Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Leo’s text is burned like a brand into my mind.
He called me. Gabriel’s alive!!!
Another text arrives.
He says he’s coming! The GT penthouse.
It’s all I can see, all I can think about. Just getting to Grimm Tower Atlantic City.
Getting to Gabriel.
I have never appreciated a VIP access elevator more in my life.
I use my keycard, and even though it probably takes less than three minutes, I bounce on the balls of my feet until those doors slide open and I leap inside, then keep bouncing as I use my key to shift the elevator to express mode.
I try to hold myself together as I text down my order for a Town Car to be pulled around.
Then I try to will the damn elevator car to move even faster as it drops the forty-plus stories to the subterranean valet level.
When the doors finally open, I burst out, racing across the sub-3 lobby, my untied sneakers slapping against the marble tile. I probably look like a crazy person fleeing the scene of a crime. I don’t care. I can’t care about anything except the two words still burning on my phone screen.
Gabriel’s alive.
The words keep looping through my head, a drumbeat drowning out everything else. Every step I take pounds out the rhythm. Gabriel. Is. Alive. Gabriel. Is. Alive.
And right now, all I want in the world is to get to Grimm Tower and throw my arms around my beloved.
Five years of grief. Five years of lighting candles on his birthday. Five years of visiting the gallery like it was his grave and my only solace. Five years pressing my hand against his paintings as if I could somehow reach through the canvas and touch him.
He’s been alive this whole time.
And he’s on his way to Grimm Tower!
Gabe and I used to crash regularly at the Grimm’s residential penthouse. No one actually lives there. It’s just available to the family as needed. Just like the ones in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Rome, Sydney, and at least a dozen other places.
And how wonderful that he’s here now when he could be at any other Grimm Tower around the globe. Or even back at their home in Connecticut.
Once I’m released from the elevator, I burst through the glass doors to the VIP car service area, startling a couple in evening wear who give me the kind of look you’d give a woman who just escaped from a psychiatric facility. I ignore them.
I don’t ignore the on-duty valet. Him, I practically interrogate, and am assured that a car will be arriving for me at any moment.
As he scurries off to get the elderly couple’s car, I rock from one foot to the other, twisting Mom’s ring and realizing suddenly how much better I’m breathing. It’s as if a ton of cement has been lifted off my chest.
He’s alive…
Dammit. Where is the second valet? Do we really only have one working?
As I mentally add an audit of the valet service to my list of things to monitor and upgrade, it occurs to me that David has a car here. Maybe I could go get his keys and—
David.
All my breath leaves my lungs as I think of the man I left naked and confused in my bed. David, whose hands were on my body less than an hour ago.
A wave of nausea crashes through me. I slept with David while Gabriel was out there somewhere, alive, breathing, existing in a world I thought he’d left forever.
David must think I’ve completely freaked out, and the guilt is like a knife in my heart—toward him and toward Gabriel.
But I can’t deal with that right now. I can’t deal with anything except getting to Leo and actually seeing with my own eyes that my love is back from the dead.
A solid three minutes pass, and I’m about to fire the entire car department when—finally—a sleek Town Car pulls up.
The driver’s window is already down, and he steps out, then opens the back door for me.
I tell him to take me to Grimm Tower, then slide in, noticing first that the overhead light didn’t come on.
Yet another thing to put in my report about this department.
Then, just as the attendant shuts my door, the door on the other side opens, and a man slides in beside me, though I can’t see him properly in the dark. He shuts the door, and as the car pulls out, I hear the click of the locks.
I’m about to tell the driver to stop and let this apparently confused passenger out, but that’s when we glide past one of the garage’s interior lamps, and the light erases the shadows from the passenger’s face.
For one disorienting moment, I don’t process what I’m seeing. I can tell that he’s tall, with a moustache and beard, along with broad shoulders and a familiar, commanding presence that I don’t need to see because I can feel it.
That’s when I recognize him—the man in the bespoke suit from the party. “Who—” I begin, and that’s when he tilts his head, and I finally get a good look at his face.
His eyes.
My hand flies to my mouth in both delight and terror as I look into the eyes of a dead man.
A dangerous man.
Gabriel.
And yet not.
The Gabe I love was intense. Dangerous in a way that thrilled me instead of frightening me.
His smile was rare, but when it came, it was like watching lightning crack across a dark sky—sudden and wild and impossible to look away from.
And his eyes—those pale blue eyes that always reminded me of storms rolling in over the ocean.
Those eyes always softened when they landed on me.
Like I was something precious. Something worth protecting.
