Chapter 23 #2
Samuel didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He stared at his whitened knuckles as if they were the only solid things in a tilting world.
“And this morning,” Gael continued, the words measured, deliberate, “you panicked. After.”
“If we are to continue with this,” Gael said, and here, for the first time, Samuel heard something new in his tone, not a command, but a sliver of something almost like… regret? “And I apologize for not establishing this before we began… we need to be honest.”
Ripples of panic spread instantly through Samuel’s chest.
Gael went on, his gaze a physical weight Samuel could feel on the top of his bowed head. “What we are building… it cannot exist without trust. And trust is impossible without honesty.”
Samuel’s mind was a spinning top, careening off the walls of his skull.
Trust. Honesty.
They were words from a foreign language, concepts for people who lived in the light. People who weren’t made of secrets and shame and old, buried screams.
“I do not expect you to tell me your whole life story. Not today. Not ever, if you so choose.” Gael’s voice was firm but quiet.
“I do not expect you to voice every thought that passes through your mind. But I need you to try. To be truthful with me. Even if the truth is that you cannot talk about something. Even if it’s just to tell me, ‘I can’t answer that right now.
’ That, in itself, is a truth. Do you understand me? ”
Samuel sat perfectly still. His hands in his lap had begun to tremble, a fine, constant vibration he couldn’t stop. Honesty. It was a trap. A beautifully laid trap. To be honest would be to open a door he had welded shut years ago.
What if Gael asked about his past?
What if he asked about the tense, silent dinners in Queens, about the way his mother’s eyes skittered away from his, about the heavy, disapproving silence of his father?
What if his questions, with that terrifying perception of his, went further back?
What if they found the words The Hills?
A cold, familiar terror rose from the pit of his stomach. It was a black, oily wave, choking his throat, tightening his chest. His breath came in fast, shallow hitches. His heart was a frantic, trapped bird.
I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t talk. I can’t...
A shadow fell over him. The scent of cedar and clean skin filled the air. Then, fingers, warm, firm, unyielding, slid beneath his chin.
Samuel flinched, a full-body recoil. He tried to pull away, to keep his head down, to hide in the safety of his own panic.
The grip tightened.
“Look at me.”
The command was low, iron-clad. It brooked no argument.
Samuel refused. His eyes were screwed shut, his entire being a clenched fist of no. He shook his head, a tiny, frantic denial.
“Samuel.” The voice was closer now, a quiet thunder. “Look at me.”
It was a losing battle. He knew it even as he fought it. His will was sand against the tide of Gael. A sob caught in his throat. Then, slowly, with the agony of a rusted hinge forcing itself open, his eyelids lifted.
Gael stood before him, gazing down at him.
“Breathe,” he said, his thumb stroking once, firmly, along the line of his jaw.
Samuel sucked in a ragged, shuddering breath. Let it out in a rush.
“Again. Slowly.”
He did. In. Out. The world narrowed to the dark eyes holding his, to the anchor-point of that hand on his face.
After a few cycles, when the worst of the hyperventilating had passed, Gael spoke again, his voice a low murmur. “What do you feel right now?”
Samuel shook his head, his lips pressed into a bloodless line. He couldn’t. Giving voice to it would make it real. It would give it power.
“Remember,” Gael prompted, his gaze never wavering. “Truth. Honesty. Even a small one.”
“Afraid… I am scared.”
Gael absorbed the words. His eyes searched Samuel’s face, reading the tremor in his lip, the dilated pupils, the sheen of terrified sweat at his temples. “Of what?”
The question was simple. It should have had a simple answer.
Of you. Of this. Of what we’re doing.
But as Samuel opened his mouth, he found only a void. The fear was a vast, formless ocean inside him, with no nameable source, no single monster he could point to. His body began to shake in earnest, great, wracking shivers that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, and the truth of it was the most terrifying thing of all.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know why the fear was his constant companion.
Why it lived in his marrow. Why a look, a question, a touch could send him spiraling into a fifteen-year-old’s nightmare.
He knew, intellectually, the origin; the bus, the sermons, the cube, the Director’s disappointed eyes, the searing shame.
But it had been so long. Years. Years of pretending to be healed, years of building a careful, empty life on top of the rubble.
And yet, sitting here under Gael’s gaze, feeling more exposed than he ever had under any counselor’s fluorescent lights, he didn’t feel a day older than that shattered boy in the dark.
