25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
A fter I shot every last bit of brain matter out of my cock, Gunnar and I both went back to sleep until much, much later in the day. When we wake up again, things feel less awkward between us. Not not awkward, but better.
On the upside, after all Gunnar’s mandatory food, water, rest in a bed and subsequent orgasms, I only have the barest hint of a hangover. Even though I was a dumbass and inhaled more vodka than my body knew what to do with yesterday. Gunnar gives me shit about this, of course, and asks to trade metabolisms.
He makes a lot of self-deprecating jokes about how old he is, which I low-key kind of hate. He’s not old. He’s probably felt old his entire life, after what he went through with his family. I know exactly how that feels. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of myself as young or innocent. At least not since I was literally a toddler.
That kind of emotional burden wears on you. It’s another reason I think he and I belong together, because we both get it. But sometimes I worry he’s one penny drop away from having some insane crisis of conscience and breaking it off entirely.
These are the thoughts consuming me as we both move quietly around the apartment and get ready for the day. They’re so distracting that it isn’t until I’m standing there—dressed in Gunnar’s oldest and smallest gym clothes and looking ridiculous; but clean and about as presentable as I get—that I realize I have nowhere to fucking go.
It hits me like a gunshot.
I’m just… here? I just exist?
What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Even though Eamon is still out there, he knows where I am now, so I don’t have to put energy into hiding like I did before. I should focus on how to stay safe from him, but that still feels impossible, so I push it to the side for now.
I think technically this is supposed to be my ‘happily ever after’ or whatever. Or as close as I’m going to get to one. But all I feel is all-consuming stress and fear with no solutions, and no ability to focus long enough to find solutions. I’d give anything for someone to point me in any fucking direction other than standing here like I’m waiting to be snatched again.
TV did not prepare me for this part. This gaping, empty vastness stretching out in front of me where I’m somehow supposed to build a new life from nothing. If I had the tools to do that, I would never have ended up with Eamon in the first place.
“Tobias?”
Gunnar’s voice cuts through the fog in my head like always, deep and mellifluous, anchoring me to reality.
“Yeah?”
“What’s wrong? You’ve been staring into space for minutes.”
He moves to stand in front of me, tilting his head down, his eyes dark except for that one bright blue segment, but concern etched on every inch of his face. As per usual, when I’m around.
I try to dig deep and find the words to express what suddenly stopped me in my tracks.
“I uh, I realized I don’t have anywhere to go, I guess. Maybe ever? Does that make sense? Like… what the fuck do I do now? Am I hiding up here for the rest of my life in case Eamon comes back? Am I trusting the fuckwit cops to find him? Am I trying to get a job, or what? Who tells me what to do now?”
Gunnar scrunches his face up in a way that would have made me look like a little kid, but he still manages to make dignified. Elegant, beardy asshole.
“I think you take it one step at a time. No one can tell you what to do, so you just figure it out, little by little, and let the people around you help. There’s nothing else you can do.” He takes both my hands in his, enveloping me in his warmth. “If you want my vote, though, I don’t think hiding up here forever is a good idea. I want to keep you safe in case Eamon comes back more than anyone, but I’m worried about you sitting up here in the dark all day. Why don’t you at least come hang out with me downstairs today, and we’ll take it from there?”
I turn the concept over in my mind, and in the end, I nod. I’m chewing on my lip, because the idea of being out in the open, even inside the Feral Possum, still makes me nervous. But the thought of spending another day trapped up here with nothing but my own thoughts for company makes me even more nervous.
More than anything, I want to see Lola. Gunnar has been keeping tabs on her via Tristan, and she’s okay but still in the hospital. I need to see her. I miss her more than I realized I was capable of missing another human. But no matter how much bravado I’m trying to throw down in front of Gunnar, just imagining walking into that hospital right now makes me break out in a cold sweat.
Maybe sitting in the bar all day is a compromise. Like a step in the right direction.
“Okay,” I say, before a thought suddenly occurs to me. “But if you spend the whole time babysitting me and trying to snatch alcohol out of my hands, I’m going to scream.”
