by RJ Scott
“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 lun
ch. 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.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When he got the text finally giving in to lunch, Cam had to replay it three times to make sure he’d heard it right.
Even now, in the car with Six at his side, he replayed the message and his reply.
Six had a very strong opinion on what he was doing today. “I still think this is stupid.”
“So you said.”
“Mitchell was sniffing around what you’re doing, and you know your dad will use any excuse to put him in as co-manager. Going on a date with a hooker has to be right up there as a reason to push you aside.”
“And like I said every other time you mentioned that, this is my hotel, free and clear. There’s nothing Dad can do.”
Six muttered something that Cam couldn’t hear, and he didn’t want to know what it was because he had lunch to concentrate on.
“He’s standing waiting for you,” Six informed him when the car stopped.
“What’s he wearing?”
Six paused, and Cam could imagine him giving Cam a look of despair.
“Jeans, kinda faded, a plaid shirt, mostly blue, and he’s got a Stetson on his head. Hell, the man’s gone full-on cowboy.”
Cam smoothed his own jeans—new, designer—and thought about the shirt he was wearing. It was blue, the same shade as his eyes, or at least he assumed so. The braille inside just said blue, which implied that it wasn’t light blue or dark blue, because if it were either of those it would say so. At least he could tell the collar was flat, and Six wouldn’t let him go out looking like a moron.
And yes, he was freaking out, just a little.
“I want it on record that this is a fucking insane idea,” Six growled.
“Noted.”
“I don’t get it. Do you think he’s gold under the tarnish, a hooker with a heart, like this is a Hollywood movie?”
Cam pulled at the material of his pants. What did he say?
“There’s a connection, Six. Something real.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why? Because I’m blind?” Cam snapped, and made to climb out of the car.
Six stopped him. “Really? After all these years, you’re going there?”
The sentiment behind the words—sadness, a bleakness that hit Cam squarely in the chest—had him turning back in Six’s direction. “No, I’m not, but after all these years, you know I have as much of a sixth sense as you do.”
“But what about Adam?”
“He was a mistake. I should have listened to my gut, but I was desperate for something, a connection, and I never had that with Adam, which shows how much of one I think I have with Gabriel.”
“You think you have. He’s damaged goods, Cam.”
That made Cam smile. He knew that. But hell… “I’m part of a dysfunctional family that equates blind with useless and gay with weak. I haven’t had a hug from my parents since they sat in that doctor’s room with me and heard there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop me going blind. I think I’m damaged goods as well. You’re more my dad than my own father.”
“Jesus, Cam,” Six said with feeling. “You know I’m only… Jeez…”
“It’s okay,” Cam murmured, and opened the door, the heat of a Texas summer flooding into the car. “I never say the right things.”
This time Six pulled him back, held him, and it was tight and close and Cam leaned into the hug.
“I’ll be here,” Six said.
Cam nodded into the hold. “You always are. Thank you.”
With the car door shut behind him, he didn’t know which way to face, but he didn’t need to worry, because Gabriel was there, standing close to him, the scent of him subtly changed. Instead of cologne, it was work, and soap and normality, and it was sexy and endearing all at the same time.
“Gabe?” Cam asked. He wanted to pull Gabriel into his arms and kiss him so hard, but he wasn’t sure Gabriel would want that. Was he even on the same page?
And then he was under no illusion on exactly what Gabriel was feeling.
Gabriel cradled his face and kissed him in the summer sun, and the kiss was deep and needy. Every single worry, every doubt, every word that people sent his way to get him to back off, they all vanished. He loved this man, wanted him. He wouldn’t say it, but for him this could be forever.
Cam wound his arms around Gabriel’s neck and held on tight. Six couldn’t move the car while he was pressed against it, but none of that mattered.
“I missed you,” Cam said between kisses.
“I have so much to tell you,” Gabriel said back, but he didn’t let go. He was hard against Cam’s thigh.
I want you to come. I want to feel you…
Gabriel finally backed away and tugged him along, slowing when there was uneven ground, which he warned Cam about as they walked. The ground didn’t become floor, and the heat of the sun was still there, so they weren’t heading indoors, and then the scent of horses hit him.
“I want you to meet Pixie,” Gabriel said, and guided Cam to a hard wooden fence. “Put out your hand.”
Cam did as he was told, completely trusting that Gabriel wasn’t setting him up for something stupid. Something pushed against his hand, soft—velvet-soft, actually—and he smiled.
“Tell me about her.”
“She’s a dark brown quarter horse, stands fifteen hands tall, and she has this white strip on her nose. She’s my horse.”
Gabriel said it so proudly that Cam’s chest tightened. “You have a horse.”
“Everyone at Legacy gets a horse—it’s a therapy thing.” Gabriel didn’t sound resentful of the idea of therapy. If anything, he appeared laid-back and accepting.
“She’s beautiful,” Cam said, stroking the soft nose and laughing at the snort of breath on his neck as the horse nuzzled him. “If I’d known, I would have brought a carrot or something.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, leaning into him.
“For the carrot? I didn’t actually bring one—”
“For what you and Six did. For coming to get me.”
“Always,” Cam said. They kissed again, but were broken apart by a huffing Pixie, who evidently thought kissing in a barn was a bad thing.
Cam couldn’t agree with that.
“I’ll show you my room, hold on.” The terrain changed from rough and hard to smooth floor, and it was cool in here. “So there’s a bed, a small bathroom, and every room has a desk you can put photos on and study at, that kind of thing.”
“Are you going to be studying?” Cam said, and felt for the bed, sitting on the side of it.
“I don’t know what I’m doing from one day to the next. I know I feel changed—not better, but different. I’ve been speaking to this woman called Clair who’s helping me get my head around everything
, and also to Jason. He’s the boyfriend of the guy who runs this place, and he used to work the streets for money. We have a lot in common.”
“What you did is a very real part of you,” Cam said. He wanted Gabriel to hear that Cam wasn’t going to forget what he’d done, had to do, been made to do. That was Gabriel’s journey to here, and it wouldn’t change.
“Clair is helping a lot.” The bed dipped as Gabriel sat next to him. “And I have you as a friend.”
“I’ll always be your friend,” Cam insisted. “But, it’s more than just friendship for me.” He wanted to talk about the connection between them, about the future and the past, and he wanted to tell Gabriel that he wasn’t going anywhere. He said none of it, because the time wasn’t right. It would be one day, just not today. Seemed like Gabriel had other ideas.
“I don’t get why you’d feel that way. You could have anyone. You have money, and a hotel, and the chance to hook up with a hundred eligible guys who your family would approve of.”
They didn’t get a chance to talk about it further. A knock on the door and a shouted “Food!” had Gabriel standing up. “C’mon—Kyle and Jason are doing food, and I want you to meet them. And Marianna—she’s my friend, but you need to be careful with her, because she’s kinda hurt.”
“Okay.”
“So eat all the food, talk to the people, and then we get some quiet time. Right?”
“I want time alone with you,” Cam confirmed simply, and evidently that was all Gabriel needed to hear.
The afternoon went too fast. They ate barbecue, but there was a lot of time when it was just Gabriel and Cam. Six even joined them for food, but that didn’t last long, and he made his excuses and sat inside with a book, with Clair who had arrived just after lunch. Cam wanted to talk to her, to get a feel for what he could do for the best.
Not least at the moment when they sat with lemonade under the shade of a tree and the conversation turned serious.
“What if I’m never fixed?”
“You’re working hard,” Cam reassured him. Because what else could he say? He had to believe that Gabriel would get to the point where he was able to move on from Stefan.
“I never told you what happened before Stefan,” Gabriel said.