by Piper Scott
“I wanted to know that you’d keep your word—that you wouldn’t deceive me. That doesn’t mean that you have to listen to me all the time, but it means you have to be upfront about your wants. If you had decided to actually go through with the TPE, hung your head and submitted out of duty, I wouldn’t have let you go through with it. I know that we had a rocky start, but I’m not a monster. I wouldn’t force anyone to do something they didn’t want, especially if I have the higher ground over them like I did with you.”
Could he be trusted? It was a pretty story, but Adrian had heard pretty lies before. Was Sterling saving face now that they’d connected on a physical level? It was hard to tell.
“I don’t know if I believe you,” Adrian admitted.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not here to force your hand.” Sterling’s fingers wove down the back of Adrian’s head and along the nape of his neck where smaller, sensitive hairs grew. Adrian shivered. He pressed himself closer to Sterling. “Tonight, you showed me who you really are. If you want to leave, you’re free to do so. The Shepherd will continue to welcome you.”
“I…” Adrian knew that he should detach from Sterling’s side immediately, roll out of bed, and dress to go. If he’d been in his right frame of mind, it’s what he would have done.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he nestled against Sterling and let his eyes shut once more. No matter what Sterling did or did not want from him, Sterling’s bedroom was a kinder place than the house Adrian shared with his parents.
Adrian didn’t want to go.
“Mm? You what?” Sterling didn’t push the question too hard. His fingers met Adrian’s shoulder and started to trace along the skin there, his touch so gentle that it sent shivers down Adrian’s spine.
“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you for as long as I agreed to stay.”
“You’re more than welcome to.”
There were other questions Adrian wanted to ask. What did Sterling want of him if they weren’t in a TPE? What kind of arrangement would they come up with instead? Was there anything about the penthouse that Adrian needed to be made aware of? But before he could ask, a distant, cheery melody broke the stillness. Adrian recognized the sound instantly.
His mother was calling.
Tension rocketed through his body, tightening his muscles and cramping his stomach. Sickness rose up inside of him, overwhelming the peace he’d been wrapped up in seconds ago. Not even Sterling’s presence was enough to soothe his rising dread.
“Mm?” Sterling shifted, then abandoned Adrian’s side. The mattress readjusted as Sterling sat up and swung his legs over the edge. All the while, Adrian observed him through eyes open just a slit. He made no move to find his phone. He didn’t want to speak to his mother—not now. “Is that your phone?”
“Yes.” There was no sense in lying.
“A call, I’m guessing?” Sterling was on his feet in the next second, and he padded across the room, nude and shameless. If Adrian hadn’t been crippled by his anxiety, he would have taken the chance to marvel over the firm, muscular curves of Sterling’s tight ass or the shapeliness of his fair thighs, but all he could do now was remain on the bed while he tried to talk himself down from his fear. “I’ll get it.”
Adrian wanted to tell him to leave it, but Sterling was out the door before he could muster the courage to do so. By the time Sterling made it back to the room, the call had gone to voicemail, and Adrian’s apprehension had grown to the point that he thought he was going to be sick.
“It says it’s from your mom.” Sterling returned to the bed. He pressed the phone into Adrian’s palm. “She left a message.”
“Thanks.” Adrian didn’t meet Sterling’s eyes.
“Are you going to listen to it?” From the corner of his eye, Adrian saw Sterling frown. “It’s after ten on a Friday night. I don’t think that your mother would be calling unless it was something important.”
Adrian wasn’t sure what to think. Most times his mother was so high that she had trouble figuring out how a phone worked. If she was calling, she was either in her violent, semi-lucid stage, or she was sober and something really was wrong.
Adrian wasn’t sure which was worse.
“If you’re worried about it, I can listen for you.” Sterling yawned. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
That felt like a safe option. If his mother was high and rambling, Sterling wouldn’t know who the hell Gabriel was, anyway. With a nod, Adrian brought up the voicemail and passed the phone to Sterling. Sterling tapped on the message, then brought the phone to his ear and listened.
