Chapter Twenty Gideon
Chapter Twenty
Gideon
After emptying the magazine, I replace it with a full one and turn to talk to Lena, but she’s no longer standing right next to me.
She’s leaning against the wall, her eyes glassy, her face white as fuck, and she’s shaking all over. After setting the weapon aside, I rush to her.
“Shit. Baby, look at me.” Framing her face, I nudge her up to meet my eyes, but she doesn’t look at me. She looks . . . vacant. It’s like I’m not even here at all, and it’s breaking my fucking heart. “Come back, Rebel. I need you to leave that nightmare and come back to me.”
She whimpers. Her whole body is shaking so hard, her teeth chatter, and I wish with my whole heart that I could go back in time and kill those motherfuckers all over again.
“Baby, you’re safe.” I pull her against me and rock her back and forth, cradling her against my chest. “Listen to my heartbeat, Lena. Do you hear it?”
I fucking hate how terrified she is. How her slim body trembles beneath my hands.
“Why won’t it stop?” It’s a whispered question, so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. “I’m not this weak—I just can’t make it stop.”
Shame on every single fucking person who didn’t get her into therapy the morning after it happened.
“Baby, I have to put the weapons away, and then I’m taking you home, okay?”
She nods, but she’s clinging to me now, still shaking.
“Can you stand here and wait for me for two minutes?”
Now she shakes her head no. “Don’t go.”
Christ.
I sink to the floor and pull her into my lap, and she immediately curls into me. Then I grab my phone out of my pocket and call Ryker.
“Hey, man,” he says when he picks up.
“I need you in the shooting range ASAP.”
“Be there in five,” he says and hangs up, and I set my phone aside and press kisses to Lena’s soft dark hair.
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re perfectly safe.”
“I’m not w-w-worried about me.” She sniffs, and I brush her hair behind her ear. “You got hurt. Oh, God, you were so hurt, and it was raining, and I couldn’t—”
“Shh.” Cradling her close, I rock us back and forth. She’s not afraid for herself. She’s afraid for me, and it’s so fucking humbling and infuriating all at once.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I’m sorry that I pushed it. That’s on me.”
She sniffles and presses her face into my neck. “It shouldn’t be so hard. It shouldn’t feel like you’ll die every time I see that gun. But I c-can’t.”
She starts to sob again, and I just hold her and let her cry it out. It feels like my chest is being torn open.
Ryker comes running into the range and pulls up short, his brow furrowing when he sees us on the floor. His eyes skim over us both, looking for an injury, I’m guessing.
“What’s wrong? Is she hurt?”
“We’re not injured. I need you to secure that rifle in the armory,” I tell him. “And then I need to get her home.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again, but I simply kiss her temple. “Gideon got shot, and there was so much blood, and it was all my fault—”
“Shh.” I shake my head when Ry’s face falls. “It wasn’t your fault, Lena.”
“I just had to go to that exhibit. I begged you to go until you finally gave in, and it could have killed you.”
Ryker isn’t supposed to be privy to this information, but fuck it. He’s my brother.
Framing her face, I make her look me in the eye.
“Listen to me right now. It was a random mass shooting. They didn’t know who you were. It had nothing at all to do with you, Lena. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it’s as simple as that.”
“It’s not simple.” She shakes her head slowly. “It was the worst night of my life, and I regret it so much.”
“Baby, you just wanted to look at pretty art. There’s nothing wrong with that. You didn’t lure me into an active war zone.”
“Fuck,” Ryker whispers, dragging his hand down his face.
“I can’t get the image of you lying in that wet alley, bleeding, out of my head.
I can’t.” She breaks down again, and I finally stand with her in my arms as Ryker grabs the weapon and secures it in the armory for me, then locks it and the range up behind us as we climb into the back seat of his truck.
The tears calm a bit as we get closer to the house, but Ryker keeps checking us in the rearview mirror, his brows pulled together in concern.
“What can we do?” he asks when he parks by the house.
“I have her,” I reply as I open my door. “Thanks for the help, brother.”
“I’ll have Willow make extra for dinner. Come over later.”
I nod, and then pat him on the shoulder. “Thanks, man.”
After stepping out of the truck, I lean in and take Lena’s hand, helping her out of the truck, and then lead her inside. I don’t like how pale she still is, or how flat her gorgeous lavender eyes are. She’s always full of life, full of fire.
