Give and Take (Ties That Bind Book 1)

by Claire Cullen

  “I… no… really…”

  His reaction only turned Drew's vague concerns into something more concrete. Drew took a gamble, coming as close to saying outright what he guessed the note held.

  “Matt, I don’t think Sam wants to come home to a note like that. I think he’d much rather come home to a couple of friends waiting for him.”

  “I… I can’t. I can’t do this anymore, Drew. I’ve tried and I’m just so fucking tired.”

  All thoughts of running fled. There was no way he could leave Matt alone like this.

  “Why don’t we sit down and talk? There’s no rush here, Matt. There is so much time. I’d hate to think Sam missed you for want of a few hours.”

  Matt gave one short, sharp nod and took a seat on the couch. Drew sat down right next to him. He wasn’t an expert at this sort of stuff, he didn’t really know what to say, but he was damned sure he could listen. Maybe it would be enough to keep Matt there until Sam came home.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sam was ready to sleep as soon as his head found a pillow which would hopefully be about two minutes after he got into his apartment. A convenience store robbery turned into a hostage situation had meant his day had been long in every sense of the word.

  Drew wasn’t due home for over an hour so he’d have the apartment to himself. Which was a good thing, he had to keep reminding himself. They were getting too close for comfort.

  He heard voices before he stepped in the door, surprised to see both Drew and Matt, sitting together on the couch.

  “Hey, guys,” he called, noting how they both fell silent as he walked in. Stripping off his jacket, he hung it up next to the door, which gave him a moment to think. Why was Drew home and why was Matt there?

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, stepping across the room to take a seat opposite them. It didn’t look okay. Matt was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. Drew, on the other hand, was flushed and anxious, looking from Matt to him and back again. Neither man spoke.

  “Guys, what’s wrong?”

  Matt wrapped his arms around his middle and stared at the floor. Drew watched him for a moment before turning back to Sam.

  “He came to leave you a note.”

  At first, the words seemed innocuous, their meaning simple, but the way Drew was looking at him, the expression on his face, was anything but simple. Then he got it.

  “A note.”

  There was only one kind of note that would explain why Matt couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Matt?” he asked.

  His friend pitched forward, his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Sam. I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t.”

  “Then you talk, Matt. You get help. You don’t…” He cut off his heated tirade, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

  “Okay, okay. So you came to leave me a note.” Maybe he’d got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

  “Yeah. But Drew was here, and he asked me to wait for you. So here I am.”

  “And if Drew hadn’t been here, if you had left me a note, what then?”

  “I was going to walk to that bridge up on—” Shit. Sam stood and crouched next to Matt, pressing a hand to his knee.

  “And now? If you were to walk out of here right now?”

  Matt shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d go home. Maybe I wouldn’t.”

  “Matt—”

  “I can’t sleep, Sam. Every noise has my heart pounding like a grenade exploded and not that someone just slammed their car door shut. The nightmares won’t leave me alone and… and… sometimes a sound will send me right back there, and I can feel the heat and taste the sand in the air and there’s so much blood on my hands, on my clothes, and I can’t get it off.”

  Matt dissolved into gasped sobs and Sam wrapped his arms around him not knowing what else to do except hang on.

  “It’s okay, Matt. We’re here. You’re not in this alone.”

  “But I am. I am alone. Every hour of every minute of every day. It’s like I’m trapped in a glass case. I can see people, talk to them, but I can’t really touch them, I can’t connect. I’m all alone.”

  His words were barely coherent, wrung out of him amongst the tears and exhaustion.

  “You need to sleep, Matt. And in the morning we’ll talk, when things seem a bit clearer.”

  Matt didn’t reply, rocking back and forth.

  “We’ll put him in my bed,” he said to Drew over his shoulder. “Will you stay with him for a minute while I get the room ready?”

  “Of course. Don’t you think we should call someone?”

  Sam shook his head, still holding onto Matt. “There’ll be time for that tomorrow. We can manage for tonight.”

  Drew stayed sitting next to Matt, moving closer and wrapping an arm around his shoulders to offer some comfort. Matt’s sobs had faded quickly, the room silent except for his harsh breaths.

  “I keep seeing him, every time I close my eyes,” he mumbled.

  “Seeing who?” Drew asked, but Matt didn’t answer.

  Sam was moving from room to room, doing what exactly, Drew didn’t know. Making it safe? When Sam returned, he gave Drew a look that made him shiver and not in a good way.

  “Matt, I’ve got the bed all made up for you. Come on, I’ll get you settled.”

  Drew helped Matt up and Sam took over, guiding the other man into the bedroom and shutting the door. Time passed with nothing but the quiet murmur of voices from the other side. Drew was content to sit and wait. He wanted to talk to Sam. They needed some sort of plan. If Drew hadn’t been there when Matt had let himself in, they could be looking at a very different tomorrow.

  At length, Sam returned, leaving the bedroom door cracked open a few inches.

  “How is he?” Drew asked, keeping his voice down.

  “Almost asleep. I gave him some sleeping pills. Hopefully, that will give him the rest he needs.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t be taking him to the hospital?”

