Managed (VIP #2)(53)

“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.”

“I can see that. They all basically sound American. Especially Killian and Rye. I mean, sometimes I hear a faint English accent when Jax speaks,” I say, thinking back on our conversations. “And Whip has a slight Irish lilt.”

“Jax and Whip—or John and William, as they were known back then—spent more of their time in the UK than Killian and Rye, so that isn’t surprising. At any rate, they decided I was worth adopting, and they wouldn’t go away. I was doomed.”

“Poor baby.”

Gabriel stops and turns toward the breeze coming in from the water. “It’s…hard letting people in. My dad was a drunk, almost never home. Mum was gone. And here were these four rich boys trying to take me in like I was Oliver f*cking Twist.”

“And yet here we are,” I say softly.

He nods, almost absently. “Some things are hard to resist, no matter how badly you try to maintain your distance.” He begins walking again, back toward the waiting town car. “I spent summers at Jax’s house, went on holiday with Killian or Rye or Whip’s family. And I saw how life could be.”