Antidote (Don't) (54 page)

Something seemed to slip in Jack’s eyes, and he lost all the colour heating his cheeks. Gray groaned instantly and went to grab Jack, say a thousand and one sorries, but Jack shoved him away.

Gray nearly lost his footing, crunching glass and broken frame into the wood floor, then cried out. “Easy,” I said quickly, coming between them, my back to Jack, head resting against Gray’s. “Mind games.” I took hold of Gray’s hand and felt how slippery it was. Blood stained his knuckles. Christ, that hurt was nothing compared to what was tearing through his eyes. “One serious mind game, Gray, hers,” I said warningly in a low voice. “Please. You need to step back, think.” But my head and heart were with the debris on the floor with Gray’s. Christ, Jack. Not Gray.

I shuddered, then realised Jack had gone quiet. He stood itching at his side and something caught my eye. “Jack?” I hit his touch away. Blood covered the tips of his fingers and stained the waistline of his trousers a touch on his right side.

Inching his joggers down a touch, the whole area where he’d been branded on his hip was either open wound or scab, the V now lost to a perfect square of a wound, all lined up, and angled to perfection with Jack’s body. That couldn’t have been scratched out, Jack would have had to have cut it, maybe with a knife, like the butter one that Ed said had gone missing and—“Oh my God. Jack?”

He seemed to shiver, then looked at me, eyes a little distant. “Straightened it,” he mumbled quietly. “Needed... wouldn’t straighten.” A tear slipped free as he looked down and frowned. “Head case... yeah. Head case.”

Gray groaned out loud, managing to make a sound where I couldn’t, and Jack looked over at him, almost instantly dismissing the wound, or willingly forgetting about it as he let his shirt fall back over it. “One thing,” he said as another tear fell. “You said you’d give me one thing, all I had to do was ask.” He shivered. “Why?
Please,
Gray. Why didn’t you just let me walk if you hate me that much?”

“I...” Gray frowned, caught somewhere between a promise to a father and keeping the failing love of a father’s son. “You, you need to get the fuck out now, Jack,” he said quietly. “You... you need to go, and you...” He sighed heavily, frustration, fear—grief. “I’d never hurt you, you need to know I’d never...” He gave up then; I saw it in his eyes. “You and your old man, you need each other now. You don’t need me. You don’t need this.”

As Jack frowned, Gray came in and ran a light touch over Jack’s hip. “Fuck. You’re so lost, kid.” Gray shifted slightly, screwing his eyes shut. “Please. Leave me alone. It hurts too much, so fucking much now, Jack. Mercedes. Mercedes fucking Benz.
Please
.” He took a step back after he’d slipped something into Jack’s hand, put some distance between them. “
Ed
.”

Ed came through a minute later.

“Phone Gregory, please. Tell him...” Gray frowned. “Tell him Jack needs to go home.” And he glanced at me. “You have to decide for yourself, kid. I’m not going to tell you what to do here. Jack needs professional help, I can’t give him that.” He snorted a smile, gave a half-hearted shrug, let a tear finally slip free. “I... I wouldn’t even know where to start with this.”

I was there by Gray, gripping his jaw, kissing his lips. “God, Gray, you know my answer to that. I’m already in too deep; I’ve always been in so fucking deep with him.”

Closing his eyes, Gray nodded, head now resting against mine. “For God’s sake look after him, please.” A hand came to my neck, stroking gently. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Yeah,” I whispered heatedly, wiping at his cheek. “I know. I know.”

“Slow and gentle,” Gray whispered quietly and I could feel him breaking, the shaking going on under our touch. “Hold him tight; keep him close, even when he’s pushing against it and crying he can’t take it, you hold him fucking close. You’re tougher than you realise.” He shifted his stance slightly, coming in so close. “You take him—you know that. You know I wouldn’t let anyone else touch him but you.”

I took a step back, wiped a hand over my mouth to strangle the grief into silence, then nodded.

Jack was looking down at the necklace he held. When he looked up, it was at me.

“Somewhere along the line you fell in love with him, didn’t you?” he said quietly, barely glancing at Gray. Then back at me, he shouted, “
What the fuck is wrong with you
?”

I ignored all of Jack’s fire. “Yeah,” I mumbled quietly. For all of his Jack-related faults and flaws—“I love him.” Thing is, I didn’t realise I did until that moment.

