Chapter 19 Galen
Galen
I’m the biggest fecking eejit that’s ever fecking lived. I know this before Logan tells me. He knows it without me telling him what’s got me tripping over my bottom lip. But that certainty, it doesn’t mean anything. I could have all the doubt in the world and it would still be fecking true.
“You need to get out more,” Logan informs me from sunny Devon. It’s not sunny, but imagining it is lets me resent him even more for his sage instincts. “I swear, you only leave the house to get laid these days.”
“Aye, well. Maybe I’ve got nowhere to go now my buddy’s fecked off down south, eh? No one to cook me eleven sausages and take me down the pub. Ever think about that?”
“All the time,” Logan says, and he means it. My pal, he’s a serious fella. Severe, if you don’t know him. “I miss you too, we all do.”
“Never said I missed you.”
“Heard you all the same, though.”
Course he did. That’s why he’s my friend.
And he’s right—about all of it. I do miss him, and I do need to get out more.
Meet new people. Find a new hobby that isn’t fucking strangers and convincing myself I love my stupid life.
But the thought of doing anything beyond sulking into my tea mug makes my chest ache with longing, and I feel like I deserve the pain.
You left him.
Sab.
Worse than that, I walked out without telling him it wasn’t his fault, and I hate knowing he’ll think it is.
Because someone else hurt him first.
Goddammit. I heave a sigh and scrub a hand down my face, aware of Logan’s parental stare absorbing it all as I spiral into the memory I can’t block out, no matter how hard I try. And trust me, I’ve tried. I have the hangover to prove it.
Sab’s wide-eyed confusion as I pushed him away.
His shuttered face as I walked out on him.
The sound of his front door closing, even though I was halfway home by then.
I haven’t laid eyes on him since. I’ve worked a lot, and when I’ve been home, I’ve kept the blinds shut and done nothing more than drink whiskey and sleep.
Haven’t seen him online either, but that’s because I haven’t looked.
Haven’t been on FlingIt or any other app.
I’m dead inside, save for missing Sab like I’ve lost a limb, and I don’t know what the feck to do with myself.
“Seriously.” Logan tries again. “Are you okay? Sonny said you shouted at an old lady in the street.”
“Sonny’s a grass,” I retort, glancing over my shoulder for my new wingman who isn’t all that new anymore. “And for your information, I did not shout, when I should’ve done considering how many extension plugs the old gal had piled on top of each other. Fecking death trap.”
Logan grunts, a chesty rumble that comes from deep within him and sounds like a literal bear. I sigh again and wonder how long I have to talk to him before I can palm him off on someone else. It’s not just me—everyone misses Logan around here. That’s why I called him in the first place.
As it happens, though, he gets bored of my bullshit before I can pass my phone along.
He calls me a daft twat and hangs up on me, and he’s right enough about that too that I don’t leave him an outraged voicemail.
Instead, I wander over to the station Christmas tree and run a critical eye over the decorations.
Someone’s tidied it. It’s still fecking awful, but not awful enough. Does no one follow traditions anymore?
I mess it up.
Then trudge myself to the dorm. It’s by the appliance bay so we can roll out of bed and onto the engine within seconds of a call coming in. Rapid response. But I already know tonight’s shift is going to be a quiet one, I can feel it in the air, and I hate that too.
Still, it’s not a bad thing to find the dorm empty, everyone else either gossiping in the gym or dozing in front of the telly.
My favourite recliner is at the back of the room, where the beds used to be before some desk-based knobhead decided we didn’t need them.
It’s the same one Logan used to sleep on, and I like it better than the one I used before he left.
Before I got my lungs smoked out, when sleeping came easier to me.
I make myself comfortable and stare at the ceiling, resisting the call of my phone.
Any other night I’d be on FlingIt by now, waiting for Sab to come online, knowing it was fifty-fifty if he’d show, if he’d stay long enough to talk.
Tonight, though, like every night since I saw him last—since you left him—I just…
can’t. And that ache in my chest hurts worse than any lung burns ever have.
You’re a fecking eejit.
Again, I know it’s true. But what am I supposed to do? Watch him fuck other people when it makes me feel like clawing my damn eyes out?
You could tell him. Ever thought about that?
