Page 52 of The Call of Azure (Unexpected Love #3)

Gabriel

It takes more time than I expect before I finally hear footsteps crunching through the fallen pine needles behind me.

Normally, Blue would have followed immediately.

I guess I left more chaos behind than I thought.

Either that or I’m finally getting to the point in our friendship where he realizes that I’m more trouble than I’m worth, and he had to take a few minutes to brace himself before coming to deal with my drama.

I’ve found what I thought was a decent hiding place where I could try not to cry and rein in my panic.

It’s not like I’ve run into the woods that surround this little homestead clearing; I still have enough clarity to realize that adding being attacked by nature to my day would make things far, far worse.

Instead, I made it to the tree line where a handful of chairs are clustered around a stone fire pit and settled in with my ass on the ground to idly toy with the stray blades of grass that poke through the pavestone patio.

Okay, it’s not really a hiding place, but it’s far enough away from the overcrowded farmhouse where everyone in the world I love - including Liam - seems to have magically gathered in some kind of horrible “let’s trick Gabriel into admitting he’s in love” intervention, that I can try to catch my breath.

The body that eventually settles quietly in the weathered Adirondack chair next to me isn’t Blue.

The movement I catch from the corner of my eye isn’t quite as bold or confident or graceful as Blue’s always are.

The scent is wrong too. Blue always smells like citrus and smoke, not pine and cinnamon.

I don’t know why poor Ken was the one who got volunteered to come deal with me.

I’ve already done enough to ruin his day, so I keep my mouth shut.

He’s one hundred percent a caretaker, so I can only hope that as long as I don’t start crying like the drama queen I am, maybe he’ll just go away.

“You want to tell me what happened in there, son?” We’ve been sitting in silence, listening to each other breathe and the constant background chatter of birds and squirrels and trees for long enough that his deep voice startles me, even though it’s clear he’s intentionally trying to keep it low and gentle so he doesn’t spook me into running again.

“I ruined your birthday. That’s what happened.” I scoff sarcastically. Maybe I can use snark to deflect the conversation away from my horrifying disclosure.

“You didn't ruin anything.”

“I did, and I'm sorry. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to ruin parties.”

His sigh is deep and long, and I’m pretty sure that he’s not going to let me weasel my way out of this conversation through the use of self-deprecating humor.

“Do you know what I saw in there? I saw one of my boys hurting.”

“I'm not one of your boys.” I don’t want my voice to tremble the way it does at what feels like a confession rather than a rebuke.

“No?”

“Nope.” I pop the p, still trying with everything I have to hold onto the shield of flippancy that protects me from thinking about the way I’m so alone in the world.

“Do you think Namid is my boy?”

I know he’s trying to prove a point, and I don’t like that we both know my answers are going to prove that he’s right.

“You found him with no memory on the side of the road, Ken. You took him in and gave him a home a decade ago. We both know he’s yours now.”

“How about Jayce and Blue then?”

I roll my eyes, even though he can’t see them. “They’re with your sons. Of course they’re your family.”

“You’re Blue’s brother, Gabriel. If Blue is my son, then that makes you mine as well.”

There’s nothing I can say in response because we both knew that he’d be able to prove that when this stupid conversation started.

Ken and Ethan and Blue, even Namid and Jayce, they’ve been kind to me from the moment we each met, and that’s terrifying.

I’ve spent the past six years just waiting for the moment that Blue finally gives up on me and walks away, and it’s been soul-crushing to continually carry that anxiety in the back of my mind.

He’s only one person. He’s the person I love most in this world, and he’s my family, but he’s still only one person.

If I let the rest of them in, if I admit that I have more than just Blue, then I have to worry about more than just one person leaving me, and I don’t think I could bear waking up one day and finally having a real family only to lose them all the next.

“My boys and I, we've made our own family,” Ken continues when I don’t reply. “Every one of us knows what it’s like to be alone, and every one of us has chosen to love and support the others. We’re not the kind of family that turns its back on one of its own, no matter how they came to join us.”

My head drops back against the edge of the chair I’ve been half leaning against so hard it audibly thunks against the wood, and Ken chuckles when I hiss in response to my own stupid actions.

“Now. Since that’s settled, tell me what happened in there.”

