“I was so pissed when I walked out of the garage that day,” Devlin said. “Then the more I started thinking about it, the more I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that you had suddenly shown up in Redemption. I became determined to find out the truth.” He quirked a brow Garrick’s way. “I drove around town and half the neighborhoods looking for your truck before I came upon you playing outside with the kids.”
“I’m so glad you did. Shawn and Chloe are important to me; Grace is too. But not in a romantic way,” Garrick added quickly. If Garrick could see himself this second, he knew his entire body would be flaming red. He faced Devlin anyway, and finished. “She knew I was gay even before I told her.”
Devlin’s brows went even higher. “Oh yeah?”
“I didn’t look at her tits enough.”
Devlin threw back his head and let loose a sharp bark of laughter. “Classic dead giveaway.”
Garrick threw himself back on his pillow. “Apparently.”
“You’re good with Shawn and Chloe. A blind man could see how much they love you.”
“I already love them too. I don’t know...” Garrick was so unused to sharing himself with people that he had a hard time formulating his thoughts. “Maybe they’re just good kids and I like them, or maybe I’m working out some absentee father issue of my own with them, but I can’t help feeling like they need me.”
Between their prone bodies, Devlin tapped his open hand against Garrick’s in a comforting rhythm. “And you need them. Grace too.”
“I don’t have my sister anymore. I can’t ever get her back. We were close before I started taking undercover assignments. Grace reminds me of her a little bit,” Garrick shared. “A fighter.”
Devlin stopped toying with Garrick’s hand and linked their fingers together instead. “I’m so sorry you can never have them in your life again.”
“Me too.” Garrick’s emotions swayed the pendulum again, and he fought the wetness that wanted to fall. “I knew the risks when I started taking undercover assignments. On an intellectual level, I knew I might have to change my identity, lose my family, and start over again on my own. But when you’re young and filled up with your own talent, the potential lifelong sacrifices don’t quite penetrate your brain. There’s a part of you that thinks you’re invincible. And in truth, to do that kind of work, you have to believe you are indestructible, or you’ll get made. It gives you the swagger to step into a dragon’s den and believe you can slay them.” He turned his head and latched onto the comfort of Devlin’s presence beside him in bed. “It also blinds you to the long-term consequences of a case going bad. It was my choice to do the job. My only regret is that my family is mourning someone who isn’t really dead,” his voice cracked, “and I can’t do anything to make it better for them.”
“Oh, baby.” Devlin rolled himself into Garrick and tugged him close. “You’ve been living so many different lives for so long that it must be tough to know who you really are anymore.”
“I know myself when I’m around you.” Garrick held Devlin’s face. He pulled it so close his lips snagged on Devlin’s with each guttural word he confessed. “Your presence settles something inside me. I can feel the instincts and the ingrained things that Gradyn Connell understood and believed in still alive in me when I talk to you. He’s in this body, with this longer hair. He has blue eyes instead of green, and he has a new job, and a different name, but his identity is still intact, and can exist because you know it too.”
The very deepest of Garrick’s fears, that he had refused to let himself examine and mourn, broke down the damaged gate inside him and roared through his being. “Otherwise, how can Gradyn ever have been real if I’m the only one who knows him, and he always has to stay inside me? He would fade away, and I don’t want to forget him.” Tears that Garrick had successfully suppressed finally won out and filled his eyes. “I don’t want to forget his family. I don’t want to forget that he was a good person.” Ugly tears streamed down Garrick’s face, and thickness coated his every word. “I don’t want to forget that Gradyn had a dog named Turbo who slept in his bed for ten years. I don’t want there to be no one who ever knows that when Gradyn was seventeen, and the dog got sick, he had to put him to sleep. I don’t want to never be able to tell anyone that Gradyn had to pretend to his buddies that he was cool about losing his dog but that he really cried himself to sleep every night for two weeks afterward, and he still gets teary if he sees a chocolate-colored Lab.”
Devlin brushed the mess of Garrick’s hair away from his face, and moisture filmed his eyes too. “You don’t want Gradyn to disappear forever as if he never existed.”
Garrick heaved an uneven breath. “I know I need to but--”
Devlin stopped him with a kiss. “You don’t need to, baby.” He touched their foreheads together, and Garrick swore he could see past the blur of pale eyes right into Devlin’s soul. “You’ll tell me stories when we’re alone, and I’ll listen. You don’t have to worry about keeping Gradyn buried so deeply all the time that you begin to question if those memories are real or figments of your imagination. It’s going to be okay. You’re safe with me.” He pressed lingering kisses to Garrick’s cheek, temple, and into his hair. “I promise.”
“Thank
