“Fallon. Baby.”
He took a breath. “I know you’re still…recovering from everything that happened. I know you don’t like talking about it. But I hope…” He stopped. He was struggling with his words, knowing what he wanted to say, but terrified that the way he was going to say them would come out too harsh or too bluntand hurt Gage, who was already in pain. “I don’t want you to keep it all inside and then get to a point you can’t ask for help if you need it.”
Gage was very quiet for a long time. There was a tension in his body that hadn’t been there when he first took Fallon into his arms, but Fallon told himself not to take it personally. Not yet. Not until Gage said something because he knew that no matter what, Gage wouldn’t lie to him.
“Dealing with my trauma is complicated,” Gage said very quietly. “I don’t remember any of it. There were videos—I saw clips of them that those two assholes sent me when they were trying to blackmail me for money.” His exhale trembled slightly as he let it out. “But even the videos didn’t trigger anything, you know? I was very, very drugged.”
Fallon had no idea what to say.
“I thought I was supposed to be afraid or scared to have sex after it happened. When I wasn’t,” Gage said, his voice going even quieter, “I thought something was wrong with me. I mean, aren’t assault survivors supposed to be afraid?”
Fallon wasn’t sure that was an actual question, but Gage went quiet after. “I don’t think assault survivors are supposed to feel any type of way.”
Gage smiled, his eyes crinkling slightly in the corners as he looked down. “That’s what my therapist said. He said I was focusing too much on what I thought I was supposed to be feeling that I wasn’t working on how I actually felt.”
“Which was?”
“Angry,” Gage said, the word an almost whisper. “So fucking angry. Like, I wanted to put my fist through the wall all the time. I wanted to pick fights. I wanted to hurt people I thought deserved it. It took every ounce of my self-control not to beat your ex until he was unrecognizable.”
“What stopped you?”
Gage looked at him. “You. I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want you to think I was as bad as he was.”
Fallon didn’t know what to say. He had no idea how he would have reacted if Gage had done worse to Charlie. Maybe he would have been afraid.
Gage swallowed heavily. “I’m still angry. It’s easier to manage now, but sometimes it scares me. I have dreams about them all the time. About…” He went silent for a moment. “Jonny and Alayna.”
So, those were their names, then. The ones who hurt him.
“Sometimes in the dream, I’m running after them and screaming and trying to get everyone around me to hear what they did, but no one does. And I can never catch up to them. Sometimes I have them in a room, and I’m screaming in their faces, but they don’t react at all.”
Fallon picked up the hand Gage was resting between them and kissed his palm.
Gage smiled a little. “Sometimes I’m tearing at them with claws, but they don’t bleed. And I mean, I don’t think you need to be a psychiatrist to know what those dreams are trying to say. They were arrested, and they were punished for everything they did, but I…I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t feel like enough?”
Gage bowed his head. “Not all the time. Because they can be punished forever, and it won’t change what happened to me. And God, what if they get out and do it to someone else? Or what if I wasn’t the first?” He leaned forward and knocked his head against Fallon’s. “My therapist says it’ll get better. That it might not ever go away, but there will be days I don’t think about any of it because my life will be so good and so happy that it’ll eclipse everything else.”
“Do you believe him?”
Gage leaned back, and his lips tilted up in the corners. “Yes. Because it’s already happened with you.”
Fallon had no idea what to say, so he said nothing at all. Instead, he curled his fingers into the front of Gage’s shirt and then kissed him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GAGE
Loungingon the deck at his dad’s place, Gage turned his face up toward the sun. It was cold outside, but there was a little warm front that had come in, which made sitting outside a bit more bearable. Briar was in the yard walking Audra around, and Rex was in the tree house, working on some project he was refusing to tell anyone about.
Bowen and Adele were arguing over how to properly clean the grill, and Kash kept snorting every time Adele called his brother a jackass.
“Can I tell you something?” Gage said.
Kash raised a brow. “Of course. Is this a big sit-down talk or something else?”
Gage glanced over at his dad, then shook his head. “More like I need some fatherly advice from someone who isn’t going to get all…weird.”