Gunnar’s face twists. “Tobias…”
“No,” I interrupt. I don’t even know if I want a drink right now, but I can already picture him neglecting his job to obsessively monitor me, and it makes me itch. “I can’t do the whole controlling thing again. I know you’re trying to look out for me instead of trying to make me submit to you, or whatever, but I still can’t do it. If I have to spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells, wondering if what I’m doing is pissing you off or if I’m about to have a drink yanked out of my hand, I think I’ll genuinely fucking lose it. Not with you. Please don’t turn this into that.”
This time, Gunnar looks like I slapped him. His face is pale and his eyes are wide, while he’s loosened his grip on my hands so much they would drop away from his touch if I didn’t hold them there.
He opens his mouth a few times like he’s about to speak, but no words come out. Finally, once he’s churned through his thoughts for a while, he answers me.
“I’m sorry. I never want you to feel afraid of me. Even if it’s just afraid of disappointing me. I want to take care of you so fucking much, I forget sometimes how far it pushes me. I can’t… I’ll stop. I promise.”
I snort. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Just try. I have to make my own choices, for better or worse, remember? Otherwise, I’m just trading a shitty cage for a nicer one. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick, but this is important to me.”
My voice wavers a little, because I realize as the words are exiting my mouth how important it actually is to me. And just how insane it is that I went from thinking it to vocalizing it all at once, and he’s actually fucking listening to me.
I’ll never get used to this, I think.
“I’ll try,” he says in the end, still looking unconvinced. “I’m worried about you, though. I don’t like the drinking.”
At least we’re being honest now.
“I don’t have a drinking problem!” The words are out of my mouth on instinct, something I’ve thought a thousand times before. “I have a life problem. And a personality problem. And an Eamon problem. Sometimes it gets too much, and booze helps quiet it, is all.”
He sighs, like my individual words have weighed down his chest, one by one.
“That’s how it starts for a lot of people, Tobias. I see it every day at the bar, and I almost became it myself, after my dad died. I know how easy it is to let everything get fuzzy until you’re relying on the easiest, most convenient crutches instead of fixing your problems.” I must be making a face, because Gunnar studies me for a second and then pulls me into a hug, kissing the top of my head before he continues. “I saw how you drank before, sometimes. Remember? I’m just worried. And you said your dad was an alcoholic, which makes me more worried, because there’s a genetic factor to these things.”
I pull back. “No, I said he was a drunk and a piece of shit, just like his dad. Oh, and a racist. I don’t think we really have a lot in common.”
I didn’t mean to get defensive, but something about Gunnar’s words is hitting too close to parts of me that are too raw, and I want this conversation to be over.
“True,” he says, bringing his hands to my face and sweeping his thumbs over my cheekbones, the way he always does when he seems to think I’m about to disappear. “You’re nothing like him. And I’m not saying you have to seal yourself away in a box and never look at alcohol again. I stopped drinking too much when I dealt with my issues instead of hiding from them. For some people, that works. For others, there’s never going to be an option other than all or nothing. You can only figure that out if you admit there’s something to be concerned about and tackle it.”
He takes in a deep breath, studying me while he picks his next words carefully.
“How about this? We agree that I’m never going to stop worrying about you, because it’s futile. And I’ll tell you when I’m worried. But I will never try to take away your choices. Even if you’re making bad ones.” He pauses for a second, looking pensive. “Unless it’s life or death. I’m not making any promises, then. But generally speaking, I won’t interfere with your choices, as long as you let me be here for you when things go sideways.”
“I feel like you’re getting the raw end of that deal,” I mutter, because it’s true.
Gunnar smiles at me, utterly beatific and looking like all his cares are about to melt away. “Yeah, but I get you. Any deal is worth that, in the end.”
I can only hold eye contact with him for a few seconds, because the intensity of whatever feelings are crawling and swelling inside me is too much to bear. I look down, gathering my thoughts before I look back up.
