Melting Point (9 page)

He held a hand up and cut his eyes to Brady's, sharper than he had ever seen them. “You're right, Brady. I can't possibly appreciate what you went through because I've lived a truly blessed life. Yeah, it was shitty when I was a kid, but I landed on my feet with the Dempseys. And while I've lost people I care about, my family was there to pull me through. On balance, I am one lucky sonofabitch.”

He reached for his boots, loosening the laces. “I love being a firefighter and dancing in bars with hot guys and hanging with my family and friends. I'm not especially deep, I've got a pretty high opinion of myself, and I don't take my life too seriously.” His gaze rose to Brady's scarred body and continued up to his ravaged face. “You've always had it in your head that a guy like you has nothing to offer a guy like me, but really it's the other way around. You never saw me as boyfriend material. You never saw me as worthy to share your troubles with. I'm just the guy on the billboard, the fantasy fuck who's good for the short term, but God knows you don't take that home to meet the parents.”

While Gage dragged on his boots, Brady sought the right words to smooth this over. Go back to the fun and flirting of before. As usual, he had nothing. The twin emotions of humiliation and failure dueled in his chest.

And something else. The painful knowledge that Gage was right.

Gage stood and hooked Brady with that clear blue gaze. “My heart beats faster when I'm with you, but it's probably just overactive hormones or my dick running the show. I could tell you I'm in love but you'd just say I'm crazy to even think it.”

He made a hopeless gesture with his hands as though he couldn't quite believe that it was over.

It was over.

Soft thuds on the hardwood floor were his soundtrack to the door, and then there was a squeak as Gage turned quickly and pounded back. Those blue eyes blazed and that miracle mouth twitched before it moved softly over Brady's lips. So fast it felt like it had never happened.

“Fuck, I'm going to say it anyway. I love you, Brady Smith. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make me feel as good as it should, but I love you. I only wish you could believe in this, in us, the way I do. Say you might hurt me in your sleep or that those scars make you pitiful or we're oil and water, but we both know those are just excuses. The real reason is that you don't think you deserve to be adored, and if that's your attitude, then you're going to spend your life settling for second best.” His smile, sad and beautiful at once, shredded Brady's lungs. “I'd like to say it's been fun, but it hasn't. Not really. Maybe fun is overrated. Maybe this is supposed to feel messy and raw and painful.”

He strode to the door, a little less swagger than usual, his bootlaces undone. Just seeing that vulnerability, that hint of imperfection, from the usual flawless golden god sliced Brady in half.

Gage turned, his hand on the doorknob. “Hey, how many people can say they had a top chef name a sandwich after them? Not a lot, probably. Take care of yourself, Brady.” And then he was gone.

Brady raised two fingers to his mouth, trying to hold on to the warmth of Gage's last kiss. But his lips had already cooled. Unlike a nightmare, where all he had to do was open his eyes to make the bad things go away, there was no escaping this one.

chapter eleven

G
AGE STIRRED THE POT OF CHILI
and went back to dicing onions, while keeping an eye on the time for the corn bread. Five more minutes before he pulled it from the Engine 6 kitchen oven.

“Smells good, Simpson.” Jacob curved a look around his shoulder to check out the bubbling pot of awesome on the stove. “But do you think maybe you're overdoing it just a smidge?”

He waggled an eyebrow in the direction of the stainless steel countertops, piled high with Tupperware containers. Chicken parm, marsala, a pork-and-beef ragout to be frozen. He already had the ingredients for an Irish stew ready to be chopped.

“So there'll be plenty to eat for the rest of the week.” Cooking had always been his comfort: when Mary died of breast cancer, when Sean and Logan perished in a fire two years later, through every heartbreak since. The stove was his support, the steady
chop-chop
of the knife his salve.

Except this time, no matter how much Gage julienned and stirred and whisked, he couldn't escape his pain over how things had gone down in Brady's apartment the other night.

“How's Toby?” he asked Jacob, desperate for a distraction.

Jacob shrugged, then added a cheeky grin. “Dunno. But Michael is doing just fine.”

Gage rested a hand on his shoulder. “Grasshopper, you've come so far. The student has surpassed the master.”

A couple of the B shift crashed in and Jacob jerked back, evidently trying to put some hetero-appropriate distance between his body and Gage's. Gage didn't even have the energy to be pissed. If he wanted to play I-love-pussy in the macho confines of the firehouse, let him. Gage wasn't one to judge how another guy chose to put one foot in front of the other.

Not even Brady.

