Chapter 10
“So you just . . . stayed . . .” Ren gaped at Gabriel as he poured coffee into his travel mug.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “Is that a problem?”
“Well, yeah,” Ren said as he grabbed his favorite jean jacket from the chair by the door. “I thought you were trying to follow the hookup guidelines I gave you.”
“It was his idea,” Gabriel said, rolling his eyes. “Not even mine.”
Technically, of course, Sean hadn’t suggested outright that he stay the night, but he’d kept him from leaving, and he’d hardly kicked him out of bed when he’d fallen asleep in it.
“You are playing with fire,” Ren muttered darkly. “And it might not turn out very well.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gabriel said, taking a big gulp of coffee. Except he totally did.
Usually he slept like crap in beds that weren’t his own, but cuddled up next to Sean? He’d slept like a goddamned baby, and he wasn’t stupid enough to deny why that was.
He had real feelings for Sean. Real, deepening feelings. Sometimes he still wanted to smack him, sometimes he still made him halfway to crazy with his deliberate obtuseness or his stubbornness, but the truth was, when it came down to it, none of that mattered.
He might even love him.
“Yes, you do,” Ren said as he closed and locked the door behind them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. And it’s going to end up in a huge fucking mess. You thought the meatball missile was bad? The war to come is gonna make that look like child’s play.”
“That’s your opinion,” Gabriel said as they took the stairs down to the ground floor.
“No,” Ren said, “that’s my experience.”
“It’s . . . he’s a little screwed up about relationships,” Gabe said. He pushed open the front door to their building. It was a gorgeous morning. A fucking amazing morning, no matter how much crap Ren kept giving him.
“No, he told you that he didn’t want a relationship.
That’s not being screwed up about relationships,” Ren said, like he knew exactly what Sean meant.
He didn’t, because he didn’t know the whole story, but it did make Gabriel wonder what it was that happened to Ren to screw him up about relationships.
He’d always assumed that Ren didn’t have some big sob story in his background, making him always stick to hookups, but just because he’d never heard about it didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.
He knew Sean’s story, but he didn’t think that when Sean had told him, that it gave him permission to tell anyone else.
Still, he could at least try, without any of the details, to explain to Ren why Sean was so certain that all they were doing was fucking.
“It’s not that he doesn’t want a relationship,” Gabe said carefully as they walked down the street.
It was really a gorgeous day—sunny and not too hot yet, with the most beautiful cloud-free blue sky overhead—and he couldn’t even attribute any of that to the fact that he’d spent the last night in Sean’s bed.
“He got out of a really serious relationship a few years back, and I think he expects to feel a certain way when he’s romantically interested in someone, because of that relationship. ”
Ren frowned. “It must have been pretty serious.”
Sean and Milo had been married. At a fairly young age. There was no way it had not been extremely, life-changingly serious.
“Yeah, I think so,” Gabriel said. “So that’s why he thinks we’re just going to hook up.”
“He really believes that he just wants you?” Ren sounded skeptical.
And frankly the same skepticism was echoed in Gabriel’s own mind.
He knew that what they were sharing wasn’t just sex.
The only difficulty was continuing to have that really good sex, while also carefully cluing Sean in to the fact that they weren’t just friends with fucking awesome benefits.
“Yeah, it’s complicated,” Gabriel admitted.
“Complicated is trying to decide whose house you’re going to hook up at. Or whether you’re going to give a blowjob or a handjob, or whether you’re going to get serious enough to actually fuck,” Ren said. “This isn’t just complicated. And it will blow up in your face.”
Gabriel didn’t want to believe Ren was right, especially when it had been going pretty good so far. They’d even made it mostly past Tony’s speed bump without it derailing them. In fact, Gabe thought the necessity of working together had actually made Sean want him more.
Not that he was going to inform Tony of this fact; he was insufferable enough as it was.
“Maybe I can get him to fall in love with me back, before it does,” Gabriel said optimistically.
Ren stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Back? Back? Back?” He sounded horrified. “Please do not mean what I think you mean.”
The more he did think about it, the more right Gabriel thought it felt.
Of course he loved Sean. He’d probably loved him for a long time.
Maybe he didn’t have a wealth of experience in this area, but he had been in love before, and while this didn’t feel exactly the same as that, there was no denying that it felt deeper and stronger and the tug towards Sean so inevitable that it was amazing he hadn’t realized it before now.
