his junk on perfect display for Justice’s eyes which he quickly averted upwards until Garrett had a chance to cover everything up again.
“Sorry, I know it’s disgusting,” Garrett mumbled.
Oh, fucking hell no.
“Hey, I looked away so I wouldn’t pop a chubby, not because I was disgusted by anything, got it?” he said as he turned, shut the door with his hip and began walking into the house.
“You, are you gay?”
“Never seen a dick I didn’t want to suck; does that answer your question?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess it does.”
He managed to get the door unlocked, closed and relocked behind him and then he gently set Garrett down on the couch. “Can I take a look at some of your injuries? Would that be okay with you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He glanced first at the man’s face, noting his swollen eye, bruised cheek, cut lip and probably broken nose. He patted Garrett’s knee, “Hang tight one second, okay?” he said as he got up and walked to the kitchen.
“Not like I can go anywhere.”
“True,” Justice said with a smile and wink just before he leaned down to pull his ice machine out of the cupboard. He plugged it in and got the water running in the sink as he got a pitcher out to fill it. Luckily his cabin was a completely open floorplan so Garrett could see what he was doing from his spot on the couch. As Justice began pouring the water inside, Garrett said, “What is that thing?”
“Ice machine. We’ll have ice to put on your bumps and swollen spots in about ten minutes.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” he said as he grabbed a bottled water from the pantry and a bottle of ibuprophen then he walked back over to Garrett. “Sorry, this is room temperature and this is the strongest pain reliever I have right now. I have a doctor friend nearby that I’d like to call when you’re comfortable to have him come and take a look at your ankle. I’m pretty sure it’s dislocated and not broken but it will still need to be re-set and booted soon.”
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