Page 30 of Confessions of Pain

Chapter 8

Kelsey

It felt strange walking into the plant that I’d spent the last four years of my life working in—a plant that I hated. Sure, I loved the people working at the mill, excluding my immediate family, of course, but I hated the job. I hated it, because it forever tied me to the people I didn’t respect or love. Yet, I’d done it, walked in the plant every fucking day and fought like hell to keep my head above water and the plant in the black. Apparently, I’d succeeded in neither of those things because the plant was bought right out from under us without anybody having the first clue and because my head was way below water. I was drowning.

My chest ached. My breathing was difficult. My head felt dizzy. My fucking heart? It soared, the stupid, dumb fuck.

Because of my heart, I had walked back into the plant I hated, with hope blooming in a spot that I thought to be dead. Gabriel Maverick. He was the reason I spent the last four years working in my family’s mill and he was the reason I was back. Sadly enough, the last four years were due to the pathetic fact that I wanted to make sure he could find me if he ever took the notion to come looking. It was why I still lived in Trenton Falls. In my warped, fucked-up mind, I had to know that I’d made it as easy as possible for him find me if he ever decided to forgive me.

Well…he was here. He’d found me. He hadn’t, however, forgiven me. With all the time that passed, I could only assume now that hecouldn’tforgive me. Gabriel,my Gabriel, was here to punish me. So, here I was, ready to take my punishment. What he didn’t know was that I punished myself every fucking day for the past ten years. I hated myself. I hated what I’d done—what I’d said. I deserved whatever he wanted to dish out. Hell, for all I knew, he’d returned to Trenton Falls to kill me, there was that much hate in his eyes when he looked at me, that was for certain. That was okay, too. Been there, tried to do that. He could bring it the fuck on. Maybe he could succeed where I’d failed.

I pushed open the plant doors and saw two new security guards planted a few feet away. For a split second, I thought they were going to toss me out, but they simply nodded in my direction. I took that as a green light to keep going. The second thing I noticed was there wasn’t nearly as much machine noise as there should be. Machines were down. Just like they were every fucking morning when I punched in. Perfect.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Travis scampering across the catwalk, a skip in his step that made me want to groan out loud. He was headed in my direction at warp speed, which meant absolutely nothing good was coming my way. I could only imagine what he’d been saying to the new owners. The guy had absolutely zero filters on his mouth.

“Mornin’, boss!” he bellowed about ten yards away. “You never come in late. Did you get laid last night? Please tell me you got laid. You need something to loosen your tight ass up a little.”

I felt a blush creep up my neck and not stop until my entire face blazed. I didn’t have to look up on the catwalk to know Gabriel was standing up there, overhearing every word Travis said…unless, of course, I was lucky and he’d mysteriously lost his hearing since he left my house that morning. Since I wasn’t lucky, I felt entirely safe assuming my ex-lover heard each and every word and was probably dying laughing at me right about now.

Well, I’d known this wouldn’t be easy. If it was easy, it sure the hell wouldn’t be in my life.

“Filters, Travis,” I reprimanded when he finally stood in front of me. “We’ve talked about it. You can’t just say whatever the fuck pops into your head.”

“Yes, I can. I just did and that cute little blush on your cheeks kind of made it all worthwhile, boss. What can I say? I like tormenting the helpless.”

I wanted to argue that I wasn’t helpless, and the blush wasn’t cute, but it would only begin a conversation I didn’t need or want to have with Travis. No, I needed to move on to the immediate problem at hand—my machines weren’t running. I paused. No, Gabriel’s machines weren’t running. Admitting that should bother me, but it didn’t.

He was home.Finally.

Sure, he might be back only to punish me and make my life a living hell, like it wasn’t already the classical definition of hell, but he washere. I would call that a victory on my playing field.

“What’s going on, Travis? Why are the simplex machines down? You know that’s our most important order right now.” Pretty much our only order, but no need to mention that, I supposed.

“Two machines broke down late last night. The fixer couldn’t do anything with them, so he left them sitting until you got here. Mackie said he tried to call you, but nobody answered.” He frowned and scratched his chin. “You always answer your cell, boss. Why not last night? At first, I thought the rumors about the new owners firing you might be true, but now, since you’re here, I’m back to the other possibility—you were getting laid.”

