“No problem. What are big brothers for?” He grinned again and I shook my head. Those dimples of his got him out of so much trouble growing up.
“It wasn’t just some assholes trying to break into my car.” I could have just let the matter go, but I needed to be completely honest with him.
“Oh?” The serious look was back on Zach’s face and he recrossed his arms, his muscles bulging.
“There was a message spray painted on the driver’s side door.” I hesitated before saying it and looked down at my feet. “Fags burn in Hell.”
My heart was heavy in my chest as the words left my lips, the emotions from that night surfacing once again. Noticing that Zach still hadn’t said anything, I peered up at him through my lashes and froze.
He looked more pissed than I had ever seen him. His hazel eyes blazed with a furious intensity, and then he pulled me into his arms. “I’m sorry that happened, Gabe. If I ever find out who did it, I might need that help you offered earlier about hiding the body.”
A mixture between a sob and a laugh came out of me as a lone tear fell from my eye. “You’ll have to fight Michael for that position. He has already claimed dibs on tearing that asshole apart.”
Zach pulled back and looked down at me. “So, he took care of you when all that happened?”
I nodded and wiped the wetness from my cheek.
“Good.” Zach gave me a pat on the back and then ran a hand through his hair. “I’m glad you told me about it, Gabe.” I saw worry in his green-brown eyes.
“I’m okay. Really, I am,” I reassured him.
Zach gave a brisk nod of his head and sighed. “Okay, let’s get back in there.”
“Let’s go.” I looped arms with him like we were children, making him smile, and we walked back down the hall and into the living room.
Dad and Michael looked at us curiously, but didn’t say anything about what happened, although I knew Michael would ask me about it later. We all talked for a while and gave our stomachs time to settle from the large dinner before bringing out the dessert. Which was fantastic, by the way. I did a fabulous job on the blueberry cheesecake.
My dad seemed to really like Michael. They conversed a lot about work, life ambitions, and anything and everything that came into their minds. I had never seen Michael socialize so well with other people before. Sure, since we had been together, we went out in public and he talked to a few people, but never like this. The entire time we were with my family, the smile that I loved so much never left his handsome face. He seemed so happy and at ease with my family that it touched my heart.
I knew they would love him. Just like I did.
“Gabe, did you bring your cello?” My father asked as we all sat in the living room by the warm, crackling fire. Zach and my dad were each sitting in one of the Victorian chairs, while Michael and I were sitting together on the couch.
“Maybe.” I hid my face in Michael’s shirt when everyone looked at me.
I felt Michael’s chest rumble as he chuckled softly. “Yes, he did.”
I nipped at his shirt with my teeth and he leaned down to kiss my forehead.
“Aw, come on, Gabe. Knock off that shyness,” Zach said, amused.
I poked my head up to look at my brother and stuck my tongue out at him, my signature move.
Michael laughed and kissed my cheek before speaking. “I’ll go get it from the car.” He shifted out from under me and stood up to go get my cello.
Once Michael left the room, my dad looked over and smiled at me. “I like him. He is a very well-put-together young man who seems to have a lot going for him.”
“Yeah, he’s kind of awesome like that.” I grinned.
When Michael returned with my cello, I got up and stole Zach’s footstool he was using to sit on while I played.
“Jerk,” Zach sneered.
Ignoring him, I took a seat and placed the cello between my legs. After adjusting the endpin at the base of the instrument, I examined my bow and tightened it. Reaching into my cello case, I pulled out my container of resin to spread onto the hairs of the bow in order to help the bow speak better on the strings.
Glancing briefly at Michael, I saw that he held a warm smile on his face and it made my heart soar. Taking a deep breath, I readied my bow and began playing Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major by Beethoven. I didn’t have the piano accompaniment to go with it, but I improvised.
As I played, I could have sworn that my mother was there with me, with her loving hand placed gently on my shoulder and a bright smile lighting her face. I wished she could have met Michael. She would have loved him, I was sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Michael
A Few Weeks Later
I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep, calming breath. This damn case would be the death of me. Gary Reynolds, the man accused of abusing his twin children both physically and sexually, was on the verge of being released because of a damn screw-up. The sick bastard had confessed to his crimes, but the damn fax I just received informed me that the confession was thrown out due to evidence that it may have been coerced by one of the police officers.
That confession was what the prosecution was relying on most for conviction. With that confession, everything was going smoothly for the trial process. Confessions from the accused are the strongest forms of evidence that can be brought to trial, but now that there was evidence that the confession was false, the totality of the circumstances surrounding the confession must be assessed. The outcome of the case looked bad. Really bad. When the jury hears that the confession was coerced, other questions will arise and convicting the sick bastard will be much harder. It will just end up looking like the mother falsely accused the man out of spite due to trouble in their marriage. Which happened quite frequently in this line of work.
I honestly believed the man to be guilty, that’s why my blood was boiling at this newfound turn the case had taken.
