Give and Take (Ties That Bind Book 1)

by Claire Cullen

“There’s not much to it. Hold on to me, lean into the turns.”

  That sounded simple. Sam handed him the backpack which he slipped onto his back before he climbed on behind Sam, wrapping his arms around his waist. His hand knocked against something unexpected and he lifted Sam’s jacket, taking a long look at his holster and gun.

  Sam twisted to see what he was looking at.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he said, giving Drew a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, I know how to handle it, and myself.” Drew didn’t doubt that.

  Soon they were zipping through the streets, a cool breeze buffeting them. Sam had said they were stopping by a friend’s house, to leave his bike there and borrow a car. The bike wasn’t going to be suitable for such a long journey. As much as Drew was enjoying it, the feel of the wind whipping by him, the smooth movement of the bike on the road, he knew it would be a very different thing if they were hours on the road, in the rain or heat.

  They left the city streets, the roads growing wider, passing more schools and houses, and fewer businesses. All too soon they pulled to a stop in front of a small suburban house.

  Drew clambered off and Sam followed a moment later.

  As they walked up the driveway, the porch door opened and a man on crutches came out. It took Drew’s eyes a moment to work out what was wrong with what he was seeing. The man was missing his left leg from the knee down. It didn’t seem to slow him down.

  “Sam, good to see you!” he greeted. Sam jogged forward and Drew held back, giving the two men a moment to themselves.

  “How is the PT going?” Sam was asking when Drew got close enough to hear their conversation. PT? What could they be… oh. Physical therapy.

  “I’m getting there. They’ve fitted me for the prosthetic and I get to start training with it soon. The phantom pains are something else though. Keep waking me up at night.” He stared down at his leg, aggrieved. When he looked back up, he caught sight of Drew as he hovered a few feet away.

  “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  Sam coughed. “Sure. Jed, this is Drew. Drew, this is Jed.”

  Drew stepped forward and shook Jed's hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. You’re Logan’s brother, right?”

  “Right. You know Logan?”

  “Not really. Friend of a friend. How’s he getting on?”

  “Doing good,” Drew hedged. The truth was, he was relying on Sam’s knowledge and not his own. He hoped Logan was okay and that his problems wouldn’t bring trouble down on his brother.

  “That’s great. Do you want to come in for some breakfast or a coffee?”

  “Actually, we need to be getting on the road. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “Sure.” Jed’s face fell a little, but he rallied. “The car is in the garage. You can leave your bike in there, it’ll be safe until you come back.”

  “How are Jen and Toby?” Sam asked, as they got the garage open, Jed handing Sam a set of car keys.

  “Jen’s great. She’s been a real trooper with all this.” He gestured to his leg as he spoke. “Toby is the highlight of my day. There’s something magical about kids, they really give you something to strive for. I don’t want to think about what I’d be like without them.”

  Sam squeezed his shoulder and Drew felt again like he was intruding. There was clearly a solidarity between them all; Sam, Matt, Jed, even Vex. A sort of language he didn’t speak.

  They had the car out of the garage and the bike stowed safely inside a few minutes later.

  “It’s a good choice not to take the bike. The forecast is for storms across the east and midlands over the next few days,” Jed said.

  Sam put the backpack in the backseat and got in, waving goodbye to Jed as they pulled away.

  “How did he…” Drew wasn’t sure it was polite to ask.

  “Car bomb at a checkpoint. A piece of shrapnel tore up the blood vessels in his leg. He was lucky not to bleed out but they couldn't save the limb.”

  Drew shuddered at the image. “How do you hold it together after something like that?” Jed seemed in remarkably good spirits, considering.

  “I guess, first of all, you remember to be thankful that you didn’t die. And you take comfort and solace in friends and family. Life doesn’t end when you lose a limb though it can feel that way. The mental damage is often worse than the physical.”

