by Riley Knight
“Relax,” came the offhanded comment, plus an amused smirk, the same smirk that Gunner had perfected himself. It had come from this man originally, as had all of his protective mannerisms. “I’m not here to hurt you. I know what happened.”
Those words weren’t exactly reassuring, and Gunner straightened his shoulders and stared the other man right in the eye. If he was meant to die now, he would die as a man, facing down a dangerous situation, not shying away from it like a coward.
“Last I heard, you were going to, what did you say? End me for betraying you?” Gunner remembered. He remembered everything, even though he had tried so hard to put it all out of his mind. Some things just could not be forgotten.
“Yeah, but you didn’t, did you? I asked around. You refused to turn me in. Your sentence was so much lighter than mine, but not because you ratted me out.”
“No,” Gunner admitted. “It was because it was my first offense, and the judge gave me a lighter sentence.”
“Right. So I’m here to get you. You don’t have to keep running. It’s kind of funny that you’ve been running from me, so scared, and all I wanted was for you to come back. No one has ever been as good as you, babe. We could take on the world.”
Gunner still held his phone in his hand, and carefully, hiding his movement behind the bar and not even daring to look down at what he was doing, he typed in three numbers. Then he turned off the phone’s ability to speak, though not to listen. He wanted all of this heard.
“People are looking for you,” Gunner pointed out, carefully setting his phone, still transmitting the call, onto the counter. He just had to hope that there was someone on the other side listening. “The cops. Feds. They came to my place. You’re gonna get yourself into trouble.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be more careful. They’ll never catch me again.” One of this man’s flaws was and always had been overconfidence. Once, it had enthralled Gunner, appealed to him greatly. Now, having tasted something like stability, Gunner found it sadder than anything else.
He had cared so much about this man, and now, there was nothing left but pity. The most important relationship of his life for years and this was what there was left between them. Just the ashes of passion, and regret. A wish that he had never met him.
“Come on. They’ve caught you before. Lots of times.” Gunner scoffed, trying to keep his nerves out of his voice. If it was found out what he was doing, then somehow, this nice act would all disappear, he knew it. The gun would come out, and Gunner was fairly certain he wouldn’t survive.
Chad had always taken a dim view of betrayal, which was, of course, why Gunner had been running all of this time. And that had just been a perceived betrayal. What he was doing now was real.
“Not this time,” Chad murmured, and then he took a step closer to Gunner, who tried to gather himself, bunch his muscles in case he needed to spring away, as his former lover approached. “Because I have you.”
That was quite the assumption, but Gunner knew that he had to let the guy think what he wanted to think. He needed to distract him, just a little bit longer, so while he took a little step back, increasing his distance from the other man, he was careful to keep his hands at his sides and open, very cautious as he revealed that he wasn’t holding anything, that he wasn’t a threat.
God, he just hoped that his act did what he wanted it to do. His skin was crawling as Chad came closer because so much fear didn’t just go away in ten seconds. Not when he’d been running for years.
“They’ll catch you. I’m out,” Gunner told him, watching as the criminal’s eyes widened, clearly surprised by his daring. When had Gunner ever said no? Not often, maybe not at all. Chad had been everything to him, and at one point, he would have probably killed for him if he’d been asked.
Now there was another man in his heart. A man who had probably never broken the law in his life, and who was horrified by the very idea. Gunner could never have Sam, and he had come to accept that, but Gunner took him as a model. He set his shoulders and pulled Sam’s certainty around himself, his righteousness.
It was a pain in the ass to be around but damned if it didn’t feel good to be on the right side of the law, for once. Now if only his gambit would pay off before it got him killed, it would all be good.
“What did you say to me?” Chad demanded, his tone incredulous. Time had passed, but it was like he didn’t know that. Like he had always just assumed that it would be like it was, that he would beckon and Gunner would break his legs running to him.
