PART I: BREAKING
Prologue: Bird Stealing Bread
Counting sheep didn’t work.
Gabriel turned onto his back with a sigh. He listened to Claire’s breathing, trying to let it lull him into sleep.
That didn’t work, either. His girlfriend might be sleeping by his side, but the person who was on his mind was downstairs, getting drunk. Jared. His best friend.
Sighing again, Gabriel sat up and buried his fingers in his hair. He held his breath and strained his hearing. The house was completely quiet. It had been hours; maybe Jared had finally gone to bed.
And maybe he was still drinking in front of the fireplace.
Clenching his jaw, Gabriel looked at the door.
He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t go downstairs. It would change nothing. There was nothing he could do for Jared.
After all, he was the reason Jared was drinking.
“Don’t you see how cruel it is? Don’t you care? It’s breaking him.” Jared’s cousin’s voice echoed in his mind, over and over and over, every word like a punch to the solar plexus.
Gabriel closed his eyes, trying to block it out. He hadn’t intended to reveal to Alexander that he knew about Jared’s feelings for him. No one was supposed to know. Jared wasn’t supposed to know that Gabriel knew. Now Gabriel couldn’t stop worrying. Alexander had promised not to tell Jared anything, but Gabriel wasn’t sure he could trust the guy—he had seemed pretty angry earlier that night.
“He’s not your parent. He’s not your older brother. He’s not a monk. He’s a healthy man. If you love him as much as you claim to, you’ll stop being a selfish little shit and let him go.”
Alexander had been right, of course: Gabriel was straight, had a girlfriend he loved and couldn’t give Jared what he wanted. The right thing to do would be to tell Jared he knew about Jared’s feelings for him—and that anything between them was impossible. It would have been kinder to let Jared leave and find someone else to love.
Except Jared couldn’t leave him. Even thinking about it made his stomach clench into a painful knot and a surge of panic course through his entire body. God, this was so fucked up. He’d told Alexander the truth: he really was glad he wasn’t gay. If he was this needy and dependent when he didn’t want Jared that way, Gabriel couldn’t imagine what a clingy wreck he would have been if he actually did want Jared that way. It was bad enough already.
For fuck’s sake. He was a rising football star and millionaire. He wasn’t supposed to feel that way anymore. He was no longer a teenager. He was no longer paralyzed. He wasn’t supposed to still feel like Jared was his anchor.
He had been sixteen when he damaged his spine during some meaningless friendly match here in the States. The club had put him at the rehabilitation center where Jared was doing his residency and Jared had been assigned as his physiotherapist. For seventeen long months, Jared had been his world: he’d held Gabriel’s hand as he struggled to move his limbs, wiped the sweat off Gabriel’s forehead, encouraged him and praised his every little accomplishment. Everyone had thought Gabriel’s career was over before it even properly began—doctors weren’t optimistic about his chances of walking again, much less returning to football—but Jared made him believe he could do it. And he did. The day he took his first steps without falling, Jared hugged him tightly and whispered, his voice full of pride, “That’s my boy.” And Gabriel never wanted to let go. Jared was his. He didn’t know what he would have done without him.
He still didn’t. He might be twenty now, he might be able to walk again, he might be a star player of an English top club, but nothing had changed in the way he felt about Jared. He felt truly at peace only when Jared was with him. If he went a few days without seeing Jared, he started feeling off-balance and moody—which was unhealthy on so many levels that Gabriel couldn’t even admit it to the club’s psychologists. They’d think he was nuts, and rightly so.
Hell, he thought he was nuts for tagging along when Jared had decided to spend his vacation with his family in the States. By lucky—or unlucky—coincidence, Gabriel was still recovering from a small ankle injury, or he wouldn’t have been able to leave England during the height of football season. He hadn’t wanted to bring his girlfriend with him, but he couldn’t exactly tell Claire why he didn’t want her to come along. Claire didn’t know about Jared’s feelings; she didn’t know her presence would be painful for Jared.
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. Fuck, why did everything have to be so complicated?
If only Jared hadn’t developed a thing for him…
Except…
Except he kind of…