“What do you need, baby?” I ask her.
“Can we just snuggle on the couch?”
With a small grin, I lead her through to the sofa and take a seat, and she curls up next to me, resting her head on my shoulder and linking her fingers with mine.
“I need you to talk to me.” I take a deep breath and kiss her head. “Really talk to me. I know that we were both there that night, but I think there are some holes for both of us that need to be filled in.”
Her deep breath is shaky, but she sits up and faces me, sitting crisscross, her legs pressed up against my thigh. She won’t let go of my hand. It’s like if she stops touching me, I’ll disappear.
Again.
“I should have listened to you and Richie when you said that it wasn’t safe for us to go to the museum at the last minute. I was being selfish, and you know how I hated having a security detail in the first place.”
“First of all, you were not being selfish, Lena,” I reply, frowning over at her. “I know you didn’t like the security, and you tried to rebel against it, but you never said why.”
She rubs her lips together, thinking about it.
“I was seventeen when Mom was elected. I’d always struggled to fit in because teenagerhood is horrible, and suddenly having big, mean-looking guys following me around in high school made me so different.
I’ve never been the person with a ton of friends.
And that’s okay with me, because I’m pretty introverted, but no teenager likes to feel different. ”
Been there, done that. “I can understand that. I was a foster kid with a murderer for a father. I know what it’s like to be different.”
She rubs her hand down my cheek, and I press a kiss to her palm. “I wasn’t really the rebellious one, you know. That was Chelsea. She was my friend, and she knew that the constant security drove me bananas, so she encouraged me to try to escape. We made it a game.”
“She’s a shit influence. She’s also a shit friend, Lena. I wish you could see that.”
She shrugs a shoulder. “She’s a selfish person, sure. And she has a lot of faults. But since we were five, she’s been a constant in my life when my own parents weren’t. Nannies came and went. Security came and went. But Chelsea was always there. So yeah, she has her faults, but she’s my friend.”
Sighing, I lean over to kiss her cheek and brush my nose over her skin. “Okay, baby. Keep going.”
“I always felt guilty when we pulled off sneaking out. So guilty.” She shakes her head and bites her lip, looking lost and sad.
“But that night, I didn’t want to sneak away as if I was doing something wrong.
I was an adult, and I wanted to go to see the art of an artist that I’d admired for a long time.
It didn’t feel dangerous to me, Gideon.”
“It shouldn’t have been dangerous,” I agree, rubbing my thumb over her knuckles.
“It felt like such a normal thing to do. Chelsea had no interest in going, but that was fine with me. I don’t have an issue doing things alone. Sometimes it’s better, actually. I was enjoying myself. And then all hell broke loose.”
She swallows hard, frowning.
“At first, all I could think was that some maniac had followed us there, and that I’d fucked up so bad.”
I shake my head but let her speak.
“And then it all happened so fast. But all that blood, and the cries and screams. Those shooters had dead eyes.”
Yeah. They did.
“They didn’t care that they were killing innocent people. They didn’t look excited, or angry, or anything. They had no expressions at all. And they weren’t wearing masks to even cover up their identities.”
“It was likely one of two things,” I reply. “Either they didn’t think they’d get caught, or they didn’t expect to leave alive.”
“Did anyone ever find out why they did it?”
I scowl and squeeze her hand and feel frustration bubble in my gut. “You weren’t kidding when you said that no one would speak to you about this.”
“No. I was completely shut out. I wasn’t allowed to know anything, and it drove me crazy.
How was there nothing on the news? I know that some things can be covered up, like what happened that night before I came here.
But a mass shooting in a museum? Gideon, there was nothing on the news, and I searched for it.
No mention of you being hurt, of me being there, of any of those people dying. ”
Taking a deep breath, I push my hand through my hair. “The press releases what your mother and her people want them to release. Whether it’s the death of one man near a restroom in an art gallery or the deaths of sixteen people in a museum. She’s in control of that.”
She blinks, clearly not understanding.
“I don’t know why the shooting itself wasn’t reported. I can tell you that she didn’t want anyone to know you were there, or that I was injured, because that would show weakness. Weakness makes your whole family more vulnerable.”
Lena rolls her eyes, making my shoulders finally relax.
“There’s my sassy girl.”
