His Kind of Love

by Kate Hawthorne

  “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.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Joel Eats His Weight in Bacon

  Joel rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, expecting to wake up with the smell of Gabriel in his nose. After a deep inhale, what he got was hints of bergamot and orange, and he remembered he was at Athena’s, not at home.

  Home.

  Had he started to think of Gabriel's as home after such a short amount of time? Yes, he was afraid he had.

  Gabriel.

  Joel rolled onto his back, taking the pillow with him in a halfhearted attempt to smother himself. Squeezing his eyes closed, he brought his fingers up to softly rub his swollen eyelids. His lashes were still damp; he must have been crying throughout the night. It wasn’t fair, Joel thought. It was a childish thought, but everything good he’d ever had for himself had been ruined at some point, and rarely had he been the one to ruin it. Joel had built his walls for a reason, so afraid to be hurt again that he never gave anyone the chance. Then Gabriel came into his life like a natural disaster ready to destroy everything he touched. And Joel couldn’t fault Gabriel for that, he could tell it was just the way Gabriel was. His destruction wasn’t malicious and it wasn’t even intentional, but Joel was here now, in the wake of hurricane Gabriel, and there was no disaster relief in sight.

  Noises in the kitchen drew his attention, and he recognized the smell of bacon and coffee. Ever the obedient servant, he followed his nose out of the bedroom.

  In the kitchen, he found Athena behind the stove, wearing knee-length yoga pants and a loose tank top, her red hair piled high on top of her head, not a bit of makeup on her face. She took a swallow of coffee from her oversized mug and turned at the sound of Joel's footsteps on the tiles.

  “How are you feeling today?” she asked him, eyeing him tentatively over the rim of her mug.

  He slumped down into a chair at her small dining table and graciously accepted the coffee she put down in front of him.

  “I’m alive.”

  “Obviously.” Athena returned with a plate of bacon, and… another plate of bacon. This was one of the most Athena things Joel could ever remember seeing and the comfort of it inspired him to burst into tears all over again. As he opened his mouth to suck in a gasp of much-needed air, he nearly choked as Athena shoved a slice of bacon between his teeth. “You need to calm down and eat something before you implode.”

  Joel grimaced, ripped off a bite with his teeth, and then set the remainder of the strip on the plate in front of him.

  “Are you ready to talk?” Athena asked him softly, flicking a bacon crumb off his lip with her fingernail. “From the beginning, okay?”

  Joel nodded, bracing his shoulders back, trying to find the bravery he needed to rehash the events of last night.

  “I guess you can start with the fact we slept together.” He paused, searching Athena’s face, which remained surprisingly stoic considering what he’d told her. “And then afterward, I realized he had my clothes in his closet.” Joel plucked his shirt off his chest with two fingers before letting the fabric fall back against his skin. “I confronted Gabriel about it and he told me he’d been following me. That he’d seen me when I was at my grandma's after I graduated. Somehow he pulled strings, I have no idea how, honestly, and he admitted that he was behind the flood in my apartment.” Joel paused to eat some more bacon and let Athena process what he’d shared.

  “How on earth did he flood your apartment?”

  “I don't… to be honest, I didn’t even ask. You should’ve seen his face, Theenie. When he realized I found out what he had been doing, it looked like his entire world had shattered. And I believed him then. Everything he said, about why he did it, I believed it and it made me feel so warm.” Joel clutched his chest. “It felt like I was home, and I was there with him and it wasn’t scary. I felt so safe, and more loved than I have in years. So I told him it was okay, I told him I wanted to be his.”

  Joel watched Athena’s face closely and tried to decipher meaning behind the tics of her jaw and the twitch of her lower left eye as she squinted at him. She recognized his silence and offered a small nod, encouraging him to go on. She showed no judgment on her face for Joel or his feelings toward Gabriel. It warmed a sliver of the ice that had been inside his chest since Gabriel betrayed him, and Joel pushed on with his story.

  “And then he took me to bed again, and oh my God, Theenie, it was unbelievable. We fell asleep holding hands, I told him I loved him.” Joel stopped, choking on the last three words as they tumbled from his lips. “When I woke up, I found him at the front door and my mom and Thomas were there.”

  Athena held up a hand to stop him. “That’s a good breaking point, Baby J. Eat some more bacon.” At her own instruction, she picked up a slice and chewed it thoughtfully, then another and another, while Joel did the same. When an arbitrary amount of fatty pig had been consumed, she swallowed down some more coffee and gestured for him to continue.

  “Thomas said Gabriel was his brother.” Joel's grip on the coffee mug tightened.

  “You said that last night. And even in the light of a new day, my thoughts on that non-relation are the same. Tell me about what your mom said, though.” Athena continued to eat more bacon.

  “I don't know for sure. She said something about trying to get money from Gabriel to fix me. Thomas said he didn't want Gabriel's money.” Joel stopped when Athena ges
tured down to the plate, so he took another bite before continuing. “Before they showed up, and even right when they were in the doorway, Gabriel told me he hadn’t told me everything. I assumed he meant the stalking stuff, not the uncle stuff.”

  “You know what happens when you assume, you make an asshole out of yourself, Joel.” Somehow, Athena had eaten all her bacon. She stacked Joel's full plate on top of her empty one and took another slice.

  “Either way, being family is a deal breaker, isn't it? I even told him how I didn't talk to my family, and how badly I wanted to have a family and he was selfish, Athena, so selfish because he could have been my family!” The more Joel thought about it, the angrier he got. His entire body was a live wire, vibrating and about to snap from the tension. The feeling came on so strong it threatened to overwhelm him.

  “Am I your family? Do you consider me family?” Athena asked softly, like Joel was a skittish wild animal.

  “Of course you are!” Joel shouted at her. “You love me, and you take care of me and you look out for me when I need it. I fucking love you, you idiot.” His chest heaved with the exertion, still sore and tired from the night before.

  Athena looked at him, head cocked to the side, waiting. Joel mirrored her stance in a mocking manner, before what he said clicked into place.

  “And Gabriel loves you, and wants to take care of you, and look out for you too.” She reached for another piece of bacon, leaning forward and tapping Joel on the forehead with it.

  “It's not the same,” Joel said, trying to convince both himself and her. He shoved the bacon plates forward, banging his head down onto the table.

  Athena wiped her greasy hand down her leg and reached forward to finger Joel's hair between her nails.

  “Joel, listen. There's no denying what he did was shitty, and a lot creepy, and maybe a smidge romantic, but mostly creepy.” Athena rubbed his scalp and he tried to shake her hand free but she refused.