The Innocence Series: Complete Bundle

by Riley Knight

  And he’d been right to do it, too. Yes, he felt alone and lonely like he could never remember feeling, but that was just to be expected since he’d gotten used to having Gunner around. He felt cold, right down to his center, almost dead inside, but that would get better with time, wouldn’t it?

  He’d made the right choice, that was the thing. And he held on to that even as he told his family nothing more than that Gunner had left. He could at least be loyal enough to Gunner to keep that secret for him, even if Gunner hadn’t been loyal to Sam enough to tell him.

  Life went on. Ruby pouted, and Isaac looked concerned, and Ben looked grim. Even Shadow seemed to be listless and sad, drooping as he lay in whatever shade he could find, though Sam tried to tell himself that was probably more to do with the heat than anything else.

  Nothing changed, not for that whole time. No more cops came to the door, and Sam didn’t stop waking up in the morning half expecting to find himself in Gunner’s bed, with strong, sure arms around him. Nothing changed, not until it had been twelve days since the last time Sam had seen Gunner, peering at him through the window as the other man turned back and then walked away forever.

  “His bike is ready.”

  Mike had been even more taciturn than ever, even though his car had been fixed and Sam had paid for all of it. It had taken a decent chunk out of his savings, but he had taken care of it. But Mike seemed to be in a weird place.

  No. That wasn’t it. Mike was mourning, and so was Ruby, and Isaac, and Ben, and Amanda, and even Shadow. They were all in mourning, for the deep, profound effect that Gunner had had on their lives. All of them, even in such a short time.

  But Sam knew better. And Sam was going to lead the way. He was going to move on and show them how it was done. That was really the only answer, and he was doing good with that, or so he would have thought.

  Until Mike said those words, just four words, five syllables, that knocked down whatever fragile walls that Sam had managed to put up around his heart. He hadn’t even been thinking about Gunner, he would have told himself so in an instant, but that was revealed for the lie that it was.

  “Gunner’s bike?” Sam asked, super casual like it didn’t really matter to him. Mike shot him a look that was full of pity mingled with annoyance, but at least he didn’t call Sam on his bullshit. At least he let Sam pull whatever tattered shreds of his dignity that he could find around himself like a cloak. It might be pitiful, but it was all that he had.

  “Yeah. Gunner’s bike,” Mike told him. “Do you know how to reach him? He won’t answer his phone.”

  Sam shook his head. What did he know? Gunner had mentioned that he had a job waiting for him in Austin, at a bar, Sam was pretty sure that he had said. It hadn’t seemed to matter much at the time, because Sam had already been toying with the idea of getting Gunner to stick around.

  “I have the same cell number,” Sam pointed out, and then he turned to look at the bike, huge and gleaming black. It was so easy just to squint a little bit and fool himself that he could see Gunner, strong legs straddling the bike, a taunting little smirk on his handsome face as if to say that he knew how irresistible he was, and almost daring anyone watching to even try to resist him.

  It was Gunner’s bike. It practically screamed out for its owner, for the one who had built it, put so much love into it. The bike would roar if Gunner spurred it into life, then settle into a low, throbbing purr, trapped securely between those thighs.

  Mike was looking at him curiously, though, and Sam turned away from the bike, fighting off the urge to blush. How much did Mike know? How much did everyone know, and how long would it take for people to forget that Sam had been seen with Gunner?

  Probably Mike didn’t know anything, though. Otherwise, he would certainly seem less worried about Sam, and Gunner, and more inclined to judge them. Same went for the rest of the town, too. No one could understand, other than maybe Ben, what Sam was going through.

  Without a word, Sam turned his back on his boss, a man who was very much like a friend, albeit an older, wiser, and sometimes irritable one. He turned his back on the bike, and on the phantom image of Gunner that he could almost see, and he walked out of the shop and into the late afternoon heat.