“I thought I could do it today, out there with you, but as soon as I saw that weapon, it took me right back there. You got shot, I was trying to stop the blood, and then you passed out on me.”
“I told you to go so you wouldn’t see that.” I use my pinkie to brush her hair off her cheek and behind her ear. “You shouldn’t have had to see that. I didn’t want that for you.”
“But it was the last time I saw you until you walked into my bedroom, and damn it, Gideon.” She blinks furiously, trying to keep the tears at bay.
“Did you miss me, Rebel?”
She huffs out a breath. “Yeah. I did.”
That fills me with immense satisfaction, and I pull her onto my lap, needing her closer.
“If I hadn’t been shot, I would have stayed on your detail until your mother was out of office, and things would have been strictly professional between us.
I never would have allowed myself to look at you differently, Lena.
Even now, I know that I’m skirting some serious lines when it comes to what’s appropriate. ”
“Gid—”
“No, let me say this. I would absolutely, without a fucking doubt, do it again. There isn’t anything I would do differently, because if I hadn’t been shot that night, we wouldn’t be here like this, and there is nothing I want more than having you here with me.
You’re mine, and it took that incident to take me out of the job so I could have this with you all these years later.
And this?” I kiss her lips softly as they tremble.
“There’s nothing better than this, Lena. ”
“Gid, what if I don’t want to go when all this is over?”
“Then you don’t have to go.”
She blinks in surprise. “I don’t?”
“You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want. Always.”
Don’t ever leave.
I’m so gone over her, I’d marry her today. But my life is here on this ranch, and I know it’s not for everyone. She hasn’t experienced a winter, dealing with forty-below-zero temperatures. Being isolated out here. That’ll get old for her.
But for as long as she wants to stay, she has a home here, because if I had my way, she’d be with me for the rest of my life.
“I’ll try again tomorrow,” she says with a sigh, wrapping her sweet little body around me.
“Try what?”
“Shooting that fucking gun.”
Scowling, I drag my hand up and down her back. “You don’t ever have to shoot it. I’ll take it off the table right now.”
“No, I do need to. I need it for my own self-confidence. It’s just metal. It can’t think or react. It can’t hurt you, and I need to remind myself of that. So I’ll suck it up and shoot the fucking thing, and then we’ll get on with our lives.”
Taking her chin in my fingers, I kiss her lips softly. “You’re the strongest woman I know. You don’t have to shoot that rifle to prove anything to me or anyone else.”
“I’m proving it to me.” She straddles me and wraps her arms around my shoulders, and when she presses her center against me, it makes me hard as fuck. “Thanks for talking it out with me. I think it helped a lot. But I have some questions.”
“Shoot.”
“First of all, do we know why they targeted that museum?”
“One of them was a security guard who had been fired because he took his job a little too seriously and pulled his gun on a customer who touched a painting. The other guy was his brother.”
She blinks at me, then looks out the window. “That is so . . . It wasn’t a political statement? Or, I don’t know, something? All those people died because he was mad?”
“It was literally an act of revenge because he lost his job.” My hand slides around to her ass, and I give it a little pat. “What else do you want to know?”
“When you went to the hospital, what happened then? I went back to my apartment and my life, but I don’t know what happened to you.”
I feel my lips twitch, and she scowls.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, but I like knowing that you were worried about me.” I lean up and kiss her chin.
“I was in the hospital for close to a week. I had to have emergency surgery because one of the bullets grazed an artery—that’s why there was so much blood, but I obviously didn’t bleed out.
They got me stitched up, but I did almost lose the leg. ”
Lena gasps, her face going pale again, and I frame her face in my hands and pull her forehead against mine.
“I didn’t, though. I stayed in DC for a year, working with the best PT team in the country because I was determined to go back to work, but the leg will never be at a hundred percent. Once that was decided, I came back home to the ranch, built this house, and started my business.”
She closes her eyes for a minute and then pushes her hands into my hair.
“And you never got married?”
“No.” I nuzzle her nose. “I didn’t.”
I stand and carry her to the stairs, and she wraps her legs around my waist, nuzzling my neck.
“Gideon?”
“Yes, baby.”
“I’m so fucking glad you didn’t choose anyone else.”
I smile against her shoulder and hug her to me when I stop by the bed.
“There is no other choice for me, Rebel. Just you. Always you.”