35. Gilli
Gilli
B lue and red rays of light slice through the dark night, heralding the arrival of the police.
I never thought I’d be happy to see them.
Especially not the pig-faced man with the voice to match the one who hung up on me. This time he swaggers through the door with a cadre of other officers behind him, their guns trained on the figures on the floor.
“Freeze, motherfuckers!” He glances at Tase and grins. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
Tase took down one of them on his own, Aiden the other two, while Soren was bound the entire time.
What did I do? I took off my clothes. And when the chips fell, I’d tried to make a move. I shouldn’t have hesitated the way I did. Rather than going for maximum pain, I should have just gouged his eyes right out of their sockets. Popped them like little grapes.
The cops slap handcuffs on all three of them, muttering about the right to remain silent. The EMTs are on the way, someone assures us, but they are still a few minutes out.
Maxxx8U may not even survive a trip to the hospital.
He looks so ordinary without the mask. He could be any guy in a crowd, with mousy cashew-colored hair and an ego the size of Texas. He doesn’t look like someone who swoops in and ruins lives. Who makes people go through literal hell. And for what?
I want to ask him but the words are lost somewhere.
I’ve found my shirt and covered my nakedness, but the discomfort and embarrassment slide away along with my own aches as I lunge for Tase, running my fingers along his face until his eyes flutter closed.
“Are you okay?” Touching him is less reassuring than I want it to be.
I feel my way over his familiar features until he blows out a breath. “Check on them. I’m fine,” he manages.
He is nowhere near fine and we both know it. I kiss him firmly on the lips. He tastes like paranoia and terror and relief.
“You’re here. I can’t believe you came,” I whisper.
“I’d never let you go. You know that.”
Then Aiden groans and I crane my neck over to look at him. He’s as white as a sheet, the rifle on the counter and his knuckles gripping the edge just to stay upright.
My heart thoroughly lodges in my throat and likely staying there for the rest of my life. I hurry to Aiden. He does his best to smile at me but pain etches into his features.
There’s no relief when I glance down at his leg and see a piece of bone poking through the fabric of his pants. Blood still gushes from the wound.
“Look at me,” he manages to get out. “A regular action hero. Think I can put this on my resume, baby?”
“You are a hero. My hero.”
I’m afraid to touch him. I’m afraid to do anything that might jeopardize him or hurt him more than he’s already hurt.
“You saved us.”
Something drops over my shoulders, and Soren is there shoving one of his hoodies over the top of my head. He grunts out something to Aiden but I can’t look away .
God, have I ever loved another person like I love him? Aiden is…he’s…
“Sir? Mr. October?” a voice sounds from our right. “Let’s get you to a hospital.”
The EMTs have arrived and brought a stretcher into the living room. Our tiny slice of paradise has turned into pure pandemonium, like we’ve been caught in the middle of an uprising at a mental institution.
It certainly feels like a fever dream.
The officer who is friendly with Tase, Darrell something, stands in the center of the space with his hands on his hips, barking out orders. He stares at the young officer righting the tripod, and points toward another holding an evidence bag.
A shudder spreads along my vertebrae and plucks them one at a time. I wrap my arms around my chest, shivering.
Whatever they're going to find on the cell phone, it won’t be good.
The evidence is clear. If Maxxx8U survives, he’s going to be put away for a long time.
Soren pulls me to the side to stay out of the way while the EMTs help Aiden onto the stretcher. But it’s impossible to wait, impossible to hold myself back. I lace my fingers through Aiden’s and drag Soren with me as we follow the stretcher outside.
“It’s going to be fine,” I say.
Oh, shit, I’m going to cry.
Crying won’t help Aiden. Crying certainly isn’t going to mend his broken bone.
Aiden squeezes my hand and lifts it to his lips. Even bloodless, his lips are still soft.
“Don’t worry about me, baby,” he murmurs. “It’s just a broken bone. I’ve been through worse than this before.”
He’s gray-faced and looking like he’s going to pass out at any minute.
“I love you.” The words spill out of me before I can stop them. “I love you so much. You can’t die on me. I will…” What?
The lines of his forehead smooth out, his expression going soft. “You think I don’t know?” he whispers. “Stay with Soren. He needs you more than I do.”
My hysterical chuckle burns my throat. “Why are you guys always saying that to me? You’re all in bad shape.”
“We’re taking him to Mercy General, if you folks want to follow along behind us as soon as you’re done here,” the closest EMT tells me. “But don’t worry. Mr. October is going to be just fine. He’s in good hands. Our surgeons will know what to do.”
Aiden kisses my knuckles again, shifting his eyes toward Soren and waggling his brows. Then, as though the motion took too much energy out of him, he collapses on the stretcher and exhales slowly. They wheel him into the waiting ambulance.
It takes me a few moments to realize Soren’s hand is trembling in mine. “Soren?”
My stomach jumps when he pries loose.
Cutting through the gloom, he heads toward the lake shore and drops, practically falling onto his ass. Alone, with his head in his hands, he doesn’t twitch as I follow him.
We’re both coming down from the adrenaline and panic. It’s natural for him to want some time to figure himself out, and with Tase dealing with the cops, we aren't needed yet, not until they’re ready to take our statements.
Where do I belong? What do I do now that the threat is gone?
I kneel in front of Soren, ignoring the cold rocks against my knees. The blood covering my skin doesn’t matter. I wrap my arms around his waist, and he grabs at me like we're both in the middle of a stormy sea.
We cling to each other. Survivors in the chaos.
He breathes me in, trailing his nose through my hair and toward my cheek. “I almost lost you,” he admits .
“I almost lost you, too.”
“Fuck, Gillian, we both know you have two backups if anything happens to me.”
My fingers clench in the fabric of his shirt. “I’m not laughing. That’s a terrible joke.”