Tell him what, though? That the idea of him exploring his sexuality with anyone but me is like pouring acid in my veins and I’m too dense to figure out why? Even though I fecking know those quiet moments I’ve spent with him and Esme are the most content I’ve been in years?
Christ. I need Logan back, so he can thump some sense into me instead of sighing through a phone screen.
I need him to make me understand why a grown man who’s been loved his whole damn life, albeit by a clan that skirts around emotions, doesn’t know how to give it back.
How I’ve circled myself into this corner of meaningless hookups, swinging from one body to the other without catching a single feeling until him.
Until Sab.
The heating in the station comes on, old pipes clanking until they settle and I’m alone in the dark with the low hiss of the radiators. Alone with the knowledge I need to name the ache in my chest or bury it, but too feckwitted to do anything about it while I consider calling Logan back.
A little while later, the rest of the watch filters in to get some sleep, no one daring to utter the cursed words we all fear.
Quiet, innit?
Because it is, and it stays that way all night long, and yet somehow I’m more tired than ever when I drive home the next morning under skies still stained by endless winter gloom. Past houses with their Christmas lights still on from the night before.
I don’t advise that, folks. Just for the record.
But after long hours staring at the ceiling, it’s kinda nice to see, until the sparkly trees make me think of Sab and Esme, and I realise the glow from the flamboyant willow in their back garden is the first thing I look for as I trudge through my house to the kitchen.
Can’t see it, obviously. Blinds are still shut from my whiskey-fuelled sulking, and I lack the emotional energy to rectify it.
Yet I find myself reaching for the cord anyway and cracking it open enough for the first strains of dull morning light to filter through, a grey haze that does nothing for my mood.
Sab’s tree isn’t on, his house and garden as dark and lifeless as mine, and it bothers me for the same reasons everything else is bothering me right now.
You care about him.
Ever considered that maybe you might love him?
I should consider it. Sober and rested, when I have a better chance of making sense of the jumbled mess of feelings I’ve become since I caught that handsome bastard cruising a dodgy app in his car.
He’s not a bastard. He’s the nicest bloke you’ve ever met.
Another truth that sits like lead in my gut, and I’m a bloke lucky enough to call Logan Halliwell my best friend.
I leave the blind open and back up from the window, dragging myself upstairs and to my bed, wishing I had the excuse of a heavy night for the weight in my limbs. In my cracked brain, when my bewildered heart already knows all the answers.
My mattress on the floor has never been less inviting.
I kid myself the sheets still smell of Sab, but I’ve washed them since he was last here, I’m an eejit, not an animal.
An eejit who falls face-first onto my pillow and forces myself into a sleep I’m convinced won’t last. That I’ll be wide awake ten minutes later to play chicken with my phone again.
It’s still dark when I wake up. Takes me a minute to figure out it’s dark again and I’ve slept the whole day, a boneheaded thing to do ahead of the last rest days I have before I work most of Christmas.
My phone is a devil under my pillow. I reach for it like a smoker reaching for a cig, thumbs halfway to hell before I catch myself and drop the damn thing as if it’s made of molten lava.
Eat.
Drink, maybe, if I can trust myself not to sink the whole bottle in my best impression of my uncle Seamus.
Easy. You haven’t drunk that much.
And I wasn’t lying when I told Sab I’m not much of a drinker, but this last week…Christ. It’s a lot for me.
I haul myself out of bed and go downstairs to face the depressing contents of my fridge. The bare shelves are a world away from how my ma’s probably look right now, and I miss my people as much as I miss Sab. Eat a Rustlers burger in front of Eastenders and fecking hate myself.
Then I’m restless in ways that usually have me firing out DMs and texts, searching for an open bed for the night.
Offering up my couch. My phone’s still upstairs.
I don’t even think about fetching it. Instead I ruminate over the fact I haven’t fucked anyone since I met Sab and I can’t imagine that ever changing.
Because you love him.
Feck.
Feck.
A desperate groan escapes me. I need out of this house before I stick my head in the oven.
Go to the gym.
But without Sab, working out holds little appeal either, and I stamp into my shoes and steam out of my house with no destination in mind. I walk. Leaving my car on the driveway, and trekking down the street in the opposite direction of the alley leading to Cosmic Avenue.