The time between then and now was just… filler.
A performance. The fear was the only thing that had never aged, never faded. It was the truest part of him.
“I… I can’t… I need…”
The words tumbled from Samuel’s lips, broken and useless. He didn’t know what he was trying to say. He didn’t know what he needed. He only knew the hollow, aching terror of the void inside him, the fear with no name.
Gael, as ever, seemed to know. His hand slid from Samuel’s face. The warm palm traveled over the taut line of Samuel’s throat, feeling the frantic rabbit-pulse there, and then further back, to cradle the base of his skull. Long fingers wove into his hair.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a lower register, a vibration Samuel felt in his own bones. “I got you.”
Then the fingers tightened in his hair. The pull was firm, insistent, guiding. Samuel’s body, ever the quicker student than his mind, obeyed the silent directive. He rose from the sofa, his legs unsteady, his gaze locked on the dark fabric of Gael’s sweater.
They stood face to face, so close the heat from Gael’s body was a palpable force against Samuel’s chest. Gael was taller, and Samuel had to tilt his head back slightly to meet his eyes.
His body trembled, a fine, constant earthquake of fear and something else, something that quickened his blood even as it chilled it.
Gael’s eyes held his, dark and fathomless. “I’ll take care of you, Samuel,” he whispered, the words breathed into the scant inch of air between their mouths. “I’ll give you what you need.”
Before Samuel could process the enormity of that promise, the world pivoted. Strong hands gripped his shoulders, turning him around. Suddenly, his back was pressed to Gael’s solid chest, his own face staring out at the empty living room.
Gael’s hands began to move.
They started at Samuel’s wrists, sliding up the tender skin of his inner arms with a slow, maddening gentleness. Every nerve ending there sang, raising a forest of goosebumps in their wake.
The touch was hypnotic. Samuel’s eyes fluttered closed. His head, heavy with confusion and a dawning, desperate want, fell back against Gael’s shoulder with a soft thud.
“Yes…” Gael’s whisper was a hot breath against the shell of his ear. “Relax… just feel…”
The hands reached his shoulders, kneading the tense muscles briefly before moving to the front. They slid down Samuel’s chest, palms flat against the soft cotton of his t-shirt, following the contours of his ribs, the dip of his sternum.
Samuel’s breath hitched, stuttering in his throat. The touch was everywhere and nowhere, a tantalizing ghost through the fabric.
Then the hands reached the hem of his shirt. Fingers hooked into the material. There was a pause, a question in the stillness.
Samuel’s need answered for him. His arms rose of their own volition, straight up, a gesture of utter surrender. He was suddenly, violently desperate for the shirt to be gone, for that touch to be on his skin, real and undeniable.
Gael pulled the shirt up and over his head in one smooth motion. The sound of the soft cotton hitting the floor was obscenely loud. The cool air of the apartment whispered over his bare torso, but he barely felt it. His skin was alight, humming.
Gael’s hands returned, landing flat on his stomach.
The touch was electric, skin on skin. One hand drifted upwards, tracing a slow, circling path until his thumb brushed over Samuel’s left nipple.
The sensation was a bolt of pure, sharp pleasure.
Samuel gasped, arching his back, pressing his chest into the teasing touch, a silent plea for more.
The other hand continued its southward journey. Fingers found the button of his jeans. The metallic snick of it opening was a tiny sound in the quiet room.
A flash of panic, bright and instinctual, burst in his chest.
Wrong. Sick. Sin.
The old warnings shrieked for a fraction of a second.
They were silenced instantly as Gael’s mouth descended on his neck. A claiming bite, right over the pounding pulse at the junction of his neck and shoulder. The sharp, bright pain was a perfect counterpoint to the building pleasure.
Samuel cried out, a ragged sound, and turned his head to the side, offering more of his throat, an invitation written in the arch of his spine.
Gael took the offering, his mouth searing a path, sucking a mark into the sensitive skin until Samuel saw stars behind his closed eyelids, his mind going blank and white with sensation.
His jeans and underwear were pushed down in one firm motion, pooling around his ankles like fallen flags. The chill of the air on his bare legs and ass was a distant observation. His entire universe had condensed to the mouth on his neck, the hand on his chest, and the roaring inferno in his blood.
Then, the world upended again.