Authors: Marguerite Labbe
“It happens. Jason has been making Sophia crazy with his hovering. So when am I going to meet this guy? You bringing him home for the baby’s christening?”
“I think I could talk him into a short trip to San Francisco. Hey, Dad, I know it’s late notice, but I was wondering if you could make it up to Seattle at the end of June? Galen is having a big gala opening for the new exhibit. We’d like you to come.”
“End of June, huh?” Nick’s stomach knotted at the hesitance in his dad’s voice.
“I know you don’t like leaving the shop for just Jason to run. Galen feels the same way with his museum,” Nick said, steeling himself for the refusal. “But it wouldn’t be for long, just the weekend. I can reserve the plane tickets for you.”
“No, no. I can pay for my own tickets. Don’t you worry about my end. I think Jason can handle the shop just fine. He’s been hounding me for more responsibility, him and Sophia both.” His dad paused, and a little bit of hope crept in. Until now, his dad had refused to talk with him about the Dexios Collection. Every time Nick brought it up, he changed the subject. “So this is the exhibit with Uncle Stavros’s statues?”
“Yeah, they’re amazing, Dad. A little NC-17, but really amazing. There aren’t any words to describe them.”
“Sure there are, a whole bunch of words written on decaying paper.” A concerned note entered his dad’s voice. “I suppose they need to be insured. How much is that going to cost us?”
“Actually, Galen and I have that covered. We split the cost, so don’t worry about that.” Nick waited for his dad to ask him where he got the money from and if he’d thought it through, but he didn’t.
“I know I give you a hard time about having your head off in la-la land and of dreaming too big without thinking things through. I don’t want you losing that part of yourself; it’s what makes you Nick. I was so hard on you because I didn’t want it to control you. So that being said, don’t get obsessed with the Dexios Collection. You can have many dreams. They don’t have to all be around one thing.”
Too late for that
. Hell, it had been too late from the time when Nick had heard the first story. He’d dreamt of those statues, of finding them, long before he’d been estranged from his family and sought them anew as a peace offering. The last few months had only added to his fevered preoccupation. Galen was right to worry.
“I won’t. Galen’s got his head straight about them, and he’s making sure I keep my perspective.”
Galen’s head lifted again, and there was no question about it this time—the smile lit up his brown eyes.
“Good to hear. I’ll call you when I get the details settled for the flights.”
Nick tossed his phone on the couch and folded his hands behind his head. He needed to say something, to close this gap of silence between him and Galen, but the words failed him.
Galen smiled at him from the other side of the couch and set the file on the coffee table. “I’m glad you’re talking to him more often.”
Nick’s tongue unknotted with that first offering from Galen. “I….” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything from the beginning. It was stupid.”
Galen shook his head and waved the apology away. “I’ve been thinking about it, and you don’t have anything to apologize for. I come bursting into your life after all these months and expect you to tell me everything about something that obviously means a lot to you. That’s not fair. You had every reason to not trust me at the beginning. I needed to remember that. I can’t honestly have expected you to spill your guts on all your secrets right away. That would make me a real asshole.”
Galen’s gaze softened even more. “It also occurred to me that you opened up the very same day that you realized I wasn’t bullshitting, that I do love you. I think we both need to stop being so damn prickly and touchy.”
The unhappy knot of tension in Nick’s chest unraveled. “Trust is not something that comes easily for me. But I think half the time it’s my own fault.”
“Again, understandable, and I think not just because of how you felt when I left.”
Nick squirmed inside from Galen’s insight. After all these years the memory of his mom leaving was still seared into his brain. He never wanted to be in a situation like that again, where he was begging somebody to stay. And he’d come so close to that with Galen. “I….”
“Talk to me,” Galen said, his voice soft. “Who else broke your heart?”
“It’s not what you think. I don’t have some long-lost lover that hurt me.” Though come to think of it, that was rather sad itself. He had protected himself so much that he hadn’t allowed anyone else to get that close.
“But somebody hurt you and hurt you bad. I can see it.” Galen turned his body toward him and leaned his head on his arm on the back of the couch. “Let me in a little.”
