Page 34 of Touch of Innocence
“Look, we’ll replace the windshield,” Sam promised, trying to defuse the situation, but maybe that was a lost cause because Mike just glared at him more viciously than ever.
“Damn straight, you will. And you’re gonna fix her up ‘til she shines, you hear me?” Mike’s arms were crossed defensively over his chest, and his gaze skipped back and forth between them, restless, as though not sure which one of them to blame more.
“It wasn’t our fault, you know,” Gunner spoke up, and Sam shot him a dirty look. This really wasn’t the time or place, but Gunner had a defensive look on his face and his arms as firmly crossed over his chest as Mike did. “That truck came out of nowhere. I didn’t get a rock to the windshield on purpose.”
“You’re still gonna replace it,” Mike replied grimly. “The car was in your hands when it got damaged. It’s your responsibility to make sure it’s repaired.”
Gunner set his jaw and looked stubborn, and Sam pinched him surreptitiously on his arm. That earned him a bit of a dirty look, but at least Gunner shut his mouth. This whole situation didn’t need to be made much worse. It was already bad enough as it was.
“Yeah, fine, we’ll replace it, no problem,” Sam spoke hastily and then regretted it when he felt Mike’s eyes settle on him.
“You stay the fuck out of this, boy,” Mike snarled, and that temper, which Sam noticed Mike had been barely restraining, all flooded out of him all at once as the dam which had been barely holding it back shattered into a million pieces. “The grown-ups are talking.”
And at that moment, Sam realized something that he really should have noticed before. Mike didn’t seem him as one of the grown-ups. Why he’d given Sam a job, he had no idea, but it wasn’t because he thought that Sam could do the job. Gunner, he spoke to as an equal, albeit one that he was angry with, but Sam may as well still be a child.
“Fix it,” Mike growled, turning away from Sam like he didn’t matter at all and fixing his intense gaze on Gunner. The responsibility was put on Gunner, and why not? He probably didn’t think that Sam could handle it, no matter that Sam had learned how to replace a windshield already.
With that, Mike turned on his heel and was gone, with one more burning look at both of them. Sam staggered and had to lean against the counter to keep himself from falling over. How was this fair? Any of this? Gunner messed up, and Sam had to pay for it?
Gunner turned to look at him, and Sam returned his gaze, hurt and anger simmering in the air between them.
“Do you even care? You might have gotten me fired,” Sam snapped, though he knew that it wasn’t entirely fair. He had gone along with Gunner, which was his own bad judgment, and Mike had allowed Gunner to take the car, which was his.
Still, Sam knew what happened when he allowed himself to get caught up in boys who refused to grow up, who lived their lives recklessly. He knew. So why had he allowed himself to hook up with this man who was nothing but bad news?
Gunner opened his mouth and then frowned as the jangling ring of a cell phone split the air. Irritation on his handsome face, Gunner glanced down, and then his face went still and cold, the only sign of life anywhere on his features was in the depths of his brilliant hazel eyes, which seemed to burn golden.
“Sorry, I have to take this,” Gunner apologized, though it seemed a perfunctory thing—like he didn’t actually mean it, like he didn’t actually care that this thing had happened.
With just those few words, Gunner turned and followed Mike out, already pressing on the screen to accept the call.
“Yeah, man, what’s up?” he asked, and to Sam, he sounded casual. Too casual, like a man who is trying far too hard to seem normal. Maybe most people wouldn’t have noticed, but Sam had picked up that Gunner wanted to seem that way.
Or was it just that the guy didn’t care? Had Sam wanted so badly to see something that just wasn’t there, because of his own feelings for this man? He wouldn’t have thought so, but that was before all of this stuff had gone down.
Maybe he didn’t know Gunner as well as he would have thought. He had thought that Gunner was someone who might give a damn and just hide it as best he could. Someone more like Sam, deep down at the very base of their beings where it really counted.
Sighing softly, Sam got out the cleaning supplies, the special ones which he knew that Mike used on the Jag. He might as well get a head start on fixing the mess that Gunner had made. So he started to clean off the metal, making it gleam again, all the while trying to deny to himself what he was doing.
Waiting. Waiting for Gunner to come back, waiting for an apology for getting Sam into this mess. Waiting for things that he was pretty sure would never come. As Sam wiped and polished, the silver came back to the chrome tires, and it was a huge relief when he saw that there were no scratches, no scuff marks.
The windshield was bad enough, but even Sam knew that it could have been much, much worse. Bodywork on a car like this would have been thousands of dollars. A new windshield wouldn’t be exactly cheap, and Sam knew that, but still.
Sam kept himself busy, but it still felt like a hundred years until Gunner came back into the shop. It was actually getting to the point where Sam was wondering if Gunner had just taken off on him. Gunner didn’t have a car, but he did have two working legs and feet.
Finally, though, Gunner did come in, and there was something strange about him, something that Sam couldn’t quite put his finger on. Worry? Sadness? Anger? There was something, just a tenseness around the edges of his eyes, but Sam couldn’t be quite sure that he saw it at all.
“Who was that on the phone?” Sam asked, going for casual but not entirely sure that he managed to pull it off. Whoever it was, it had been important enough for Gunner to blow off this conversation for, though, and he thought he was within his rights to be curious.
Gunner turned to look at him, and the tension around his eyes faded, a smile coming to his lips. He walked over to Sam, lightly touching his face, and even with all of the anger and uncertainty in him, Sam found it hard not to press toward that sweet, gentle touch.
“No one important,” Gunner’s voice was light and carefree, as it so often was. If not for how closely Sam was looking at him, he probably would have believed that it really was nothing important, no big deal.
“Gunner …” Sam started, and then Gunner’s lips were on his, harder than they ever had been before, almost crushing against Sam’s. In an instant, his breath was stolen. The kiss which had come out of nowhere robbed him of any coherent thoughts, the fury, the frenzy, of it radiating through his body and making it impossible to think of anything else.
At the moment, Sam had no idea where that had come from. Why Gunner had kissed him like that. But he did remember his own body’s needs, how he and Gunner had planned to continue what they had only just started while they were in the car.
In one swift, eager motion, Gunner’s strong arms were around Sam, his hands on his ass, hauling him against himself until their bodies were flush against each other. Even with things as strained as they were, it was so easy to just melt into Gunner’s hot, strong body, to let himself be kissed, his body aroused until nothing else mattered.
Only that wasn’t quite true that nothing else mattered. The things that had happened that night wouldn’t be forgotten, and maybe they never really could be. What was happening was nothing more than a distraction.
But, as Sam’s mouth was plundered, as Gunner dragged him off toward his car and pushed him into the driver’s seat, he had to admit that it was a damned effective distraction.
