Blake hadn’t been surprised to hear those words. Not really. Even though it was the first time Gabriel’s lips had formed the syllables, he’d been saying them all along. In the way he brought Blake books and held him. The marks he left on his skin and the fingers carding through his hair. It was in his trailing hands and light touches. Casual, without expectation of anything in return. Just because he wanted to.
It was in the way he trusted him. The way he took all of Blake’s pieces, all of his truths, and let him exist. He didn’t ask Blake to change. Gabriel didn’t overlook his flaws; he didn’t try to change them either. He just let them exist. Like a crooked corner on a homemade gift. It’s the whole that counts. The soul behind it.
There was a surety in Gabriel. In the way he led, the way he lived in his own skin, and the way he loved Blake. With nopreconceptions. He loved Blake as he was in this moment. He didn’t care that he’d wasted potential by staying a paramedic. He didn’t care that Blake had failed so many times. He didn’t care that Blake saw too much. That sometimes he woke up crying for a reason he couldn’t name.
And maybe if they had met in a coffee shop, they wouldn’t be here. Maybe the worst brought out their best. He met Gabriel with a bruise on his face and blood on his hands, and he still saw something in him worth loving.
They’d faced death and found each other.
Now they were going to face life. They were going into a battle where there would be no losers—only the dead. But the victory? Life. Freedom. Safety. Peace.
That could start tonight.
He slipped from Gabriel’s lap, pulling him up by the hand. Gabriel’s smile was tender, the firelight turning his eyes bronze as he looked down at Blake. He would follow Blake anywhere.
The fire was dying down, people peeling off to call it a night or find something elsewhere. Sara was asleep on Judd, drooling on his shoulder. He winked at Blake and Gabriel as they passed. Eventually, he would pass the girl off to Victoria or Emily—she didn’t like to sleep alone. But for now, he was stroking the back of her hair.
Gabriel’s hand was loose in Blake’s as they made their way to the concrete stairs that led to the Potomac View Motel’s second floor. It was dark. Blake found his way by touch, his free hand dragging across the walls, counting the doors as he passed. Their boots crunched over dead leaves no one had bothered to rake up. It smelled like winter. Like rot.
Like home.
Not the home Blake remembered. Not the one that was the backdrop for every major event in his life. The one his parents built. With his father’s model trains and his mother’s disdainfor anything that deviated from theneutralspectrum. Not even his shabby little apartment on the corner of two busy streets. It always smelled like old grease.
No, this home had two legs and chameleon eyes. Scruffy cheeks and fiddling hands. It smelled like leather and gunpowder. It liked old military history and him.
For so long, he imagined himself a renter. He owned the keys but never put up pictures. Didn’t paint the walls or change the carpets. It was a roof. A place to sleep, to get his mail, but neverhis.
Tommy told himYou’ve got to live a little or die a lot.Blake had written it off as some Tofurkey wisdom, unlocked once you reach level ten veganism. But now he understood.
Blake pushed into their room and stepped into the pitch black like it was a weighted blanket. It pressed against him like a hug.
Gabriel lit some of the candles. The weak light did little more than cast shadows across the valleys of their faces, but it was enough. Everything Blake wanted to see was right in front of him.
He buried his face in Gabriel’s chest. Strong arms wrapped around him, holding him close. Gabriel rested his chin on Blake’s head, sighing softly.
“Today was nice,” he whispered, like he was too afraid to shatter the moment.
Blake hummed. “You didn’t catch any fish.”
“Next time.”
If there is a next time.
Blake tried not to choke on the emotion clogging his throat. He could feel pinpricks of heat on the back of his eyes, and he closed them, desperate not to cry. Not now. Not after he’d promised himself he wouldn’t. He would picture Gabriel shirtless, desperately trying to lure a fish with the stale endcrusts of bread. He would picture his smile as Judd kicked his legs under Sara’s vicious tickle attack.
He wouldn’t think of Sara’s mom. Of Gabriel limping down that same alley. Or of his blood all over Blake’s hands and the handle of a rusty axe. Of bodies shrouded in motel bed sheets, left in the woods because it was too cold to bury them.
His finger dug into Gabriel’s back, and he pressed his face against his shirt, hoping to dry the tears before Gabriel noticed.
Blake’s face was tipped up. One side of Gabriel’s face was dark. He wiped Blake’s tears with his thumbs. “I don’t like it when you cry.”
“Yes, you do,” Blake accused.
“Not like this, baby.” Gabriel kissed his eyes. “I won’t tell you it’ll be okay. I can’t promise that.”
“You should,” Blake snapped, petulantly. “I want you to promise me we’ll come back. All of us. We’ll go fishing, and Judd will talk out of his ass, and Sara will laugh, and T—Tommy will finally get Phin to unclench, and it’ll be—” he cut himself off with a choked off sob.
“If I could, I would.”