“I said I’m out,” Gunner repeated, his voice very sure, though he could hear his heart throbbing painfully even in his words. He could only hope that he was the only one who could hear it. “I don’t do that shit anymore. How did you even find me? You should have let me go.”
Standing up to him was an interesting experience. There was terror, so much that Gunner was shaking a little, trembling with nerves. But it was also liberating. Something that he’d been carrying around, something very heavy, had been pulled away from him, and with it gone he felt almost like he could fly.
“I have my sources,” Chad commented, a slight smirk on his lips. He kept approaching, and Gunner’s heart pounded until he felt nauseated, until he was sure that it would burst right out of his chest. “Behind you.”
Gunner turned to look, and the greasy little man, Jeremy, his boss and the man who owned this bar, was standing right behind him. The asshole gave him a little bit of a smirk, and all of a sudden, Gunner understood everything.
Somewhere along the line, something had gone horribly wrong. How far up the chain it went, he wasn’t sure, but the contacts that he had been trusting so foolishly had, in fact, been leading him right here and had led Chad right to him. And he had idiotically just kept on feeding them information.
In short, his former boyfriend never ever would have been able to find him if he’d stayed with Sam. So really, he was an idiot, because if he had just come clean about his past, he could have probably lived there safely forever.
It all made some sort of terrible sense, but there wasn’t much time to think about it. Gunner whirled around at a movement in front of him, and then Chad was doing something which would have made Gunner weak at the knees once. He was pulling him into his arms and kissing him, using Gunner’s sexual desire to get what he wanted, the old familiar trick which had worked so well once.
And it might have worked still if Gunner didn’t have someone better who occupied his thoughts. Someone that he wanted more than he had ever wanted Chad. This man couldn’t compare to Sam, to his Sammy, who might be lost to him but who would never leave his thoughts. If Gunner ever allowed himself to love again, he knew that anyone he tried to be with would be held up against Sam’s example, and most likely found wanting.
As Gunner was kissed, as he was grabbing Chad by the shoulders and trying to push him away, several things happened all at once. The door opened, and a man, an achingly familiar man, walked in. Behind him were two cops, but a split second before all of that, Jeremy spoke.
“Hey, Chad, he’s got the pigs on his phone …”
TWENTY-ONE
No one had told him to do it. The idea had come from his own mind, sprung up in the wake of all of the talks he had had over the past few hours. Not just the one with Ben and Isaac, but also the one with Mike. Somehow, pieces fell together, and the picture that the assembled puzzle showed was as clear as day.
Gunner had fucked up. No doubt about it and Sam knew that Gunner wouldn’t try to claim otherwise. But then again, so had Sam, and Gunner hadn’t left him because of it.
This was love. What he felt for Gunner was pure, clear as crystal, love. Nothing muddied it, now that the secrets between them had been put away. And nothing could diminish the diamond sparkle of Sam’s feelings, not even when he tried to pull back the anger, the fear, the sense of betrayal, which had been so clear in his mind just a few hours ago.
Yes. He loved Gunner. He would give up his futu
re for Gunner. No, not give up, because he knew that Gunner would never want that sort of sacrifice for him. Rather, he would change his future, compromise a bit. Get what he wanted and still make time for the most important man in his life.
All of which flooded through his body and finally washed away the sticky cobwebs in the corners of his mind. For too long, he’d been hiding. Afraid of what people would say if they knew who he really was inside. And yet, wasn’t he the same person that he’d always been? A person that people, for some reason, cared about?
He found himself on the back of Gunner’s motorcycle, straddling it as the powerful engine thrummed to life. That was almost how it felt, like Gunner’s bike was a wild animal, barely tamed, and accepting Sam only because it somehow knew that Sam would bring it back to Gunner.
“Bring him back, if you can,” Mike told him, patting him awkwardly on the back. “Someone’s gotta bring this place into some kind of order, and we both know it ain’t gonna be you.”