Sterling’s bedroom was so quiet that Adrian heard the sound of his mother’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words. She was yelling, sobbing, doing… something. He couldn’t tell what it was.
The message ended. Sterling set the phone on his chest, and when Adrian lifted his head to look at his face, Sterling’s gaze was distant and his expression was drawn.
“What did she want?” Adrian asked. “Was it nonsense? She does that sometimes.”
“No. At least, I don’t think it was.” Sterling stared at the ceiling as though it was a mile away. It looked like he was trying to put the pieces together while understanding that he was missing at least half the puzzle. “There was urgency in her voice, and she kept crying so hard that she had to repeat herself several times. She kept telling you to come back.”
“Did she say why?” Adrian already knew the answer. His mother mistook him for Gabriel more often than she recognized him for who he really was. He was sure the confused look on Sterling’s face was a result of her calling him by the wrong name.
“Yeah.” Sterling paused, then sighed and shook his head dismissively. “Maybe you should just listen to it. I’m not sure it’s something I understand well enough to explain.”
As Adrian braced himself for further heartbreak, Sterling accessed the voicemail and put it on speakerphone. The message started mid-sentence, like she’d been pleading her case to him before the call connected.
“—me home. You have to come home. Adrian, baby, come home.”
Adrian’s blood ran cold.
Adrian?
His mother never called him Adrian when she was going through one of her episodes. He was always Gabriel. Always.
Then she sobbed. The sound hitched in her throat and choked her words, but it wasn’t the frenetic, aggressive sobbing he was used to hearing—it was overjoyed.
“He’s home. He’s home. Gabriel came home. You have to come, too. You have to come. He’s here.”
Adrian sat up abruptly. The world spun, but he didn’t feel nauseous. He didn’t know what to feel.
“Adrian?” Sterling asked cautiously.
Adrian barely heard Sterling’s voice over the pounding of his heart in his ears. It didn’t matter. Right now, the only person that mattered was back at his parents’ house.
“You have to take me home, Sterling.” Adrian could barely get the words out. His throat was tight. He couldn’t believe the words he spoke next. “I need to see my brother.”
9
Adrian
Four years. Four long, torturous years. Adrian curled his hand around the handgrip on the door of Sterling’s car and stared out the window as each squat bollard light passed them by. Four years, and yet the forty minutes it took to drive from The Shepherd back to the Lowe estate was too long.
Adrian couldn’t sit still.
His foot bounced as Sterling drove, and his mind raced to process half-baked thoughts. All of it could be a delusion brought on by his mother’s drug dependence, of course. On the drive back home, Adrian had braced himself to find his mother hunched over a burlap sack stuffed full of something that might give it human form. Cotton balls, oranges, potatoes—it wouldn’t surprise him in the least if that’s what ‘Gabriel’ turned out to be. But there was a quality of desperation in the way she’d wept that suggested relief unlike anything Adrian had hear
d before.
But until he knew for sure that Gabriel wasn’t actually home, he had to work under the assumption that he was. If his mother was telling the truth, he would never forgive himself for brushing her off.
And if Gabriel was home, then…
Adrian looked from the window to Sterling. Conversation between them had been tense for the duration of the drive, but only because Adrian was too wired to engage. To think that Gabriel was alive and that he’d come home flipped off the talkative part of Adrian’s brain and set it to task focusing on more important issues.
After four years, Gabriel was back.
Adrian had never wanted to be home so badly before.
The last of the bollard lights became visible in the distance, and with them, the Lowe house. Cars clustered the garage and spilled onto the lawn, parked at odd angles and left abandoned. People clogged the area immediately surrounding the front door. How many? Twelve? Twenty? Adrian squinted and tried to count them through the dark, but he couldn’t be sure.
Even if the crowd wasn’t there because of Gabriel’s return, it was clear something important was happening, and Adrian didn’t want to miss it.
“Where should I park?” Sterling asked as they approached the end of the driveway.
