Page 51 of Touch of Innocence
“You know, I bet you could get a pardon for that, given the situation,” Isaac pointed out, looking around at all of them as though genuinely startled to find himself as the center of attention. “You served your time, right? I’d be happy to vouch for you if you need that.”
There was a long, long silence, and in it, Gunner felt his heart, which he’d patched together himself through many long miles on the road, many one-night stands, many benders, break into pieces. But this was a good sort of breaking, a part of the healing process, and Isaac’s words, and Ben’s easy acceptance, as well as Sam’s hand in his own, forged his scared, damaged heart and soul into something better, something stronger.
“You guys …” Gunner’s voice came out husky, and he cut himself off so that he could clear his throat and try to get himself back under control. “You guys don’t mind? You don’t want me to get out, to stay away from your family?”
Isaac shook his head, shooting a bemused look at Ben, as though he could barely believe what he was hearing. But his tone was gentle when he spoke to Gunner once more.
“Of course not. Everyone makes mistakes, and you paid for yours,” Isaac told him, and there was no hint of deception in Isaac’s eyes or anywhere on his face. Even as good as Gunner tended to be on picking up lies, he saw nothing, and he actually wasn’t even sure that Isaac knew how to lie.
“Besides, boy, what are you talking about, worrying that we might want you to stay away from our family?” Ben reached across the table and clapped his hand on Gunner’s shoulder, squeezing it with just the right amount of firmness. “Don’t you know that you are family?”
Whatever Gunner had expected, whatever absolution he had hoped to find by telling these men, he never ever could have expected that. He closed his eyes, trying to hide the wetness there, trying to trap it behind his eyelids, and yet he was somehow sure that they all knew what was going on.
Maybe that should have shamed him more, but it didn’t. How could he feel anything but euphoria? Not only did he somehow, against all the odds, have Sam back in his life, not only had they stopped messing around and admitted what they were to each other. But Gunner had gotten something that he had never even allowed himself to hope for, something that he had needed more than anything but had thought lost forever when his parents slammed the door on him forever.
He had a family, and not only that but a family who accepted him for who he had been in the past as well as for who he was now.
All of a sudden, just like winning the lottery or something, Gunner had everything. Everything he could ever want and his heart swelled as he pulled Sam to him, looking at Isaac and Ben and hoping that they somehow knew how much it meant to him.
And they met his eyes, and somehow, he knew that they did.
