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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Gabriel

“This is a dream come true,” I mutter, looking around at the stacks and piles of boxes.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Storm mutters.

I step forward, ready to dive into this chaos, but Storm grabs my arm, giving me a concerned look.

“Please don’t make this weird,” he says.

“How could I make it weird?” I ask.

“I don’t know, just please don’t.”

“Okay… I guess I’ll try.”

He leans in to kiss me on the lips. “I know you need the distraction right now, so have fun, but remember the rules.”

I do need the distraction. Tara using her old key and letting herself into the house to catch me riding Storm last week was not on my bingo card for the month. It caused an avalanche of problems with my family, many of which I’ve dodged, but my brothers keep harassing me to the point I’m thinking of changing my number. Suffice to say, I’ve officially been disowned by them.

It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. In a way, it feels like a relief. They’re no longer dangling me by a string, watching me fight to hold on and laughing. Now, I’m free. Yet, at the same time, I’m sad and confused. Why can’t they just accept me for who I am? That question may never have an answer, and instead of putting energy into it, I should put energy into moving on.

“Yes, I know. Organize first. Don’t throw anything away until you have looked at it. One room at a time. Trust me, Storm, cleaning is my thing. I’ve got this.”

He laughs, giving me another kiss. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” I say, holding up my gloved hands. “This feels good.”

“You’re a strange man,” he calls out when I move into the first room of the house—the living room. Guess it’s as good a place to start as any.

If we get this room clear, it’ll give us plenty of space to store things. I don’t know what he plans on doing with everything in this house, but he said he was selling it. Meaning, everything has to go. The best way to get through all of this stuff is to make piles—keep and discard. In order for that, we need space. This is a big room that will give us plenty of space, so making room here makes sense. It’s also the front of the house, which will make moving things out easier later on.

The room is full of boxes stacked on top of one another and some trash—mostly newspapers and magazines. I have no idea what’s in the boxes.

After taking in the room and looking for a safe place to start, I move to the right side and pull down a box stacked high on top of others. The one on the bottom is squished, this stack looking like it may fall over if we stomp our feet too hard. If it fell, it would cause other stacks to fall and cause a serious problem since there are so many of them.

I set the box down, open it up, and find a ton of magazines. They’re all issues from a few years ago, all with his mother’s name and this address. I move the box to an empty spot by the door and keep going.

Every box on this side of the room is filled with magazines. All types. Home, cars, gardening, gossip… anything you can think of. I’ve gone through at least a hundred boxes, and the other side of the room is more packed than this side. I bet they’re full of the same thing.

“Storm!” I call out, moving toward the hallway that leads to the kitchen. He pops his head around the corner, raising a brow. “One side of the room is done. There are only magazines in the boxes.”

“Really?” He frowns.

“Yeah, I went through every one of them.”

He nods. “Okay, well, that’s all trash, then.”

“I figured as much. Have you thought of getting a dumpster?”

“Probably a good idea. Let me call them now.”

I go back to sorting through boxes, and after two hours, I get through every one of them in this room. Thousands and thousands of magazines. Each box I get through makes me sadder than the last because this woman was not okay, but I am not the right person to have that conversation with Storm. Hoarding is a real problem, and a lot of times it comes from loss. People afraid to get rid of things because they’ve lost so much already. Funny because I feel like Storm is the opposite. He’s afraid to get attached to anything. I don’t know that for sure, but considering what he moved into my house with, I can only assume. Maybe it’s rude of me to diagnose him, but that’s why I won’t say anything to him unless he brings it up. It’s not my place and I don’t want to upset him further. This isn’t easy on him to begin with.

Once all the boxes are organized in a way that will be easy to get rid of, I stare down at the floor. There are paths worn into the cream carpet, while there are nearly perfect squares that are much cleaner from where the boxes sat. It’s all a very sad thing to see. My heart aches for her, and for what Storm dealt with. Some of these boxes were filled with magazines dated from when he was here. This hoarding isn’t anything new, nothing he wasn’t aware of. He admitted that maybe he was lying to himself about some things, so at least he recognizes that. He doesn’t need to say it out loud to me, I’m pretty sure he knows.

“You okay?”

I look up. “I’m good,” I answer with a smile.

“Dumpster won’t be here for two days.”

“Okay, well… we can organize everything to throw into it.” I run my forearm over my head to rid it of sweat.

“That’s what I figured. I actually hired some guys to toss it all away.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I don’t mind helping.”

He walks up to me, putting his hands on my waist.

“And I appreciate that, but we don’t need to be here throwing things into the dumpster for hours.”

“I don’t mind helping you, Storm,” I reiterate, this time more slowly. “You’re not a burden or anything.”

