Chapter 30
Gable
I’ve never lived with a woman. I’ve never been in a relationship—this life doesn’t really call for it—and I’ve never settled somewhere long enough to even consider living with anyone but Asher.
And now I will never live with another woman, because if they’re all like Ella Gibson, I’ll avoid them for the rest of my fucking life.
She leaves her stuff everywhere. Hair ties, half-finished cups of coffee, chargers, socks.
Socks. Why is she taking socks off downstairs when it’s fucking freezing outside?
She leaves the milk out, never washes her dishes, complains when it’s too cold but never learns how to start the fire.
She keeps doing this annoying thing where she taps her temple forty-seven thousand times a day, and she’s eating my fucking Oreos.
If I thought I hated Ella Gibson before, now it’s a fiery loathing.
The only thing she does do that I’m grateful for is cook, but she makes a mess doing that, too.
And after living in foster homes with other teenage boys, I thought no one could top the messy bedrooms I’ve seen.
I was wrong. I walked past Ella’s open door once and couldn’t believe how many clothes were sprawling out of her suitcase, especially considering she only ever seems to wear the same leggings and sweatshirt.
And the writing?
Jesus fucking Christ.
She’s claimed the oversized armchair by the fire.
The side table is filled to the brim with cups of coffee that I refuse to move because it’s her goddamn mess, but they’re going to start walking by themselves soon.
I’ll come downstairs in the morning, and she’ll still be in the chair from the night before, hair in a messy bun, glasses on her face, typing furiously with Asher’s headphones on.
Then she’ll crawl to bed for six hours, which at least means I get some peace, but then she’ll wake up cranky as all hell at dinner time.
I. Hate. Her.
And now the last of my Oreos are gone.
Fuck this.
I slam the cabinet door closed.
“Gibson, you die today!”
She looks up from the laptop, hearing me over her music. Her writing time runs from seven at night until seven in the morning, but she won’t make it to sunrise because I’m going to kill and bury her.
“Where are they?”
She pulls the headphones off, fake innocence oozing from her smile. “Where are what?”
“My Oreos, you she-demon!”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t touched an Oreo since we got here.”
“Really?” I stalk toward her. “A week and not a single Oreo?”
“Nope.”
“So if I go into your room right now, I won’t find empty packets?”
She glares at me. “Go in my room and die.”
I dart up the stairs and hear her scramble after me.
“Gable, don’t you dare!” she screeches.
I storm down the hallway and throw open her door. And my God, the fucking mess. How does someone live like this?
She wraps her hand around my arm, trying to pull me out.
“Get out!”
“Are you … what is wrong with you?” I ask, not budging, no matter how much she tries to pull me.
“I have a process!” she says, fixing her feet to the ground and pulling me. “Get out!”
“This isn’t process, this is mess.” I stalk to the bed, snatching up an empty Oreo packet and brandishing it at her. “Ah-ha!”
“That … is not mine.”
“No, you’re right, it’s fucking mine!” I say, shaking the packet, excess crumbs littering the floor. “You are a nightmare to live with!”
“And you’re not much better! Where are all the fucking towels, Gable?”
I look around. “Maybe they’re all in here! Growing moss!”
“No, they’re not, they’re in your fucking bedroom!” she says, pushing me. “And don’t say they’re not, because I know they are!”
“Stay out of my room! And stop eating my Oreos! Or I’ll cut you up, Gibson; I swear I fucking will!”
The Oreo war is put on pause, but only because I find a spare packet that I hid, and now she’s doing the annoying things she does when she writes.
We’re both in the living room, and I’m watching her type, her facial expressions changing every few seconds, from delighted to confused to happy to sad. She goes through about six different emotions, and it’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
“What?” she shouts, her music turned up so loud that I can hear the lyrics.
“Why are you doing that?” I ask, gesturing at my face.
She pulls the headphones off. “Doing what?”
“Your face,” I say. “You keep changing it. It’s distracting.”
“Oh, I have to have the same expression my character does while I’m writing dialogue,” she says. “It’s easier to describe it.”
I stare at her. “Every expression?”
“Yep.” She pauses the music. “So, if they laugh, I laugh; if they’re confused, I’m confused—”
“Yeah, I get the idea,” I say, eyebrows still pinched together. She keeps her headphones down but starts typing again. “Do you cry, too?”
“Yep.”
“Real tears?”
“Yeah.”
This is probably one of the most interesting things she’s ever told me, because I haven’t really cried since I was fourteen.
I didn’t cry when I left each foster home, even the nicer ones, because I expected the disappointment and crying wouldn’t help.
The last time I shed a tear was the day Asher died, and even then, it had only been one or two.
I just can’t do it. I can feel the pain, it’s definitely there, and it tears me up inside, but it never presents itself on the outside.
“How?” I ask.