  Not thinking about Gunner. Never again would he allow Gunner to get into his heart. It had been a dangerously close thing even as it was, and he couldn’t let himself be hurt by a bad boy on a motorcycle. He couldn’t allow his life to be derailed by something so dangerous.

  He’d walked that path before, and no matter how much his heart still leaned toward Gunner, no matter how much he missed the guy, he couldn’t let himself go there. He couldn’t let his feelings get in the way of his future, not again.

  * * *

  But what would it have been like if Gunner had stayed? If they had worked things out, if Gunner had come to him openly and told him about his past, and if Sam had found some way to accept what he was being told. After all, hadn’t he thought that he knew Gunner, the man inside?

  A crime committed years ago, a crime that Gunner had paid for, maybe that would have been okay. Maybe. Even Sam couldn’t be sure how he would have reacted. But if he had accepted it, and if Gunner had stayed, would Sam really have been okay with going off to Harvard and leaving this brand new thing? The only relationship that Sam had ever attempted that had made any sense to him at all?

  No. So what would he have done? Sam thought about it all the way home, and when he got to the house, he stayed in the car, on his phone, doing research. Just checking out his options, not that it mattered, of course, since he didn’t have Gunner around to hold him here, but it couldn’t hurt to know.

  What he found staggered him. He stared down at his screen, his eyes wide. This whole time, he had been killing himself to try to save room and board and tuition for Harvard, which would take all that he had managed to scrape together and more. Five minutes of poking around online shared some pretty harsh truths with him, truths that Google could have told him in a second if he hadn’t been so stubbornly fixated on his own plans.

  There was a University of Texas at Austin, and the tuition there was less than half of what it would cost for him to pay for Harvard. And that wasn’t even considering the fact that he wouldn’t have to pay room and board if he went to school right up the road. With what he had, he could pay for several years of school.

  But what did it matter? He wasn’t going to do it. Harvard was his dream. Harvard was the school which everyone would be the most impressed by, the one which would show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sam, the man with the strange family, the one with the mother in jail for dealing drugs, had really made it. That Sam wouldn’t be a tragedy, but one of the rare success stories.

  Ruby ran by, stopping to grin and wave at him, her blonde hair flowing behind her in the wind. She was followed by Shadow, his huge, black form bounding after her.

  Shadow. What was he going to do about Shadow, if he went to Harvard? And he hadn’t even managed to send that email, he realized, about getting back in there.

  A realization was creeping up on him, but he wasn’t sure that he was ready for it. So he slipped out of the car and shut the door hastily, as though he could hide his own actions, even from himself. Trying to deny what he was coming to believe was true.

  He had made choices already, but he ran from them still. Ran past Ruby, who was scratching Shadow’s stomach, ran past Isaac and Ben, who were sitting together, disgustingly cute as they cuddled on the loveseat and watched some show or another together. So very together, irrefutably so. Proof that love could exist between two men, and that it could be something real.

  Even when Sam reached his room, he didn’t quite feel safe. He glanced down at his phone, which still displayed a comparison between UT of Austin and Harvard. A huge, huge difference.

  All of a sudden, he felt the urge to scream. To throw the phone against the room, to scream and cry and rail against his own brain which stubbornly, logically persisted in pointing
out the facts.

  He had choices. Way more than he had ever allowed himself to think before, and part of him, a part that was wiser than his pride, seemed like it had been making plans for quite some time now.

  * * *

  How much time passed, Sam didn’t know. He didn’t look. His mind whirled, and all he really knew was that the sun was going down outside his window. One more day had passed, one more day without Gunner. And there were going to be a lifetime of those.

  Sam sat on his bed, staring out the window, letting the setting sun sting his eyes. Letting the brightness grow and barely allowing himself to register any of it. His stomach grumbled, and he knew that soon, he would need to go get himself some food, but he didn’t really think much about that, either.