“Anywhere. Here is fine. I just…” As the car slowed to a stop, Adrian unbuckled his seatbelt and let it snap back into place. His hand tested the door handle. “Thank you. I need to go figure out what’s going on. I’m sorry to have asked you to drive so late.”
“You’re fine.” Sterling shifted into park, then killed the engine. “Go. You need to see him.”
Adrian hadn’t shared his past with Sterling, but he knew that Sterling wasn’t dumb. He had to have assembled the pieces well enough that he understood the monumentality of the moment. A little twist of excitement spiraled through Adrian’s chest, and he leaned across the seat to kiss Sterling on the cheek. Sterling smiled for him, the movement pushing his cheek against Adrian’s lips.
“I’ll be here waiting,” Sterling said when Adrian drew back. “Whatever you decide, wherever you need to be, we’ll make it work.”
“Thank you.” Adrian pulled the door handle and opened the door, but he hesitated before he got out of the car. “I just wanted to say—”
Before he could complete his sentence, some of the people standing on the lawn migrated to stand by the car. Faces Adrian recognized but couldn’t put names to peered in at them. Sterling’s windows were tinted, and the night should have given them cover, but the overhead light had come on when Adrian had opened the door, and it put them on display.
“Adrian?” A woman asked. Family. A second cousin, maybe? Adrian had no idea. “Adrian, is that you?”
“You heard the news, didn’t you? Megan told you?”
“Adrian, your brother is home.”
The voices stacked, one on top of the other, until Adrian struggled to pick sentences from the chaos. He looked to Sterling apologetically, then opened the door in full and stepped out into the crowd. A hand clapped his shoulder. Someone put a hand on his back. Yet another person swept him into a hug. Adrian let himself be passed from one person to another, touched and talked to, like he was the son who’d gone missing almost half a decade ago. He didn’t deserve the attention. He was the one who’d caused this mess. Without him, a reunion wouldn’t have been necessary.
But the attention didn’t last long. A car door shut firmly, ringing out through the night, and Adrian watched as the relatives who were so quick to offer their congratulations when they hadn’t been bothered to so much as leave a voicemail offering their condolences four years ago all looked up at once.
Sterling stood on the other side of his car, arms folded on the roof, one eyebrow arched as he watched the crowd. Adrian had no idea what his goal was, but as Sterling stood there and observed the crowd, the crowd froze and observed him back.
Then, like a school of fish, they left Adrian’s side to rush around the car and swarm Sterling.
“Who are you?”
“Are you here with Adrian?”
“Are you dating?”
Sterling had never met the Lowe family before, but he’d read into the situation flawlessly and offered himself up as a distraction to give Adrian the time he needed to escape. Adrian met his gaze before Sterling turned to address the crowd, smiling in such a sincere and down-to-earth way that Adrian couldn’t be sure whether or not he was acting.
Adrian’s heart skipped a beat, and the strangeness in his chest returned to plague him.
He didn’t stick around to hear what Sterling said. Instead, he used the opportunity Sterling had given him to break from his nosy extended family to find the man he’d come to see.
It wasn’t hard to find him.
In the light of the LEDs that illuminated the front garden, left on his own to sit on the stoop, wrapped tight in a blanket pulled from his old bed, was Gabriel. He stared across the lawn, eyes distant and lost, and didn’t move.
Adrian didn’t see their mother. Their father was on the lawn, chatting casually with other family members like his long-lost son wasn’t sitting just a few feet away. Adrian increased his pace, letting one foot fall in front of the other until the heavy sound of his footsteps was so frequent, it matched the racing beat of his heart.
When he fell to his knees before Gabriel and scraped his knees, he didn’t feel the pain—the tears that gathered in the corners of Adrian’s eyes weren’t selfish. After four years of unending guilt, of knowing that he’d been the one who had let his brother be taken, Gabriel had come back.
Adrian cried with relief.
