CHAPTER 38 DEVASTATION
Cole perched on the edge of the ER bed, his body quaking with each breath as Devlin's fingers worked methodically around his ribcage, securing the bandages. Tears leaked from vacant eyes that stared at nothing.
“They’re not broken,” Devlin whispered, his touch feather-light against the purpling skin. “But some are cracked. So, you need to take it easy for a while. You and Gabe both.” His palm cradled the back of Cole's head, lips pressing briefly against his hairline. “Understand?”
The words floated past Cole, meaningless sounds in a vacuum.
The antiseptic smell, the fluorescent lights, Devlin's presence—all of it existed somewhere far away.
All he could see was Ezra's emaciated form curled in that splintered crate, skin mapped with wounds that told stories too horrific to comprehend.
All these years… he had him all these years… hurting him… breaking him…
The shakes consumed Cole like a seizure.
Devlin wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, the weight both comforting and suffocating.
He stroked Cole's face with a tenderness that threatened to shatter what little composure Cole had left. “It’s going to be okay,” Devlin murmured, voice thick with emotion.
“I’m so sorry for Ezra. But we’re going to get the best care for him, I promise.
” His eyes glistened with unshed tears as he pulled Cole against his chest, cradling him like something precious and broken.
“He’s safe now, and no one will ever hurt him again.
We won’t let that happen, not ever again. ”
Cole's throat constricted around the question, “Where... is he?” The sound barely escaped his lips, a ghost of his voice.
“The doctors are with him,” Devlin murmured into his hair.
“I want...” Cole's chin quivered, the muscles spasming beyond his control as a sob built in his chest like a gathering storm. “I want... to see him.”
“When they’re finished,” Devlin promised, his fingers threading through Cole's hair with such gentleness it burned. “They’re taking real good care of him.” He eased Cole's arms through the sleeves of a hospital gown. “Let me take you to Gabe. I had the nurse make up a bed for you in his room.”
Cole sagged against the bed, his body a hollow shell, each breath a knife between his ribs. Tears carved hot trails down his face, pooling at his chin before falling to darken his hospital gown. “Does… Does Gabe know…”
“About Ezra?” Devlin's voice was gentle, a lifeline Cole couldn't quite grasp.
Cole nodded, the simple movement sending a wave of dizziness through him.
“Yeah,” Devlin whispered, his voice a gentle anchor in Cole's drowning world.
“He's waiting for you. He's worried about you.” He took Cole's arm with a tenderness that threatened to unravel what little composure Cole had left.
“Come on, babe. I promise, I'll let you know as soon as you can see Ezra.”
Devlin called for a wheelchair. The squeak of its wheels against linoleum felt obscenely ordinary in a world that had shattered beyond repair.
Cole's legs trembled as Devlin helped him sit; the journey to the elevator passed in a fog of numbness, punctuated by stabs of memory.
Each floor number lit up like accusations as they ascended.
Minutes later, as they approached Gabe's room, Cole's heart hammered against his damaged ribs.
Dane sat on the bench outside the room, his face a canvas of concern that deepened when he caught sight of Cole's hollow eyes.
“Hey,” Dane murmured, squeezing Cole's forearm where the blood-stained bracelet wrapped his wrist—the crimson flakes a stark reminder of everything that had been lost and found in one devastating day.
When Devlin tried to put it in the bag with the rest of his personal items, Cole's fingers had curled around it with the desperate strength of a drowning man clutching a lifeline.
Dane sank next to the wheelchair, his eyes swimming with a mixture of heartbreak and fierce protectiveness.
“How you doing, babe?” He ran his fingers through Cole's hair, each gentle stroke carrying the weight of unspoken grief.
“Things are going to get better for Ezra now,” he said, his words heavy with a promise that felt both impossible and essential.
“And we're all going to be there for him.”
Cole turned slow eyes to Dane, tears sliding down his hollow cheeks like silent prayers, his gaze haunted by ghosts only he could see.
“He's a part of you… He's a part of us,” Dane whispered, his voice thick with devotion. “You know that's how it works in this family. Don't think it will be any different this time.”
