The Other Man (Starting Over Book 2) Read online

“I—I told you. I left home at sixteen.”

  “Yeah, and I assumed you had somewhere to go.”

  “No.”

  Aled closed his eyes. Oh, Christ. “So you were a sixteen-year-old kid living on the streets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fucking hell, Gabe…”

  “I ran away. I couldn’t take it at home anymore, so I ran away. I lived in a fucking box, Aled, I literally lived in a box, I slept in doorways and underpasses until I met Jim, I can’t do it again, I can’t—”

  “Okay, listen to me. Listen!” Aled barked, prising Gabriel free and shaking him. “Look at me. Look.”

  Gabriel looked. His face was flushed red and his eyes were streaming, but he looked and Aled squeezed his shoulders gently.

  “I’m not going to let someone that I care about end up in a box on the street. It’s not happening, and that is that. Okay? So you don’t have to be chain-smoking a whole packet of fags and crying out here, because all this is, is goodbye to a job you didn’t really like, and time to find one that’s less shit.”

  “But I can’t afford—”

  “I can,” Aled said firmly. “Now how we do it is up to you, but you can either say fuck the trial period and stay with me until the job situation is sorted, or I can cover the shortfall on the flat until you have a new job. And if you do stay, I am not going to get pissed at you if once you’ve sorted another job, you want to move out again. This can be a permanent thing or it can be just until you’ve rearranged everything. I don’t care. But you’re not going back to some box, and I will not let you. All right?”

  Gabriel’s chest hitched before his face—cold and wet—was buried in Aled’s neck and he was clinging viciously. Aled’s chest ached. He knew very little of Gabriel’s family. They had been dismissed in one conversation months ago as ‘shit’. He knew that his mother was a transphobe and had thrown him out, and he knew that the relationship with his grandfather was only recently repaired. He knew that Gabriel had lived in Sheffield before Leeds and somewhere further south before that. But he hadn’t known about the homelessness.

  Shit, no wonder he was so antsy about the job. How could any family let a sixteen-year-old kid end up in a box? How could Gabriel think even for a second that would happen again now he had Aled in the picture? For fuck’s sake, Aled’s car was worth twenty thousand, thirty when he’d bought it. He could support a bloody cycling boyfriend for a year without too much trouble. How could Gabriel seriously believe he’d end up back in doorways and underpasses with Aled around? And even without Aled, what about Kevin? There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance Kevin would allow it.

  Aled took a deep breath.

  Panic. That was what it was. It was panic. He was scared and panicking and he wasn’t thinking rationally. Now wasn’t the time to get pissed off and ask those questions. Now was the time for the promised fuss. Just like a scene gone wrong. Just like when a game missed the right note, and he had to find the right one again.

  “Come on,” he murmured, kissing the side of Gabriel’s head. “Let me take you home, make a big fuss of you like I promised and wind you down.”

  Gabriel nodded, and silently allowed Aled to steer him through the rain to the car. He remained silent all the way out of the car park and onto the ring road, before croaking, “You can’t.”

  “I can’t what? Make a big fuss of you?”

  Aled earned himself a wan smile, but Gabriel wasn’t to be deterred. “You can’t just pay all my rent and bills.”

  “I can stop my partner from losing his home and being forced back onto the streets.”

  “I’m not a pet to be kept.”

  Aled sighed. “No, you’re not, and that’s not what I’m doing.”

  “You’re offering to pay for everything.”

  “And if you were my pet, or I were paying to keep you, then I would expect something in return. And we’d outline a new deal for that. But we’re not. All I will be doing, no matter which option you pick, is providing a security net against losing your home.”

  “I’d be living in a flat entirely paid for by one of my regulars,” Gabriel croaked and Aled winced, flicking on the indicator. “What—Aled, why are we going to Halfords?”