Should have gone cold turkey, Simpson.
Because now his chest cavity felt like it had been scooped out to create a canoe. Previous breakups, most of which he'd initiated, left him grouchy and itchy to get back out there and prove nothing kept Gage Simpson or his dick down. Fuck knew he wasn't the deep and reflective type. He was a fun-lovin' ho who liked dancing and drinking and screwing. Too flighty for anything serious, and Brady recognized that.

Did him a favor, to be honest. Gage was in the prime of his cock-sucking years, and if he was going to go all honey-I'm-home, toothbrushes-sharing-a-mug, no-blowing-other-guys, why the hell would he choose someone with so many problems? Especially when he had enough of his own. His heart pinched, thinking about his mom and wishing he could talk it out with someone who would listen without judgment.

Like Brady.
But Gage had never wanted to unload on a guy who was clearly in so much pain. A trouble shared was sometimes just more trouble than it was worth.

The oven timer beeped, and Gage grabbed the mitts to pull out the corn bread, hoping there wouldn't be any runs from dispatch in the next half hour. He had fucking Irish stew to make.

J
UST AS HIS SHOULDER
had started to heal, Brady realized he had to worry about giving himself a new injury. If he carried on in his current state, his fingers would soon be taking a permanent leave of absence from his hand.

He really should not be using sharp knives.

At least, not to chop veggies for mirepoix. But there was a guy in a well-cut suit leaning against a shiny chrome counter in the Smith & Jones kitchen who he wouldn't mind slicing up into small strips.

Eli picked up an empty food mill and turned the crank, the grinding sound shredding Brady's last nerve. Brady laid the knife down gently, took the mill from Eli like he would a disobedient child, and moved it out of reach.

“You've been here for twenty minutes and all you've done is ask dumb questions about what every piece of equipment here does.”

“Four different kinds of slicers seem unnecessary, don't you think?”

“Just get to the point, Eli.”

“Thought maybe you'd be evolved enough to want to talk about it without me going all Dr. Phil.”

“Nothin' to talk about.” Brady picked up the knife again and started chopping a carrot, keeping it in a kiss to the board, working in what felt like slow motion. A knot of anger tightened in his chest and he slammed the knife down. “No, wait a second. Maybe we should talk about how you've been stickin' your nose into my life, Mr. Matchmaker. And how the hell do you even know anythin' happened?” Brady hadn't exactly jumped on the phone to call all his girlfriends the moment Gage walked out the door.

“I'm the fucking mayor. I know everything.” He arched an eyebrow. “As for my matchmaking, as you term it, I thought maybe he'd wake you out of this fog you've been lost in since you left the Marines.”

“Ain't been that bad.”

Eli's stare said it all.
Remember how I found you holed up in that flea-bitten hotel in Cabo, a bottle of Jack in one hand, a gun in the other? Or
the money I lent you to train with Claude Delon in Paris? Does the fact I'm the Jones in Smith & Jones mean nothing to you?

Brady knew he owed his life several times over to Eli, but that didn't give him permission to screw with it like a puppet master.

“Better to quit before we get in too deep.” He'd spent the last two days arguing variations of this conclusion in his head. It wasn't just that he could hurt Gage physically and not even realize it. Sooner or later, Gage would have reached his hard limit, because even Mr. Sunshine had a ceiling.

Eli made a sound that could be roughly translated as “you're an emotional cripple.”

“What did you think was going to happen, Eli? A guy like that—” Sheer frustration stalled the words in his throat. He wanted to murder his so-called friend for putting Gage in his path. For letting him think he could coexist in the same universe with this man.

“I might have facilitated an introduction, but you're both adults, and the rest was up to you. Why do you think he pursued you? Twice, in fact, because you were too dumb to get it the first time.”

“Because he was bored. Because he likes a challenge.”

“Wow, great reasons, Brady, except the one that matters. Sex. That's why. Which incidentally I imagine
a guy like that
can get anywhere. While you were marinating in what-ifs and doomsday scenarios, he was chasing you down so he could fuck you stupid.” Eli put a hand on his shoulder and said in his best Valley Girl, “Oh. My. God. Is that what happened? Have you been completely fucked stupid?”

Brady shrugged him off. “I was doing okay without your interference.”

Eli maintained eye contact, eyes steely and soft at once. “Six years ago, one of your team died on your watch.
Our
watch. We all fucked up, but especially me because I should have finished the job when I had the chance. Instead I left it to my friend who had taken the worst of it for his men and was out of his head with the kind of pain no one should ever have to endure. That's on me.”

“Eli—”

“Several poor decisions were made that day, Brady. You, me, Haynes, none of us get a pass. But those were the field conditions and that's how it played out. You got your ass kicked and your body burned and let's face it, you had the personality of fish bait to start with so you were already behind.”

Brady snorted. “Fucker.”

Eli smiled, just a flash. “Doesn't the martyr thing get tired, Brady?”