“Gabriel?” Adrian asked. He reached out, but found himself too afraid to touch. Even now, Gabriel’s eyes were distant. The downcast slope of his brows and the looseness in his lips made Adrian think that maybe his mother had given him one of her pills, and that Gabriel’s mind was too fogged to process external stimuli. “Gabriel, do you know who I am?”
Adrian knew who Gabriel was. Four years weren’t enough to change his face. Adrian recognized the long, regal bridge of his nose and the angles of his cheeks. Lowe features—features that Adrian shared.
“Adrian.” Gabriel whispered his name. His eyes refused to focus.
“Yeah.” Adrian’s lips trembled, but he smiled anyway. “It’s me. It’s Adrian. I… I’m really glad you’re home.”
Gabriel blinked. When he opened his eyes again, they locked on Adrian’s. For a second, neither of them moved. Tension grew. Adrian didn’t know what to expect, but seeing Gabriel so listless and detached took the pain he’d shouldered over the last four years and drove it deeper into his heart.
He’d done this. He’d taken his shy little brother and turned him into a husk of who he’d used to be.
Adrian dropped his hand, disheartened. How could he expect Gabriel to forgive him for what he’d done? Whatever suffering Adrian had been through in the last few years was nothing compared to the terrors Gabriel had undoubtedly encountered.
But then, the awkward tension between them shifted. Gabriel’s lips trembled, and he let loose with a singular, frightened sob. The blanket tumbled to the stoop, and as it fell, Gabriel latched his arms around Adrian’s neck and pushed against his chest.
“Adrian.” Gabriel’s voice was muffled by Adrian’s shirt, but Adrian heard it as clear as if Gabriel had spoken directly into his ear. “Adrian, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry about anything.” Adrian’s arms tightened around Gabriel. He cupped the back of Gabriel’s head and held him close. To his surprise, Gabriel’s hair was soft, pleasant to the touch. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I left you.” Gabriel drew a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t. It wasn’t supposed to… to be forever.”
“No. No, don’t say that. You shouldn’t be sorry.” Adrian squeezed his eyes shut, racked with guilt. It was one thing to know that he’d caused Gabriel to run away, but to know that Ga
briel was so scarred by the event that he blamed himself? It was a blow Adrian couldn’t stomach. “Don’t ever be sorry. All we ever wanted was for you to come home, and now you’re here. You’re back. You don’t ever have to be sorry. You came back to us.”
The shuddering breath Gabriel sucked in heightened, then turned into a low keen. He pushed his face so tightly against Adrian’s chest that it hurt. All the while, Adrian stroked his hair and held him close.
“Did you see Mom?” Adrian asked against the ridge of Gabriel’s ear. “She called me to come home. Where is she? She didn’t hurt you, did she?”
“No.” The word was broken and forced, but Adrian heard it regardless. “She’s inside. She fell asleep on the c-couch.”
Asleep was safe. Adrian shifted his position so he was sitting. Gabriel stuck to him like glue. For a little while longer, they simply held each other. Gabriel’s sobbing faded into nothing, and he settled on Adrian’s lap like he was a small child seeking comfort. While he settled, Adrian stroked Gabriel’s hair, doing his best to channel the same calming aura that Sterling had exuded during aftercare. But it wasn’t until soft footsteps approached, then came to a stop beside them that Gabriel settled down completely. Adrian didn’t have to turn his head to know Sterling was there—his presence was unmistakable.
“Adrian?” Gabriel whispered, so meek and frightened that Adrian couldn’t help but hold him a little more tightly. Sterling wasn’t close enough to intrude upon their space, but there was no doubt Gabriel had been through evils—he had every right to be afraid of a stranger.
“It’s okay. That’s Sterling. He’s with me.” Adrian looked over his shoulder at Sterling, and as he did, his heart warmed. Sterling stood facing away from them, his hands folded neatly behind his back. He stood close enough that Adrian was fairly sure he could hear their conversation, but not so close as to be imposing. To an outsider, he would have looked like a bodyguard. In a way, Adrian supposed he was.
“He’s not… going to hurt us?”