Chapter Four
The Castle
Sunday Night
Nine P.M.
Someone was dead weight. When they got him back to the castle, Graham was still out, and it had been one hell of a hike too. The whole mile back to the place where they could put the man down, Michael carried him, some of the time over his shoulder, and the rest in his arms.
And it was brutal, but not because of the heaviness of the carry, but the heaviness on his heart.
It was the last few feet of the carry that killed a piece of him. Unfortunately for Michael, he could smell Graham’s cologne, and it took him back.
It was the same one that he’d always worn, and it reminded him of their three years together.
On the base.
Off the base.
And in the memories.
He remembered it from when they made love and for all of the times where he carried him to their bed from the couch when he’d fallen asleep as they watched a movie together.
It felt like just yesterday, but Michael knew that it wasn’t.
It felt like eons, instead.
The man was out cold, and he doubted it was from the hit to his neck that put him out, so he couldn’t hurt himself.
No.
That should have only lasted a short period.
Instead, someone, his once-lover, was lost in the booze.
Been there.
Done that.
If he had a dollar for all of the times that he’d drank himself stupid because of this man, he would likely have as much money in his bank account from that.
For someone who was suffering, that was never a good thing, and he, too, was familiar with it.
Yeah, he’d done himself dirty plenty of times wallowing in his self-pity over the man who had broken his heart.
Yeah, he was a pro.
At beating himself down.
While he didn’t want to hold this man, or feel anything but anger for him, he did.
And that rattled him.
It was hard to let the past go, and for Michael, he’d believed he had.
But clearly, that was a lie.
Because here he was, being pulled back in, and all because his fiancé broke him.
His heart was a mess.
How was he going to keep it safe when he couldn’t go home because of Riley, and he couldn’t stay here because of Graham?
What he wanted to do was run, but what he’d planned on doing was facing the demons.
He was out of places to hide.
Once in the kitchen, he held Graham as he waited for a location to take him. This was as far as he’d gotten when he’d walked in before, and he didn’t know the inside of Callen and Chris’s gift to their wife.
“Help a guy out. Which direction?” he asked.
Graham was getting damn heavy, and his arm was already battered and bruised from trying to stop him from dying.
Finn clued him in.
“His apartment is in the garage,” Finn offered, grateful to have the man here.
Michael was a beast of a man, and Finn was well aware that he couldn’t carry Graham the entire distance like the Marine had.
That was for damn sure.
There was no way he was letting his pregnant fiancé do the deed either and help him transport the passed-out groundskeeper.
Michael hesitated.
“I don’t want him that far away. He willingly took that leap off of the cliff,” he said. “He needs to be monitored until he sobers up.”
Gabby agreed there.
Someone needed to babysit the man who usually babysat the people there.
“There are bedrooms in the tower. That’s where the Blackhawks usually put their guests. The room you would have been in is up there too.”
Well, that worked for him.
He’d get him settled, and then, he’d keep an eye on him to ensure he was safe.
“Give me a few,” he said, wanting to put the man down so that he could also put space between them.
This moment was stirring up feelings he thought were long dead.
Or should be.
“Give me a few. I’ll be right back,” he offered.
Moving toward the stairs, Michael hefted his once-lover up them, and toward the place where the bedrooms were located.
At the first one he reached, he saw the plaque on the side of the door, and knew that it was ironic as hell.
‘Master’s Suite.’
Yeah, this had to be a Callen thing.
He liked a good play on words, and it wasn’t lost on him that at one time, he’d had a sex life like that where he’d been with a sexy submissive man.
With whom?
Graham.
He was dominant, and Graham tended to be submissive in bed. Curiously, he wondered if the man still was, or if time had changed that.
With Riley, Michael had toned it down, only because that part of him had died when he left. When he became Saint Michael of the Blackhawks, it was about survival, and he couldn’t do that if he pined away for any part of his life.
And it sucked.
Because some of the best sex he’d ever had in his life…no, all of the best sex he’d had in his life had been with this man.
PERIOD.
They had chemistry when they came together, and it had been nuclear. Graham had his needs, and Michael had the same ones, just flipped. They’d made the Earth move more than a few times.
Oh, well.
That was then.
This was now.