Where had all of the sting which should have been in those words gone? Why didn’t Sam care anymore? Had he somehow finally accepted that he was just never going to be good at this, and that was okay? That Mike could be better than him at something?
“I will,” Sam said, touching Mike’s hand briefly. The truth was, Mike was not supposed to be simply handing the keys to this behemoth of a bike over to Sam. The bike didn’t belong to Sam, and Mike was opening himself up to a potential lawsuit if Gunner was so inclined.
Enough time to deal with that when Sam had found Gunner. When he had canvased every bar in Austin, if he had to, and when he had given it his best shot. Maybe Gunner couldn’t forgive him, and honestly, he felt like Gunner would be completely within his rights to refuse to have anything to do with Sam ever again, but for once, Sam was going to put himself out there. He was going to try, really try.
His pride could go straight to hell. Even knowing that he had probably given up any chance with Gunner, he was still going to put himself out there, give Gunner the chance that he deserved to stomp his heart to the curb. Gunner deserved no less.
As the hours passed, Sam’s spirits didn’t flag, though his body was becoming exhausted. Bar after bar he tried and no one had even heard of Gunner. Who was to say that the guy hadn’t just moved on? From what Sam understood, Gunner had done a lot of that in his life.
So he didn’t have a lot of hope, not when he first pulled the growling bike up to the curb and then silenced it. Funny how he was coming to anthropomorphize it himself. He had always found that sort of hysterical when Mike and Gunner both had done the same thing. And now, here he was, doing it, thinking that the bike seemed to have almost a contented sound as the rumbling ceased and the engine ticked softly to itself as it cooled off.
Was this the place?
It wasn’t a particularly impressive building, sort of half falling down, slung between a corner store on one side and a cheap hotel, the kind where the rates were by the hour rather than by the night, on the other. The bar sagged between them, like a drunk man being barely held up by the other buildings.
But there was a quickening in his body, a clenching of excitement in his stomach, and Sam walked to the front door with a bounce that hadn’t been there before. It was getting late, approaching two in the morning, and he was usually long asleep by now, but somehow, that didn’t matter.
A car pulled to a stop, and the sirens might be off but the lights were flashing, painting the grimy street a bright, cheerful red, and then a blue, flickering and lighting the place up. The cops. The cops were here, too, and though Sam knew that the chances were good that these police officers had nothing to do with him, he couldn’t help but feel a surge of anxiety as he reached for the door and pushed inside.
The two police officers were out of the car so fast that they ended up coming in just behind him, and Sam took a second to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom inside. The place was a wreck. Ben would be horrified to see the scarred, splintered wooden bar, the seats with the padding worn thin, the dirty glass everywhere.
In a split second, his eyes took in all of those details, but then he saw something which made his blood run just as cold as if it had been in the freezer for hours, chilled completely before being put back into him.
Gunner. Gunner was there, all right, but Gunner was locked in an intimate embrace with another man. When that man raised his head and turned to look at them, Sam recognized him. The man from the picture that the feds had shown him, the man who he could instantly identify as Gunner’s ex-boyfriend.
Only he didn’t seem to be such an ex anymore. Sam’s eyes burned with tears that he refused to shed. Gunner had wasted no time getting back together with this son of a bitch, the one who had gotten Gunner tossed into jail in the first place.
Gunner’s eyes met Sam’s, and they were widened in shock, but then Gunner shook his head, and a plaintive look came into his eyes. It was then, when Sam really looked at the situation that he noticed that Gunner was being embraced, but his arms hung limply at his sides.
“Chad. I know some people who are looking forward to seeing you,” one of the cops spoke, voice hard, and both of them advanced into the room, firearms up and aimed right at Chad.
The guy reacted quickly. Sam had to admit that. In a split second, so fast that it seemed to appear there as if by magic, there was another gun, gleaming silver and incongruously bright and clean in the otherwise filthy bar.
The muzzle of that gun pressed against Gunner’s head, and Chad slid around behind him, using Gunner as a human shield and keeping him subdued by the horrible shine of that gun.