He huffs out a laugh. “I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. Trust me, that’s not my issue here.”

“Then what is?”

His smile falls, and he lets out a sigh. “What are we getting for lunch?”

I consider changing the subject back, but it’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk about it. And though every part of me wants to squeeze it out of him, that’s not fair of me. I’d hate it if he did it to me.

“Whatever you want,” is what I say.

“Let’s go out somewhere.” I glance down between us, raising a brow. “After we go home and clean up.”

“Thank you,” I breathe out. “I was worried.”

He chuckles, taking my hand and leading me out of the house. He locks up and we get into the car and head home, where we shower and change into something nicer, and then he treats me to lunch at a nice restaurant by the bay.

“How are you doing?” Storm asks as I get comfortable on the lounger. It’s dark and the sky is clear. It’s a beautiful night.

“In general or…”

“With Tara,” he says carefully, almost as if he didn’t want to say her name.

“Oh, that.” I cross my legs at the ankles and lean back. “Fine, I guess. It’s strange to think about. Seeing her was… just really weird. I mean, I was supposed to marry her and I don’t know a thing about her. I was so close to doing it, too. She left me at the altar, and I think that’s the closest you can get to marrying someone, you know? It’s a relief, if I’m honest.”

“But what about your family?”

My family…

“That’s… something that will probably take me a really long time to process. My issues with them didn’t start when you came along, Storm. They’ve been there since the day I was born.”

“Do you need me to be your therapist?” I glance at him and find him giving me a suggestive look. “We can role play.”

I chuckle. “You want me to tell you all my problems and then, what?”

“I’ll make you feel better by sucking them out of you—through your dick.”

I bark out a laugh. “That’s absurd.”

“Porn always is.”

“Speaking of… how is our video doing?”

“Better than I thought. People want more. They’re suggesting things we should do.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A lot of creators do it, actually. I was doing it for a while, but put all that stuff on hold.”

“All that stuff?”

“Yeah…” He laughs nervously. “Remember that merch I was telling you about?”

“Yes,” I answer carefully.

“That was part of it.”

“How so?”

“I took orders from people who wanted personalized items. Like shirts and underwear.”

“Oh,” I say, shocked. “That’s cool. Normal. I thought you were going to say something like—”

“It was personalized with my cum.”

“Yep, there it is.” I shake my head in disbelief.

“I haven’t done it in weeks, though.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. We aren’t dating.”

I don’t mean for the words to come out harsh, but they do. I feel bad for it the moment I see Storm’s face fall. He turns onto his back and looks up at the sky.

“Right.” His word is soft, sad.

Maybe I should apologize for what I said, but I don’t. Maybe my tone was off, but I’m not wrong. I asked him what was going on between us and got nothing in response. Though we’ve fallen into this sort of routine where we act like we’re dating, nothing is official and every time I bring it up, he shuts down. So now I’m ignoring it. This will come back to bite me in the ass, but if I speak my mind, and he leaves…

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Huh?” I say, thrown off by his question.

“We don’t know a lot about each other. Not simple things. So tell me what your favorite color is.”

“Blue.”

“That’s so basic.”

“Okay, sapphire blue,” I amend. “It’s the perfect mix of light and dark. It’s exactly what I imagine blue to look like when someone says blue. What’s yours?”

“Shamrock green. It reminds me of good luck, which I always felt like I didn’t have. It gives me hope.”

That’s a perfect reason to choose a favorite color, and I love that he’s digging deep.

“Okay, how old are you?” Storm questions.

“Thirty.”

“I’m—”

“Twenty-six. I remember from your application.”

“Right, yeah.”

“What is your favorite number?” I ask.

“You would ask that.” He huffs a laugh. “I don’t know. Sixty-nine?”

“That’s so basic ,” I repeat his words from earlier and he laughs again. When he doesn’t say anything, I continue, “Mine is 1729. It’s the first taxi-cab number.”

“What the hell is a taxi-cab number?”

I turn to face him, frowning. “Did you go to school?”

“Of course I went to school. But I learned normal things like how to read and add numbers. I didn’t do number history.”

“Number theory,” I correct. “And a taxi-cab number is a number that can be expressed as the sum of two positive cubes in more than one distinct way.”

He blinks a few times before saying, “Part of me wants to ask why that’s interesting to you, but the other part knows I won’t understand it.”

Now I laugh.

We stay outside for a few hours, enjoying the night and going back and forth with random questions. I learn so much about Storm that night, and it feels like we’re moving in the direction. A direction that I want. But I’m still not sure he’s ready to take that leap yet—and maybe he never will be.