Chapter 10
As Gabriel drives us away from Foundation, my hands shake on my thighs, fingers twitching with leftover adrenaline that has nowhere to go.
The city lights blur past the windows, neon and streetlight streaking together until my eyes ache. Focus slips through my fingers. Thought fractures. My limbs drag as if weighed down, my awareness hovering a step behind my body, and the sensation only amplifies the building pressure within me.
Gabriel keeps both hands on the wheel as he assesses my mental state from the corner of his eye. “You hungry? We could stop somewhere.”
The simple question hangs between us. I should answer. Should say something. My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. The words tangle together, caught behind the knot of rage and fear that Darrow planted there.
“Saint?” Gabriel tries again, softer this time. “Food?”
My stomach twists at the mention of food, and I swallow the rising nausea. “Not hungry.”
Gabriel accepts this without pushing further. His body language stays open, non-threatening, shoulders relaxed, hands loose on the wheel despite the tension crackling between us. “You should rest when we get back. It’s been a long two days.”
A laugh bursts from me, harsh in the confined space. Rest. As if sleep could come with Tony’s threat hanging over Micah. Over all of the Rockford mates.
The silence stretches, broken only by the soft hum of tires on asphalt and the occasional horn from passing cars. Gabriel doesn’t fill it with more questions or meaningless reassurances.
He just drives, his attention shifting between me and the road ahead. His concern sends a fresh wave of irritation through me. I don’t need him caring about my state of mind when everything is already too fucking complicated.
The pheromone incident at the club replays in my mind, his scent wrapping around me, forcing a biological response I didn’t consent to.
And yet, underneath the anger, a tiny voice whispers that it worked. His Alpha purr brought me back from the edge when I was about to do something stupid.
I hate that voice.
By the time we reach my apartment complex, my fingers have gone numb from digging so hard into my thighs. The car rolls to a stop in a parking spot.
“You can go home,” I tell him, hand already on the door handle. “I’m fine now.”
Gabriel cuts the engine, plunging us into relative silence. “I don’t think you are.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I snap. “I need to be alone.”
He pops open his door. “I’m not leaving you like this.”
I turn toward him, teeth clenched so tight my jaw aches. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Saint—”
“Especially not after trying to regulate me with your pheromones at the club.” The accusation bursts out. “You don’t get to control me, Gabe. Not with your scent, not with your money, and not with your concern.”
His features tighten, the first crack in his calm facade. “It wasn’t about control.”
“Bullshit.” I slam my palm on the dashboard, the sound cracking through the car like a gunshot. “You saw me slipping and decided to take matters into your own Alpha hands.”
“I saw you about to self-destruct in public and tried to help,” he counters, volume climbing to match mine. “Would you rather I let you get arrested? Or let you blow our cover?”
“Our cover?” I laugh, the sound ugly even to my own ears. “There is no ‘our’ anything, rich boy.”
“Fine. Your cover. Your safety. Your freedom.” Gabriel sucks in a breath, his chest rising and falling. “It’s all about you. Better now?”
His anger burns through me, stripping away layers I can’t afford to lose. I reach for the door handle again, shoving it open. “I’m going inside. You’re going home.”
“Saint—”
I’m already out of the car, the night air hitting my overheated skin with a shock. My boots thud across the pavement as I stride toward the entrance to the building, fumbling for my keys with shaking hands.
Footsteps follow behind me, and I don’t need to look to know who’s trailing me like a persistent shadow I can’t get rid of.
“Go home, Gabe.” My keys jangle as I miss the lock on the first and second try.
His hand appears beside mine, steadying my wrist without taking the keys. “Let me help.”
I jerk away from his touch, the contact sending electricity up my arm. “I don’t want your help.”
Finally, I get the key in the lock, and the door opens. I push inside, heading straight for the stairs. Six flights still aren’t enough to calm me down.
Gabriel follows, his footsteps echoing in the stairwell, neither rushing to catch up nor falling behind.
By the time I reach my apartment door, sweat beads along my hairline, and my breath comes in short bursts. The lock cooperates this time, and the door swings open to reveal the sparse living room beyond.
Gabriel follows me inside without invitation, closing the door behind him with a click. With him here, the already small space shrinks inward, as if he steals all the oxygen.
“I need to change,” I mutter, already retreating toward the bedroom.