  A knock came at the door, and at first, Sam ignored it. It sounded again, a little bit faster, as whoever was knocking got annoyed, but Sam didn’t really care. He was on the brink of something, and he knew it, and he was equally torn between the safe course, the course he had followed for more than a decade now, the only thing he had really ever thought about, and flinging himself off into the unknown, allowing a new path to open up under his feet.

  He had no time to play with Ruby or come down for dinner or whatever. So he ignored it, hoping that they would just go away, but maybe he should have known better. He lived with a houseful of people who were as stubborn as he was.

  “Sammy, open up,” Ben growled, his voice coming clearly, only slightly muffled by the door. The truth was, there weren’t too many people that Sam would actually listen to, but he knew very well that he owed this man, who had saved him from years of being in and out of foster care, who had given him a home, no matter how unconventional it might sometimes be.

  Maybe there wasn’t another person in the world that Sam would have gotten up off of the bed for, even if he sighed as he did it. But he did it, and he went to the door and opened it enough to peer through.

  “What do you want, Ben?” Sam asked, and then the door was being pushed open and Ben was walking in as though he’d been invited. Not only that but to add some insult to injury, Ben’s arm was very firmly around Isaac’s waist.

  They didn’t even pretend anymore, Sam thought resentfully. When he’d been younger, they’d kept it under wraps, at least a little. Isaac had let the world think that he was Ruby’s father, for instance, but as time had passed, and Sam had gotten older, the fiction had ceased.

  Probably in part because Ruby didn’t seem to care at all. She didn’t seem to be bothered that people knew that two of the adults raising her were men who were married, and it had naturally just seemed to stop, the pretense.

  “I think this has gone on quite long enough, Sammy.”

  Ben sat on Sam’s bed, and Isaac, of course, settled down beside him. It was a little bit gross, really, how sweet they were on each other. How even after being married for a decade now, they were still all over each other every chance that they got.

  “So I guess we’re going to have a heart to heart now,” Sam said, sighing a little bit willing to give in to the inevitable. “But I don’t want him here.” He looked at Isaac, saw the hurt flicker in those bright blue eyes and knew that he was being a jerk, not even speaking directly to Isaac.

  “Sammy, don’t you dare …” Ben started, already bristling like a porcupine. If there was one thing that would piss Ben off, it was someone being mean to Isaac, and Isaac was the one who reached out and touched Ben on the shoulder gently, soothing him.

  “No, it’s okay. I can speak for myself,” Isaac said, with his eyes fixed on Ben for a moment and so much love in them that Sam’s heart gave a painful little lurch. He had never had anyone look at him with that adoration, but sometimes, now and then, Gunner would …

  “Sam, do you think that I care any less about you because we’re not related by blood?” Isaac asked, his voice still gentle, but a sort of steely gray determination forming in those sapphire blue eyes. Isaac tended to be quiet, and polite, but that didn’t mean he should be underestimated, clearly.

  “I never thought …” Sam started, but Isaac raised his hand, cutting him off before he could say any more, and Sam, surprised, did stop speaking. He just wasn’t used to Isaac behaving like this.

  “I don’t know what happened between you and Gunner, but whatever it is, you’re only hurting yourself,” Isaac informed him. Sam couldn’t stop staring at Isaac, who had never dared to speak to him like this before. “If you fought, or whatever you think happened that’s so bad that you won’t even say his name now, I think you need to consider getting the hell over it.”

  Wow. Isaac never said that word, hell. And he never stared straight, challengingly, at Sam, either. There was a lot of never going on here, and Ben just sat there with a smile of amusement on his face.

  “He’s right, Sammy,” Ben said quietly. “I know you think you can’t be with another guy. I know you think people will judge you. And some people will. But the people that you care about, and who care about you, it won’t matter to.” Ben squeezed Isaac’s hand in his own. “We’re living proof of that. This town has accepted us, you know?”

  Sam blinked and then dropped his gaze, uncomfortable with the love between his brother and Isaac. His stomach clenched, and he had to come face to face with the thought, for the first time, that he might have made a horrible mistake.