“It’s no big deal. It happened a long time ago.” Nick played with a mechanical pencil, ejecting the lead and pushing it back in until it broke. “My mom left.”
Nick stole a glance at Galen, who was continuing to watch him with a look in his eyes that made Nick’s throat ache. “My dad was at work, he worked a lot then, from before opening till after close, Jason was helping him. I was at home with my brothers and mom, and we were just screwing around being stupid, and I broke a window. Stefan and Damien ran next door to a friend’s house when it happened. Mom lost her ever-loving mind. She began yelling, then crying and the next thing I knew she was packing up all the suitcases in the house.”
“Oh God, how old were you?” Galen moved closer on the couch, bridging the distance between them.
“Ten.” Nick swore he could remember every word that was said that day, every accusation that was hurled when the rest of the family came home to find Nick alone. Not his dad, though. His dad had been quiet, and he’d tried reassuring Nick many times that it hadn’t been his fault. “Nothing I said convinced her to stay. I cried, I begged, and it only upset her more.”
“I’m so sorry.” Galen took his hand, and even that slight contact made the memory hurt a little less.
Nick looked up, drawn by the gentleness in Galen’s voice. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“Yeah, for a little bit. About a year later she wanted to see me and my brothers, so she contacted Dad, and he agreed. I would’ve done anything to get her to stay, and she promised that she would, but my brothers they were still pretty angry, and they didn’t make it easy for her. Not that I blame them, I just wanted to pretend that it never happened. We got a few months of visits with her before she disappeared again. I haven’t seen her since.”
“I….” Galen leaned in and kissed him. “She missed out on an amazing man.”
“I’m glad you can still say that when I know I drive you crazy. I’m sorry.”
Galen shook his head and tapped his finger to Nick’s lips. “I can easily still say that. I’ll drive you crazy at times too. But at the end of the day the two of us together are better than us apart. You let me be myself, which was something I think I was missing before.”
“I wouldn’t want you any other way.” Nick slid his hand into Galen’s hair, both relieved that the subject of his past was over and grateful that Galen knew the story. It had really torn him apart inside. Maybe now he could let that go, just as Galen had let some of the guilt and pain over Bryan’s death go when they’d talked about it. And maybe now he understood his brothers and their reaction to his move a little more too. He wanted to help Galen in return, get him to take another step forward.
“How about we work on getting you to drive a bit this weekend?” Panic flashed across Galen’s face, leaving behind a distinctly ill look. “Not far, I promise not to send you out onto any highways, just enough to break the ice a bit and get you behind the wheel again.”
“Fine.” Galen drew in a deep breath and rubbed his palm on his jeans. “Can we do it Sunday, before we go to Mom’s for dinner?”
This time Nick felt the hot rush of prickling nerves. “Sunday dinner? This Sunday? You didn’t say that it was going to be so soon earlier.”
“I got distracted, sue me.” Galen grinned, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Trust me; you don’t want to try avoiding her. Mom has a way of tracking people down that’s uncanny.”
Okay, dinner. Nick could do this, no problem.
“Looks like you’ll get a chance to meet my dad at the gala.” Nick slipped his arm around Galen’s shoulders, and a sense of contentment settled over him.
“That would be cool. Think your brothers might show?”
“Not likely, but you know, one step at a time, right? Jason and Sophia will have to run the shop, and it’s going to take Stefan and Damian a little longer to come around. But I think I have a little more insight into them. I think if I keep doing what I’m doing, calling and visiting, that things will eventually be okay.” Galen took Nick’s hand and laced their fingers together. It felt good to be so relaxed around someone again, without the weight of the past or the worry for the future hanging over him.
“You’ll get there. Rebuilding trust is a step-by-step process.” Galen brushed a kiss on his jaw. “You taught me that.”
G
ALEN
hadn’t mentioned Nick’s crazy-assed notion to get him behind the wheel of a car again. He’d been hoping that Nick had forgotten all about it, and he didn’t want to do anything to call attention to the suggestion. When Nick didn’t bring it up the rest of the week, Galen thought that he’d managed to escape.
