Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Morning light filtered through Bella’s curtains, soft and golden, the kind of light that made everything look gentler than it actually was.
Gabriel hadn’t slept. He’d been too afraid of what might happen if he did. Instead, he’d lain there all night, her hand in his, staring at the ceiling while his mind churned through everything she’d said.
Hell, everything she’d demanded.
Find someone to talk to. Do the work.
He knew she was right. But the thought of sitting in some therapist’s office, spilling his guts to a stranger with a notepad and a degree…He shuddered.
Everything in him rebelled against it. He’d spent five years building walls, learning to survive on his own, trusting no one. The idea of tearing all that down for some shrink who’d probably never even thrown a punch felt like walking into enemy territory with a water pistol.
But he’d promised her that he’d try. And Gabriel Grimm kept his promises.
Even the ones that terrified him.
Beside him, she stirred, stretching like a cat in a patch of sunlight. When she opened her eyes and found him watching her, something soft flickered across her face.
“Hey,” she murmured. “Did you sleep?”
“Some,” he lied.
She studied him for a moment, and even though it was clear she didn’t believe him, she didn’t push. Just squeezed his hand once before letting go and sitting up.
“I have a meeting at the gallery in an hour,” she said. “You could come with me. If you want.”
He should say yes. Should spend the day with her, prove he could be normal. The man she deserved, instead of the monster he kept becoming.
But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he figured out how to fix what was broken inside him.
“I’ve got some things to handle at The Beast.”
He thought he saw disappointment flicker, but it was gone so fast he couldn’t be sure. “Will I see you tonight?”
He cocked his head. “Do you want to?”
Her slow smile started a fire inside him. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I do.”
He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Then I’ll be here.”
After she left for the gallery, Gabriel sat on the edge of her bed as his mind circled back to the nightmarish idea of therapy. Of professional help. God, he felt like making finger quotes around the words. He just wasn’t wired that way.
Then he thought about Travis.
Travis, who’d pulled him off the floor more times than he could count in those first brutal months.
Who’d listened without judgment when Gabriel raged about Isabella’s betrayal.
Who’d watched him fight his way through five years of pain and never once told him to stop, just made sure he didn’t kill himself in the process.
Travis wasn’t a shrink. But he’d been friend, counselor, and priest all rolled into one. He’d seen more broken men than any therapist—and he’d helped some of them find their way back.
If Gabriel was going to talk to anyone, it should be him. If nothing else, Travis was a place to start.
The club was quiet now—the monthly day off with no crowds, no fights, just the cleaning crew and a few staff prepping for the next day’s fights.
Gabriel moved through the corridors on autopilot, past the locker rooms and storage areas until he came to Travis’s office.
The door was half-open, and Gabriel could hear sports radio playing from inside.
He stopped in the doorway. Knocked on the frame.
Travis looked up, surprise flickering across his weathered face before his eyes narrowed. “You look like shit.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Anissa keeps sending you food. You eating any of it?”
“Some.”
“Liar.” Travis closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the cluttered desk. “You want to come in and tell me what’s wrong, or are you just going to stand there looking like a man who’s about to jump off a bridge?”
Gabriel stepped inside, then closed the door behind him. The office was cramped—barely bigger than a closet, with cinder block walls and a single flickering fluorescent light.
He’d given Travis his choice of offices, most of which had room to stretch both arms to the side while also expanding your chest to breathe. But his friend had chosen this tiny interior room. Had said it was cozy.
Cozy.
“Is that a grin?” Travis asked as Gabriel took a seat in the battered guest chair.
“If it is, it’s an outlier,” Gabriel admitted. “Not much to grin about these days.”
Travis nodded, but didn’t say anything. Just put his hands on his desk, watched Gabriel, and waited.
Travis waited. That was one of the things Gabriel had always valued about his friend—the man understood silence.
Understood that some things took time to surface.
A long career as a Texas Ranger and almost five years of managing underground fighters had given Travis a patience that most people mistook for indifference.
It wasn’t indifference. It was respect. The understanding that a man would talk when he was ready, and not before.
“I’m going to lose her,” Gabriel finally said.