  Sam lapsed into silence and Drew didn’t break it, not knowing what to say to that. He’d seen how much Matt was suffering and as far as Drew could tell, the damage there was solely psychological. And when he thought back to his teenage years and his last few months at home being tormented daily by his father, it wasn’t so hard for him to understand what Sam was talking about.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Drew was quiet in the car next to him, watching out the window. Sam did two loops that led them on to quiet back roads. If there had been anyone following them, he’d have seen them.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” he said, setting off for their destination. “We’ll try not to stop until we have to, okay?”

  “Okay,” Drew replied, his eyes not straying from the window.

  The rain Jed had promised didn’t arrive until the afternoon, the sky darkening before the downpour began. He threw on the wipers and slowed to a safer speed. After a while, the sound of the wipers started to grate on him.

  “Do you mind if I switch on the radio?” he asked. In answer, Drew turned it on.

  “What would you like? News? Music?”

  “Music.”

  “What’s your poison?” Drew seemed to have perked up a bit, smiling at him.

  “Rock. Soft rock. No metal. No classical either, that stuff gets to me after a while.”

  Drew tried a few channels before settling on one. “This okay?”

  “Perfect.” The beat was enough to distract from the wipers and he relaxed again.

  Drew hummed along to some of the music.

  “You’re not going to burst into song, are you?” Sam asked.

  “Well, I don’t want us to crash and I’m told I sound like yowling cats,” he replied. “So, no, you’re safe.”

  Grinning, Sam tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in time with the beat. If he ignored the circumstances, he could almost pretend that they were just two friends on a road trip. He stole a look at Drew out of the corner of his eyes, heat stirring in him when Drew rubbed his thumb idly across his lips. Okay, maybe more than friends, and maybe not a road trip, maybe a weekend getaway. He put the brakes on his imagination, knowing it wasn’t the time or place to get distracted. He forced himself to focus on their surroundings again, watching for cars keeping pace with them. It was hard to keep his thoughts off the man next to him but at least the driving kept his hands busy.

  The rain petered off around lunchtime and they pulled over at a service station in the mid-afternoon, paying a visit to the restrooms and filling up the gas tank. There were some picnic tables to one side, sheltered by an awning on the wall. With no one using them because of the weather, Sam jogged over to check them out.

  “It’s dry,” he called back to Drew, waving him over. They pulled food out of their backpack and sat side by side, eating their fill out of view of the rest of the parking lot.

  Drew was picking at his food and not making much of an effort.

  “You need to eat,” Sam pointed out.

  “I know. My stomach’s churning.”

  “It’ll only get worse with nothing in it and all that stomach acid swilling around. Just eat half that sandwich and some of the soup from the thermos. It’s still warm and there’s ginger in it. It’s good for settling stomachs.”

  “Why Vex? It’s not a name I’ve heard before.”

  Sam was more than ready to help distract Drew from his nausea.

  “Oh, he got the name long before we met. I think he had a rep for being irritable, you know, vexed.”

  “How did you meet?”


  “He was one of our instructors in basic training. I didn’t like him at first. He was a real hard-ass, like most of them were.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Some of the guys training with us saw Matt being a little too friendly with another guy and took it upon themselves to teach him a lesson. Vex walked in right in the middle of it. And I guess it’s tough to know what the best thing to do is in those circumstances. If he puts a stop to it, then it looks like he’s rescuing Matt from them and Matt loses a lot of face. Not a good position to be in during basic.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Said they needed to even up the odds a bit and went to stand back to back with Matt. Those idiots didn’t know what to do. One of them panics, tries to take a swing at Vex, ends up taking a blow to his solar plexus instead and winds up on the ground. The other two turn tail and run. Vex and Matt carry the injured guy to the infirmary. And the story that gets out, because all three guys are petrified to say anything, is that Matt and solar plexus guy went one on one and Matt got the better of him. Vex never said a word about it.”

  Drew grinned. “Vex seems like a pretty sound guy.”

  “Yeah, he is. More than that, he’s fair. Only one of those three made it through basic, incidentally. The guy Vex hit. Had quite the attitude change though, for the better. But that’s what basic does to some people. Breaks them down and makes them up better than they were before.”