She raises her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“How do you just … cry? That’s weird. Aren’t you supposed to actually be sad to cry?”
“I am sad when I cry. My characters are sad, and I feel it, too.”
I close my own laptop, work forgotten, not that there’s much to do.
I’ve hired a few people through the dark web to find out more information about this drive, but anytime any of them gets close, they back off.
This recent guy is the only one asking fewer questions and doing more work. But he also cost more money.
“Your characters aren’t real. How can they be sad?” I ask.
“They’re real to me.”
I frown. “But … you made them. You know more than anyone that they’re not real. It’s like baking cookies and then being surprised that they’re made from ingredients.”
She laughs. “They’re fully formed people in my head, Gable. They are real, they’re just not … here.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Well …” She closes her laptop slowly and takes the headphones from around her neck, placing them on the side table. The only things in the house she treats with care are her laptop and those headphones. “It’s like Asher. He’s not here, but we still feel something for him, right?”
“Yeah, but Asher was real. Asher was here. Your characters were never real.”
“But they’re built from everyone I’ve ever met.
They’re pieces of real people made into someone else.
They have thoughts and fears and emotions and go through experiences, just like we do.
They react just like we do. Like …” She gets up and sits beside me.
“If we were having this conversation with Asher here, what would he say?”
“He’d probably agree with you and say it was cute.”
“But you don’t know that, do you?”
“Yes, I know him, and I know what he’d say.”
She shrugs. “It’s the same with my characters. I know them and I understand them, so yeah, when they lose someone or experience pain, I feel it with them. For them. And I cry.”
It still doesn’t make sense to me, but it seems to make sense to her. And she isn’t annoying me for once, which is a nice change.
“You really cry?” I ask, eyeing her suspiciously.
She nods. “Don’t you cry at stuff?”
“No.”
“You almost cried over your Oreos.”
I scowl. “I got angry over my Oreos; I didn’t cry. I don’t cry.”
“Crying is good for you.”
“It’s dehydrating.”
She laughs, and it’s the first laugh that isn’t a cackle. I only ever heard her laugh like that with Asher. My lip twitches, and I look away.
“So …” She crosses her legs. “You just don’t cry?”
“No.”
“What if I hit you really hard?”
“I’d probably laugh.”
“Happy tears?”
I frown. “I can bet my life I will never cry happy tears around you. Unless I watch someone drop something on you that killed you. That’d be pretty funny.”
“You know, for someone so focused on keeping me alive, you sure do talk about me dying a lot.”
“I’m keeping you alive for Asher—not for me.”
“A begrudging bodyguard. Lucky me,” she says. “Ooh. I should write that down.”
She scrambles back over to her chair and reopens her laptop, typing furiously, and I wonder how long it’ll be until we kill each other.
“We should go over drills again tomorrow.”
Ella sticks her tongue out in disgust. “But they’re so boring.”
“Drills are important. They keep us alive.”
It was Asher’s idea to have backup plans in place, and we’d run drills for them every few months.
If he was taken out, what are my next steps, and vice versa.
We’d run through various scenarios: if the car was compromised, if one of us was injured, if the house was infiltrated—everything. We always wanted to be prepared.
I’ve run three with Ella and every single time, she’s complained about it.
“It’s just so repetitive,” Ella says. “Everything is dangerous to you. ‘Don’t go for a walk alone, Ella, someone could shoot you.’ ‘Don’t answer the door, Ella, someone could shoot you.’ Everything is about survival, and it’s fucking exhausting.”
I stare at her, unblinking. “I’m sorry me keeping you alive is so tiring.”
“You know what I mean,” she mumbles. “I miss doing normal things. Having normal conversations.”
“You can do normal things once this is all over.”
She scoffs. “And when will that be?”
Sooner rather than later.
I hope.
As she types away, chewing her lip almost aggressively, I watch her. I’ve taken her away from her home, from everyone she knows, and not hidden the truth from her at all. She’s fully aware of the danger she’s in, of how close she’s come to dying, and how hard people are looking for her.
And I see the effects of that as time goes on. She calls her dad more often, and sometimes I’ll catch her staring out the window quietly, not writing or listening to music.
She’s homesick, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.
“Gibson?”
“Hm?”
“Thank you for coming with me.”
She lifts her gaze to me, her head tilted, her hands hovering over her keyboard as we stare at one another. Silence stretches, interrupted only by the crackle of the fire. “Shouldn’t I be thanking you?”
I shrug. “You could’ve said no.”
“I did, and you threatened to kidnap me.”
“Just …” I sigh. “Accept the thank you. Asher wanted to keep you safe, and me doing that … it means I can do something for you that I couldn’t do for him. It’s important to me, or whatever. So, thanks.”
Ella nods and looks at her laptop. “You’re welcome, Gable.”