“You’re my choice, you know,” I say in a quiet voice. “Don’t forget that. I might make some shitty choices, but I’m choosing you. Not because you’re convenient or because I feel like I owe you. You could offer me a thousand and one other options, and I’d choose you every time. I think you might be the only good choice I’ve ever made.”
Gunnar’s smile turns into a grin before he leans in to kiss me. I open myself up to him, going soft in his grip as he lazily tongue-fucks me until we both forget what we were fighting about.
Downstairs, I do my best to quell my nerves, but it’s not easy. Even before the doors open and the customers come in, I’m on edge. My senses are hard-wired for the maximum amount of alertness that my body is capable of. Not that it’s ever stopped a threat, but it leaves me better prepared if I know what’s coming.
Now I’m jumping at every noise that stands out against the general din, as well as constantly subconsciously searching for sounds and smells that would tip me off if Eamon were here.
I think I see his face in the shadows about a dozen times before I finally call it and get a drink. I don’t care that Gunnar is frowning at me from across the room. He should be proud of the restraint I’m showing by asking Kasia to pour me a beer and then sitting on my stool to drink it like any other customer—albeit not a paying one—instead of crawling behind the bar, folding myself into the smallest possible space I can find and chugging warm vodka from the bottle.
No one tries to talk to me, at least. I’m sure there’s been more than a little gossip about me floating around, but my association with the Banna—however theoretical, at this point—makes most people steer clear. Which I’m grateful for, but it reminds me that I have yet another hole to dig myself out of that I hadn’t considered yet.
Have the Banna even noticed I’m gone? I know Patrick thought I was a degenerate from day one, and mostly seemed to keep me around as some kind of distraction or reward for Eamon. At the time, I told myself it didn’t matter if they respected me. It’s not like I was trying to make a career in the mafia or something. I just needed the money.
I never had a plan beyond that. If someone had asked me at the time, I would have said I’ll deal with the future when it happens. In retrospect, I think there wasn’t any part of me that believed I would live long enough for it to matter. I was racing against the clock. All I wanted was to make enough money to keep Lola alive before someone—anyone—finally rubbed me out of existence.
Now this impossible, ineffable future that I never thought I’d have is here. Kind of. Assuming Eamon doesn’t come back to rip it all away again.
And I have no fucking clue if I’m supposed to be making new plans, or still waiting around for the inevitable.
These thoughts lead me to a second beer, and then a third. After that though, I switch to water. Because while the alcohol has produced a glorious fuzziness that’s dulling the sharp edges of all my issues, there’s something else that is even more appealing to me right now.
Gunnar. I know he won’t want to fool around if he thinks I’m drunk, but there’s still hours before close and I’ll sacrifice having a panic attack in the bathroom if it means I can spend the rest of the night losing myself in him upstairs.
I don’t want to think about the future. He’s the only part of my future that seems real, and I want to hang on to it.
Fucking him last night was weird. It’s not something I even thought I’d do, and it felt a little discordant with what my body wanted to do. But I was so overwhelmed by the need to touch and be touched, I would have taken it in any form.
I just need to get all that old shit off me. It’s invisible, I know. It’s not even real, it’s more of a mental layer of stickiness that I perceive all over my skin. But no matter how unreal it is, I can still feel it. Every time Gunnar and I touch each other, a little more of that toxic substance burns away. I think I can sweat it all off if I try hard enough.
I don’t want to think or heal or make healthy choices or whatever else Gunnar is contemplating with those big sad eyes of his. I want to fuck until I can’t remember my own name, let alone anyone who ever touched me before him or what they might have done.
The logical part of my mind knows this won’t really work. All that shit will still be there. But I’m not in the mood to listen to logic right now, and the three beers have given me warm cheeks, a twitchy energy, and just enough confidence to tell logical-me to go fuck himself.
I’m on my third glass of water—which makes me neutral or something in terms of alcohol, surely—when Sav wanders over. I’ve barely seen him since I’ve been back, and Gunnar says he’s been MIA without explanation for a lot of the week, but he’s been too distracted to ask. He’s sporting a lot of fresh and newly fading bruises that I don’t ask about out of politeness.