It’s a flimsy excuse, but all I can manage as my skin pulls tight over bone and muscle, stretched thin enough to tear if I stay here with him another second.
The bedroom door slams behind me with satisfaction, the barrier between us solid and real. On the other side, Gabriel doesn’t call out or try to follow, but he doesn’t leave, either, his presence both infuriating and the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
The drawer slides open with a familiar scrape of wood on wood, and my fingers hover over the leather case within, trembling in the dim light filtering through the blinds. The case contains sharp, clean, predictable relief.
I pull it out, the shape in my palm both comforting and sickening. The zipper makes a soft hiss as I open it, revealing the gleaming metal inside, the blade that has carved lines of control into my skin when everything else spiraled beyond my reach.
The pressure under my skin pulses with each heartbeat. My thighs itch where old scars lie hidden beneath denim, calling for fresh company.
With shaking hands, I shove off my jeans and tug up the leg of my boxer briefs, searching for a clean patch.
I lift the blade, watching light catch on its edge. The promise of relief pulls at me. One cut, and the noise will stop. One line of fire to focus the chaos in my head, to draw out the poison Darrow planted there.
A soft knock interrupts the ritual, and my head snaps toward the door.
“Saint?” Gabriel calls, muffled by the door but clear. “May I come in?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. The words stick in my throat like glass shards, and the blade trembles between my fingers.
The door opens, inch by slow inch, giving me time to hide what I’m doing. But I remain frozen, caught between impulse and shame as Gabriel steps inside.
His gaze lands on the open case and the blade in my hand without a hint of shock or disgust.
He doesn’t rush toward me to take away the blade. Instead, he sinks to the floor, back to the wall, knees bent in front of him, allowing distance without abandoning me to it.
“You’re thinking about hurting yourself.” The statement hangs in the air, neither accusation nor question, just truth, spoken without judgment. “I’m not going to stop you. But I’d rather you talked to me instead.”
His gentleness breaks through the walls I’ve built, and rage floods through the breach. “Don’t ever try to influence me with your pheromones again. Not now. Not ever. Not without my consent.”
Gabriel doesn’t flinch at my anger. “You’re right.”
“You manipulated me.” My fingers tighten around the blade, metal biting into skin without breaking it. “You decided I needed calming down, and you—”
“I’m sorry.” The interruption comes soft but firm. “I misjudged the moment. I was trying to help, but I crossed a line.”
I wait for the qualification, the “but” that always turns an apology into self-defense.
It doesn’t come.
“It won’t happen again,” he continues, hands resting on his knees, palms up, open and undemanding. “You have my word.”
“You don’t get to fix me,” I tell him, the words less heated but no less true. “You don’t get to decide when I’m broken or how I should heal.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” The question scrapes my throat. I’m giving Gabriel more chances than I’ve given anyone in my life, and I don’t want to question why. “Because your family treats the world as something to be managed. Problems to solve. People to arrange into neat patterns.”
“I’m not my family.” He shifts on the floor, trying to find a comfortable position. “And you’re not a problem to solve.”
My fingers ache from gripping the blade too tight. The need to cut hasn’t disappeared, but the urgency recedes.
“Then why are you here? Why follow me into my room? Why not leave?”
“Because I care.” The simple statement steals my breath. “Not about fixing you. Just about you.”
Time stretches between us, measured in heartbeats and shallow breaths. The blade in my hand grows heavier with each passing second, desire to use it dimming in the face of Gabriel’s presence.
Without breaking eye contact, I set the blade aside.
Gabriel releases a long breath, but remains silent.
The decision doesn’t come without a cost, though. It leaves me raw and vibrating, a live wire with nowhere to ground.
“What now, rich boy?”
Gabriel shifts his position, stretching one leg out in front of him. “Whatever you need.”
“I don’t know what that is.” The admission costs me, each word pried loose from pride’s grip.
“That’s okay.” He tilts his head back to expose his throat in a display of trust I didn’t ask for and don’t deserve. “We can figure it out.”
There’s that word again. We. Open-ended and uncertain.
My thighs tense as the pressure starts to build again. “I need an outlet. Cutting gives me a release. Fighting gives me a release.”
“Sex?” he offers.
I flinch. “I’m not letting you on top of me.”
“Okay.” Gabriel crawls forward. “You can have control. I’ll bottom.”