  “We’re not, I’m using their car park because buses get pissy round here if you use their stops,” Aled quipped, and hauled on the handbrake. “Right,” he said, twisting to face Gabriel. “Listen to me. I am not paying to keep you. I am not some fucking sugar daddy, or a pimp, or whatever other idea you’ve got in your head right now. All I am doing—all I am doing—is preventing someone I love from losing everything. I can afford to stop this, so I will stop this, you understand me?”

  Gabriel simply stared at him, eyes wide and face pale.

  “You’re panicking. That’s all. Deep down, you know I wouldn’t let it happen. You know Kevin wouldn’t let it happen either. You aren’t going to fall. I promise, all right? And if you rang Kevin, he would tell you the exact same thing. I would do the exact same for Suze, I would even do it for Tom, and I will certainly do it for you.”

  Gabriel took a shaky breath. His fingers were shivering in his lap and Aled wanted to hold them.

  “I’ll be fucking dependent on you,” Gabriel whispered. His face was painfully open, so anxious and afraid that it made Aled’s heart hurt. “Don’t—God, Aled, please don’t make me regret that.”

  “Hey,” Aled whispered, giving in and squeezing those shaking fingers. “I won’t. All right? When you get a new job, the deal can be off or we can leave it in place and that decision will be one hundred percent yours.”

  Gabriel squeezed back and swallowed. “I—you can’t pay for my flat, Aled. You can’t. I’d just feel like a total whore, like I was some—some fucking prostitute, and you were paying for me to fucking entertain clients or something.”

  Aled grimaced.

  “But the house, I don’t know…”

  “If you won’t let me pay for the flat, then you are welcome at home,” Aled said softly. “You could take the spare room if that would make you feel better or you could stay in with me and get squashed to death every morning when I get up.”

  “You take half an hour to get up,” Gabriel croaked and Aled laughed.

  “Be an hour if you’re there all the time. These two weeks have been nothing.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “So is that it?” Aled prompted softly. “Give up the flat and move in until you’ve sorted everything out?”

  Gabriel swallowed and nodded. Aled smiled, leaned over to kiss his cheek and put the car back into gear.

  “All right,” he said. “Enough planning. We can sort everything out tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going to take you home, make one of those cannelloni things you like so much and give you a scalp-to-toenail massage just like I promised at lunchtime. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  But Gabriel stared out of the window, silent and unmoving, the whole way home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Gabriel finally gave in to his need to piss, the sun was high in the sky outside Aled’s bedroom window and the road was quiet.

  But he could smell bacon.

  Yawning, he crawled out of the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. He felt tired down to his very bones—and yet he also felt calm. A hell of a lot calmer than his embarrassing panic attack yesterday. Christ, what an idiot.

  It was embarrassing. He'd just dissolved and started spouting all sorts of nonsense, and he rubbed a hand over his face, groaning, as he sifted through his memory. God, he'd all but accused Aled of being out to get him. It was a miracle Aled hadn't lost his temper, and Gabriel wouldn't blame him if he had.

  Anyway, even if Aled was willing to let Gabriel go back on the streets, Kevin wouldn't. He shook himself. It was all about finding ways to make this comfortable, that was all. There'd be no boxes. No streets. He'd have somewhere.

  They just had to figure out where.

  And how.

  He decided to go and find th
e bacon first, though. Stealing Aled’s dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and tucking his nose into the sleeve for a minute to inhale the familiar, soothing smell, he abandoned the bathroom and inched carefully down the stairs.

  “Morning, sweetheart.”

  “Guess I wasn’t imagining the bacon, then,” Gabriel said.

  “Nope.”

  “You should be at work.”

  “I have an awful case of the stomach flu.”

  “So you’re making a full English?” Gabriel asked doubtfully.

  “They don’t know I’m making a full English.” Aled grinned then lifted an arm. Gabriel shuffled under it for a hug, burrowing into Aled’s side, and sighed contentedly when Aled kissed his hair. “You okay?”

  “Mm.”

  “Any advance on that?”

  Gabriel sighed. “Calmer. Less panicky about everything.”

  Aled squeezed. “Good. You were pretty wound up yesterday.”

  Understatement of the century.