Then Nick shooed them out the door an hour earlier than they had to leave for his mom’s, and Galen realized that Nick hadn’t forgotten it at all. Nick was never ready early. Galen’s stomach began to knot as they left the apartment, and by the time they were loaded in the car and Nick pulled off, Galen’s palms were sweating.
“This is a bad idea,” Galen muttered and bit at his thumbnail. “We should try this another time.”
Nick shot a quick sympathetic glance at him. “There’s never going to be a good first time, especially now that so much time has already passed. It’s like getting on a bike again, but on a much bigger scale. What happened was far worse than a simple accident, but if you do nothing you still let it have power over you, and I know that’s not what you want.”
Galen rubbed his hands on his jeans and stared unseeing out the window. His stomach churned. He wanted to argue, but Nick was right. He couldn’t live the rest of his life with this fear and self-imposed handicap. Still, did it have to be today? He had so much on his mind. After the gala would be a much better time.
“We won’t be out long today, and you can relax after at your mom’s,” Nick said, interrupting Galen’s thoughts. He reached over, caught Galen’s hand and brought it to his lips for a quick kiss.
Nick got them on the highway heading out of Seattle, toward the suburb where Galen’s mom lived. Galen closed his eyes, not wanting to see all the other vehicles on the road today of all days. “The sun’s too bright. I didn’t bring my sunglasses.” He couldn’t drive with the sun in his eyes.
“That’s okay, you can use mine.” Nick squeezed Galen’s hand. “Besides, I thought it would be better today than on an overcast or rainy day.”
Galen went cold inside at the thought. “Good point.”
It was daylight, sunny, and they were headed toward quiet, back roads. This couldn’t be any more different than the night of the accident. Galen kept telling himself that, concentrating on breathing slowly in and out, as he had so many nights after Bryan died when panic or grief would strike. Gradually, they had faded, though he still got the occasional panic attack. One seemed to be building up to strike now, and Galen refused to break down in front of Nick.
By the time Nick pulled over in the empty parking lot of a high school, Galen had managed to calm himself down somewhat. Okay, this he could do. A large space. Nobody else around. It would be similar to when he was fifteen and his big sister had taken him out to show him the basics without his mom knowing.
Nick pulled his car over and stuck it in park. “You ready?”
Fuck no, he wasn’t ready.
Galen’s stomach jumped, but he nodded and got out of the passenger side before he could change his mind. He could do this. He slid behind the wheel and took his time adjusting the mirror and seat. His stomach was fluttering so badly he was surprised it didn’t take flight right out of his throat.
“Nothing complicated at first. Why don’t you go around the parking lot a few times?” Nick suggested and handed him his sunglasses. Galen set his hands on the wheel. He could feel the sweat on his palms. That wasn’t good. He wouldn’t be able to grip it if he kept this up. He had to get over this.
Galen found himself putting the car in drive, and it crept forward a few feet. His heart hammered, and he gripped the wheel tighter.
“Hey.” Nick touched his wrist, and Galen heard the concern in his voice. “It’ll be okay. Trust me. We can keep it to the parking lot today.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust.”
Nick hadn’t killed his partner in a car accident, Galen had. And God, now Nick was sitting next to him…. He couldn’t do this with Nick sitting next to him. The first turn came, and Galen’s arms felt stiff as he maneuvered the wheel. He was going to be sick.
“You’ve got to relax.” Once again Nick touched his arm, and Galen found his grip locking even tighter. “Don’t hold on so tight. You won’t be able to adjust.”
Nick’s voice sounded tinny and far away. It became a nonsense blend of words. The sense of Lykon bloomed to life in his awareness and panic lurched.
No!
Galen clung to the wheel, his gaze fixed ahead as he searched for the brake. Lykon couldn’t come now. Galen couldn’t allow himself to get dizzy, or even worse. Nick was there. He could get hurt. He could….
“Galen!”
What if Nick wanted him to take the car out on the road the next time? There would be other drivers, people Galen couldn’t control. He could take care of his end, but he couldn’t predict theirs. That night flashed through his mind again: the rain, the blurry lines on the road, and the other vehicle’s swerve into his lane. That god-awful scream, only this time the scream was Nick’s.