“Thank you,” Cole whispered, the words barely audible, as if gratitude was all he could salvage from the wreckage of his heart.
“No need to thank me, love,” Dane murmured, pressing his forehead against Cole's, sharing breath and sorrow. “Family is everything.” He kissed Cole lightly on the lips, a seal of his vow, then stood with reluctance etched in every line of his body.
Cole raised his watery eyes, the weight of them almost too much to bear. “Angel...?” The name trembled on his lips.
“He's better. He'll be okay. Abel, too,” Dane added, glancing at Devlin, a flicker of relief passing between them like a fragile thread of hope.
“Everyone is home. We can start to heal.” He bent down and kissed Cole on the head, his lips lingering against Cole's fevered skin as if trying to transfer strength through the contact. “Including Ezra.”
Cole nodded slowly, each small movement sending ripples of pain through his chest that had nothing to do with his cracked ribs.
The emptiness inside him yawned wider, a cavernous void.
His heart felt both leaden and paper-thin, ready to collapse under the weight of what he now knew.
Byrne's words slithered through his mind, venomous and inescapable, each repetition cutting deeper than the last: For years, I raped him and tortured him… until he finally went insane.
Gabe scooted up in bed when the door opened, and Devlin wheeled Cole into the room.
The vacant devastation etched across Cole's face made Gabe's chest constrict until he could barely breathe.
Tears clung to Cole's lashes, his eyes unfocused—looking through the world rather than at it.
A tremor of grief rippled through Gabe, a sympathetic agony that threatened to drown him.
Finding Ezra that way... the horror Cole must have felt discovering someone he loved reduced to such a broken state was beyond comprehension, a pain so vast it seemed to have hollowed him from the inside out.
“Cole?” Gabe's voice cracked with tenderness, each syllable weighted with a desperate need to reach through the fog of devastation surrounding the man he loved. “Babe?”
Cole raised bloodshot eyes, heavily rimmed in red, his gaze hollow and distant—a window into a soul drowning in grief too vast to comprehend. His silence spoke volumes of a pain beyond words.
“Put him to bed,” Gabe quietly told Devlin, his own heart splintering at the sight of Cole's brokenness. “I’ll take it from here.”
Devlin nodded, his throat tight with unshed tears as he carefully helped Cole into bed.
He tucked the blanket around Cole's waist with trembling fingers, then pressed his lips to Cole's cheek, lingering there as if trying to transfer warmth into Cole's chilled skin.
“Try to rest, babe,” he whispered, his voice thick with a helplessness that threatened to overwhelm him.
“I'll let you know when you can visit Ezra.” Devlin stepped over to Gabe's bed, dropping his voice to a raw whisper.
“Take care of him; he's... I've never seen him this broken.”
“I will,” Gabe promised, the words a solemn vow that resonated through his entire being.
“Do you need anything?” Devlin asked, his voice heavy with the weight of everything they couldn't fix.
Gabe kissed him, a weary smile dusting his face, eyes filled with a gratitude that transcended their exhaustion. “That'll do for now.”
Devlin returned his smile, the simple gesture an island of warmth in an ocean of heartache. “For me, too.” He parked the wheelchair in the corner and left the room, his shoulders sagging under invisible burdens.
In the other bed, Cole lay still and quiet, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as tears leaked down his temples, each one carrying a fragment of his shattered heart.
The hollow emptiness in his gaze spoke of a grief so profound it had become physical.
“Cole? Babe?” Gabe murmured, his voice a gentle bridge trying to span the chasm of Cole's despair.
“You can talk to me, baby. You don't have to go through this alone.”
Cole stared at the ceiling, unresponsive, his eyes vacant pools reflecting nothing but inner devastation.
The only movement was the slow, repetitive working of his fingers against the leather bracelet—a desperate, unconscious ritual, as if each touch might resurrect the past from ashes.
A hollowness radiated from him, making Gabe's chest ache with helplessness.
Dane had relayed to Gabe the stories Cole had told him about Ezra, each word like a knife twisting in Gabe's heart—and the horrific things Cole's father had forced upon him, leaving wounds too deep to fathom.
The bracelet's history—a talisman of both love and torment—had come to Gabe secondhand, through Dane's gentle, pained recounting.