“Isabella?”
The name sent a spike of want through him. Even now. Even here, in this cramped office that smelled like old coffee and sweat. Just her name was enough to make his body respond.
“She reamed me out for being a jealous prick.”
“Was she right?”
“She’s rarely wrong.”
Travis nodded slowly. “Solution’s easy. Stop being a jealous prick.”
Gabriel forced himself not to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “I got there on my own. I’m working on implementation.”
“Life’s a bitch. What’s the real reason you’re here?”
Gabriel drew a breath, then let it out slowly. “I almost fucking killed her.”
Travis went very still. “All right. You have my attention.”
“A nightmare,” Gabe said. “I almost killed her while I was having a fucking nightmare. And when we tried to—”
He couldn’t finish. The memory of his hand around her throat—twice now, once asleep and once awake—was too raw. Too shameful. “They may not have killed me, Trav, but they damn sure broke me.”
Travis leaned back. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes held both compassion and understanding.
“You talk to anyone about this yet?” Travis asked, his voice as soft and measured as Gabe had ever heard. “Professionally, I mean.”
“No.”
“Maybe you should.”
“I’m talking to you.”
Travis snorted. “I’m not a shrink, Gabe. I’m a guy who runs a fight club. Your fight club.”
“You’re also the closest thing I’ve had to a father since mine decided empire-building was more important than his kids.
” Gabriel dropped his hands and met Travis’s eyes.
“You’ve seen more broken men than any shrink I know.
Guys who came back from combat and couldn’t.
.. Couldn’t be normal anymore. Couldn’t be with their families.
” He shook his head. “How did they fix it? The ones who did. How did they come back?”
Travis was quiet for a long moment. His feet came off the desk, and he leaned forward.
“Some of them didn’t,” he said. “Some of them ate their guns or drank themselves to death or just disappeared. Couldn’t find a way back. And the ones who did come back...” He shook his head, “Gabe, man, I was just a friend to them. Just like I am to you.”
“You’re more than a friend. Hell, you’re a savior.”
“Your body, maybe. When I found you that day in the snow, I didn’t think you’d survive.
Neither did Anissa, and that child of mine is the world’s foremost wide-eyed optimist. You say I rescued you, and maybe I rescued your body.
Got you out of the cold. Got you stitched up.
But you rescued yourself, buddy. You did the work. You can do this work, too.”
Gabriel’s vision blurred, and he cringed, realizing the cause was tears.
“It wasn’t anything I did,” Travis said softly. “But the ones who made it—they had a few things in common. They had people who wouldn’t give up on them. Who they could talk to. You’ve got me. Anissa. And I think you have Isabella, too.”
“That’s it?” That’s the solution?”
“A part of it. Mostly, I think they came through because they had something to live for. And they figured out what was actually broken, instead of just trying to beat it into submission.”
That last part landed hard. Because that was exactly what Gabriel had been doing for five years. Trying to beat the beast into submission through violence and exhaustion and sheer force of will.
But what the hell else was he supposed to do? Offer it tea and crumpets? Whatever the fuck a crumpet was.
“Honestly, boss, I don’t know if I can help you, but I’ll be your sounding board. So go ahead. Tell me what happens. Walk me through it.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened, pride warring with need.
Need won out. And so he told him. About wanting her.
About the tender bits falling to the side, as if the beast that lived inside him kicked them away.
About the way everything in him would shift, like he was readying for a fight, when that wasn’t what he wanted.
He wanted her. Not to hurt, but to have.
Except it was as if his body didn’t get that.
His mind didn’t get it. He’d end up overcome by a horrible need to strike first. To protect himself.
He shivered. “It doesn’t make sense. She’s not a threat. She’d never hurt me. But my subconscious is a scared pansy-ass with one hell of a right hook.”
Travis nodded slowly, like pieces were clicking into place. “When they shot you in that cabin, you told me they had you tied to a chair?”
The question caught Gabriel off guard. “What? Yeah. Why?” He shook off the unwelcome memory.
They’d burst through the door. He’d fought—but three against one, and they had guns.
The first bullet took him down before he could land a punch.