“Let me go or else he dies.”
The threat was horribly real. There wasn’t a hint, not even the faintest trace, of any doubt, no hesitation, in his voice. This was way outside of Sam’s comfort zone, but even the cops seemed a bit on edge, and they had surely seen things that Sam hadn’t.
“You want to add murder on top of everything else? You’ll go away forever,” one of the cops said, and Sam took a deep breath and let it out very, very slowly. He was just a civilian, and he was more terrified than he had ever been in his life, but at the same time, he didn’t think that Chad had seen him just yet, or registered him as any sort of threat.
Gunner caught his eye again, and Sam was the one to nod this time. Really, what choice was there? Was he going just to let the man he loved be used like this? Or, worse, be taken from him, kept as a hostage? His mind wouldn’t even let him think about what would happen if the police officers didn’t back down.
Slowly, carefully, Sam sidled forward and to the side, just one step at a time, like he wanted nothing more than to get away from this standoff between the cops and the criminal. No sudden movements. Nothing to alarm the crazed asshole with the gun pressed to the temple of the man that Sam loved.
A man who looked at Sam the whole time he was moving. A man who was tensing, Sam could see the bunching of his muscles. Their eyes locked, some sort of communication which had nothing to do with words passing between them, until Sam was close enough.
Then Gunner moved, not just a little, but his powerful body shoved forward against the prison of Chad’s arm. The finger on the gun tightened, but it didn’t matter, because Sam was lunging forward, grabbing the criminal’s wrist and pointing it away from Gunner. It went off and hit nothing more dangerous than the side of the bar. Wood went flying, sharp shards of it, but no blood.
The cops were quick on the uptake. Sam had to give them that. Not even ten seconds had passed before they were on Chad, and on the other man, the greasy one, who was standing there with an expression of ludicrous shock that would have been funny under almost any other circumstances.
While one cop read the criminal his rights, Gunner walked over to the other, holding out a business card. Sam recognized the name on it instantly, the fed who had come to Sam’s house and started this whole thing.
“I think you’ll want to contact him,” Gunner spoke so firmly like he was complete
ly unaffected by everything that had happened. But his arm was around Sam’s waist, and only Sam would be able to feel just how much he was shaking under his calm demeanor. Anyone looking at Gunner would think he took down notorious criminals all the time—like it was no big deal for him to have a gun held to his head.
But Gunner let Sam know otherwise. He let himself show his fear, and he didn’t try to hide it from him. Even after everything that they’d been through together, Gunner still trusted him this much, and Sam knew that he didn’t deserve it, but he almost could hope that he hadn’t actually completely fucked everything up beyond the point of all return.
Meanwhile, Chad was being put in chains, glowering around at everyone and everything. Sam winced when that burning gaze turned on him. If he ever got out of jail, he would be coming after not only Gunner but now Sam, too. Wonderful.
And yet, could he have done anything else? What other choice did he have? Sam had trusted the police, and the justice system, his whole life, and he really didn’t have any reason to stop. Though he had to admit that he was a little bit terrified, but somehow, with Gunner’s strong arm around his waist, it was a little bit better.
“Is this pretty asshole who you replaced me with?” the prisoner snarled, any attractiveness gone from his face as he practically spat the words like venom. “You know you can’t ever replace me, and when I get out, I’ll kill him while you watch.”
“I’d watch what you say,” one of the cops suggested, the words mild, but his tone of voice as sharp and pointed as a dagger. “People generally frown upon criminals who also threaten to kill people right in front of officers of the law.”
That shut the bastard up, and Sam turned to Gunner, looking into his big, round, beautiful hazel eyes, admiring the slight crinkles at the sides of them, the long, full sweep of the lashes. Gunner was looking at him, too, and for a moment, things were awkward between them, a silence hanging like a sword between them. Or like a bundle of swords, and neither of them knowing how to approach it without the risk of being cut or even stabbed.
