Page 8 of Confessions of Pain
Chapter 3
The ride to our hotel was long, very uncomfortable, and deathly quiet. Ethan hadn’t spoken a word to me since leaving the textile plant I now owned and didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do with. The rental car was roomy and luxurious, and I felt like my very presence left a nasty smear on the expensive leather. It was so quiet. So fucking quiet.
There was nothing worse than being left alone with my own thoughts. I hated myself. There wasn’t one part about me that I liked at the moment. Not one fucking part.
The words hadn’t been spoken, but what had beenunspokensaid so much more than any shit Ethan could have hurled in my direction. More than any fucking thing in the world, I wished Ethan would pull over, yank me out of the car, and beat the ever-lovin’ shit out of me. To be honest, I would prefer he pull the piece he always had on him in some secret spot and blow my brains out. Anything would be better than the silent treatment.
When he pulled into the nicest hotel in town, which was still pretty bad, I expected him to pull into a parking space. Instead, he pulled right up to the door, put the car in park, and just sat there. My mind scrambled for something to say…something to do that would somehow magically remove the last two hours of my life. At one point or another in my life, I’d been about as low as a human could possibly go. I’d sucked cock for money—I’d stolen food just so I could eat. I’d sold drugs and couldn’t say I regretted it, because the money I earned put food in my stomach. I’d been a homeless, dirty, hungry prostitute. And I’d still never felt this low before.
Ethan should have never witnessed this side of me. There would be no going back from this point. He wouldn’t be able to forgive what I’d done. Ethan could smile through every fucking thing, but hecouldn’t, smile through what he’d just witnessed.
The silence was suddenly interrupted by his voice. “I love you, Gabriel. I love you as much as I love my family. Hell, you are my family.” His head turned and his eyes sought out my own. “I would die for you, and I know you would do the same for me, without hesitation.” He took a deep breath. “I might love you, Gabriel, but I don’t like you much right now. I need you to go on up to the room and give me some time to process what I just witnessed. I’ll be back later and we can grab something to eat, but right now, I can’t be with you.”
Shame flooded through my system but at the same time the need to justify, if only in my own mind, what I’d done roared to life. Kelsey and his family earned every damned thing they’d gotten. They’d worked harder for this day than I’d worked for that first ten dollars sucking some stranger’s cock in a filthy gas station bathroom.
“You don’t have to stay, Ethan. I can handle this—”
“Don’t!” he broke in abruptly, his tone telling me exactly how hard it was for him not to punch me. “Don’t you dare pull that shit with me. Not after all we’ve been through together. I’m not leaving you behind to handle whatever the hell this is eating at your soul, Gabe, so just shut the fuck up. If you start that shit with me again, I swear I’ll take you down faster than you can blink an eye.”
He could try. No, he would succeed—I wouldn’t raise a hand to protect myself against any of my friends. If they were coming at me, then I had it coming.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked around the parking lot. “I don’t want you to see me this way, Ethan. I’m so full of hate for Kelsey and his family. This is a part of me that I would rather have kept hidden.”
Ethan snorted out a sound that must have been a mix between a laugh and a curse. “Thisisn’tyou, Gabe.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hell, I don’t know what happened to get you to this point. Whatever the hell it was, I’m on your side. Never doubt that. This is a part of you that you refused to share with us. We knew it was bad. We also knew you would share when you felt like the time was right. All that’s fine, Gabe, but you’ve put me in a position that I’m not at all comfortable with. I’ve got to get my bearings before I say or do something I’m going to regret.”
“I told you—”
“Don’t,” he hissed. “So help me Jeezus, if you open your mouth and say what I know you’re going to say, we are both going to end up in the town jail tonight. Yes, it might be cleaner and more comfortable than the dump we’re staying in, but I’d venture a guess that the food is shit. Let’s not find out, okay?”
Ethan didn’t realize it, but the food in the local diner was probably not worth a shit, either. I looked at him again and got lost in the softness of his eyes. He was like a freakin’ lifeline when the storm was raging around me. His calm, solid strength had always been my shelter. Yes, he was disappointed in me, but at least it wasn’t disgust I was seeing.
“He hurt me, Ethan. He nearly fucking killed me,” I whispered softly. I’d never admitted that fact to another living person. It had been a mantra I chanted in my own head since the night I’d heard his testimony that I’d raped him. Thinking of that always caused my body to break out into a cold sweat. Fear. Betrayal. Pain. All those emotions were too strong for a seventeen-year-old boy to have to handle alone.