He came to bound to the chair, ropes on his wrists and ankles. One around his chest.
“You were helpless,” Travis said, his voice as soft as a kitten.
The word made Gabriel’s stomach turn. “Yes.”
“Couldn’t fight back. Couldn’t defend yourself. Just had to sit there and take whatever they decided to do to you.”
He squirmed. Fighting the urge to bolt. “Yes.” His voice came out hard. Brittle.
“And then they shot you again.”
“The woman did. She had Izzy’s eyes.” He shuddered. “And she walked up and put a bullet in my chest like she was swatting a fly.”
“You barely survived,” Travis said, as if Gabe needed to be reminded. “You swore you’d somehow find and kill every one of them.”
“Damn right.”
“And the one who shot you had eyes like the woman you love.”
“He closed his eyes, nodding, hating the memory of how he’d treated Bella when he’d come back. That he’d even for a moment believed that she’d been that bitch in the cabin.
Except some part of him still believed it. Some terrorized part of his subconscious. That’s the point. That’s where Travis was leading him.
“But it wasn’t her,” Gabe said. “I know it wasn’t. No doubt, no question. Not anymore.”
Travis shrugged. “Your nervous system learned a lesson in that cabin—vulnerability equals death. And it’s been keeping you alive ever since. Problem is, it doesn’t know the war’s over. It doesn’t know how to turn off. And add her eyes into the equation….”
Gabriel sat with that for a moment, his gut churning. “But I love her. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Survival instinct,” Travis said. “Sex makes you vulnerable. You let your guard down, you stop thinking, you give yourself over to sensation. For most people, that’s the whole point.
But for you?” He shook his head. “For you, that vulnerability feels like being tied to that chair again. Like the bullet’s coming.
So your body does the only thing it knows how to do—it fights. ”
“I can’t just turn it off,” Gabriel said. He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Fuck. I’ve tried, Trav. God, I’ve tried to make it stop. I can’t.”
An eternity seemed to pass in silence.
Finally, Travis drew in a breath. “Like I said, boss, I’m not a shrink. But hear me out. Seems to me that when you feel vulnerable, every instinct screams at you to attack. To take control. To make sure you’re never helpless again. Sound about right?”
Gabe nodded.
“So what if you couldn’t?”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t attack. Couldn’t take control.” Travis held his gaze. “What if you took that option off the table entirely?”
The implication hit Gabriel like ice water. “You’re saying what, exactly?”
“I’m saying maybe you need to be tied down.
” Travis’s voice was matter-of-fact. Practical.
Like he was discussing fight strategy, not Gabriel’s fucked-up sex life.
“Let her run the show. Let her be the one in control. Your body can scream at you to fight all it wants, but if you physically can’t move, you’ve got no choice but to ride it out. ”
“And then what?”
“And then maybe—maybe—your subconscious learns that letting go doesn’t mean getting shot.” Travis shrugged. “It’s the same principle we use with fighters who flinch. You can’t think your way out of it. You’ve got to retrain the reflexes.”
Gabriel wanted to argue. Wanted to say it was too simple, too risky, too much to ask of Isabella. But the more he turned it over in his mind, the more it made sense.
His body had learned that vulnerability meant death. The only way to unlearn that was to be vulnerable and survive. And the only way to guarantee he wouldn’t hurt her in the process was to make sure he couldn’t.
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you try something else. Find a real shrink, do actual therapy, work through it the slow way.”
Travis stood, grabbed a half-empty bottle of water from his desk, then took a long swallow.
“Or go talk to a real shrink right now. But you’ve got to try something, Gabe.
Because what you’re doing isn’t working.
And that woman isn’t going to wait forever.
Not because she doesn’t love you, but because she can’t save you if you won’t let her try. ”
Gabriel stood too. His legs felt unsteady, his mind still churning. But for the first time in weeks, he felt something other than despair.
He felt hope. Terrifying, fragile, dangerous hope.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t thank me yet. Go home. Talk to her.” Travis dropped back into his chair, already reaching for his laptop. “And Gabe?”
Gabriel paused at the door.
“Eat a goddamn muffin. You look like death warmed over.”