Oh, how times had changed. It might have been ten years ago, but it still felt like just yesterday that I would have been terrified of anybody finding out I was gay. The only time I hadn’t been afraid was when I’d been with Gabriel. Then, because of my own cowardice and stupidity, Gabriel had left me and I’d been forced to deal with my homosexuality by myself. If I had a dollar for every bruise I’d gotten over the years, nobody would have been able to come in and swipe the company out from under us. I’d be a rich man. As it was, nobody was paying for bruises, I was poor, and, oh yeah, someone had actually swiped the company right out from under us. And I couldn’t find it in myself to give a fuck…at least not about the company.

I chose to ignore Travis’ inappropriate comment and focus on the clusterfuck in simplex. “If two machines went down, why aren’t the rest of them running? We have twelve machines. Last time I checked, that meant I still had ten machines that could be making us some money.” I looked Travis in the eyes and asked, “Want to explain that one to me?”

He shrugged. “Simple mathematics, boss. We took a vote this morning and decided that we didn’t like the new fuckers upstairs and if you weren’t here any longer, we didn’t want to be either. None of us wanted to put up with Wayne’s bullshit and we don’t want to put up with new guy’s bullshit, either.”

Travis was being an idiot—a loyal idiot, but an idiot. “We’ve had this discussion before, Travis. You’ve got a wife and two little babies to take care of. It doesn’t matter if we like the guys upstairs or not, they sign the paychecks, so give them some respect.” The headache that had grown substantially since my pathetic crying last night was getting worse with each passing second. “We don’t have to like it, but we have to do our jobs. End of story. Now go start up the other machines while I work on the two that are down. I need you to be an example for the other employees, Travis.” I frowned and then corrected what I’d said. “I need you to be agoodexample to the other employees.”

Travis’ eyes narrowed. He wasn’t buying my feeble attempt to get him off the subject of me getting laid. His persistence would have been nothing more than annoying if a spark of alarm hadn’t exploded in my body when I caught a glimpse of Gabriel coming down the stairs.

I wasn’t ready for this. I hadn’t been ready yesterday. I hadn’t been ready this morning. I wasn’t fucking ready now.

Travis wrapped an arm around my neck and tugged me close to him. “Hey, is what they are saying about you and new owner true? Did y’all used to be lovers?”

How in the hell did that get out? When we’d been younger, we’d thought we were being so careful— that nobody had known about us. Suddenly, it felt like the entire world knew our secret. Which meant, of course, that everybody knew I’d gotten dumped when Gabriel skipped town. To everybody else, it probably looked like I’d been the one done wrong, but I knew the truth. Oh, and Wayne. Of course, that fucker knew the truth, and there wasn’t much else in the world that he enjoyed more than throwing it back up in my face. He would laugh and laugh when he explained how quick Gabriel high-tailed it out of town when he’d heard what I’d said about him.

I didn’t care what folks thought about me. It had taken years, but I finally managed to move past that piece of insecurity that once ruled my entire universe. What I didn’t want were people like Travis not liking Gabriel because they believed he’d done something wrong. It was all on me and everybody needed to know that. It was the least I could do.

I tried to carefully choose my answer. I didn’t even know if Gabriel wanted people to know he was gay. I sure as fuck didn’t know if he wanted anybody to know he’d ever been involved with me. “That’s none of your business, Travis. Keep thoughts like that to yourself, okay?” When he frowned at me, I added, “Let’s just say that Gabriel is a good man. He’ll be a good leader of this company. Whatever bad blood exists between him and me is there solely because of me. Got it?”

Travis’ frowned deepened. “Are you telling me to back my shit down, boss? To treat the new boss man with kid gloves because I might hurt his feelings over whatever the hell history you two share? To maybe let him get away with talking shit about you because of some idiotic shit you did when you were around sixteen years old?” He stepped even closer to me. “Because if you are, you might as well get prepared to be pissed at me and the rest of the guys. We’re all Team Kelsey.”

Gabriel had reached the production floor and was only a few yards away from us. I knew this because I could see him out of the corner of my eye and because every nerve in my body suddenly went on high alert…with little alarms going off, warning me of an upcoming confrontation.

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