  “Everything just felt like it was getting on top of me—work, Michael, the flat…”

  “And now?”

  Gabriel stretched up to kiss Aled’s cheek. “Got you. And somewhere to live. So—yeah, I’ve still got a roof over my head and food to eat. I can work on everything else.”

  “That’s more like it. Speaking of eat, are you in the post-shot scary stage where I swear you have hollow legs, or the post-sleep yoghurt-is-a-healthy-breakfast stage?”

  “Scary stage.”

  “Christ, grab another packet of bacon out of the fridge, then.”

  Three butties and a large coffee later, Gabriel felt a little more human and proposed going back to the flat to fetch the rest of his things. There was no point dragging it out. He’d have to ring the landlord. And they’d have to clear out more space for his clothes back here. Not to mention more bathroom space. Aled had left his whole linen cupboard behind, and Gabriel wasn't going the next few months without the good towels.

  Pausing in the bedroom as he pulled the last of his clean T-shirts over his head, Gabriel eyed the open cupboard. Gabriel’s jeans and muscle tees looked odd amongst Aled’s jumpers, and he had the distinct feeling their socks were going to have polygamous orgies in the night and they’d never find a matching pair again, but it didn’t feel so scary as when they’d started the trial. It didn’t feel so overwhelming as it had when the text message had arrived from the boss.

  He took a deep breath as he closed the wardrobe door and shook himself. This was Aled. Dangerous, domineering, completely sweet and goofy Aled. It was going to be fine.

  “I was thinking,” Aled called from the bathroom.

  “Dangerous!” Gabriel shouted, dispelling his nerves by being obnoxious.

  “Tit. I was thinking we could go and have a pub lunch after we’ve packed up your flat.”

  “You have stomach flu.”

  “We’ll drive down to the Derbyshire. I doubt my boss has spies out in Bakewell.”

  “Can’t we go to that pub in the Peaks? The one with the fireplace?”

  “They’ve all got fireplaces out there.”

  Gabriel grasped for humour. Obnoxiousness and crass humour—it always worked before, and it would work again now to quell the butterflies in his stomach.

  “The one where I blew you in the toilets that one time.”

  It worked. He smirked. Aled cackled with laughter.

  “That doesn’t narrow it down either, you slag.”

  Gabriel ducked into the bathroom to flip Aled off, who just laughed at him and washed away the remnants of his shaving foam.

  “I know the one you mean. And you never know. Maybe I’ll return the favour.”

  * * * *

  Gabriel hadn’t been back to the flat since they’d started the trial, and he had to wrestle with the lock before the door would open. Bills were piled up behind the door, some of them already red, and there was a vaguely damp smell.

  And it looked—lonely.

  Dust hadn’t settled in the gaps where his bike usually stood, or the space for his missing alarm clock on the bedside table. The gentle dripping of the kitchen tap sounded deafeningly loud in the empty space. The closed curtains made it seem as if someone had died rather than just moved out.

  Anxiety began to crowd back into Gabriel's head.

  “I’ll—I’ll ring the landlord,” he said awkwardly, fidgeting with his keys in the doorway. “Can you…”

  He trailed off. Aled touched his elbow lightly.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sort of. Maybe. It ached a little inside, having to ring Jack and explain the situation. The guy was an arse and Gabriel wouldn’t miss him, but the rent had been cheaper than normal for Leeds. And it had been his.

  That was the crux of it. He’d needed the low-income top-up every month to get by, and he’d sometimes let Kevin pay him to play a part in his porn movies when the bike needed some repair work or the weather was especially savage and he needed to put the heating on. He’d have been better off in a council flat.

  But the flat had been his.

  He hadn't liked the too-small bedroom. He'd hated the constant damp smell in the bathroom. The kitchenette was ugly, and the walls were paper-thin. In the winter, the windows frosted up from the inside. In the summer, he was cooked alive.

  But it had been his tiny bedroom and damp bathroom. His ugly décor. His thin walls. He'd never really liked the place, but there was still a tearing feeling in his chest as he made his excuses to Jack.

