Page 45 of Touch of Innocence
TWENTY-ONE
No one had told him to do it. The idea had come from his own mind, sprung up in the wake of all of the talks he had had over the past few hours. Not just the one with Ben and Isaac, but also the one with Mike. Somehow, pieces fell together, and the picture that the assembled puzzle showed was as clear as day.
Gunner had fucked up. No doubt about it and Sam knew that Gunner wouldn’t try to claim otherwise. But then again, so had Sam, and Gunner hadn’t left him because of it.
This was love. What he felt for Gunner was pure, clear as crystal, love. Nothing muddied it, now that the secrets between them had been put away. And nothing could diminish the diamond sparkle of Sam’s feelings, not even when he tried to pull back the anger, the fear, the sense of betrayal, which had been so clear in his mind just a few hours ago.
Yes. He loved Gunner. He would give up his future for Gunner. No, not give up, because he knew that Gunner would never want that sort of sacrifice for him. Rather, he would change his future, compromise a bit. Get what he wanted and still make time for the most important man in his life.
All of which flooded through his body and finally washed away the sticky cobwebs in the corners of his mind. For too long, he’d been hiding. Afraid of what people would say if they knew who he really was inside. And yet, wasn’t he the same person that he’d always been? A person that people, for some reason, cared about?
He found himself on the back of Gunner’s motorcycle, straddling it as the powerful engine thrummed to life. That was almost how it felt, like Gunner’s bike was a wild animal, barely tamed, and accepting Sam only because it somehow knew that Sam would bring it back to Gunner.
“Bring him back, if you can,” Mike told him, patting him awkwardly on the back. “Someone’s gotta bring this place into some kind of order, and we both know it ain’t gonna be you.”
Where had all of the sting which should have been in those words gone? Why didn’t Sam care anymore? Had he somehow finally accepted that he was just never going to be good at this, and that was okay? That Mike could be better than him at something?
“I will,” Sam said, touching Mike’s hand briefly. The truth was, Mike was not supposed to be simply handing the keys to this behemoth of a bike over to Sam. The bike didn’t belong to Sam, and Mike was opening himself up to a potential lawsuit if Gunner was so inclined.
Enough time to deal with that when Sam had found Gunner. When he had canvased every bar in Austin, if he had to, and when he had given it his best shot. Maybe Gunner couldn’t forgive him, and honestly, he felt like Gunner would be completely within his rights to refuse to have anything to do with Sam ever again, but for once, Sam was going to put himself out there. He was going to try, really try.
His pride could go straight to hell. Even knowing that he had probably given up any chance with Gunner, he was still going to put himself out there, give Gunner the chance that he deserved to stomp his heart to the curb. Gunner deserved no less.
As the hours passed, Sam’s spirits didn’t flag, though his body was becoming exhausted. Bar after bar he tried and no one had even heard of Gunner. Who was to say that the guy hadn’t just moved on? From what Sam understood, Gunner had done a lot of that in his life.
So he didn’t have a lot of hope, not when he first pulled the growling bike up to the curb and then silenced it. Funny how he was coming to anthropomorphize it himself. He had always found that sort of hysterical when Mike and Gunner both had done the same thing. And now, here he was, doing it, thinking that the bike seemed to have almost a contented sound as the rumbling ceased and the engine ticked softly to itself as it cooled off.
Was this the place?
It wasn’t a particularly impressive building, sort of half falling down, slung between a corner store on one side and a cheap hotel, the kind where the rates were by the hour rather than by the night, on the other. The bar sagged between them, like a drunk man being barely held up by the other buildings.
But there was a quickening in his body, a clenching of excitement in his stomach, and Sam walked to the front door with a bounce that hadn’t been there before. It was getting late, approaching two in the morning, and he was usually long asleep by now, but somehow, that didn’t matter.
A car pulled to a stop, and the sirens might be off but the lights were flashing, painting the grimy street a bright, cheerful red, and then a blue, flickering and lighting the place up. The cops. The cops were here, too, and though Sam knew that the chances were good that these police officers had nothing to do with him, he couldn’t help but feel a surge of anxiety as he reached for the door and pushed inside.
The two police officers were out of the car so fast that they ended up coming in just behind him, and Sam took a second to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom inside. The place was a wreck. Ben would be horrified to see the scarred, splintered wooden bar, the seats with the padding worn thin, the dirty glass everywhere.
In a split second, his eyes took in all of those details, but then he saw something which made his blood run just as cold as if it had been in the freezer for hours, chilled completely before being put back into him.
Gunner. Gunner was there, all right, but Gunner was locked in an intimate embrace with another man. When that man raised his head and turned to look at them, Sam recognized him. The man from the picture that the feds had shown him, the man who he could instantly identify as Gunner’s ex-boyfriend.
Only he didn’t seem to be such an ex anymore. Sam’s eyes burned with tears that he refused to shed. Gunner had wasted no time getting back together with this son of a bitch, the one who had gotten Gunner tossed into jail in the first place.
Gunner’s eyes met Sam’s, and they were widened in shock, but then Gunner shook his head, and a plaintive look came into his eyes. It was then, when Sam really looked at the situation that he noticed that Gunner was being embraced, but his arms hung limply at his sides.
“Chad. I know some people who are looking forward to seeing you,” one of the cops spoke, voice hard, and both of them advanced into the room, firearms up and aimed right at Chad.
The guy reacted quickly. Sam had to admit that. In a split second, so fast that it seemed to appear there as if by magic, there was another gun, gleaming silver and incongruously bright and clean in the otherwise filthy bar.
The muzzle of that gun pressed against Gunner’s head, and Chad slid around behind him, using Gunner as a human shield and keeping him subdued by the horrible shine of that gun.
“Let me go or else he dies.”
The threat was horribly real. There wasn’t a hint, not even the faintest trace, of any doubt, no hesitation, in his voice. This was way outside of Sam’s comfort zone, but even the cops seemed a bit on edge, and they had surely seen things that Sam hadn’t.
“You want to add murder on top of everything else? You’ll go away forever,” one of the cops said, and Sam took a deep breath and let it out very, very slowly. He was just a civilian, and he was more terrified than he had ever been in his life, but at the same time, he didn’t think that Chad had seen him just yet, or registered him as any sort of threat.
Gunner caught his eye again, and Sam was the one to nod this time. Really, what choice was there? Was he going just to let the man he loved be used like this? Or, worse, be taken from him, kept as a hostage? His mind wouldn’t even let him think about what would happen if the police officers didn’t back down.
