Page 44 of Touch of Innocence
God, he just hoped that his act did what he wanted it to do. His skin was crawling as Chad came closer because so much fear didn’t just go away in ten seconds. Not when he’d been running for years.
“They’ll catch you. I’m out,” Gunner told him, watching as the criminal’s eyes widened, clearly surprised by his daring. When had Gunner ever said no? Not often, maybe not at all. Chad had been everything to him, and at one point, he would have probably killed for him if he’d been asked.
Now there was another man in his heart. A man who had probably never broken the law in his life, and who was horrified by the very idea. Gunner could never have Sam, and he had come to accept that, but Gunner took him as a model. He set his shoulders and pulled Sam’s certainty around himself, his righteousness.
It was a pain in the ass to be around but damned if it didn’t feel good to be on the right side of the law, for once. Now if only his gambit would pay off before it got him killed, it would all be good.
“What did you say to me?” Chad demanded, his tone incredulous. Time had passed, but it was like he didn’t know that. Like he had always just assumed that it would be like it was, that he would beckon and Gunner would break his legs running to him.
“I said I’m out,” Gunner repeated, his voice very sure, though he could hear his heart throbbing painfully even in his words. He could only hope that he was the only one who could hear it. “I don’t do that shit anymore. How did you even find me? You should have let me go.”
Standing up to him was an interesting experience. There was terror, so much that Gunner was shaking a little, trembling with nerves. But it was also liberating. Something that he’d been carrying around, something very heavy, had been pulled away from him, and with it gone he felt almost like he could fly.
“I have my sources,” Chad commented, a slight smirk on his lips. He kept approaching, and Gunner’s heart pounded until he felt nauseated, until he was sure that it would burst right out of his chest. “Behind you.”
Gunner turned to look, and the greasy little man, Jeremy, his boss and the man who owned this bar, was standing right behind him. The asshole gave him a little bit of a smirk, and all of a sudden, Gunner understood everything.
Somewhere along the line, something had gone horribly wrong. How far up the chain it went, he wasn’t sure, but the contacts that he had been trusting so foolishly had, in fact, been leading him right here and had led Chad right to him. And he had idiotically just kept on feeding them information.
In short, his former boyfriend never ever would have been able to find him if he’d stayed with Sam. So really, he was an idiot, because if he had just come clean about his past, he could have probably lived there safely forever.
It all made some sort of terrible sense, but there wasn’t much time to think about it. Gunner whirled around at a movement in front of him, and then Chad was doing something which would have made Gunner weak at the knees once. He was pulling him into his arms and kissing him, using Gunner’s sexual desire to get what he wanted, the old familiar trick which had worked so well once.
And it might have worked still if Gunner didn’t have someone better who occupied his thoughts. Someone that he wanted more than he had ever wanted Chad. This man couldn’t compare to Sam, to his Sammy, who might be lost to him but who would never leave his thoughts. If Gunner ever allowed himself to love again, he knew that anyone he tried to be with would be held up against Sam’s example, and most likely found wanting.
As Gunner was kissed, as he was grabbing Chad by the shoulders and trying to push him away, several things happened all at once. The door opened, and a man, an achingly familiar man, walked in. Behind him were two cops, but a split second before all of that, Jeremy spoke.
“Hey, Chad, he’s got the pigs on his phone …”
