Give and Take (Ties That Bind Book 1)

by Claire Cullen

  They stayed like that for another few moments before Sam took a step back, slipping out of him. He was lifted up and set on his feet, bracing his hands against the back of the couch to hold him steady. Sam’s arms wrapped around him, holding him tight to Sam’s chest as he pressed hot kisses along his shoulder and neck.

  “There,” Sam rumbled into his ear. “Maybe now we can get some work done.”

  Drew huffed. “That wasn’t enough of a workout for you?”

  They broke for lunch before Sam insisted they go back to their self-defense practice, despite Drew groaning and making faces at the prospect. It took two hours of trying the same move over and over again before Sam was happy Drew knew it.

  “Okay, now it’s your turn.”

  Drew paused, looking over at him. “My turn for what?”

  “I said if you learned a move, we could have some fun. You’ve got the move down, so...”

  He waited as Drew contemplated his offer before smiling back at him.

  “Okay.”

  “You know what you want to do?”

  Drew nodded. “I want to kneel for you.”

  Before Sam could ask what he meant, Drew was walking him back to stand against the wall and sinking to his knees on the floor, his hands on Sam’s pants, tugging them and his boxers down.

  Sam could only watch, mesmerized, as Drew leaned in and peppered kisses along his shaft until he reached the tip. He glanced upward, his gaze meeting Sam’s for a moment, before he opened his mouth and took Sam inside.

  Sam swallowed hard, bracing himself against the wall as the heat of Drew’s mouth settled around him. He knew what he was doing, taking Sam deeper within seconds, his tongue teasing Sam as his hands found Sam’s hips and held on.

  It took all of Sam’s control not to thrust into that heat but he held firm, looking down at Drew’s head and watching as he pulled back and pushed closer, taking a little Sam deeper each time. He wasn’t going to last long, not with the way Drew’s talented mouth was working him.

  One hand wrapped around him, as Drew pulled back, sealing his lips around Sam’s shaft and sucking with a quiet hum.

  Sam let a hand leave the wall, his fingers reaching down to card through Drew’s hair, not pulling or pushing, just touching.

  “Drew, I’m close,” he warned. If anything, it spurred Drew on, taking Sam deeper again, lips and tongue tight to him, until he came with a gasp, hips jerking rhythmically. Drew swallowed around him, not letting go or letting up as Sam sagged against the wall.

  “Fuck, you’re amazing,” he whispered when he got his voice back.

  Drew pulled away slowly, grinning up at him and wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve. You’re not the only one who read the manual.”

  On their last day together, the last day for who knew how long, Sam appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, a pleased smile on his face. The first thing Drew noticed, after the smile, was the small wrapped package in his hand.

  “I got something for you,” Sam said, adding, “close your eyes.”

  Drew let them fall closed with a smile, hearing Sam move over to the window, where thin blinds filtered out the sunlight except for a broken one near the top.

  “You can look now,” Sam said. Opening his eyes, he saw something glint in the air. Squinting and moving to the side, he realized what it was. A prism, dangling from the curtain rail. It sat at just the right height to catch the ray of sun that escaped in through the broken blind, painting a rainbow of color across the room’s plain walls.

  His surprise became a smile, then a grin, then a laugh, when he pictured Morton’s face were he ever to return.

  “It’s perfect,” he said, wrapping his arms around Sam. “I love it. I love you.”

  The words slipped out unplanned, his feelings bursting through the shield he’d built to hold them down.

  Sam laced the fingers of their hands together, lifting them high into the air. The light from the prism fell on them, dappling their skin with a riot of color. Drew felt like the burst of light and color mimicked his own feelings, doing their best to escape from his chest.

  “I’ll wait for you,” Sam said, taking Drew’s other hand and placing it over his heart. “As long as it takes.”

  “I’ll wait for you, too.” He was getting good at waiting.