He’s not laughing either, thankfully. Finally he takes my face in his hands to study me. “Are you okay? Really okay?”
When had it happened? I wonder when I fell for Soren, too. Somewhere in the middle of hatred, love bloomed, strong and pure and forgiving.
“Are you ?” I throw back. “I’m so worried about you.”
His laugh is dry and bitter. “Me? Don’t worry about me. I did fucking nothing. I didn’t help you. I couldn’t help you.”
Ah, that’s where his stiffness comes from. The disgust in his voice isn’t for me this time. It’s for himself.
“You did what you could,” I insist.
He shakes his head, turning away. “If Tase hadn’t shown up when he?—”
“Stop.” I dig my fingers into his shoulders. “Did you want to impale yourself on the end of a madman’s knife?”
The idea terrifies me in a way I never thought possible. I swallow hard, the rock in my throat barbed and burning.
“You have no idea what it did to me, to see the three of you in danger.”
Soren drops his forehead to mine and the tips of our noses touch. “I’m more worried about you. It fucking killed me to not be able to help you.”
“You helped enough.”
“No.” His breathing is harsh. “I didn’t. When the chips were down, I did nothing. I put you in danger thinking I’d be able to stop this guy and not knowing what I was up against. It’s my fault. I had to watch you strip for those pieces of shit.”
“Are you going to beat yourself up for the rest of the night? Or will this be something we have to deal with going forward? ”
The anger is for me as much as for him. I brought trouble to their doorstep.
And when certain things come to light, the fallout will be anything but pretty. The shiver starts at the base of my spine and wracks through me.
“We came way too close to dying. If I’d lost you, if Aiden hadn’t managed to grab that gun, or if Tase hadn’t shown up when he did… There are too many things that could have gone wrong. Horribly wrong. Then we’d have an entirely different outcome tonight.”
“It doesn’t pay to think about those things.” My voice trembles.
He huffs out another laugh and squeezes me closer. “But that’s all I think about. I don’t want to lose any of you. Everyone I actually care about was in that cabin with a madman and his gun. His knife. His baseball bat.”
Soren needs to get this out. Which is why, no matter how hard it is to bite my tongue, I stay quiet and let him finish.
“I never hated you, Gillian,” he continues softly. “I’ve always been better at letting my body do the talking. Words, emotions, they’re tough for me and not something I’ve been good at.”
“No one is,” I reply.
“I never hated you, because you aren’t your mother. And it’s not just her fault, what happened to my own mother. It’s my father’s fault too. They both share the responsibility equally. The rest of us had no choice. But you…you’re different.”
Shit, now is the absolute wrong time for tears. I’ve cried enough, haven’t I? Except they RSVP’d to the party and there’s no stopping them now.
“I never wanted to be different.”
Soren shifts to cup my face in his massive hands.
His thumbs stroke my skin. “None of us ask for it, but here we are. I see you, Gilli. I see the pieces of you you’d rather hide, and I see how you hate and love yourself.
I see your vulnerability when you don’t want anyone else to look that closely at you. ”
“We don’t need to get into this right now, Soren, We’ll have time later.”
He cups my chin harder. Forces me to look at him.
“If not now, we might not get another chance,” he mutters.
I get it. When it feels like you’re on borrowed time, but instead of making every second count, all you can do is wonder if you’ll get any more.
Soren is right. If so many different pieces hadn’t clicked into place for us, then we wouldn’t be here, waiting for the cops to secure the scene. We’d be inside, dead. Or worse, alive and tortured.
The world is continuing around us while we sit. Even the chill in the air is something separate and held at bay by the heat rolling off of him.
“Dammit, Gillian, do you have any idea what you mean to us? To me?” he asks.
“You can’t speak for the others.”
“I can, and I’m going to, because I’m the only fucking one here to tell you this.
You’re our star. You’re our guiding light and none of us realized it until you got here.
” Soren shakes his head until his hair obscures his face.
“I love you. I never thought it was possible, and we’re in for a huge fucking mess because of it, but you’re it for me. I can’t wait to learn how we fit.”
I hiccup through a sob. The world continues around us but here, in our bubble, it’s only us.
“I’ve probably always loved you. It’s wrong and screwed up and I’ll rot in hell for it, but I’m not letting you go. You’re mine.” He growls out the last word.
I’m damned right along with him as I kiss Soren with my heart full to bursting. “I love you,” I whisper against his lips.
Being with him isn’t easy and yet I don’t want it any other way. He’s my anchor in the storm. How did it happen so quickly?
“We’re going to make this work,” Soren insists. “All of us. We’re going to make this work.”
He grabs me by my ass and lifts me into him, forcing me to scramble to wrap my legs around him as he bites my lip between his teeth.
“Yes. We’re going to make this work.”
“Always having fun without me.” Tase lumbers over. “No one ever waits for me to join.”
Soren releases a dark chuckle. “Is that what you want, Doc? To join?”
But he loosens his hold on me as Tase gets closer and I know what to do. Casting Soren a final hot look, I stand up and reach for Tase, and he draws me into a hug while Soren hauls himself to his feet.
Tase kisses me, tasting Soren on my mouth, tasting me. I put one arm around his waist and the other arm around Soren’s, drawing us all closer together.
The anger I’ve carried my entire life washes away. Scattered on the gently lapping water on the shore. For the first time, I’ve found what I’ve been looking for. My home is wherever they are. We can stay here, or we can move to Alaska, I don’t care as long as we are together.
But it’s not quite home yet, not without Aiden. I swipe at the tears in my eyes. “Let’s go check on Aiden,” I tell them.
The future I want may still be on the table, but it’s so much richer than I could have imagined. Brighter, more stable. So clear and strong it steals the air from my lungs.
I’m not alone. And it’s my choice.