Gentlemen Wanted 5

Gentlemen Wanted 5
Gemma

Everything looked exactly the same. Even down to my clothes in the wardrobe. The only thing that was different in my tiny little one-bedroom apartment was the fact that someone had already put up Bobby’s crib in the corner of my room. There were several dozen moving boxes stacked up by the window. 

It was almost like I had never left. But it didn’t feel like home. It felt nothing like the home I had spent the last months craving. It was like I was a stranger here.

Even with my living room full of the sounds of quiet laughter from the friends I had missed so much, the place felt empty. 

It was like there was a great big gnawing hole, and it was because Gent wasn’t there. I wasn’t fool enough to think differently. He had been like my shadow, the one person I could rely on. My knight in shining armour...or worn leather anyway. Not that he had worn his cut, but sometimes I had seen him touch it with a look of pain on his face.

He had given up so much when he had taken me to safety. Much, much more than I had.

I knew I had no right to ask him for anything else, that he had given up almost a year of his life for me. I had given nothing in return, and after seeing him with his hand on another woman’s thigh, I knew deep down that I couldn’t stay here.

We may have a platonic friendship, but the wave of jealousy I felt wasn’t the way platonic friends should feel. I couldn’t ask him not to be with other women just because I thought I had some kind of ownership over him.

“Everything ok?”

I had been so engrossed in my own head that I hadn’t even realised that Cali was standing in the bedroom doorway.  

Peeling my eyes from Bobby’s sleeping face, I turned to her, plastering my face with a smile. “Yeah, I just like watching him sleep, that’s all. Gent always tells me that I should be resting when he is…” I cut myself off. My lips snapped shut. 

“I’m glad he was there to look out for you. You guys got close, I take it?” She was keeping her voice low, like she didn’t want to wake anyone. “I saw the way you reacted when the club girl...” She shrugged.

“Nothing romantic has ever happened between us. So my reaction was silly, right? I have no right to feel jealous.” I scrubbed at my face with my hands. Jesus, why was this so hard?

“Oh, sweet girl.” Cali’s arms were suddenly around my shoulders, pulling me in tight against her soft body. “You have every right. You can’t help how you feel.”

Hiccuping, I patted her back. “I think it’s just because I’m not used to him not being here. Gent sees me as a sister.”

Avery was suddenly there, her arms going around both of us. “Yeah, we have all heard that line before Gem. That’s what Wicked used to say about Chelsea. If you have feelings for that man, you need to tell him. What have you got to lose?”

I laughed, the sound making the baby stir in his cot.  “I don’t know my dignity? But come on, let’s go and talk in the living room.” Untangling myself from their arms, I grinned. “I want to hear all the juicy gossip from you guys. Let me live through you.”



The one night Bobby slept through, and I hadn’t gotten a wink. I had just laid there, staring up at the ceiling in the dark and listening to my friends’ soft snores coming from the next room. I was almost glad when I heard Bobby start to stir. At least it gave me an excuse to get off the bed and do something that wasn’t dwelling on whether I had romantic feelings for Gent or not. Those thoughts were getting me nowhere.

He wasn’t interested. The sooner I came to terms with that, the better. Our pretend little family life was over. 

“Morning.” 

Maybe I was overly cheery for such an early hour as both Avery and Cali scowled. Cali was rubbing at her back like it hurt her, and I felt a pang of guilt. I should have given her my bed to sleep in or demanded she go home to Truth. She was pregnant, after all. 

“What time is it?” Avery was already on her feet, no doubt going on a coffee hunt.  

“A little after five.” I bounced my son in my arms. He would want to feed soon, and he was more than willing to let everyone know if I was late with his breakfast.

Cali made a sound of disgust in the back of her throat, and I didn’t even try to hide my smile. She was going to have a baby of her own soon. She might not like early mornings now, but she would have to get used to them. And quickly. 

“There’s no coffee...” I called out after Avery. I could hear her slamming cupboard doors in her search for the life-giving substance known as caffeine. “There’s nothing. Shopping is the first thing on my list.” Or at least it would be if I actually had any money to do the grocery shopping. There were so many little things that I had grown accustomed to Gent taking care of. Now he wasn’t here. I wasn’t even sure I would manage to do simple things like put food on the table. 

Something must have shown on my face because Avery paused. “I’ll talk to Ruin; he will-”

I cut her off. I knew what she was going to say. That Ruin would look after me, support Bobby and me until I got myself back on my feet. “No, I will work something out.” I wasn’t sure how but I would.

I had lived off other people for too long already.

It was time to start making some tough decisions. 

“Well, how about Cali and I go and grab coffee and breakfast? You can sort Bobby out, and…” Avery swung open the door. It didn’t seem to matter that her hair was standing up in every direction because she hadn’t been awake more than five minutes. Her urge for caffeine outweighed her need to look human. 

“Nothing is going to be open….” I didn’t get to finish. As she swung open the door, a figure fell through with a grunt to land on the carpet.

Gent looked up at us sleepily.