That door had closed after he’d been given an ultimatum and left. Knowing that Graham had never really loved him…
Or trusted him…
That had been a hard pill to swallow, and he knew it. Time had healed that wound, mostly, but now, here it was front and center.
Pushing the door open with foot, he carried the man in, and saw the giant bed inside. Oh, he knew why it was so damn massive.
Yeah, this was definitely Callen’s doing.
Gently, he placed Graham on the bed, and pulled back the bedding on the one side. With gentle fingers, he pulled off the man’s shoes, his socks, and considered leaving on his pants.
They weren’t a couple anymore, and he didn’t want to cross a line.
He knew he was a ‘wear boxers’ kind of a guy—or had been—and honestly, his pants were dirty from them rolling around on the ground, so he probably should take them off of him for good measure.
Right?
Leaving them on him seemed counterproductive, but that was only what he was telling himself. What he knew he wanted was to take them off of him and for one reason, and one reason alone.
Curiosity killed the Marine.
Sue him.
So, he undid the button, dropped the fly, and lowered them down his legs to get them off of his body and out of the clean bedding.
It wasn’t so much to be sexual, but because he needed to know one thing.
What was that?
Did he still have his tattoo?
Or had he covered it or removed it?
Call him curious.
With featherlight fingers, he lifted his boxers on his one thigh to see if it was still there.
And was it?
Yes.
There was his initial.
Oh, and it was unmarred—much like the G on his leg was too.
Yeah, Riley had pitched plenty of fits over another man’s initial on his body, but Michael wasn’t going to ever remove it.
It wasn’t happening.
First, he didn’t like to be told what to do or given ultimatums, as some people found out, and secondly, it was his past.
A cherished past.
Those three years with Graham…
They’d saved him in ways he only realized after the fact. He’d given him someone to love, someplace to hide when war was too brutal, and someone to have his back.
Until he didn’t.
Yes, he nearly died protecting Graham, but it had been worth it—until he found out the man didn’t trust in him at all for those years.
Or what they’d had.
Still, he couldn’t remove it.
That seemed…
Wrong.
Seeing it brought back the memories of both men getting them.
They’d been in Italy on leave after a particularly tough joint NATO mission.
Those tattoos took plenty of sneaking around. They’d had to go to different tattoo places, so no one figured out that they’d gotten matching ones.
The ‘no one’ being people they served with in their units.
Being gay as a Marine, or Black Watch…it was dangerous.
To their wellbeing.
So, they did it on the DL, came back to the hotel for their leave, and showed each other.
Then, they made love for HOURS.
They’d celebrated finally having that person as their own for the rest of their lives.
In that moment, that was when Michael started making plans to marry this man.
And when it went south.
Leaving the man’s shirt on him, since it wasn’t dirty, he tucked him into the bed, and sat there staring at Graham. The whole time, he took in how time had aged him.
And he wondered if there’d been anyone else.
There was no ring on his finger, and everyone told him that the man had never moved on, but was it so much to ask to find proof of that?
Why?
He didn’t know.
The last thing he needed was proof when it came to this man since they weren’t a couple, but he really wished he could figure it out.
As he lay in bed, he looked peaceful, but he was betting he was anything but that.
Michael was thinking about the words he screamed out into the darkness, and the pain he’d heard there. It made him…curious.
No.
It made him desperate to find out the truth.
Was what everyone had told him about Graham never giving up on him right?
Did Graham still love him?
Had he been on this self-destructive behavior because he was lost without him by his side?
Had he never moved on?
Like he had?
That floored him.
How could this man have pined away for him for all of these years?
That befuddled him.
And made him question everything.
For all of this time, did Michael think he was the one hurt the most, and instead, Graham had been paying for each day, each year, and each moment that passed with pieces of his soul?
God.
He’d never thought he would.
Honestly, when he walked out, he figured he was the one who was broken by their breakup, and him refusing to come to the US with him.
And here, that wasn’t the truth.
This had hurt the man too.
From the age on his face, and the worry lines at the corners of his eyes, someone had suffered.
Gently, he touched his face, and there was so much pain there—even in his sleep.
He looked…lost.
It hurt Michael to know that Graham had been hurting for all this time—as the darkness came for him.
A darkness he’d dodged because he’d not been alone out there.
He’d had a family.
The Blackhawks.