“Thank you for this,” Gage said quietly as he pulled back. “For tonight. It helped.”
Fallon nodded, his lashes fanning downward as he looked at where Gage’s fingers were playing with his own. He didn’t want this to stop. He wanted to beg Gage to promise him they could pick up where they were leaving off the moment they were ready.
But Fallon knew better than to ask something so unfair.
“I hope I see you soon.”
Gage hummed and nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
It was the best either one of them would get.
Instead of stealing another kiss, Fallon got out of the car and didn’t look back as he walked up to his building door and stepped inside. It was quiet, the only sound the muffled thud of his shoes on the low, worn carpet. His apartment was at thefar end of the hallway, and he kept his eyes on the ground as he turned the corner and took the familiar path toward his door.
“Hey.”
Fallon almost jumped out of his own skin. He knew that voice too fucking well. His palms began to sweat as he tried to fumble for his phone, but Charlie took several steps toward him, and he froze like a deer in headlights.
“Relax,” Charlie said, holding up his hands. His tone was more subdued than it had ever been. He looked tired too, like he hadn’t slept in months. Fallon hoped he hadn’t. He hoped Charlie had lost twice the sleep Fallon had over the last few weeks. “I’m not here to fight. I just want to talk.”
Fallon swallowed heavily. “To talk?”
“To apologize,” Charlie said quickly. “I’m not here for anything else. I swear. I know I fucked up so badly. I know I lost it. I…I never thought I’d be that guy, and I just want you to know that I know this was all my fault.”
Fallon would never love him again. He knew that. Whatever he’d felt before had died the moment Charlie hit him. But the empathy he felt—the empathy he always felt—was overwhelming, and something about Charlie’s tone sounded…maybe not sincere, but worth a few minutes of his time.
He took a breath. “I’m going to let you in, but I’m putting my brother on speed dial, and if you so much as flinch at me, I will call him, and he will kill you. I’m not joking. He will do life willingly.”
Charlie swallowed thickly. “That’s fine. I’m…I’m not a monster, okay? I’m fucked-up, but I’m working on it.”
Fallon didn’t believe him. But in spite of knowing better, he would hear him out.
CHAPTER THREE
GAGE
Leaning against the counter,Gage smiled at his best friend with all his teeth in spite of the fact that Lucas couldn’t now and never had been able to see his creepy grin.
It was a mask, of course. Three months had gone by since he’d been with Fallon. Three months since the phone call telling him that his life wasn’t going to be rearranged. He expected things to get easier. But they hadn’t.
His life wasn’t worse. It was just…stagnating. He was angry all the time and confused about it. He had a hair trigger, and he’d been avoiding the people he loved because the things that came out of his mouth sometimes were mean.
And he was never mean.
He knew it was probably down to the fact that he was still processing everything that had happened to him, but he was so ready to be done. He was so ready to start feeling normal. He just didn’t know what normal meant anymore.
With a sigh, Lucas shook his head, and his fingertips searched the counter until they found Gage’s. He squeezed briefly before letting go. Lucas’s hands were roughly calloused from burn scars, having worked in his food truck kitchen for several years, but they were still kind.
And at the moment, Gage appreciated that.
He felt raw and pulled apart and put back together in all the wrong shapes. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. Well, that wasn’t true. It was the fault of two assholes and their decision to try and fuck up Gage’s life beyond recognition, but that part was over.
He was currently in both private and group therapy to deal with everything, but he was thinking about quitting group because the guy who ran the sessions kept telling them all not to let their trauma define them.
Gage didn’t think anyone wanted to make assault survivor their entire personality, but itwaswhat he thought about in all the quiet moments from when he woke up to when he went to sleep. Life went on, and most of the time, he felt okay, but it was those still spaces when there was no one left to distract him—when his meds had worn off and he was jumpy on the inside and unable to turn his racing thoughts off—that he couldn’t escape what had happened.
And the torture of it all was not remembering what they’d done while he was drugged. It was going through what felt like a billion different types of therapy and home remedies to unlock those memories and finally realizing whatever those two assholes had given him had done its job.
They were both in jail now. He’d eventually chosen to pursue charges after his lawyer swore that he wouldn’t have to be present for the hearing. And with the video evidence they’d managed to get off their phones, they took a plea deal, so the sentence had been handed down right away.