  “Isn’t that the point of basic for everyone?” Drew queried, and Sam belatedly recalled Drew telling him about his father putting pressure on him to enlist.

  “Yes and no. So, how come you didn’t enlist? What with Logan and your dad being all for it?”

  Drew sat back, his thumb pulling idly on his bottom lip.

  “I just wanted somewhere I could be myself. If I couldn’t at home and I couldn’t at work, I knew, eventually, I’d reach a point of no return. Don’t ask, don’t tell is pretty much an invitation not to be yourself. Plus, I’d spent enough of my formative years being torn apart, I didn’t need the military to finish the job.”

  “I guess that’s a better reason than most. Finish your soup. We’d better get back on the road. We don’t stop again until nightfall.”

  It was raining again when Sam jogged over to the dingy reception and paid for their motel room for the night. The night manager, a kid who didn’t look older than eighteen, barely glanced at him, too busy watching people playing video games on a screen. He handed over the key, muttered some instructions about being out by eleven and not setting fires and went back to his games.

  Sam left Drew in the car while he scoped out the room, making sure they could secure all the doors and windows and that all the lights were working. Only then did he get Drew and their backpack, hurrying across the motel yard as the rain fell in long sheets.

  Once inside, Drew disappeared into the bathroom while Sam made a point of checking the doors and windows again.

  “At least there’s no cockroaches,” Drew pointed out when he returned. “And there’s even soap in the bathroom.”

  “Yeah, as motels go, it’s not so bad.”

  Drew looked at the two single beds before asking, “Do you have a preference?”

  “I’ll take the one closest to the door. The doors and windows are closed and locked, so if someone was to try to get in, they’d have to use force to break-in. That’ll make noise so we’ll have some warning.”

  He’d meant it as reassurance but the more he spoke, the more freaked out Drew seemed to get.

  “Which isn’t going to happen anyway, because no one knows where we are. We’re driving a borrowed car, neither of us used credit cards to pay for anything, and we’re both using new cell phones. I’m just being extra careful, that’s all.”

  “That’s what you're trained to do,” Drew added.

  Sam went to use the bathroom. When he returned, Drew had stripped to his boxers and was climbing into bed. The bruising had turned a sickly yellow color in most places and was starting to fade in others.

  “You’re healing up,” he commented, mentally chastising himself for drawing attention to the fact that he was looking at Drew’s body.

  “I’m not too slow a healer,” Drew replied. “Unless it’s a paper cut,” he added with a snort of laughter.

  Sam settled for sleeping shirtless wearing sweatpants. If anything did happen in the middle of the night, he didn’t want to be chasing anyone down wearing just his boxers.

  The thunder woke him with a start and he sat up in the dark room, trying to work out the unfamiliar layout. Right. Motel, Drew, and the promised thunderstorm. He was about to settle back to sleep when a flash of lightning lit up the room and he heard Drew, who was curled over onto his side, making soft sounds under his breath.

  Another nightmare, Sam guessed, swinging around to sit on the edge of his bed. He gave Drew a minute to settle himself, but the next roll of thunder seemed to mingle with his dream, Drew starting to fight the blankets and mumble words under his breath. He heard ‘no’ and ‘Russ’ and couldn’t listen anymore, crouching next to Drew’s bed and calling softly.

  “Drew, wake up. It’s just a dream, that’s all.”

  The other man didn’t seem to hear him and his next words were drowned out by an even louder crack of thunder, sounding like it was right overhead. It woke Drew, who leaped up, yelling out when he found Sam right next to him.

  Afraid they’d draw the attention of their neighbors, Sam reached for him. Exactly the wrong thing to do as a wide-eyed Drew threw himself backward, rolling off the bed and hitting the floor.

  “Drew,” Sam called, following after him and landing softly on the floor beside him.

  “Sam?” the shaky voice replied, before two confused eyes peered up at him. “What’s going on?”