They’re not soft now.
Nothing about him is soft. All that has been stripped away.
He’s leaner now, his face carved into sharp angles and cold planes.
A scar I’ve never seen before runs along his cheek, partially hidden by the full beard.
His hair is longer, and right now it’s pulled back from a face that holds no warmth at all.
Instead, those beautiful eyes are looking at me like I’m the enemy.
“Gabe.” His name comes out broken. A whisper. A prayer. “Oh my god. Gabe.”
I reach for him without thinking, just as I have so many times in my dreams.
But unlike my dreams, he doesn’t reach back. Instead, he catches my wrist before I can touch his face, his grip so tight it’s almost painful.
“Don’t.”
One word, as cold as a blade. I yank my hand back, then cradle it against my chest like he’s burned me.
I swallow, then whisper, “What happened to you?”
“Don’t you dare play that game with me, you little bitch.”
The word stings like a slap, and I recoil, trying to disappear into the leather seats. To get away from the accusation in his voice.
A wave of nausea crests over me, and I have to fight not to vomit. To not let him—whoever the hell he is now—win.
When I’m certain I can keep the bile down, I try again, as if I’m going to somehow find the magical combination of words that bring my Gabriel back to me.
“Please,” I say, hating that my voice is close to a whimper, but not able to manage any more force.
“I’ve missed you so much. Please, please tell me why you’re acting like this. ”
His eyes narrow. “Missed me? Next, you’re going to say that you loved me.”
“I did,” I whisper. “I do,” I add, then cry out and recoil when he cups my chin and yanks me to him.
“Don’t you fucking lie.” His voice is hard and rough and low, and I see hate in his eyes before he pushes me away. “I’ve had enough of your lies to last a lifetime.”
I hear myself whimper, and tears are streaming freely now. I curl into a ball again and sob silently against my knees, my shoulders shaking. I don’t know everything that’s in his head—hell, I don’t know anything. Nothing except that he truly believes I had something to do with leaving him for dead.
How?
How could he possibly think that?
For a moment, I consider jumping from the car at the next traffic light, but I can’t convince myself that’s a good idea, especially when we’re heading into a dicey neighborhood and not toward Grimm Tower.
More importantly, I need answers. And to get them, I have to stay the course.
“Where are you taking me?”
I don’t expect him to answer, so I’m unsurprised when he stays silent, watching me with eyes so cold, I’m terrified that the Gabe I loved doesn’t exist anymore. That whatever horrors he’s faced over these past years have broken him completely.
I tremble slightly, not sure if my heart can handle knowing that.
After a moment, I draw new breath, then try again.
“Gabriel,” please talk to me.” I hate how desperate I sound.
Hate that I’m already begging. But I can’t help it.
I’ve spent what feels like a lifetime dreaming about seeing him again, and now he’s here—alive, real, close enough to touch—and he’s looking at me like I’m nothing. Like I’m less than nothing.
Like I’m someone he hates.
“At least tell me what’s happening.” I try to keep my voice level, try to exorcise all hints of begging or pleading.
“I thought you were dead,” I continue when he stays stubbornly silent. “I thought you died in the fire.” Tears well, and my voice cracks. “I mourned you. I’m still mourning you. And now you’re here, and you won’t even look at me like...like…
“Like what?” Not words. A growl, low and harsh and dangerous.
“Like you even remember loving me.” I blurt the words out, ahead of the rush of tears that follow.
And maybe it’s an illusion from those tears, but I think I see something flicker in his expression.
There and gone, too fast to identify. Pain, maybe.
Or anger. Or just contempt. I don’t know. All I can tell is it’s bad.
“We’ll talk,” he says. “But not here.” His voice is still harsh, but at least we’re moving toward answers, and I nod eagerly, clinging to his words like a dog with a bone. “Then where? And when? Can we go now? Please, Gabe. Can we just go now?”
I start to say more, but swallow my words because there’s no way to express the chasm that looms between the reunion I imagined and this cold, hostile silence.
In my dreams, he was always so happy to see me. Always reaching for me the way I reached for him.
This Gabriel doesn’t even answer me. Just turns to stare out the window at the passing lights of this illuminated city. The neon glow paints his profile in shifting colors—red, green, gold—and I study the new lines of his face like I’m trying to memorize a stranger.
The scar on his cheek. The beard and mustache. The hard set of his mouth. The tension in his shoulders, like he’s holding himself back from something. Violence, maybe?
Or perhaps he’s holding out on telling me the truth.
All I know is that he doesn’t say another word for the rest of the drive.