“Right.” Jack was looking back at the necklace, and his look was so fucking confused as he looked up. Life didn’t seem any clearer for Jack. “Clothes, then. Yeah? I’ll...” Jack glanced at me, shrugging a touch, needing help so much more. “I’ll just go and get changed.” Giving a rub at his head, a look at me as a tear fell, Jack shrugged. Going over, I rested cheek to cheek, hating that he jerked away. I pulled him back, holding him, half wanting to wring the life out of him, the other half needing to inject life back into him. Ease his head, his heart. “Changed,” I mumbled. “Get you some fresh clothes, yeah, baby?”

He didn’t respond at first and I knew his look was on Gray over my shoulder. The same breaking Gray was going through was there in how Jack shivered against the cold, one that should belong to being caught out in wintery nights. Maybe something was trying to shake free, those first few cold breaths without Gray by his side sparking the need to find warmth, to find reason in why his body wasn’t capable of reacting and stopping this fallout. There just wasn’t enough of the spark to go around, and he stopped shivering, flat-lining out. I could almost feel him scurrying back into whatever broken reality he’d built up around himself.

“Clothes,” he said flatly. “Need to get changed. Out.” And he made a point of picking up DCI Sanders’ notepad and the DVD of the branding, the wariness in his eyes saying exactly where “out” would take him and his evidence.

Letting him go, I watched him leave, just head out of the gallery, never more aware of the people who moved out of his way and gave him a wide berth.

“You understand what Halliday will do with him?”

I looked back at Gray, hearing him speak. Ed had edged a little closer to him, but Gray himself looked unable to move.

I nodded. Halliday was MC, and all of this... I knew where it had landed Jack. I don’t think Jack did, not yet.

“Whatever help he needs...” Gray shrugged. “I’ll pay for everything. And safety... you’ll be under full surveillance protection from the MC. You don’t worry about safety, not yours, not his. Ever.”

“Jan?” Ed said quietly. “I need you to leave us alone now, okay?” He smiled back, but it couldn’t have been more haunted. “I’ll phone Gregory and ask him and Doctor Halliday to come over and get you two, just please give me time with mine now.”

I gave him a nod, then looked at Gray. “It doesn’t heal,” I said quietly. “It just gets better.” I glanced behind hearing Jack’s fading footsteps, then Gray had every part of me. “When the hurt starts to ease,” I said to him, “you come and find me. If you don’t, when Jack’s hurt starts to fade, I’ll make damn sure he comes and finds you.”

I turned away, just catching a glimpse of Ed going to Gray and tugging him in close. There didn’t seem any fight there, and that was one thing I couldn’t look back and watch for too long. Gray had always had the fight. That had been the one constant.

Jan

Five months later.

Framed by the shadow of the doorway, Gray waited with his keys in hand, head turned slightly towards the exit, towards his black Mercedes Benz. The manor was packed up, the removal trucks having taken all of his private possessions. He hadn’t called me. Being here was pure luck on my part. A visit from Trace this morning at Jack’s new apartment had made sure that I’d caught the morning paper today, how a manor had been put for sale, going by the location, the mention of Welsh family heritage, it hadn’t been hard to figure out the rest. On my way over, I’d called to start off with, leaving a message for Gray to pick up, but it had gone unanswered. I hadn’t been the only one calling him over the last few months. Jack had, too, but like mine, his calls, from what Jack had told me, went unanswered too.

I’d come here more than a little fired up with how final Gray had made the break. No contact, nothing to see how Jack was doing under Halliday’s care. It had been the hardest time of our lives, worse than facing Vince. Jack had hidden away from life, but mostly from himself with what Halliday had made him face. He’d called Gray a few times from the MC psychiatric unit, just to talk, but each call had been met with silence, Gray more than standing firm and hard behind his decision.

It had hurt Jack like hell, and he’d eventually stopped calling both of us for a while, going back into hiding with Halliday. I’d hated how Gray was prepared to let him.

Yet when Ed had let me into the manor a few hours ago and I’d bypassed the mail, seeing Jack’s letter of resignation from the MC, but also the list of messages, most of the fire had disappeared. I knew Jack had resigned as Master’s sub and it must have cut so deep with Gray. But his blackouts over BDSM equipment were something that wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. Ed had bypassed the letter, instead pressing play on the answering machine, and Jack’s voice had come over, the first few calls marking just how bad life had been for him for a while. Gray had kept them all. And for the past five months, when Jack’s calls had come in, I knew he’d stood exactly where I had, listening to each one, maybe playing the calls back, just listening. My call was the last, still stored, but like the others, unanswered. The one before had let Gray know that Jack was out of the unit, and as though he’d been waiting to hear life was a little easier for us both, he’d started to finish packing his life away.

