Chapter 12 #2
Miles would never admit it, but Charlee had been right—it was embarrassingly easy to sneak Gabriel into their house.
Stealth wasn’t even necessary, which was lucky considering how they stumbled over each other past the front door and up the stairs.
The sound of his dad’s thunderous snores through his parents’ closed bedroom door could’ve masked the noise of an oncoming train.
It was nothing like the horrific mental image he’d had weeks ago of Charlee helping Gabriel clamber through his bedroom window.
It helped that he’d entered a surreal place where he was too tired to really feel the anxiety ricocheting around inside him. Making sure his parents didn’t catch him didn’t seem nearly as important as crawling into bed as soon as humanly possible.
“I’ll grab you some pajamas,” he told Gabriel, leaving him in the hall with Charlee.
The thought of Gabriel wearing his clothes should’ve given Miles a heart attack, but he just grabbed the first T-shirt and pair of plaid pajama pants he could find in his dresser. A distant part of his brain marveled at the absence of panic. Lack of sleep might be the secret cure for anxiety.
He passed Gabriel the clothes and all but pushed him into the bathroom.
Charlee yawned. “See you in the morning.”
“Wait.” Miles caught her arm. “Where are you going?”
“To my room. You know, the place where I can change out of these disgusting clothes and zonk out.”
“Charlee. You can’t—I can’t—” She couldn’t leave him alone with Gabriel. The boy he looked at and, nine times out of ten, thought about wanting to kiss.
“You’ll be fine. You’re both exhausted and had an awful night—I doubt he’s going to try and jump you just because you’re sleeping in the same room.”
Miles flushed. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Stop freaking out, to start. You’re not exactly making him feel welcome. And comfort the poor guy. He nuked half a graveyard to save your life. I think that’s earned him bedtime cuddles.”
“Charlee.”
She snickered and disappeared through her bedroom door.
Asshole.
Miles turned and found Gabriel hovering in the bathroom doorway, holding his folded clothes and pointedly avoiding eye contact. He’d clearly heard them.
Worse, he was wearing Miles’s too-big pajamas, rolled at the sleeves and ankles, hanging off his slender frame. He looked unbearably cute.
“I can go home,” Gabriel murmured. “I shouldn’t have accepted your cousin’s invitation in the first place and made you uncomfortable. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
His words punched Miles in the gut. Hard. Gabriel looked so small and vulnerable in his hallway and in his clothes. It made Miles want to bundle him up, get him safe and warm, and show him how it felt to be taken care of.
“No,” Miles insisted, then again more vehemently. “No. You aren’t making me uncomfortable. I mean, a little, but that’s just because you’re you and I—” He cut himself off before he said something really stupid. “Stay. I mean it. I want you to.”
And suddenly he did. More than anything.
“C’mon.” He caught Gabriel’s hand and tugged him into his bedroom. “I’m seriously about to fall asleep right here.”
Gabriel came easily, more willing than usual. Softened by exhaustion and, Miles hoped, the comfort of being here.
He closed the door behind them, giving the space a quick critical scan—he’d learned his lesson since the last time Gabriel unexpectedly came over and had been keeping his room tidy.
Still, there was a mug of tea perched on his bedside table and a stack of clean laundry he hadn’t gotten around to putting away yet on his desk chair.
His gaze landed and stuck on his bed.
“We can’t sleep together,” Miles blurted, then immediately wished for a swift and sudden death. “I mean, like, in the same bed. My bed’s too small, and I wouldn’t—I don’t—I’d never suggest that anyway, that would be weird if we—”
“Miles,” Gabriel interrupted, palpable fatigue weighing down his words. “Give me a blanket and a pillow, and I’ll sleep on the floor.”
He forgot his mortification. “What? No! You’re the guest, take my bed.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but what happens if one of your parents or sisters comes in? You take the bed and I’ll sleep on the floor”—he gestured on the opposite side of the bed—“so I’m not immediately visible.”
It was a fair point. That didn’t mean it was right to make him curl up on the hardwood floor. Even with the shag rug, it would be far from comfortable.
“Fine. But give me a sec.”
Miles went down the hall to Charlee’s room. The lights were off and she was starfished across her bed.