Sitting in my office, I slammed the papers down on my desk and stood up from my chair. The court date was set for the next Monday, December twenty-second, so I had just a little under a week to figure out something to present to the judge and defense attorney or the case would be dismissed. Pacing in front of the window to my office, I thought of those two small children who would never have justice for that fucking sorry piece of shit that wronged them if I failed.
I needed their testimonies.
When I suggested that option previously, their mother shut me down and informed me that she didn’t want the children testifying during the trial. She told me that she would testify in their place, but that wouldn’t help the prosecution’s case much, since she hadn’t witnessed the abuse first-hand. Her testimony would just be a form of hearsay and she wouldn’t be an effective witness. After hearing about the coerced confession, however, I had called the mother and informed her of the unfortunate direction the case had turned and she agreed that having the children testify might be a possibility.
Crimes of sexual abuse were some of the most difficult to prove, mainly due to the lack of evidence. It was normally a crime committed in private, with no eyewitnesses. So, the child’s testimony was of great importance to the success of the case. However, it was somewhat of a double-edged sword. If the only evidence I had was the children’s testimonies and nothing else, the defense attorney would kick my ass during the cross-examination and try to prove that their allegations were tainted by a faulty memory or swayed by hearing the publicity of the case circulate, or by being swayed by their mother’s words.
I would need to corroborate the evidence, but so far, I hadn’t been able to discover any past crimes from the defendant. His record appeared to be clean. Fuck.
Pulling out my cell phone, I looked at the time and sighed. I would need to work late tonight if I was going to get this done in time. Finding Gabriel’s number, I called him.
“Hey, my sexy stud,” Gabriel answered, making me smile.
Damn, I missed him already.
I didn’t know how I was going to stay away from him for a few more hours.
“Hey, Princess, I’m going to have to work late tonight. An unexpected situation arose with my case and it’s going to cause me to pull some major strings.”
“Oh.” I heard the disappointed tone in his voice and it killed me. “That’s okay. I haven’t seen Melissa in a while, so maybe I could call her over for some girl time.”
I heard his car chime as he opened the door and started the ignition. He had gotten his car back from the shop a week ago and it looked even better than it did before it was vandalized. I might have had something to do with that, but I’d never tell him. He hated when I spent money on him, which of course just made me want to spend it on him even more.
I smiled at his reference to himself as a girl.
“That sounds good, Angel.” I stood by the window and looked outside. The weather was cold, but the sun was shining bright in the sky. It was a beautiful day. Too bad I’d have to be stuck inside all day, and probably a good portion of the evening as well. “Tell Mel I said hello.”
I met Gabriel’s friend Melissa a few days after Thanksgiving, and she was everything Gabriel told me she would be. It was reassuring to know that he had a great friend like her.
“I will.” Gabriel sighed and I held the phone close to my ear, wishing that I could be with him. Being in love was sometimes a pain in the ass, but I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Gabriel was my entire life. I knew that sounded cliché, but it was true. Not a day had passed since our first date that I hadn’t seen him. And ever since I showed him my scars and told him about my past, not a night had gone by without him lying next to me. Sometimes we stayed at his apartment, but mostly we stayed the night at my house. Gabriel loved the tranquility and solitude that my home gave to us, and I loved being anywhere, just as long as he was beside me.
If I had it my way, I would just have him move in with me. I didn’t want to pressure him, though, so I had decided to bring up that topic at a later date.
“Do you need me to bring you some dinner?” Gabriel asked.
“No, thank you, Angel. I’ll probably just order a pizza.”
“Okay,” he said with a sigh.
“How was your music lesson?” I didn’t want to get off the phone yet.
“It went great,” he said, enthused. “I’m officially done with lessons. I feel like I really learned a lot by taking them, more so than I thought I would. Now I’ll just have to keep up with my playing and try not to forget anything.”
“Well, you can play for me anytime.” I loved watching and hearing him play and I never wanted him to give it up.
“I guess I better stop blabbering in your ear so you can get some work done,” Gabriel muttered dejectedly and I pictured him biting his lip after he said it.
“You can blabber anytime you want.” I smiled. “I love you, Princess.”
“I love you too, my knight in shining armor.”
I laughed. “I don’t think my armor is anywhere close to shining. It’s more tarnished and damaged.”
“That only means that you have experienced the hard blows life has thrown at you and you have come back victorious and even stronger than before,” he spoke with a rich sincerity in his melodic voice.
“There you go being a fortune cookie again,” I teased.
“As if,” he snickered into the phone.
Fuck, I missed him.
Hearing a knock at my door, I looked up to see Richard standing in the doorway holding some documents. Speaking into my phone, “Angel, I’ve got to go. I’ll stop by your place when I get done here, okay?”
“Okay, Sir Stud.” He sighed dramatically and hung up the phone.
Even after the line went dead, I held the phone to my ear, an ache already forming in my chest from the absence of him.
“Hey, Michael,” Richard interrupted my moment and came strolling into the room. “I think I found something you might find useful.”
Seeing the papers he handed to me, a smile formed on my face. This is exactly what I needed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gabriel
“Oh no you didn’t!” I squealed and threw a handful of popcorn at Melissa.
