Page 27 of Gunner

“You asked me to stop, and I will. I shouldn’t have come here last night. Even men like me have boundaries. I broke my own rules. It won’t happen again. You’ll be safe from me.” He sets the fruit down on the edge of his plate next to the untouched toast and looks at me with those arctic blue eyes.

“Take them out,” I whisper. “Please.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. I need to look you in the eyes for this. Your real eyes. I need to see what’s there.”

“There’s nothing there. Nothing at all. I’m the same inside. You’re not going to find redemption in me. I don’t get a character arc. My story isn’t one where I climb out of some hole to become a better man. I was lost long ago. You’ve brought me an unspeakable amount of joy over the years. I want to thank you for that.”

Years. I knew it.

My legs get watery and my pulse skyrockets. At least half of it is because I’m weirded out this time, but the other half is just a plain sick thrill.

“Are you leaving?” It makes me nauseous to think about that. Never seeing him again. Not having him out there, somewhere, watching me, even when I don’t know it.

I’ve felt that prickle of my skin, where my hair has stood on end, and turned around to find no one there. I’vefeltwatched a few times in the past year, Followed. I thought I was just being paranoid, but it was him. He was there, at my back. He wasprobably just creeping, but I can’t shake the way that makes me feel protected and safe.

It’s pathetic that I’m afraid that he’s not going to be there when I only just figured out that he was. That loneliness that’s hovered around me like a black, suffocating cloud drops down, thick and choking until I’m suffocated.

“Probably.”

Please, don’t do that. I want to see you again. It doesn’t make any sense and it’s so stupid and wrong, but I don’t want you to go.

“Where will you go?”

He shrugs. “Don’t know.”

It’s not like he’s a lost kitten or a stray puppy. I can’t just keep him. It’s not my job to mend him and make him whole. He’s more than likely right about being too fucked up. I have this stupid savior complex, and his pain is crying out to me, but it’s not my problem. I need therapy, not time to strip him bare and put my hands and lips all over his body. Every decision I’ve made since meeting this man has been one more in a series of the worst I’ve ever made in my life.

He’s going and I’m not going to stop him. That’s the fact, no matter the illogical feelings I have. I won’t see him again, but I need him to hear this. It’s more important to me than anything else right now.

“Some people say that second chances aren’t real. If you start down that path of darkness, it’s always going to be dark. I don’t know what you’ve done or what you’ve lived but- but I… I hope that you know that morally black is an okay shade too. Nomatter where you live, even if it’s the coldest, most unhospitable place on earth, the sun is going to shine on you at some point.”

The low rumble of engines in the distance is impossible to miss. How the men from his club made it here so fast, I have no idea. The clubhouse isn’t so far, and Hart isn’t all that big, but still. Were they out already? Looking for him? Wondering if they’d find his body somewhere?

The shiver that rolls through me stings like a sliver of metal.

He hears it too. He scarfs down the toast and eats the banana, downs the water in silence, all while that roar turns into thunder. He stands barefoot. His boots are sopping. Destroyed.

I retrieve them for him anyway. He rams his feet into them, expressionless. Gathers up his vest. He doesn’t look at me. He either can’t or he won’t, but I look at him.

I drink my motherfucking fill. I etch the details of his face, frighteningly cold eyes, strong nose and strong jawline, the ink, the scars, his height, the magnetic rawness, all that pain and sadness lashed and chained to him, into memory. He’s haunted me for years as a living, breathing man and now he’ll become a ghost.

I’m going insane.

The roar of several motorcycles comes at me like a net of nightmares that I thrash around in but can’t escape.

Gunner walks to my front door, unlocks it, and steps out as the bikes pull up. There are three, and an ancient pickup truck. I don’t recognize the man driving it, but when he gets out and looks at us, he has a kind face and half a smile that seems legit. He’s younger, thirty, if that. The others are wearing open-face helmets with black bandanas around their nose and mouth so I can’t see their faces. One is dressed entirely in black. His long black hair cascades out the bottom of his helmet. Once they come to a stop, they pull down the bandanas so I can see their faces.

I recognize the guy with the dark hair and beard from the cookout. He’d been standing beside Gunner when I walked up. I’ll remember that instant that my eyes first met his, that electric shock, the way the very earth trembled under my feet, forever. I’ve never had that with another person.

“Got the old cage out to take you back,” the man beside the truck calls. He thumps the hood affectionately. Preacher can take your bike home.”

A second man gets out of the truck, another that I don’t know. He’s middle aged, has a hard face, but he doesn’t look like a rotten apple. His dark eyes are soft.

“Crow and Bullet will stay with you. We called ahead. Archer cancelled his appointments for the morning. He’s ready.

Just like that, no questions and nothing else said, Gunner walks down the steps in silence. He holds himself stiff, but not like a man who’s hurting. He walks down my sidewalk, between the flower gardens that are just about ready for turning and planting. They’re just dirt right now. Still asleep.

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