  “You were having a nightmare, and it came complete with a soundtrack.” He gestured upward as another crack of thunder sounded. Drew flinched at the sound.

  “Not a fan of thunderstorms?” Sam asked.

  Drew shrugged. “I used to love them. I guess I’m no longer the biggest fan of sudden, loud noises. Why am I on the floor?” He got to his feet with a put-upon sigh. “You must think I’m a total mess, panicking at the sound of a storm.”

  “Hey, go easy on yourself. You weren’t even awake. Dreams don’t have rhyme or reason most of the time, nightmares especially.”

  “It was just Russ. It’s always Russ.” Drew rubbed his hands across his eyes. “What time is it?”

  Sam checked his watch. “A little after three. We have a few more hours of sleep to catch.”

  They returned to their beds and Sam kept an ear out. Drew didn’t settle, tossing and turning before finally sitting up, his head turned towards the window. Despite the curtains, each flash of lightning gave the room a brief daylight glow.

  “Do you want to sleep over with me?” Sam asked, as he sat up again.

  “You need your sleep, you’re doing most of the driving.”

  “I can sleep anywhere. You won’t keep me awake.”

  Drew didn’t need a lot of convincing, sliding out of bed and slipping in under the covers beside him.

  Sam stretched out an arm, letting Drew press against his side before setting that arm around him. The position was awkward though, for both of them, so he turned instead, until he was face to face with Drew. Lightning flashed again, the light reflecting in Drew’s eyes.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Sam asked.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t already told you.”

  “Is it the one where you can’t breathe?”

  “No, it was… when he found me after I’d accessed his laptop.”

  “That was the first time he was violent with you?”

  “Yeah. Well, there was the time he threw the water over me, but you can pass that off as a prank, I guess. There were a few times when he grabbed me, when I was saying or doing something he wasn’t happy with. His hand would touch me, my hand, my shoulder and
squeeze until it hurt. We’d always be in company and I’d just kind of have to wait for him to stop. He never seemed to mean anything by it. And the few times I brought it up, he apologized. Twice he bought me a gift. Usually something expensive. Which I thought was a strange thing to do considering he was denying he’d actually done anything deliberate. He’d say I overreacted, and he only wanted me to be happy and I’d feel guilty for pushing him.”

  It sounded like every other abusive relationship Sam had ever heard of as a cop. He could understand how Drew was only seeing that now, only working through it now. At the time, like most people, he would have struggled to separate out the different emotions and aspects of their relationship.

  “Things must look a lot different now that you and he have some distance.”

  Drew huffed a laugh. “Yeah, I can see him for the manipulative bastard that he was. And me the naïve, trusting kid who desperately wanted someone to accept me for who I was. Except, I guess, in the end, that wasn’t what he was doing.”

  “He was trying to change you to fit an ideal. That’s more common than you think. It would only have got worse as time went on.”

  They lapsed into silence. Another crash of thunder had Drew shuffling closer, his breath warm against Sam’s skin.

  Sam was a little taken aback when Drew’s lips pressed against his neck.

  “Hey…”

  “Please. I don’t want to think anymore.”

  Sam knew what that felt like. His hands itched to touch Drew, to trail along that soft skin.

  Drew pushed himself up on one elbow, so he was looking down at Sam. “Please?” he said again, his teeth worrying his bottom lip.

  “Come on, lie down,” he said, urging Drew to lie back on the bed. He let his knuckles drag along Drew’s cheek, sweeping under his jaw and chin before tipping Drew’s head up.

  “You really want to do this?”

  “I want to forget. And when I’m touching you, all I can think about is you. Nothing and no one else.”

  As he spoke, Drew placed a hand on Sam’s chest and stroked along the skin, fingers brushing skin and hair. He let go, his hand cupping Sam’s cheek instead as he pressed forward and touched his lips to Sam’s. He did it tentatively as if anticipating rejection. Sam couldn’t deny him but he wouldn't take advantage, either.