Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
GABE
I was pacing my living room when Marco showed up at my house. I let out a sigh of relief when my friend walked into the house. “Thanks for coming over.”
“No problem,” he replied. “What’s going on?”
I gestured for him to follow me to the kitchen, where I grabbed two beers from the fridge.
Marco raised a brow. “Day drinking?”
I scowled at him. “Shut it.” I set a bottle in front of him. “You’ve never complained before.”
“You never called me sounding like your dog died before,” he retorted.
I rolled my eyes. “I did not sound like that.”
He took a swig of his beer. “Uh-huh. So what’s the emergency?”
I sat on one of the barstools at the kitchen island and sighed. “It’s not an emergency, per se.”
“Then what is it, exactly?” He pinned me with a glare because he knew I was stalling.
“Okay.” I blew out a breath. “You know what happened at the party on New Year’s Eve, right?”
“Yeah. You and Nico finally got your heads out of your asses. Why? Did something else happen?”
I waggled my hand. “Kind of yes and kind of no.”
“Gabriel Thomas Warner,” he growled. “If you don’t get to the point, I’m going to call you Gabriel for the next month.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “All right. All right. Jesus, you don’t have to be mean about it.”
“Get to the point then.”
“I got us a room at the hotel. Nico was on board with taking things further, so we got mostly naked and started making out.” I bit my lip and rubbed the back of my neck. “You were right that something bad happened to him in prison. He told me about it a few weeks ago. And I swear I didn’t push. I kept asking if everything was okay.” I trailed off.
“But something went wrong,” Marco prompted.
I swallowed hard. To my surprise, I found myself getting emotional. My voice was hoarse when I replied, “Yeah. I got lost in the moment. I went too far without checking in first.” My eyes were burning, so I squeezed them shut. “He froze. He dissociated or had a flashback, I’m not sure which.” A tear slipped down my cheek, and I quickly wiped it away. “I did that. I made things worse for him.”
Marco put his hand over mine. “What did you do next?”
I blinked away more tears. “I had to bring him back. He didn’t know who I was at first. And then he was upset and blamed himself.”
“I assume you didn’t let him continue that line of thought,” he said.
“Of course not. I told him it wasn’t his fault. I got him to calm down, and we went to sleep.”
Marco checked his smartwatch. “That was a week ago. What set you off today?”
“I gave him Teresa’s contact information, and he went to see her today. He’s there now.”
He looked confused. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
I ground my teeth in frustration. “It is, except I feel like I pushed him into it. He didn’t want to see a therapist because he’d had a bad experience with one in prison. After what happened on New Year’s Eve, I think he felt like he had no choice.”
Marco shook his head. “Damn. Your family really worked you over with the guilt trip thing.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Do you seriously think Nico Galanis is the kind of man to let himself be forced into doing something he doesn’t want to do?”
“He might feel like he has to do it to make someone else happy,” I countered.
Marco shook his head. “Come on. Do you really think he walked blindly into Teresa’s office to make you happy?”
My shoulders slumped. “Well, no. I think he read four or five books on trauma and PTSD before calling her for an appointment.”
He raised his brows. “Oh, so you think maybe he knew what he was getting into?”
My lips twitched. “You’re an asshole.”
“And this is a surprise how?” He came around to my side of the kitchen island and opened his arms. “Come on. You need a hug.”
Marco enveloped me in his big arms, and I relaxed for the first time all day. “Thanks,” I said with a sigh.
“Any time.” He picked up his beer. “Let’s finish these and go get some lunch.”
“Sounds good to me.”
He put his arm around my shoulders. “And while we’re out, we’ll talk about how you have completely glossed over the fact that you were one hundred percent prepared to kill Russell Smith execution style that same night.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Dammit.”
Marco raised a brow. “It’s cute you think I forgot about it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. “I got nothing.”
Marco’s brow creased in a deep frown. “You need to work through that shit, Gabe. If you can’t put a lid on that, I can’t risk using you around civilians. You know that.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll call Teresa to make an appointment today.”