“I’m… I’m sorry, Sir.” Gabriel fixed his gaze on the curve where Sir’s neck met his shoulder. He recalled the scent of his skin, and the way Sir’s body had felt against his own. Whenever they touched, the pinprickscameback.
Whenever they touched, Gabriel washappy.
“What are you apologizing for?” Sir reached over and pressed a button on the side of the phone. It lit up, and Sir punched in a few numbers to undo the lock screen. “I’m glad that I know a little bit more about you. I would have never known you were in a relationship if you hadn’t told me. What we need more than anything else is trust, and you can’t build trust with astranger.”
You can’t build trust with astranger.
Gabriel looked down at the unlocked phone screen, searching the icons for a web browser as Sir’s statement sunk in. When Sir had asked him to pretend to be someone else back in the driveway, how well had he known Garrison? He’d struggled to string together a singlestatement.
They’d been together for threeyears.
The screen dimmed. Before it could go out, Sir pushed the browser. It launched, and when it loaded, it presented Gabriel with a searchengine.
“Type in his name.” Sir tapped the search field and brought up the touch keyboard. “Let’s see whatweget.”
Garrison Baylor,Gabrieltyped.
He pressed enter, but his heart had already pressedescape.
19
Cedric
GarrisonBaylor.
Gabriel’s boyfriend. The name was familiar, but Cedric had a hard time placing it—likely someone from their school, he figured. A forgotten face from a lower grade that Cedric had never concerned himself with. Whoever this Garrison was, the news was hard to swallow, but Cedric was glad he’d found it out now before his heart got any more entangled than it was. Gabriel as a client wasn’t enough to keep him from imagining what could be, but to know Gabriel was in a relationship? Cedric wasn’t a home-wrecker. If Gabriel was with someone else, it gave him all the more incentive tostayaway.
No matter how much it hurt, and no matter how much Cedric wished otherwise, Gabriel would neverbehis.
If only he could convince his heart ofthesame.
Gabriel’s thumb hovered over the search button, as if he were having second thoughts. He glanced at Cedric, his lips tight and near the point of trembling, like he was on the verge of tears, but whatever was causing him pain didn’t last long. He pressed the button and began thesearch.
Soon enough, Cedric would know the man who held the heart of the damaged omega athisside.
Over three hundred thousand resultsgenerated.
Cedric’s jawdropped.
Sex Offender Sentenced to LifeinJail
Leader of The White Lotus Sex Ring FoundGuilty
Life in Prison for Baylor, CourtRules
Gabriel scrolled through the articles as if nothing was wrong. The tiny frown he wore didn’t match the magnitude of the news on the screen. It was like hedidn’tcare.
“Gabriel?” Cedric asked. He resisted the urge to take the phone directly from Gabriel’s hand and turn off the screen. “Are you sure you have therightname?”
“Yes.” Gabriel kept scrolling. All the articles were recently dated. “All I need to know is where to find him. He’s waiting for his appeal to go through and for his lawyers to clear his name, and I want to be with him while hewaits.”
Either Gabriel wasn’t reading the snippets beneath the articles, or he was willfully ignorant of them. Ignorant or not, the further he went, the more frantic his scrollingbecame.
Criminal Defense Attorney Marcus Hayes Takes on Role as Prosecutor in Jaw-DroppingAppeal
Sentence Maintained—No Freedom forBaylor
You’ll Never Believe What This Lawyer Did to Keep a Sex Offender off theStreets…