  Sam’s heart was beating away beneath his palm and he sighed, resting his head on Sam’s shoulder.

  “I’m going to miss you, but I’m not sorry you’re going. Saving people is part of who you are. I don’t want to be the person you’re always rescuing. I want to be the person you come home to after. I want to be the constant, like the beat of your heart. When you need someone to be there for you, I want that to be me.”

  He couldn’t be any clearer, the words falling easily from him.

  Sam kissed his lips, his cheek, then, with his mouth pressed to Drew’s ear, he whispered to him, “I want that, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Middle of the night phone calls were rarely a good thing. Since parting from Drew almost two months prior, he had been half-expecting a call from him or Cora. For Sam, late night calls were usually a change in work schedule, an extra shift, an early start. But not tonight.

  “Dad?” he asked, glancing at his alarm clock. Two forty-three am.

  “Sam.” He’d never heard his father’s voice sound quite like that. “It’s Theo. There’s been an accident.”

  A wave of cold washed over him at the words and numbly he listened to what his father had to say. He was already up and pulling clothes from his dresser as the words head injury and hospital filtered through.

  “Molly?” he asked.

  “I’m calling her right after you,” his Dad assured him.

  The next hour was a blur, getting on his bike and driving through the dark streets to the hospital.

  He spent what seemed like a lifetime staring at the information board before a security guard stepped up to him.

  “Sir, can I help you find somewhere?”

  “I…ICU.” The three letters were hard to spit out. “My brother’s there.”

  “I’ll show you the way,” the guard said and Sam followed numbly. His father was pacing the corridor outside and rushed to embrace him. “Sam.”

  “How is he?”

  “They haven’t told me anything. There’s a waiting room we can sit in.”

  His father led him down the corridor to the empty waiting room, walls painted in cool, calm colors, chairs scattered across the floor and boxes of tissues on every table. A room to wait and grieve.

  “Dad, what happened?”

  “He and his friends were playing hockey last night. They stayed late. Around midnight they had finished up and were coming out. Theo had taken off his helmet. His friend hit the puck towards him. Theo went for it, on instinct I guess, slipped and hit his head.” His father pressed a hand to his forehead. “Why couldn’t he play football or basketball, like everyone else.”

  Theo had always gotten a lot of stick in school for choosing hockey over the more popular sports but to him, it was no choice at all. He loved being on the ice.

  They sat, watching the time tick away on a clock on the wall. The door opened and they both stood. It was Molly, eyes red, face pale. “Is there news?” she asked.

  “Not yet, sweetheart,” their Dad replied. She hugged him, then Sam, and they sat again. More people came in, Theo’s friends who’d been with him when he fell, and a woman waiting for news of her critically ill husband. She sat in the corner with a friend, their tones hushed.

  It was almost five am when a doctor came to see them.

  “Theo’s family?” he asked, before leading them to a private room and explaining what had happened.

  “The blow to his head caused a build-up of fluid and pressure in his brain. We had to drill into his skull to relieve that pressure, in a procedure called a craniotomy. Right now, Theo is in a medically induced coma and we’ll be keepi
ng him comatose for a week to ten days.”

  “What’s his prognosis?” their father asked.

  “It is hard to be certain at this point. Alongside the fluid, there was a hemorrhage - a bleed - in the brain tissue near the point of impact. It is small but it’s not possible to say right now whether he’ll have complications as a result. We won’t know anything for certain until we wake him up.”

  “What kind of complications?” Sam asked.

  “Because of the location of the bleed, we’d be concerned about motor and speech difficulties, as well as cognitive problems. He also has a serious concussion and we can’t outrule possible memory or personality changes.”

  The doctor’s list of complications just about covered every eventuality Sam could imagine.

  “Will he wake up, for definite?”

  The doctor paused and Sam knew the answer before he voiced it.

  “We won’t know that for certain until we try. We’ll repeat the brain scans over the next few days and that will give us additional information. I should warn you, his condition could deteriorate at any time and you need to be prepared for that.”