“Whaaaaa…?” she slurred sleepily as he started pulling blankets off her bed.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Kinda hard to do when you’re stealing all my warmth,” she grumbled, wrestling a knit blanket away from him.
“You’re fine.” Charlee was a certified nester, burrowing under a mountain of blankets before she got too hot and threw them all off in the middle of the night. “Gabriel needs them.”
She spluttered in protest, but he was already out the door with half of her stash.
“I’m going to make you the world’s comfiest floor bed,” Miles told Gabriel, dropping Charlee’s blankets in a heap.
“That’s not necessary—”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
He folded and stacked all of them, adding a pillow from his bed. It seemed a little weird to give Gabriel his main pillow, so he chose the backup one that always ended up on the floor.
“Here.” He yanked his main comforter free. “It gets chilly, and we don’t run the heat very often.”
Gabriel sat down on his makeshift mattress, looking satisfied as Miles draped the comforter over him. “I run warm anyway.”
It was a sleepy, off-hand comment, but it was such a strangely intimate thing to know about someone.
Miles padded across his room and switched the light off, plunging the room into darkness. He changed into his pajamas, skin prickling with the knowledge that Gabriel was only a few feet away, then crawled into the safety of his bed.
The quiet was stifling. Miles stared up at his ceiling, irrationally self-conscious about making a sound, but able to hear every breath Gabriel took, every rustle of his blanket as he got comfortable.
“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to sleep until he did.
“I feel better now.” His sincere answer soothed Miles’s jitters. “You were hurt tonight. I heard you scream.”
“Yeah, but I’m okay.” It felt like the truth, even with his body aching and a lingering throb in his core that he suspected was shame. He wanted to tell Gabriel what’d happened, but that would mean admitting how easily he’d given in to the magic, how weak he’d been in the face of pain.
The grimoire was supposed to tempt you, entice you. But with Miles, it had gone straight for the stick over the carrot. It had wanted to hurt him.
Gabriel didn’t push, and Miles didn’t mention the death they’d left behind in the cemetery. It was okay—they’d both be ready to talk eventually.
A car passed outside, a flare of light across his wall. Some poor person was up even later than them. “Why do you think Jocelyn didn’t come?”
“Does it matter? It didn’t work.” Gabriel sighed. “It could’ve been me, the ritual, the magic… perhaps I was wrong about it being able to undo itself. All I know for certain is that we’re not using the grimoire again.”
“As soon as we find the curse, we can set it on fire together.”
“Agreed.” Blankets shifted with a low rasp as Gabriel adjusted. “It deserves to burn after it hurt you.”
Hearing that probably shouldn’t make Miles feel so pleased, but he blamed it on his sleepy brain.
He was just starting to drift off when Gabriel spoke again. “I owe you an apology.”
“We all agreed to use the grimoire. We all thought it was worth a shot.”
“I meant that I owe you an apology for the last few days.”
Miles was suddenly wide awake. He didn’t dare look over the edge of the bed. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry for so many things, I’m not certain where to start,” Gabriel confessed, and Miles’s heart thumped.
“For leaving like I did and being too afraid to tell you. For treating you poorly because of my own emotions. For having to see you nearly die tonight before I realized what an idiot I’ve been. ”
It was hard not to reassure him that it was okay, that he had nothing to apologize for. But the memory of fear during the days he was gone—then the anxiety and hurt once he’d returned acting like a stranger—still sat heavy in Miles’s gut.
“I know you’ve been struggling,” he said instead. “I’m sure you’re not used to having someone breathing down your neck, and I’m not always great at taking a step back when someone needs space.” He huffed into the darkness. “I just… I wish you would let me in. It feels like you don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you. But I’m also angry with you.”
Ridiculously, Miles perked up at that. It was progress. Insight. Anger, he could manage. Charlee had once said he was embarrassingly good at groveling.
“I’m mad at you,” Gabriel continued, “for having no survival instinct. After I told you about my premonition, you should’ve walked away without looking back. Told me to stay away. Taken my offer to separate. I want to yell at you for being so frustratingly irresponsible with your life.”
Honestly, that was fair. Miles had no defense—he had practically yelled at Gabriel for being so nonchalant about his own death all those weeks ago.
“I can see how that might piss you off.”