  “What was the rent?” Aled asked when Gabriel hung up and let out a shaky breath.

  “Four hundred.”

  “My mortgage is three seventy,” Aled said. “Once you’ve found work again, you can pay half.”

  “What’s half of three seventy?”

  “One eighty-five.”

  Gabriel swallowed. “Two hundred.”

  “What?”

  “Two hundred. To—to help with the other bills too.”

  “Okay.”

  Gabriel rolled his head, deliberately working the tension out of his neck. It helped, a little. He wasn’t thick—he knew full well why Aled had backtracked and asked for a rent payment. But it helped. He'd be paying some of his way. The sour feeling of failure eased a little in his gut.

  A little. He’d always been a failure.

  That was the biggest joke of the whole fiasco he’d made out of his life. No matter what he did, his mother’s voice would always echo from the back of his mind and call him a failure. He’d not been enough to keep his father hanging around. He’d never been smart enough to go to college like his oldest sister, whose job kept them all in food and clothing when their respective fathers couldn’t be bothered. And he’d failed at being a girl entirely. Failing was all he’d ever done. Part of him—the part that had his mother’s nose—thought losing his job was just the universe reminding him of his place.

  Then he slid down onto the bed beside Aled and sagged into his side for a hug. The warm touch banished the shrill chirping in his skull. Failure didn’t find men like Aled. He’d be okay.

  “Thank you.”

  “What’s up?” Aled asked gently.

  Gabriel sighed and opened the bottom drawer to start packing up his toy collection.

  “This was the first flat that was mine,” he admitted. “I told you that I ran away. Well, initially I was begging and squatting in London. Then I scrounged enough for a train ticket and I just picked the first train that was leaving. I got off in Sheffield and was begging in the bus station for a while until this PCSO got me into a hostel. He was nice,” he added wistfully.

  “Not gay?”

  “Nope.”

  “Tragic.”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel agreed with a faint smile. His name had been Jamie. He could remember his face and everything. One day, he’d have to track him down and thank him. “The hostel workers got me back into the social system and I got a job and a council flat and a ph
one. Started my whole Grindr thing. Then—then the neighbours at the flats figured out I was tranny scum, and put my door through and were calling me a paedo—”

  Aled’s arm locked around his waist. Warm. Tight. Secure.

  “So the council shifted me, but it happened again. Even if I passed as a man for a while, they’d figure I was gay and do it anyway. Things calmed down a bit when my boyfriend moved in. I guess nobody wanted to tangle with him too much.”

  “Jim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Big lad?”

  “Not really. Just a loudmouth. I don't know, he just had this air that he could hold his own in a fight. It was...peaceful, being with Jim.”

  “What happened there?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Nothing, really, we just didn’t work out. I was like nineteen and I desperately needed the hormone therapy and top surgery. He got himself in massive debt paying for the HRT privately because the doctors wouldn’t let me have it—said my lifestyle was too unstable—then we fell apart and I ran away to Leeds. I couldn’t—Sheffield just—it was bad.”

  Aled tugged. Gabriel sagged into his side, sighing deeply.

  “Take it he didn’t pay for your boobs?”

  Gabriel chuckled dryly. “He would have done. But I didn’t want to lose those.”

  “He sounds nice.”

  “He was. He just—wasn’t the one for me. It was all too monogamous and too serious. It sounds horrible, but I didn’t love him. I liked him. He was fun. I liked being with him. But—I didn’t love him, and he needed someone to love him.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Aled chided.

  “Yeah,” Gabriel murmured. “I just wish I had been older and not so dumb about it.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “I came to Leeds. I lived with my uncles for a bit, but I hated it. And I refused to go back into council housing and Judith didn’t want one of Kevin’s other subs living with them long-term. I was stuck.”

  “Until you got your current job?”

  “Yeah. I made a deal with Kevin that if things were really bad, he’d pay me for some of my video work with him to make up the shortfall.”

  He felt Aled’s smirk against his scalp.