  “Can we see him?” Molly asked.

  “The nurse will come and get you when it’s time.”

  It was only two visitors at any one time, so Sam let Molly and his dad go first. Molly held it together until they got back to the waiting room before she dissolved into sobs. Sam slipped out, leaving his father to comfort her. He needed to be with his brother.

  The nurse encouraged him into a seat next to Theo and resumed her position at the end of the bed. Sam spent a minute just taking in all the machinery surrounding them.

  “Hey, Theo,” he said quietly, taking his brother’s hand in his like the nurse had said he could. “You’re really channeling the Matrix right now. I don’t know that you can hear me, maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m sorry it’s been so long since we talked, there’s so much I want to tell you. I met this guy and he’s really great. You’d like him.”

  He trailed off, casting his mind around for something else to say. “I hear they’re keeping you under for another while, to give your brain time to heal. You gave your head such a smack, Theo.”

  Tears welled in his eyes and he forced them back. “We’ll be right here with you, the whole way along. It might take some time, to get you better, to get you back to yourself, but we’ll do that, I promise.”

  He gave Theo’s hand one last squeeze before getting up and leaving, nodding to the nurse as he passed. Back in the waiting room, Molly was calmer. She and his Dad sat in silence, holding hands. They were praying. Sam had never put much stock in prayer or faith, but he sat with them, held their hands, and gave himself over to the silence.

  When it turned a reasonable hour, they started making phone calls. To family, to friends. Sam called Tom, who listened and said simply, “Whatever you need, we’re there.”

  At eleven am, he got a call from Cora. She was brisk as always and at first, he couldn’t get a word in.

  “Sam, good news. Russell took a plea deal, it’s all ironed out, and Drew will be out of witness protection this time tomorrow. You can pick him up if you like.”

  His words were halting, stumbling as he explained about Theo.

  “I’ll organize someone to go get him,” he promised, even while Cora was assuring him she’d handle it.

  He kept his promise, calling Matt, the other answering on the first ring, already aware of the situation with Theo. He passed on Cora’s number and Matt said to leave it with him.

  Sam returned to his family in the waiting room as they made a plan for the next ten days. They all wanted to take time off, but Dad, ever the voice of reason, felt they might well need that time later, when Theo was awake and in recovery. Right then, he barely knew they were there, later was when it would count.

  They drew up a rota, taking into account all their work schedules, so that one of them would always be in the hospital. The staff had offered them a family room, with a bed and a sink. They’d take turns staying overnight.

  “It is going to be a long and hard road, for all of us,” his Dad said. “But I’m here and I won’t check out, not like before.”

  Sam wanted to believe him but he knew that when the going got tough, he’d be the one left with the responsibilities. He was okay with that. He had to be.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Drew hated hospitals. The smell, the air, the heat. He hadn’t had much cause to be near an ICU but he knew enough about them to know to be afraid. Most people who went in did not come out.

  Matt was by his side, looking a hundred times better than when he’d last seen him. Not cured, because Drew didn’t think there was a cure for that kind of injury, but coping, living.

  Pushing open the door to the waiting room, he caught sight of Sam, sitting towards the back, his head in his heads.

  As they crossed the room, he rubbed hard at his eyes and sat up. Drew pulled up short. Sam looked exhausted, eyes red and tired, face unshaven.

  Sam went to get up and Drew stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, slipping into the seat next to him.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi.” Sam’s voice was tired, that one word holding a heavy weight.

  “How is Theo?”

  “The same. No better, no worse.”

  Drew put an arm around Sam’s shoulders only for Sam to stiffen. Pulling back, he exchanged a look with Matt.

  “You got out okay?” Sam asked

  “Yeah, I did. Matt picked me up and I left the world of witness protection behind.”

  Sam nodded, glancing around the empty room, then up at Matt. “Matt, do you mind giving us a minute.”