She ducked her head and laughed. “Yes, I did! I can be wild sometimes. And maybe your new relationship pushed me to get out in the world more.”
Rolling my eyes, I responded, “My relationship isn’t exactly new. We’ve been together for like two months.”
“You better not be giving me that famous Gabriel attitude or I might just be tempted to hide your Sex and the City seasons. No more Carrie Bradshaw for you.” She tsked and waved her finger at me.
I gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
“Oh, I so would,” Melissa said straight-faced, making us both burst out into a fit of giggles. “So, it’s really serious now between you and Michael?” She asked once the giggles had subsided.
“I think it’s been serious between us from the first moment we met,” I answered with a shrug. “But, yes. It’s very serious. I honestly can’t imagine not being with him.”
“Wow.” She nodded her head and grabbed some popcorn from the big purple bowl sitting between us on the couch. “I figured as much when I met him. The way he stared at you was unlike anything I’ve seen. Like you were the sun and he was a planet revolving around you.”
I tilted my head at her and teased. “So, I’m a huge ball of gassy mass now?”
She snorted. “It’s called a metaphor, prissy pants.” Looking around the living room, she smiled when she saw a painting on the back wall. “Aww, you hung it up.”
“Of course I did. Duh. It’s of me, and I’m gorgeous.” I smiled at her and grabbed some popcorn before washing it down with some wine. Melissa had painted a portrait of me for one of her art assignments and it looked amazing. In it, I was wearing my favorite black studded collar with smoky gray eyeshadow on my lids, and I was looking straight ahead with an arched eyebrow and a small smile curving the corners of my lips. There was a secretive gleam showing through my blue eyes that reminded me of the mysterious Mona Lisa painting, but I guess in my case, it was the Mona Gabriel. Melissa had captured me perfectly. After it was graded, she placed it in a glamorous frame and gave it to me for an early Christmas gift.
I loved it.
“How’s Zach doing? You haven’t talked about him in a while,” Melissa said before taking another sip of wine.
“He’s doing great. His personal training is really picking up. Business will really be great for him after the holidays when everyone makes New Year resolutions to eat better and lose weight.” I giggled and hiccupped before looking at my almost empty glass of wine. I hadn’t told anyone about Zach thinking he was gay, except for Michael.
After Michael confided in me about his past, he and I made a pact to never keep anything from each other again. I had also been curious as to what Michael would say about the whole situation with Zach and wanted his opinion. After telling him everything, he told me that Zach would have to decide on his own, for the heart cannot be swayed by outside forces. It knows what it wants. Zach didn’t say much else to me about it since Thanksgiving, but it was probably because he was trying to juggle everything in that goofy head of his.
It was killing me, though, to find out the truth. Zach had always been somewhat of a womanizer, but now that I really thought about it, he never seemed happy doing it. Could it be because he was trying to prove something to himself by sleeping with all of those women? The questions in my mind were practically screaming at me. But, I knew Zach. He wouldn’t talk until he was ready.
“Now, back to our previous topic. You seriously went out and had a one-night stand?” I still couldn’t believe it. Melissa was always more reserved than that. I was pleasantly shocked and amazed at her.
“Yes, I did,” Melissa said and tilted her glass up to her lips and finished off the last of her wine. After swallowing, she continued, “He was exactly my type too: go
rgeous red hair with a matching beard and green eyes.”
“I’ll go get us some more wine.” Standing up, I grabbed our glasses. “And when I come back, you better tell me all the juicy details.”
***
Later that night, I lay on the couch, tossing and turning. Melissa decided to stay the night with me since we drank one too many glasses of wine during our gossiping, and I let her sleep in my bed. Because I was a fantastic friend like that. She went to bed about two hours ago and I was still nowhere near asleep, although my muscles were satisfyingly relaxed from the wine.
I still hadn’t heard from Michael and it was close to midnight.
Sighing, I reached across to the coffee table and grabbed my cell phone, checking to see if I had any new messages, even though I had just checked it about a minute ago. No new messages… no shocker there. Grabbing my Disney princess blanket I was using, I pulled it over my head and huffed. Michael bought that blanket for me as a joke, but I loved it. It was fuzzy, warm, covered in tiaras, and purple. What’s not to love?
Hearing a vibrating on the coffee table, I quickly uncovered my head and grabbed my phone. It was a text from Michael.
Hey, Princess. Sorry, it’s so late. I just got done at the office. Are you still awake?
Smiling, I responded. No, I’m asleep.
Okay, smartass lol do you still want me to come over?
I grinned at his message and texted back. Of course I want you to come over. Duh. But Mel is still here becuz we drank way too much and I didn’t want her driving home. So she has taken over my bed and I’m on the couch.
Michael didn’t text back, so I assumed it was because he was driving. Which was good. Texting and driving was freaking stupid.
A few minutes later, my phone buzzed and alerted me that I had a new message. Looking down and reading it, I smiled and jumped off the couch to go open the door. Michael was standing there in his work suit and looked amazingly handsome. As usual.
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