Cali started giggling. But I couldn’t laugh. All I could do was stare at him. Because it looked like he had been sleeping, leaning against my front door. And if his confused face was anything to go by, he had been asleep for a few hours at least.

“Come on, Cali.” Avery reached a hand to Cali. “No need for us to stay, not now Gent’s home.”

Her choice of words wasn’t lost on me. A blush flamed to life in my cheeks. Why did they have to go and say it that way?

“I thought you were going to get breakfast and….” I had spent the last year alone with Gent, but I wanted my friends to stay. It would be less awkward if they stayed. At least that way, we would have a buffer between us. 

“Change of plan.”Cali winked as she stepped carefully over Gent’s prone body. “Maye you and Gent can take a walk and grab some breakfast together.”

“Or have breakfast in bed.” Avery’s voice carried as she trotted downstairs.

Glancing down, I let my eyes meet the man lying on my floor. And I had no idea what to say. 

“Hey.” Gent’s voice was soft, his smile lazy as he looked up at me. 

“Hi.” Awkwardly, I shuffled my feet. “How long have you been outside?”

The smile on his face slipped slightly. “Pretty much all night,” he admitted. “I found it hard to sleep somewhere you two weren’t.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I hadn’t expected him to say exactly what I was feeling.  

“Gem?” With a groan, he climbed to his feet. “At least say something.”

A wail went up. Bobby had decided now was breakfast time. And it couldn’t come at a better time. 

Saved by the bell or, in this case, the screaming baby. “I’ve got to get his bottle.”

“Pass him over.” Gent’s hand closed around my bicep, stopping me in my tracks. “Are you mad I slept outside?”

No, I wasn’t mad. How could I be? 

“No, I'm not mad. I wish you had knocked on the door instead of sleeping in a stairway, but I’m not mad.” 

“I didn’t want to wake you.” Something shifted in Gent’s gaze as he stepped into my space, his chestnut hair falling into his eyes. The hand on my arm moved to cup my cheek. 

Gent pressed his lips to mine softly as if he was testing the waters. It was a nice kiss. A barely there touching of his mouth on mine. But he looked pleased with himself as he stepped back.

“You wouldn’t have woken me. I couldn’t sleep either.” I pressed my fingers against my lips. 



I didn’t know what to say.

He didn’t know what to say.

So we sat there in silence as I fed Bobby with two untouched glasses of water on the table between us. 

It had never been so awkward. 

He had come to me because he couldn’t sleep, sat outside my door like some cut wearing guard, and I hadn’t been able to sleep because I wasn’t under the same roof as him.

Yet, we couldn’t seem to look each other in the eye. 

I broke first. “Your back must be hurting from sleeping against the door. Why don’t you go and have a shower or a bath or something?” For a second, he caught my gaze, and I looked away guiltily. 

I could imagine him naked and soaking wet so easily. It made me blush. Heat crept up my neck and over my cheeks.

“Gem….” His voice was strangled as if I had said something suggestive, and my already scarlet cheeks flamed further.

The way he was looking at me. The heat in his eyes. It spoke volumes. 

“I wasn’t saying we should have a bath.” My words were coming out in a jumbled rush. Even staring down at my sleeping son, I could feel his eyes on me. 

“I wouldn’t mind if we had a bath, Gem.” Gent’s voice was so quiet, so soft that I almost didn’t hear it. I almost thought I had imagined it. 

“Do you want me to put him back in his crib for a while?” Just like that, he changed the subject. Almost like he could tell I was uncomfortable. 

“Or…”

“Or what, Gent?” I didn’t mean for my voice to come out like it did. “We are home now and….”

I didn’t even know how I was going to finish that sentence, but I didn’t get a chance to find out. His eyes blazed. “Don’t say that you two aren’t my responsibility, Gem. You never were. I didn’t look after you both because I had to. I did it because I wanted to.”

“Why are you angry with me?” Tears flooded my eyes. I wasn’t sure what had happened. We had gone from our first, chaste kiss to him talking to me with so much venom in his voice it was actually scary. 

“Shit.” He froze. His hand tugging at his hair. “I don’t know, Gem. I don’t know what the hell I am feeling right now, you know. It’s harder being home than I thought. I thought we would go back to the way things were.”

His words ripped through me, back to the way things were meant barely talking to each other. It meant not watching movies together on a Sunday evening. Or laughing together… it meant not being together. 

“We can go back to the ways things were.” Strangely my voice came out firm. “Hell, you already did. Have you even washed the smell of club slut off of you?”

Gent recoiled back like I had slapped his face, and then slowly, he stood. Drawing himself up to his full height, he rolled his shoulders. 

“I think you should leave.”

“Gem.” 

“I can never thank you enough for everything you have done, Gent. But I think if we are going to get back to normal, then we shouldn’t see each other for a while.” 

For several long seconds, he stared at me. “Is that what you want?”

No. I wanted to scream the word at him, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t beg him. Space was what we needed. The feelings I was feeling weren’t real. They were the result of living with him for so long. 

“Yes.”

Gent paused, his eyebrows slammed down and then, without another word, he walked out the door.