God, yes.

He hauled the deepest breath he could. Still wasn't enough. Hadn't been since Gage had stomped out with his laces undone, leaving Brady's world similarly unraveled. He felt like his lungs had collapsed and his heart had been ground through that food mill. And none of it mattered. Those organs were unnecessary because his reason for breathing and loving was gone anyway.

He had no words but that was okay, because Eli Cooper, the man who could talk the dogs off a meat truck, was using
all
of them. Prick.

“You've got to give yourself permission to enjoy this life you've built and the people who are in it. God knows why, but Gage Simpson is nuts about you, and while he's as surprised about it as you are, at least he's not afraid to own it.”

In his heart of hearts, Brady knew Eli was right. Believing it had always been the problem. He wanted to believe in himself, in Gage's love for him, in the possibility of deserving good things.

Brady looked at his friend, wishing he knew how to thank him for all he had done. Eli just offered up the grin that had put him in
People
's Sexiest Man Alive issue. Twice.

“Who knew you were such a romantic, Eli Cooper?”

“Hush now, we don't want that to get out,” he said with a shifty look around the empty kitchen. “My career in politics would be over.”

G
AGE STEPPED OUT
into the cold sunshine, the weight on his shoulders forcing him into a hunch. No change with Emmaline today, which could be interpreted any which way he pleased. Good that he didn't have to bring things to a head and bad that he was still stuck in this soul-deep rut of “not knowing.” Had she made her peace with Gage before the pieces of her mind started to break off? Or were her views still as rigid as the lump of pain lodged behind Gage's breastbone?

He looked up and his heart lifted with his gaze. A hot streak of muscled, tatted male sat on a Harley Dyna Glide in the Hillview Nursing Home parking lot. It shouldn't have meant anything, yet somehow it meant
everything.

“Back in action, then?”

Brady nodded and unhinged his big, sling-less body from the bike. He drew up along the driver's side of Gage's truck. “I went around to see you and Alex told me about your mom. You should have said something, Gage.”

This is why he'd kept the situation with Emmaline under wraps. Family interference was the Dempseys' favorite pastime, so he had remained silent until yesterday when he snapped at Alex in the bar and she'd asked him who died. Now she and Luke were pissed, Beck was nodding his understanding, and Wy was squinting like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western.

“You had enough on your plate.”

“Not so much I couldn't have been there for you. Like you've been for me.”

Brady would probably never know how much he had helped Gage these last few weeks, but now he would handle it alone. Gage the Fixer was on the case.

“I'm okay,” he said, though Brady hadn't asked.

He reached for the handle of the truck, which forced him to maneuver around a mountain of man. The chef stayed still, just staring, all knowing.

“I'm okay,” Gage repeated, more forcefully this time. Giving it volume to up the truth levels.

That bastard continued with what he always did. The eyes filled with sorrow. The smug fucking scars that said his pain was real and deep and how dare Gage Simpson think he had any right to be hurt. He'd survived a childhood nightmare and it shouldn't still hurt. He'd found love with the Dempseys and it shouldn't still hurt.

“I don't need this,” Gage said.

“You need what you need. You need whatever will get you through.”

No.
If he started thinking about it—speaking about it—then the words and memories and pain would have power over him. He'd be just some other sad sack homo with a rotten backstory who fucked his way through his misery.

Brady cupped his jaw and that touch,
oh,
Gage hated himself for craving it. “Gage, you're not alone.”

“I know,” he said with grin number three in his repertoire, a little devilish, brightness factor as high as it could go. “I have my family, my friends, sunshine coming out my ass 24/7. People care about me and guys want to bang me and the whole world is my oyster, so don't give me that look, Brady Smith.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair to counter the wobble on his smile. “Just. Don't.”

“And me. You have me.”

“I don't have you.
You
don't have you.”

“Gage, I fucked up. I'm no good at dating or relationships or being, well, normal. I'm just some idiot trying to make his way with no map or GPS. But this isn't all on me. You're demanding honesty and you won't even share what you've been going through. I might know shit about relationships, but I'm pretty fuckin' sure that's not how it works.”

Gage choked out something that was supposed to be amusement but sounded like he was having a coughing fit. “You had it worse.”

Brady laughed, a belly buster of a sound that compelled Gage to take a step back from the crazy man in the parking lot. He had finally lost it.

“This isn't a contest, Gage. There's no one tallying a ledger of whose pain is more worthy. I knew something was going on with you, but I was too self-involved to push. I should have and I'm sorry. What I do know is that I'm stronger than I've been giving myself credit for, and a lot of that is because you're in my life. You've been letting me lean on you. Now it's time to let me be what you need.”