Free Touch the Sky (Free Fall Book 1) by Nyrae Dawn, Christina Lee

to his place, but it’s a comfortable silence. It doesn’t weigh heavy on me. It’s one of those situations where you don’t really need to speak, and you can just be.
    When I pull up to his apartment, I turn off the car, even though I don’t plan on going inside. I had fun with him today. It meant something to see him happy at the airport. It’s not often in my life that I feel like I’ve made someone happy. Maybe because in the past I didn’t take the time, or because I didn’t have the means, but today made Gabe happy, which in a weird way, did something for me, too.
    Strangely, I feel like I owe him because of it. Doesn’t make the words want to come out any easier, and doesn’t keep my hands from gripping the steering wheel. “I tripped carrying her to bed.”
    Gabe hits the interior light and then turns sideways in the seat to look at me. “Huh?”
    “The scar. You asked how I got it the other day. I came home to find her drunk. She’d been sober for six months before that but she was fucking gone. Wasted. Stumbling all over the place and crying. She got like that, when she was drunk. It made her sad because of the life she led. It made her sad for me, because she blamed herself for the shit I had to deal with.”
    I let a deep breath fill my lungs and then let it out slowly. This would have been a whole lot easier if he hadn’t turned on the light.
    “She’d feel guilty because she was an alcoholic, or because she thought I didn’t have the things I needed.” Really, I only needed her. Nothing else mattered. We could have lived on the fucking streets, but if she were sober, I would have been the happiest guy in the world. “So yeah, she was drunk and crying saying, I’m sorry, Luke. I’m so sorry. Fuck, it used to piss me off so much. If she was sorry, why the hell did she do it? If she felt so bad, why the fuck didn’t she stop?” Why wasn’t I enough to make her want to stop?
    As though he knows I don’t really need an answer to my question, Gabe stays quiet.
    “I just wanted to make her stop crying. I couldn’t handle hearing her sadness so I told her I’d help her to bed. I tried to carry her, but I was just a scrawny-ass kid. My feet tangled with hers. We tripped and I hit the corner of my eye on the coffee table.” I shrug it off dismissively. “And that’s where the scar came from.”
    Really, it’s a big fucking deal. Even after all this time, I’m back in that apartment, my head gushing blood and Mom crying even harder. I’m back there holding a towel to my head and telling her it will be okay when nothing fucking felt okay.
    When Gabe doesn’t reply, I turn to face him. Slowly, so fucking slowly, he lifts his hand, touches my cheek, then rubs his calloused thumb over the scar. His fingers smell like salt and grease from the fries.
    This stupid urge to close my eyes hits me, to just close my eyes and feel. To pretend my past isn’t my past and Gabe’s past isn’t his past and we’re just two guys sitting in a car together.
    “I’m sorry,” he finally says, still touching my face.
    “I know,” I tell him. I’m sorry for what he’s been through the same way he’s sorry for my life. Being sorry doesn’t change anything, though. “I should go.” Really, I don’t need to, but I think it would be better if I did. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just afraid of this, of letting him get close.
    “Okay,” Gabriel replies. He opens the car door, shifts to get out but then he stops. Suddenly, he’s moving toward me instead of away. I think he’s going to kiss me, and on instinct, I wet my lips with my tongue. I want to taste him. Even as a kid, I wondered what he’d taste like, what it would be like to kiss Gabriel.
    But he doesn’t. Not in the way I expect at least. He leans in and presses his lips to the scar at the corner of my eye. They linger there a second, warmth and breath against my skin, and then he pulls away, gets out of the car, and walks