“That little poodle in the conference room? The one with the sad, scared eyes? What did he do, Gabe? Nip at your ankles? Yap too loud for your sensitive ears?” He reached over to squeeze my thigh, letting me know he loved me…and to brace myself. “You were both kids, Gabe. Kids do dumb shit—really fucking dumb shit. Obviously, this guy took it to the highest level if he left you with all these emotions swirling around in that sexy body of yours, but he was still a kid.” When I opened my mouth to argue, he held up his hand and said, “Yes, you were a kid, too. You told me. I get that and totally agree with you. Standing on the outside and looking in, the whole damned world would think he won and you lost that battle.”
His squeeze tightened. “Looks can be deceiving, Gabe. Right up until you found out that Morganston Textiles was in financial trouble and you might have the opportunity to snatch it out of their greedy hands, your eyes twinkled with happiness and your mouth was the first to curve into a smile. You enjoyed the life you’d built for yourself, surrounded by people who love the hell out of you. Hell, Gabe, you put on a fucking apron at Thanksgiving and cooked us all a huge dinner. An apron, Gabe. Sure, there was that time that the apron was the only thing you were wearing, but on most of our family dinners you—”
“First of all, I don’ttwinkle. Ever. Nothing about me twinkles. Secondly, is there a fucking point to your story? I’m having a hard time following how my apron-wearing skills have any damned thing to do with my vendetta against the Morganston bastards.” All of our family dinners were nothing but good times, and I didn’t want images of Kelsey sullying those beautiful memories. I didn’t want to picture how things could have been so different if he hadn’t lied about me. Kelsey could have been sitting at that giant dinner table, making fun of my apron and then tasting my cooking. Kelsey’s soft laugh would have probably been drowned out by the boisterous sounds of my adopted family, but I would’ve heard it. I would have known how well he fit in because my eyes would have been on him all day and night. But Kelsey would never be there with the people who loved me…because he didn’t and obviously never had.
Ethan pushed out an exasperated breath. “Jeremiah should be here, he’s so much better at this shit than me,” he mumbled as his head dropped. It was clear he was trying to come up with some earth-shattering statement that would somehow manage to cause the Gabriel he knew to magically make a reappearance. It wasn’t going to happen, not while I was in Trenton Falls. Talk about magic. This place somehow managed tomagicallyturn me back into the poor trash I was before making my escape. The second I’d crossed the county line, I’d heard a whispering—telling me I was finally coming home to the trailer park where I’d spent the first seventeen years of my life. No, not the nice trailer park where the hard-working low-income families lived with their nicely maintained mobile homes, trimmed grass, and children’s toys littering the yards. I’d lived in the park where the drug dealers, alcoholics, and folks who just refused to work an honest day in their lives called home. That was my fucking legacy.
“My point is, smartass, that you were happy. You were lost when we first met, but that was a long damned time ago and I haven’t seen that look in your eyes in years, Gabe. You have a satisfying, well-paying job. You have family who would die for you without a second thought. We play poker every other Friday night, and you cook those stupidly delicious crab thingies that we all love. You get laid whenever you want and with whomever you want—all you need to do is cast those sexy eyes in their direction and they drop to their knees. And, as if that isn’t enough, you’ve got the best fucking neighbors a person could dream up.”
Naturally, he was referring to himself and Jeremiah, who lived in the cabin north of mine, and Titus who lived in a house south of mine. He was fooling himself. They weren’t all that. Jeremiah’s dogs barked loud enough that they could wake me out of a sound sleep.
Who was I kidding? Theywereall that.
Taking a deep breath, I answered, “Yeah, I know I’ve got it all, Ethan. I honestly do. My life is about as perfect as humanly possible.”Except Kelsey wasn’t in it. “Let me just finish this and everything can go back to normal.”
His eyes looked sad as he studied me. “My point wasn’t going to be that you had it all, Gabe. My point was going to be that I don’t think Kelsey had anything except that job. And you just took that away from him.”
His words dropped like a bomb right into my lap. In silence, I sat there, wondering if I should be furious with my best friend for obviously being Team Kelsey when he damned well should have been Team Gabriel. I wanted to ask how in the fucking hell he thought he knew anything about Kelsey, much less sit there and pretend to know what he had or didn’t have going on in his life. Why would it even matter, I wanted to ask. On the other hand, I wondered what Ethan had seen that I’d missed.IfEthan had seen anything. I, more than anybody else, knew just how charmingly deceitful Kelsey could be.
“What makes you think that? He looked to still be living pretty large to me, cushy job where his only requirement is to have the Morganston last name in order to bring home a fat paycheck. He graduated high school. Went to college. Looks the way he does. Explain to me how he has nothing.”
“Look, Gabe, I tried to back you up in there in front of all them, but now this is just you and me talking. Do you think that having money is what’s important in life, Gabe? What’s the most important thing in this world to you? Education? Good looks?”
“Family,” I answered without hesitation. “You guys are my family and you’re theonlything important to me.”