“I think I do,” Gabriel said. “And it’s not like you didn’t know this was coming. You did. I did, now that I think about it. I never wanted it to be about just sex, and you said, hook up with him, because it’s hard to make it just sex. Well, you were right.”
Ren threw up his hands. “Officially, I give up on you.”
“I kind of thought you gave up on me ages ago,” Gabriel said with a laugh, because even though his cousin was seriously overdramatic, even Ren’s fit couldn’t ruin this day. The sun was shining and he hadn’t just spent the night with Sean, he fucking adored him.
“That was on you ever having the capacity for being cool,” Ren said. “But this is worse.”
“Just because you don’t have the capacity for it doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t want to fall in love,” Gabriel said, and that was perfectly reasonable, right? He wasn’t saying Ren had to fall in love—even if he even could, at this point—Gabriel just wanted to enjoy it.
“I have the capacity,” Ren said in a clipped voice as they neared the lot. “I just choose not to.”
“Yeah, that’s all fine and good,” Gabriel said with hesitation, “but sometimes I’m not sure you get a choice.”
“You always have a choice,” Ren said with steel in his tone.
Gabriel thought Ren was fucking crazy, but what else was new?
He pulled his keys out and went to unlock the door, but to his surprise, there were scratches on the stainless steel panel of the door—the panel that held the lock. Alexis’ truck had had very similar ones, only a few weeks back.
“Shit,” Gabriel said.
“What is it?” Ren asked, coming closer. “Did you decide you were being stupid?”
“No,” Gabriel said, pointing to the scratches. “I think someone tried to break into our truck last night.”
But Ren was already not paying attention—he was craning his head around the edge of the truck, clearly distracted by something else he’d seen.
Gabriel looked too, because anything that had given Ren that look on his face was something worth paying attention to.
There were wooden picnic tables scattered across the courtyard between all the different trucks. And on the very central one, someone had painted a message. Ren and Gabriel walked closer, his heart in his throat. Was this what Tony had been worried about the whole time? Thefts and vandalism?
It was worse than that. “Suck a dick,” was the message, scrawled in bright purple paint, across the entire tabletop.
“Shit is right,” Gabriel said with an unsteady exhale. “What the fuck is this?”
“I don’t even want to suck a dick now,” Ren said, his own voice not precisely steady, “and I always want to suck a dick.”
“We’re gonna have to clean this up.” Gabriel pulled out his phone after glancing around and realizing they were the first owners here. This was their prep day, and he and Ren often were here by themselves for at least the first hour.
Tony needed to see this.
Tony just stood there and stared at the message.
His brother, Wyatt, stood next to him, a frown on his face, and the rest of the owners clustered a little ways back.
Everyone’s expressions were grim, but there was a healthy amount of disbelief thrown in.
Gabriel knew how they felt. He’d felt safe here too, protected with their community, with the cushion of so many queer food truck owners gathered together.
He’d always believed that they were stronger together than they were apart, and he knew Tony had believed in that idea too.
“Well,” Ash said under his breath, coming up to stand next to Gabriel, “I guess I was wrong about needing security.”
The semi-playful argument they’d had during last week’s staff meeting felt a lot stupider with those words emblazoned across one of their picnic tables.
“I guess we were all wrong,” Gabriel admitted.
“But how do we know,” Ash continued, “that someone like Lennox isn’t behind this shit? He didn’t really seem all that comfortable with us . . . what did he call it? Fucking around all the time?”
“He might not be comfortable, but the guy wasn’t homophobic. You know that, Ash.”
Ash was still frowning though, like he didn’t quite believe it. “I wish Tony would find someone else.”
“Tony isn’t going to find someone else,” Gabriel said. “He said it at the staff meeting: the guy knows us, knows our trucks, knows the lot. Maybe he’s a little uncomfortable with so many queer couples, but that shouldn’t stop him from keeping us safe.”
“Do you trust him?” Ash asked him, point-blank.
Gabriel wished that this day hadn’t been totally derailed; he wished that Ash was actually asking him about Sean, not about Lennox. He wished they didn’t even have to talk about this. But that option had come and gone.
“I don’t know him, but I trust that he’s going to do his job,” Gabriel finally said.