Managed (VIP 2)

I stop short, and he does too, since I’m still holding on to him. A lump rises in my throat. “You mean she—”

“Took her own life,” he answers shortly. “Yes.”

“Oh, hell.”

“I don’t…blame her,” he grits out. “I simply… Ah, bollocks, I resented the hell out of her for taking what short time we had left away from me. Which is selfish, I know, but there it is.” He spreads his hands as if to encompass his pain.

A thought occurs to me, and my skin prickles in horror. “And then Jax…”

“Yes.” The word is a bullet, his face flushed and full of rage before going blank.

I move to hug him, but he turns and starts walking again, still controlled but his pace faster now.

“As I said, we did not have a lot of money. But Mum always wanted to go back to France. Her parents had died, and she felt a bit lost, I think, missing her country. This one time, Dad piled us into the car and we drove here, to Nice for holiday.” He stops and stares at the sea. “I was ten. It was the last time we went anywhere as a family.”

He lets me take his hand, and his cold fingers twine with mine.

I hold him more securely. “I’m sorry, Gabriel.”

Nodding, he keeps his gaze averted. “I remember being happy here. But it brings back other memories I’d rather forget.”

“Of course.”

We don’t say anything for a while, simply walk.

“I feel shitty now,” I confess. When he glances at me with confusion, I bluster on. “I went on and on, complaining about my mom showing up, and what a pain my parents are—”

“And I loved hearing about it,” he cuts in. “Don’t you dare think otherwise. And don’t you dare pity me. I won’t stand for it.”

“It’s not pity,” I say softly, squeezing his hand. “I just…” Ache for you. “Hell, I don’t know. I feel like a shit just because, okay?”

He chuffs out a half-laugh. “Well, okay. And I do have a family.”

“The guys and Brenna?”

“Yes.” His hand slips from mine, and he clears his throat. “After Mum, well, Dad was around even less. But I’d always done well in school. I received scholarship for an independent school. You’d know it as a prep or boarding school, I suppose.”

“I know Harry Potter,” I offer.

He almost smiles. “I think we’d all have preferred Hogwarts.”

“Was it bad?”

“It wasn’t good,” he says with a touch of asperity. “I don’t know how much you know about Britain, but whether we admit it or not, classism is very much alive. All I had to do was open my mouth to speak and the other students knew I was working class.”

“You?” I have to laugh. “You sound like Prince William to me.”

His ghost of a smile is bitter. “Mimicry. You learn to adapt to survive. And there are days I hate the sound of it coming out of my mouth. Because I ought to have stayed true to myself. At the time, however, I just wanted to fit in. Didn’t work, though.”

“Did they give you shit?”

“Scholarship Scott with his dad on the dole? Of course. And I was a bit of a runt until I hit twenty. Stick thin and about six inches shorter.”

I have to grin at that, imagining Gabriel in his puppy youth, all awkward angles and blooming male beauty.

“I was having the crap beat out of me when I met Jax.” He says it almost fondly. “Jax jumped right in the middle of it, scrappy as a dog. Next thing, Killian, Rye, and Whip were there, pummeling the shite out of anyone left standing.”

He looks up at me and laughs, the first truly amused sound I’ve heard from him since our walk began. “I was brassed off. Who were these tossers? They didn’t know me. Why help?”

My throat constricts. “You’d never had anyone help you just because it was the right thing?”

Eyes the color of the sea meet mine. “No. At any rate, I told them to piss off.”

“But they didn’t.”

“Of course not. Firstly, they’d heard I could secure dope—”

My steps halt. “You? Smoking up? No.”

“How very scandalized you sound, Darling,” he says, fighting a small smile. “I was a teenager stuck in boarding school with a bunch of elitist wankers. Passing through some of those long hours in a haze was part of survival.”

“I’m now picturing you slouched on a couch, doing bong hits.” I grin at the thought. “Did you get Scooby-snack cravings?”

He looks at me blandly. “Yes, but only after riding around in the Mystery Machine, searching for villains. Hard work, that.”

Snickering, I start walking again. “So after you became the guys’ supplier?”

“Hilarious,” he mutters. “And it wasn’t about drugs. Not really. They were outcasts in a way too. They came from money, but they were all either half-American or had lived there for a majority of their lives.”