Up until a few hours ago, I would have had the will to ask Gray to stay, used all the will in the world I had to keep him close, maybe show some of my own weakness and run with how I needed his comfort now, not just Jack’s.

I missed them both so bloody much.

He’d kept to his word of providing security. I hadn’t been able to go anywhere without feeling the presence of a black Merc, or catching the familiar sleek design slip around the corner and park up as I pulled on to my drive. Cameras had been re-installed, Mike taking me through all of the security, making sure the designs weren’t similar to Vince’s, that there was no red lights, but plenty of panic buttons. Jack hadn’t needed them, not with where he’d been, and the only time I’d felt like hitting them myself was when Gregory had come over. He’d been doing that more frequently towards the end, sometimes asking after Jack, most times just sitting, just staring. That had been hard to see, that same drug-induced stare of Jack’s, there in his father’s eyes.

And yet the hardest had come today.

If anyone had suggested that a year after meeting Jack I’d be stood in Gray’s hall, Gray close to one exit, looking desperately for a way out even if that meant packing up his whole life and pushing feeling away, I’d have broken my council-bred skill of running away, and smacked them one for thinking the three of us wouldn’t last the year, let alone the distance. All that feeling, that passion, hell, just the ease in smiles between us was gone.

I looked down at the keys in my hand.

Gray had done what he always did with anything that hurt him emotionally. Packaged everything up, taped it firmly out of sight, and pushed it to such a distance moving had been the last and final option for him. There were too many memories for him here, too many thoughts, too many nights of holding Jack. And no matter his feelings as a formal MC Master Dom, it didn’t take away the hurt of being a lover, of losing a lover and being left with nothing but an empty bed and home.

Everybody had their own ways with coping, both Gray and Jack. I was still struggling to find mine. Or maybe lingering here around Gray, needing him to stay,
was
mine.

Hearing the jingle of keys, I looked up to see Gray looking around his hall with a smile. We’d stood here a few months backs, discussing
The Bard
painting, and it seemed like different people, easier times. Now all the paintings were gone, taking with them all life. Turning the clock back wasn’t an option anymore; it was there written in Gray’s soft smile.

“I hope the new owners have better luck with her.”

Something in that made me smile sadly. “You call all your homes a ‘she’?”

Gray looked over at me, then smiled down at his keys. Yeah, it was still close how Jack had preferred to call an inanimate “this fuckable” a “he”. When Gray looked back, I started to say something. It was there, the need to make him unpack all of his paintings, just sit, talk about the last Welsh Bard as he jumped to his suicide, but it would only be a bad reminder for him. I’d be a bad reminder. Love was there, but we were nothing more than representations of different periodic ghosts; bodies unable to react together because we came from different walks of life, different times, ones that needed a living, loving host to make us drop the haunting and allow us to love. He saw that too, which is why he let his gaze fall from mine, stopping me speaking.

A disgruntled sigh, Gray held the hall door open, and I went over, pausing by him for a second just to brush his hand with mine. He caught my finger, and we stayed like that, locked.

After a moment he let go and brushed a hand against my cheek. “Thank you for not forcing this, Jan. It was good just to be seen for a while. Nothing more.”

I nodded, still wanting to cry no against the injustice of it all. Any future relationships would be tainted now. Nothing would come close to this. But then again, I also never wanted to allow a relationship to be this intense again. It was right to call a stop. Gray was right to
call
a stop, my head told me that. But my head wasn’t the problem here.

I kissed gently at his cheek and Gray turned into it, brushing against my lips. No, heads weren’t the problem here. He was the first to pull away, and I nodded, moving past him and heading through to where Jack had thrown his car keys at Gray all those months back. They were still there on the table, too, something else Jack hadn’t needed lately. Ed was standing just at the bottom of the stairs, looking lost in the emptiness of the old manor. He stood holding on to the banister, maybe knowing if he let go, that would be it: the final move. Yet his eyes were still all for Gray, and he let go the moment he saw him.