I growl. I actually growl, and he just laughs patiently.

Stupid Ken. He’s going to win this conversation too.

Even though I really, really don’t want to let myself be vulnerable with him, I’m starting to realize that being alone in all the ways that matter really isn’t what I want, even if the alternative scares the crap out of me.

“I don’t want to love him. I don’t want to love anyone, not like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because love is stupid, okay,” I huff out in annoyance.

“Is it?”

God, how is he doing this? His stupid two-word questions are somehow forcing me to answer honestly, and it doesn’t seem fair at all that he’s turning that superpower on me.

“Okay. Fine. You win, alright.” I’m sad and exasperated and falling apart, and all I really want is to admit that I don’t want to be alone anymore.

“Everyone leaves me. Everyone I’ve ever dated, everyone I’ve cared for - aside from Blue, of course - everyone I’ve ever even started to fall in love with.

They leave me. It hurts bad enough when someone I’ve been seeing for a month takes off.

If I let myself love Liam, I mean, actually like a fairy-tale, happy-ever-after love him. What happens when he leaves me too?”

When I finally let my head lull to the side to look at Ken for the first time since he joined me, I’m surprised to see pain etched across his face.

I expected frustration or surprise at my outburst. Maybe irritation that he’s having to spend his afternoon this way, or over the fact that I probably seem a bit absurd to let random men not sticking around bother me so much. I didn’t expect pain.

“I didn’t meet Ethan’s mom until I was thirty-two.

I’d dated a bit before then but not much.

We lived in a small town, and to be honest, I really hated the way everyone knew everyone else’s business.

It was just easier to keep to myself. We married less than a year after we met, and we had Ethan only a year after that. She died when he was eighteen.”

His sigh is long and shaky, but I don’t offer my condolences. I’m sure he’s had enough of those to last a lifetime, and I don’t really think he’s done talking; he just needs a moment to pull his thoughts together.

“I mourned her loss for a very long time. There are still moments I get lost in the past, stuck in my grief and wondering what if. That loss will always be a part of who I am. Ethan lost her, too, and he lost his first love. Jayce lost his parents and his brother, and even though Blue hasn’t said anything specific, there’s something about the way he is with Ethan and Jayce that makes me think he’s had his own losses in his life.

Losing things or people we love: it’s not a choice that we get to make.

Everyone loses love, son, and everyone deals with that in their own way.

Some folks move on quickly and fill their lives with as much new love and life as they can.

Some lose themselves to their grief and wander through life in a fog for years on end.

We don’t get to decide who or what we’ll lose, and we don’t get to decide how that affects us in the end.

But I can’t imagine trying to hide myself away from love just because I know it might not last. I loved Katherine with my entire soul, and to not have gotten to experience that would be the biggest loss I can imagine.

The world takes things from us all the time, but if you have a chance to know love, a real, honest chance, don’t take that away from yourself.

The very act of living takes enough as it is.

For those of us who are lucky enough to experience it, even for a moment, love is one of the deepest and most human experiences we can ever know. ”

I don’t know when I start crying. I hate crying.

I don’t know why, after years and years of trying to figure out why everyone leaves me, and why it affects me so strongly when they do, Ken’s tiny little speech next to bug-infested woods is what finally breaks me, but it is.

I love Blue. In their own unique, weird ways, I love the rest of them too.

And somehow, even though I tried to fight it and ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening with every fiber of my being, I fell in love with Liam too.

I’m glad that I’ve spent the past year learning that I don’t need someone else to make me happy or whole.

That I don’t need to spend my life actively searching for something I think is missing.

But I don’t like that, along with that, I’ve become someone who is letting fear steal away the chance to have friends and a family, and maybe even a partner.

I don’t really know how to unpack my entire life history with love and family and loss in five minutes sitting here on the dirty ground.

I don’t know how to be strong enough to let it all go and move on and happily prance back inside and tell Liam that I’m all good now and we should be a thing since I’ve caught feelings.

I don’t think I’m brave enough to do that, even if I knew how.

I don’t know that I’d even want to. Because understanding that what Ken’s said is right and allowing myself to take that kind of risk, well, those are two very different things.

What I do know is that I can’t leave Liam in there with my…

family…wondering what in the ever-loving fluff just happened.