This couldn’t be fucking happening!
Gunner sat back on his heels with a huff. How could one man be so tiny, and yet wreck the world around him like a bull on steroids? “I didn’t do shit! Alexander outed me in front of them! So I lost my cool! I was doing just fine before that, but no, he had to come over and throw me under the bus! So I threw him at a table. Big fucking deal! Would you fucking untie me?”
Caspian moved back and forth in the tight space between the bed and cupboards, his brain on fire. “What do you mean he ‘outed’ you? How the fuck would he know?” He yelled and flinched when he spread his arm and hit the wall.
“He made assumptions after the shopping we did. Asshole. After I broke his nose—”
“The hell?”
“I told you we had a fight. So I was buzzing after, and kinda… admitted it was true?” Gunner’s shoulders dropped, but he offered Caspian a hesitant smile, as if he didn’t realize that there was nothing amusing about his behavior. This was dreadful. Absolutely fucking worst.
“You admitted—?” But the fact that Gunner had come out in his stead to his parents and their entire social circle wasn’t the worst of it. He’d also beat up another person severely enough to break bone, and there had been at least three dozen witnesses to back up Alex’s story.
He couldn’t fucking breathe.
“You need to go back. You need to apologize to Alex right the fuck now, and beg him not to press charges!”
“What kind of pussy is he? I barely fucking scratched him!”
“You said you broke his nose!”
Gunner pouted. “Potato tomato.”
Caspian stared at him in horror. “That’s not how the saying goes!”
“And I said untie me! I don’t wanna be here anymore!”
“Yeah, you shouldn’t be,” Caspian yelled, raising his voice. “We’ll dress and go together, so I can keep you in check, because clearly you can’t control your fucking temper.” He roughly flipped Gunner over and pulled on the right fragment of the looped belt in order to loosen the cuff.
He couldn’t believe this was happening. This party had been very important for Mom and Dad, and Gunner had ruined it. The possibility of fallout was so great it was making his insides cramp with the stress of it all.
Gunner slid off the bed with a miserable expression and pulled his pants up. “I’m not going! What if they arrest me?”
“Then you’ll be a good boy and go with the police, apologize, and tell them you panicked because he outed you in front of everyone,” Caspian yelled, tossing the belt at the wall, before quickly putting on underwear and jeans from a pile of clean stuff. “How could you do this to my parents?”
Gunner hugged himself, looking lost, and for a moment Caspian wanted to give in and tell him everything would be all right. But what the fuck was wrong with his head? The walking disaster deserved a kick in the ass, not consolation.
“I’m just a bad fucking person, and you know this!” Gunner finally yelled as if a dam had broken inside of him, and secret truths could no longer be held in. He put on his T-shirt but stilled with the jacket in hand when someone knocked on the door.
“Will you fucking shut it? My baby’s trying to sleep!” Carla, one of his neighbors yelled.
“I will not shut up! Tell your baby to suck it up. It’s the middle of the day,” Caspian roared, banging his hand against the wall, out of fucks to give. It didn’t matter whether people liked him, because at the end of the day, this wasn’t his world, his home, or his neighbors. If Gunner couldn’t respect those in his old life, then he’d return the favor.
Gunner put on the jacket, glaring at Caspian as if he had any right to be pissed off, and headed for the door. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come here.”
But Carla wouldn’t give it a rest with the banging, splitting Caspian’s overworked brain in half. “I’ll tell my husband, you no good bastard!”
This was it.
Caspian pushed past Gunner and ran to the door, opening it into the woman’s face. Dressed in a skater dress and an open hoodie, she stepped back, as if suddenly reminded who she was confronting. “You and your husband fart out of your mouths every other day, and I have to listen to that, so don’t you fucking come in here and tell me when to argue with my boyfriend!”
Carla stared at him, for once stunned into silence. Good. But the other neighbors already peeking at the situation from nearby only angered Caspian further—as if containing his aggression on a daily basis hadn’t been hard enough.
Gunner slipped out under his arm and faced Carla. “He’s talking bullshit, we’re not— It’s not that.”