  “It’s not just that. Gunner didn’t tell me something that he should have,” Sam protested, but his voice was weak, and it didn’t come out in a way that could even convince Sam himself.

  “So he made a mistake,” Isaac said, his eyes unrelenting as he caught Sam’s with his own. “Everyone makes mistakes. And the people who love us forgive us for them.”

  “So here’s the thing, Sammy,” Ben continued from where his husband left off, his green eyes holding Sam’s every bit as much as Isaac’s did. “Whatever he did, that’s between you and him. It’s not our business to know if he didn’t tell us. But whatever it was, was it enough that it’s worth losing everything between the two of you?”

  The question hung in the air between them, and Sam shook his head, not because he was denying the words. Not because he didn’t know, but because he knew all too well.

  He had made a mistake, and now, he had no idea how to go about fixing it.

  TWENTY

  The job sucked, just as Gunner had known that it would. He had never been under any illusions about what sort of job it would be, or what sort of place he would be living in. But the little room above the bar came with the job, and he was making a surprising amount of money.

  It was exactly what he would have expected, in short. When had he ever been afraid to work hard? He just had to last it out long enough that he could buy a new bike. Or he had even had some fantasies about calling Mike back, telling him that he would be back for his bike once he had enough money to pay for all of the parts and repairs.

  It shouldn’t be that long. If only Mike didn’t just laugh his head off at the suggestion, but then, why did Mike keep calling? Once every few days, Gunner’s phone rang, and that seemed like a lot of effort for Mike to go to if he just wanted to yell at Gunner.

  Even now, even two weeks, almost, after Sam had kicked Gunner out, Gunner’s phone buzzed, and when he glanced down at the screen it told him that he had a call coming in from Mike. As always, he rejected it, but for a moment or two, just a split second, really, he thought about taking it.

  It was stupid. The best thing to do would be to cut off all ties completely, and he knew it. He was still too close, and what he should probably do was leave Texas completely. Maybe go down and hide in Mexico, give his incredibly rusty Spanish a workout. Though what the hell would he do there?

  Or.

  Or he could go back.

  The idea caught at his imagination, and this time, he let it. What would happen if he just walked out of this bar forever, if he left the grubby walls and the stench of cheap beer and cigarettes behind him? If he hitched a ride back to to
wn, grabbed his bike, and …

  And that’s where it had to end because where else could that go? The rest of the fantasy was impossible. Mike might be willing to hand Gunner his bike, since it was, after all, his, but being so close to town, to Sam and his family, would he be able to resist going to see them?

  He knew it was impossible. Sam had made that very clear, and by now, Sam would have certainly passed on what he knew to Ben and Isaac, who were probably thanking their lucky stars that they’d gotten rid of the dangerous ex-con.

  This was how it had to be. So when someone pulled open the door to the bar, Gunner raised his head, intending to greet them. He knew most of the regulars already, and most of the people who came into a dump like this were regulars, so he completely expected to know the man who walked in.

  His words of greeting died a slow, wilting death on his lips, and first there was disbelief. Then the fear hit, hammering away in the pit of his stomach, sending adrenaline flooding through his body, the urge to run, or to fight, mingling inside of him to the point where he couldn’t seem to make himself do anything at all other than stand there like his feet had been blasted to the floor and clamped there.

  “No,” he finally whispered. No, it wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t. Of all of the things which had happened to him, this one rankled the most. All of the things he had given up, lost to him forever, because of this man.

  “Hey, babe,” Chad spoke as casually as though he and Gunner had been parted for mere moments. Like one of them had just stepped out to grab some milk from the store, not like they had been put in jail together.

  “Oh my God,” Gunner whispered, and at that moment, he prepared himself for death. In the image he had seen from the cops, he had noticed the gun in his former lover’s hand. Where would he be shot? In the head? Through the heart? Or a gut shot, so that he lingered on in pain longer?