  “Sure, I’ll just be outside,” he said, walking quickly from the room.

  “What kind of deal did Russell make?” Sam asked, his voice quiet.

  “He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud and federal murder charges. The deal he took allows him to serve out his sentence in a less secure facility and makes him eligible for parole when he’s seventy.”

  “Good, he’s not a threat to you anymore. I’m glad.” There was something off about Sam’s tone.

  “Yeah, we don’t need to worry about that, not now. It’s Theo who needs you now.”

  “Yeah, he does,” Sam agreed. “And he might need me for a very long time with the kind of injuries he’s sustained.”

  Drew laid his hand on Sam’s only for Sam to pull away.

  “I guess, what I’m saying, is that I can’t be there for you right now, Drew. I know you’re just out and you need people around you to help you adjust to the transition. But I need to be there for Theo and there isn’t enough of me to go around. Ask Matt to help you find a place to stay, but you’re welcome to crash at my place until you do. If you need money, I can get you some…”

  “Sam? Sam, stop.”

  Drew slipped to the floor, crouching in front of Sam, his hands on Sam’s knees.

  “You don’t need to do anything for me right now, not a thing. It’s the other way around. I’m here for you. Tell me what you need.”

  There was a pause, Sam’s face stricken. “I… I need Theo to be okay.”

  He bent forward and Drew knelt up, wrapping his arms around him. “I know, I know you do. And there’s hope, right? Matt said there were lots of reasons to be hopeful?”

  “I can’t see it, I can’t.”

  “That’s because you’re exhausted. When was the last time you slept?”

  “I got an hour or two last night in the family room here.”

  “When’s your next shift?”

  “Tonight. My sister’s coming to take over from me around four.”

  “Well, why don’t we go to the family room now and you can nap for a while.”

  “No, I need to be here for Theo.”

  “You are here. You’ll be just as much here for Theo in the bed in the family room as you are in that chair. And you’ll be better able to handle what’s to come if
you’ve had some sleep.”

  He was throwing Sam’s own words back at him, in the hope that he might listen. “I’m sure Matt wouldn’t mind sitting out here for a while, if that would make you feel better. Or I will, once I’ve got you settled.”

  “You don’t need to…”

  “Yes, I do. Why do you think I’m here, Sam? You mean so much to me. The last thing I’m going to do is walk away or turn my back right when you really need me.”

  It took another few minutes to convince Sam to get up and come with him to the family room. Once there, Drew got him into bed and took a seat beside him.

  “I’m afraid, if I sleep, I’ll miss them calling me if something happens.”

  “I’m right here, wide awake, and with two good ears. I’ll wake you if they call.”

  Within ten minutes, Sam was fast asleep. Even in slumber, his face showed lines of worry.

  Drew woke him half an hour before his sister was due to arrive. He looked better, his eyes clear.

  Drew had rooted through Sam’s bag, leaving his razor and shaving foam on the side of the sink. Sam looked from it to Drew with raised eyebrows but got up and shaved before giving himself a quick wash with a damp cloth.

  “Feel more yourself now?” Drew asked.

  “Yeah, I do. I’m sorry about trying to send you away earlier.”

  Drew shrugged. “I think I understand. Since you met me, I’ve needed a lot from you. Right now, you don’t have the energy to give what I needed then. But that was then and this is now. It’s my turn, Sam. My turn to give you what you need.” He glanced at the razor. “Whether you realize it or not.”

  Sam pulled his t-shirt over his head, taking a seat on the side of the bed. “So what do I need now?”

  “To visit your brother for a few minutes during visiting hours. Say hi to your sister. And then dinner and a liberal dose of caffeine. After that, it’ll be time for you to go to work.”

  “You should be putting your life back together. Not propping up mine.”

  “I kind of thought we agreed you were going to be a big part of my life and me yours. Can’t let yours fall apart without hurting my own.”