  Sam shook his head with a grimace. “For what? For him to sit in the emergency department all night until they push some pills at him and send him home? No, he needs better than that. Right now, he’s as safe as I can make him. I took anything dangerous from the room and I’ll sleep out here so I hear him if he gets up in the night. Tomorrow, we’ll work out what to do.”

  “You’re not on shift?”

  “No, off the next two days.”

  They sat in silence, Drew’s ears straining for any noise from inside Sam’s room.

  “So, are you going to tell me?” Sam asked.

  Drew blinked, looking up to find Sam watching him intently.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Your bags are packed. I went into your room to get clean sheets.”

  In the drama of the previous few hours, he’d forgotten all about that.

  “I… uh, yeah…”

  “Take a minute to think about your answer, the fact that I’m a cop, and that I’m too tired for bullshit right now. Then try again.”

  Drawing his knees up to his chest, he wrapped one arm around them.

  “I got fired today, twice. The managers both said the same thing, it wasn’t their decision, the owner forced their hand.”

  Sam sat up straighter. “I’m really sorry, Drew. I had no idea.”

  “It’s my ex. He’s poisoning the well, I guess. If I can even get another job, chances are it won’t last long.”

  “Why would you think it’s your ex? How would he even know where you were?”

  Drew reached into his jacket and withdrew the envelope, passing it over. Sam pulled out the note and read it.

  “When did this come?”

  “Hand delivered to me as I left the bar this evening.”

  “Okay, but how would he have lost you your jobs, Drew?”

  “He’s powerful. He has influence. I guess it could be something as simple as him telling them I have a criminal record. Most employers won�
��t take the chance if they think you’ve lied about something like that.”

  “And he really thinks you’d run back to him, just because he’s getting you fired?”

  Drew rubbed his hands across his jeans, feeling the rough material beneath his palms as he tried to ground himself. “Getting me fired wasn’t the first thing he tried. I think he tried to scare me into coming back first.”

  “Scare you?” Sam asked. “How?” He held up a hand. “Wait. The assault? That was him?”

  “Not directly and maybe not even at all. But I think he managed to locate me a lot sooner than I realized.”

  “He didn’t assault you?” Sam asked.

  “No. It was like I told you. Three guys I’d never seen before.”

  “Why do you think that had anything to do with him?”

  He turned his head away, avoiding Sam’s eyes. For all he’d told him, he’d never come clean with the full truth.

  “They called me by name. But not Andrew, the name on my badge at the diner, and not Drew. They called me Andy. He calls me Andy. He’s the only person in my life to call me that.”

  “You never said.”

  “I thought I was being paranoid, being stupid. It made no sense, to me at least. But that’s how he thinks. When he wants someone to do something, he first tries to convince them, then he tries to scare them, then he puts pressure on them.”

  “You've seen him do this?”

  “To competitors, yeah. He’s like a shark.”

  “Competitors?”

  Drew bit his lip. He was saying too much, spilling all his secrets. He should be going, running.

  “Drew, if what you’re saying is true and this guy had you assaulted and fired, then you are in some serious trouble. The kind people don’t get out of by themselves. Where are you going to run to? Do you know how to stay off his radar?”

  And therein lay the problem.

  “I thought I’d done everything right this time. I kept to my routine right up until an hour before I ran. Dumped my cell, my laptop. Took the max amount of cash from my ATM and dumped my cards. Bought bus tickets, with cash, going to three different places. Took one of those, got off halfway and changed buses to another destination. Did that twice more before I got a bus coming here. I haven’t made contact with anyone I know, logged into any emails or accounts. I’ve been as off the grid as I could manage, and still…”

  “You ran before?”

  Meeting Sam’s eyes, he nodded. “Right after I found out some stuff about Russell. About the kind of lengths he was willing to go to.”

  “He wasn’t just your boyfriend, was he?” Sam’s gaze was calculating, putting together all the pieces that Drew had let slip.

  “No, he was also my boss.”

  “You seem to have a habit of sleeping with your bosses.”

  Drew couldn’t stop the puzzled frown that crossed his face as he tried to work out what Sam meant.

  “Oh, you mean reptile guy? No, different scenario altogether. That job came months after we got together.”

  “And with Russell?” Drew jolted at the name, having forgotten Sam had heard it.

  “He… I… it kind of all happened at the same time. I guess we were on our first date when he hired me.”

  “That doesn’t seem very ethical. Offering you a job while wanting to sleep with you.”

  “I guess, when I look back on it, there are all kinds of red flags. At the time I was awestruck. Nothing untoward he said fazed me. Not even that he had a wife and kids.”

  Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “You were having an affair with a married man?”

  “He made that clear from the start. Said it was a marriage of convenience for them both, to keep their families happy. She knew their relationship was open and didn’t care so long as he financed her art projects and charities.”

  “And that didn’t concern you at all?” Sam asked.