Cole had shared so little—only his real name, his father's identity, and fragments of unspeakable trauma—but never Ezra.
That sacred wound he'd kept hidden, protected even from Gabe's love. What he knew of Ezra, he’d learned from Dane.
Was Ezra's memory so precious, so intimate, that Cole couldn't bear to share him?
Or was the pain so fused with love that speaking of it might shatter what little remained of Cole's fractured soul?
Gabe ached with the need to gather those broken pieces, to create a safe harbor where Cole could finally release the tsunami of grief that threatened to drown him from within.
“Cole...” Gabe said softly, his voice a tender lifeline thrown across the chasm of grief between them.
“Tell me... about Ezra. If you loved him so much, he had to be an amazing person.” He attempted a smile that trembled at the edges, fragile as blown glass.
“That's why you love me, right? Because I'm awesome?” The joke fell into the silence like a stone into still water, and Gabe's heart constricted.
“Sorry. I was just...” His voice caught on the jagged edges of his own inadequacy. “Sorry.”
Cole's throat worked, the muscles contracting around words that seemed to cost him physically. “You are,” he whispered, each syllable carrying the weight of devotion that even devastation couldn't diminish. “Awesome.”
Gabe looked at him, his blue eyes brimming with tears that magnified the raw, desperate love shining through.
His heart cracked open, pouring everything he couldn't say into his gaze.
“So are you. You're the most awesome thing to ever come into my life. Even before we knew we loved each other… you were still the best part of my life.” His voice broke on the last words, thick with a devotion that transcended their current pain. “You always will be.”
Cole's face crumpled like a discarded love letter, each line deepening with self-loathing as he whispered, his voice raw and threadbare, “I'm poison. His blood...” His throat constricted as though the words themselves were choking him.
“It makes me poison to... to everyone I love.” His chin trembled, the slight movement betraying the earthquake of grief beneath.
“All of this...” Each word seemed to tear something vital inside him. “...happened because of me.”
“It happened because of him ,” Gabe said, his voice rising a notch with a fierce protectiveness that made his chest burn.
His hands trembled with barely contained rage—not at Cole, never at Cole—but at the monsters who had shaped his lover's perception of himself.
“Because of them . They chose to be monsters.” His throat tightened around the words, each one carrying the weight of his desperation to make Cole believe.
“ Fuck your bloodline—you are who you choose to be.” He leaned forward, eyes glistening with tears he refused to let fall, needing to be strong when Cole couldn't. “And you made that choice a long time ago.” His voice softened, breaking on the edges of his love.
“None of this—not Abel, the kids, me... or Ezra—is your fucking fault, Cole.” The last words emerged as a plea, raw and aching.
“Do you think any of us blame you? Do you think Ezra ever blamed you for what that psychopath did to him? Do you, babe?”
Cole closed his eyes as more tears leaked through his lashes, each one carrying a weight of shame he'd been bearing for years.
“It doesn't matter if he blames me,” Cole's voice cracked.
“Or you blame me.” He swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet room, his Adam's apple bobbing with the effort of containing a sob.
“It happened because of me. That's just... reality.”
“No,” Gabe murmured, his heart constricting at the sight of Cole's self-flagellation.
“That's the reality they want you to believe.” His hands flexed, fingers trembling with the need to touch, to heal.
“The truth is, you never had a say in the things they did... or the things they made you do. How can you be at fault for things you had no control over?” His voice rose slightly; a desperate plea wrapped in reason. “It's illogical.”
Cole sniffed, the sound raw and childlike in its vulnerability. “If it were you,” he whispered, his eyes opening to reveal pools of anguish so deep Gabe felt himself drowning in them. “If it were you... in my place... you wouldn't feel any guilt?”
“I would,” Gabe admitted, his shoulders sagging with the weight of his honesty. “But I would be wrong.”
“It doesn't matter...” Cole's words came out in fractured syllables. “...if it's right or wrong. You feel what you feel, and...” His chest heaved with a suppressed sob. “...and when the people you love get hurt...” His fingers clutched at the blanket. “...nothing can make that feeling go away.”