We come from the same world. He’s just much higher up the food chain. Or he was, or something. I’m still not totally clear about what he’s doing working here instead of there, and I don’t want to ask.
“Tobias,” he says, nodding his head.
He’s a man of few words. It makes him seem mysterious, mostly because he’s ripped and covered head to toe in tattoos, but the more I get to know him, the more I suspect he’s legitimately just shy.
“Sav,” I say, for lack of any other words coming into my head.
“You doing okay?”
He stares me down, and I can’t tell if he’s asking me if I need another drink or if I’ve recovered from my violent vacation. Or maybe both.
“I’m fine. Are you okay?” I eye the bruises.
Sav shrugs. “You seem jumpy. Are you worried fuck-face is going to come in? Or is this about my father?”
I freeze, and I swear my whole-ass jaw drops.
“What? Patrick is your father?”
I haven’t had the opportunity to spend a lot of my life gossiping in my life, but this must be what it feels like. I swear it’s like a curtain got pulled. They kind of look similar, I guess. Although most of the Banna look like generic, mean, tattooed, white guys. They all run together, after a point.
“How the fuck did I not know this?”
Sav winces, then shrugs, although he looks a little embarrassed. “You’ve been busy.”
I whip my head from side to side, trying to process the greater implications of this information while checking no one’s actively eavesdropping on us. I catch sight of Gunnar pretending not to be watching me and doing a terrible job of it, and when I wink at him to let him know he’s been caught, he at least has the decency to blush.
Watching a man that’s all that… man go all pink-cheeked and embarrassed when I wink at him is swiftly rising to the top of my ‘hottest things in the universe’ chart.
Then I turn my attention back to Sav.
“So, if Patrick—lord high dipshit of the Banna—” dear god it feels good to talk shit about him, even if it could still get me killed, I’m so very fucking past caring, “—is your father, then why aren’t you sitting on a gilded throne or some shit? Shouldn’t you be supervising all the high-end deals and, I don’t know, snorting coke off the biker bunnies’ tits? That’s what those assholes are all gunning for, as far as I can tell. Every one of them I’ve had more than a ten-second conversation with seems to fully embrace the cliché.”
Sav is staring at me like I’ve lost it, but I’m buzzing with adrenaline now. My nerves from before have burned away for some reason, and I feel like I’m ten feet tall.
Fuck these guys. If the crown prince of the redneck mafia can be over here washing dishes for a living, doesn’t that mean one lowly little thief that they never even liked can slip off into the night?
Or maybe I’m so burned out on being afraid of everything I just hit max capacity like a brick wall, and now my brain is swinging wildly in the other direction.
Fuck everything. Maybe I’ll just be happy from now on. Who cares if they kill me?
Sav clears his throat before he speaks, because my thoughts have obviously drifted again.
“I didn’t want to do it anymore,” he says. “It’s not supposed to be something you can leave, but some things are worth trying, at least.”
His somber tone ratchets down my high a little bit. I feel stupid for getting so worked up over nothing, and that little adrenaline buzz, along with the brief, artificial euphoria it brought with it, flees my body and leaves a black hole of nothing behind it.
I nod, because I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.
Sav turns to go back to work, but I stop him.
“Do you think he’ll come for me? Your father? Or will he let me go, because he never wanted someone like me there in the first place?”
The look he gives me in return is so confusing, I couldn’t begin to guess what he means by it. He looks pained. Almost guilty. But also like he has something to say that he’s not saying.
I sit there quietly, waiting for the words to come, but he doesn’t answer my question. He looks at me for a few more seconds before turning away, leaving me with more questions than I had in the first place.
Whatever that means for my future, it can’t be good. Sav has to know something he’s not telling me. Otherwise, there would be no reason for him to stay quiet.
My brain gets sluggish at the thought. I’ve vacillated between some form of scared, angry, and over-excited too many times today, and I already feel worn-out. All I want to do is count down the minutes until the shift is over and I can replace all these feelings with Gunnar.