  “I told you, I was awestruck. I was also twenty-two, being wooed by a self-made multimillionaire fifteen years my senior with everything at his disposal. Charm, good looks, and the kind of self-assurance about who and what he was that I’d only ever dreamed off. He was just so comfortable with everything, with his sexuality. I was like a moth to a flame. All the things I should have picked up on and I just didn’t see them.”

  It was embarrassing to admit that he’d been blinded by attraction, by the money, success, and the power Russell exuded in waves.

  “How long before his true colors started to show?” Sam wasn’t deterred by Drew’s reluctance or shame. He seemed to know exactly the right questions to ask.

  “A year, I guess. He was kind of controlling from the start but it was under the guise of teaching me about food, culture. You know, stuff like ordering for me, choosing my clothes. I was on an open contract with his company and he said he’d be happy for me to take on outside work as well but every time I tried to, he’d find some way to disrupt it. They’d suddenly need to me do extensive security checks on one of their systems that would tie me up for weeks.”

  “Security checks? What did you work as?”

  The word security had piqued Sam’s interest in a different way to the rest of his story, which seemed to elicit a range of expressions from horrified to angry.

  “An IT security consultant. I did a lot of penetration testing, making sure their programs were secure from outside forces.”

  “So you haven’t spent five years doing odd jobs then?”

  He made a face, knowing that was just one of a handful of lies he’d been caught out on. “Three years working in IT, two of those working for Russell. Entry-level stuff before that while I did extra certs on the side and some extra-curricular stuff.”

  “And you haven’t picked that work back up here?”

  “I can’t exactly let a new employer call them for a reference. And the only way to get freelance work is to use my name and experience. Or start from scratch. I was sure either of those would be just another way for Russ to track me down.”

  “And the bruises?”

  Drew ducked his head, feeling Sam’s eyes boring into him.

  “Drew?” he called. “I need you to look at me, and I need you to tell me about the bruises.”

  It was said so calmly and matter-of-fact, like they were talking about the weather. It wasn’t easy to lift his head, knowing his cheeks were red, his skin flushed. Lifting his gaze, he found Sam’s deep brown eyes and focused on them, letting the rest fall away.

  “It wasn’t like that, most of the time anyway. It only happened three times, just before and just after I left the first time, and again before I left this time around. He wasn’t a violent man, he didn’t need to be. When he wanted something, he knew how to get it.”

  “That doesn’t excuse the fact that he hurt you.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But he was angrier than I’d ever seen him, and it’s easy to understand why given what I did.” Drew didn’t mean to yawn, but the day was catching up with him, all the disappointment, the fear, the worry.

  “Besides, you don’t need to worry about this. You have enough on your plate.” He nodded towards Sam’s bedroom where Matt slept. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Where will you go?” Sam crossed his arms, the question a challenge.

  “I… I’m not sure. I had a Plan B, but I wasn’t expecting to have to use it so soon, and now I'm not sure it's safe to. I might just travel around for a bit, do some hitchhiking, travel off the map, and see if I can’t shake Russ’ tail.”

  “And if that doesn’t work? What then?”

  “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  Sam nodded slowly, running a hand through his hair.

  “Okay, so let me just make sure I have this right. Your employer, and boyfriend of two years, physically assaults you, you leave him, he forces you back, assaults you again, twice, you leave again, are assaulted a third time by people probably acting at the behest of your boyfriend, and you lose t
hree jobs in the space of a week due to his influence. And now, you’re on the verge of running again to escape him. Does that sound about right?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “You do realize you’re talking to a cop, right? Did it ever occur to you to file a police report?” Sam spoke as if he already knew the answer.

  “I thought about it, but he said—” Drew silenced himself and broke eye contact.

  Sam’s sigh was followed by the sound of footsteps and a dip in the couch beside Drew as he sat.

  “Does he have something over you?”

  He turned his head away, but Sam caught his chin with gentle fingers, coaxing him back so they were eye to eye.

  “It was kind of the other way around. I found out something about him, that’s when I decided to leave. Only he knew I’d figured it out, and he said if I reported it, he’d make sure to take me down with him.”

  “And you think that’s a valid threat, something he could do?”

  Drew shrugged his shoulders. He’d been acting on fight and flight responses for months, he wasn’t sure he trusted his own judgment anymore. “I just wanted out. It was easier not to take the risk.”

  Sam let go of his chin and rested a hand on his arm. “I think you might have to take some risks if you want to get out of this mess.”

  Letting his forehead rest on his knee, he mumbled a response. “It might be easier just to go back. Life with him wasn’t so bad, just a little stifling, I guess.”

  Sam’s hand shifted from his arm to his back and pressed down firmly over the week-old bruising. Drew jerked upright and away, turning to glare at the other man.

  “That is what your life with him will be like, Drew. People like that don’t change for the better. They get worse. You’ll always be one step behind his rules, always just that bit of a disappointment. The honeymoon period is to suck you in, gain your trust and enmesh your lives. This...” His fingers ghosted over the bruised skin again and Drew couldn’t suppress a shiver. “This is who he is and what you’ll be under his hands.”

  Drew couldn’t keep the fear from his eyes any longer, knowing Sam’s words were true, knowing things were worse than he’d let on.