Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
I wake up slowly, drifting up from sleep like a swimmer rising toward light.
For a moment, I don’t remember where I am. The surface beneath me is velvet, not cotton. The air smells like old wood and something else—something warm and male and achingly familiar.
Gabriel.
Memory floods back. The confrontation. The confession. The desperate, devastating sex on this couch, surrounded by his paintings.
I open my eyes.
He’s propped up on one elbow, watching me. The cold mask is gone, replaced by something softer—something that looks almost like the man I fell in love with years ago. His free hand is tracing lazy patterns on my bare shoulder, feather-light touches that send shivers across my skin.
“Hi,” he says quietly.
“Hi.”
“You’re beautiful when you sleep.” His fingers drift up to my hair, tucking a strand behind my ear. “You always were. I used to watch you for hours.”
“That’s creepy.”
“Probably.” A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “I was creepy about a lot of things when it came to you. Obsessive. Possessive.” The smile fades. “Turns out those tendencies didn’t go away when I thought you’d betrayed me. They just got darker.”
I should respond to that. Should say something meaningful about last night and the impossible tangle of emotions sitting heavy in my chest.
I don’t.
Instead, I sit up, covering myself with the throw blanket. “What time is it?”
Gabriel checks his watch. “Almost four in the morning.”
“We should...” I trail off. Should what? Go back to my suite, where David is probably waiting with questions I don’t know how to answer? Pretend last night didn’t happen, even though I’m wildly glad it did?
“Come back to my place,” he says, sitting up. “We can talk. Get some real sleep.”
I should probably say no. It’s going to be light in just a few hours, and I have things to do here at the Monarch. But I just spent hours in Gabriel’s arms. A Gabriel who loves me—not a Gabriel who’s been tormenting me.
So I say yes, and soon we’re both dressed and in his Porsche, then tumbling out into the Obsidian’s parking garage before hurrying through the sub-basement hallways to the rhythm of men pounding each other in the ring, even at this hour.
I glance sideways at him, but he just shrugs as if to say You know who I am now, and you came. Deal with it.
So, yeah. I’m dealing.
Unlike the hall, his apartment—quarters?—is quiet. Familiar, even. But now, I’m looking at it through different eyes.
The thought reminds me of my first time here, and my eyes dart to where I’d seen the crumpled photo of me and David and that kiss.
It’s gone.
I glance at Gabe and find him looking back at me. “I tossed it,” he says. “Yesterday, actually.”
“Oh?” I try to sound casual, but inside, I’m gleeful. Before, this apartment had felt like enemy territory. Now, it feels like hope.
“I can make coffee,” he says. “And there’s a real bed, if you want to sleep. And a shower.”
“Coffee,” I say, both because it’s so freaking normal and because I could use some. “Coffee would be good.”
He grins, and some of the tension he’s still carrying eases. “Coming right up.”
Exhaustion catches up with me, and I settle onto the sofa as he moves around the kitchen. The space is warm despite being underground, with the only natural light coming from four high windows.
“How long have you been living down here?” I ask.
“Since I came back. A little shy of four years.” He sets a mug of coffee on the table beside me, then sits on the opposite end of the sofa with his own cup.
“Before that, I was with Travis and Anissa in Aspen. They’re the reason I’m alive.”
“The reason? What do you mean?”
He’d been looking straight at me. Now he seems focused more on my chin.
“Travis found me,” he says softly. “ In the woods, barely alive. He took me back to his place—I managed to stay conscious long enough to beg him not to call the cops. He’d been a medic in the military, then a Texas Ranger after that, and he’d taught Anissa what he knew.
Between the two of them, they kept me alive. Well, them and my dreams of vengeance.”
“Against those men,” I whisper. “And me.”
“Just you,” he says. “The men were nothing to me. Not then. Not while I was trying to hang on.” He flashes an ironic grin. “So, yeah, I’m alive because I loved you enough to truly hate you.”
I blink back fresh tears. “I’m so sorry.”
He takes my hand. “Don’t be. We’ve danced this one already. It wasn’t you. But, hey, the fact that I thought it was really did give me something to live for, dark though that might be.”
I bite my lower lip, hesitate, then plow forward. “About Anissa. Was there ever—” I cut myself off with a shake of my head, feeling like a seventh-grader. Gabe, however, looks delighted.
“I love her,” he says, his voice completely serious.
“Oh.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Like a sister.”
I scowl and suppress the urge to whack him with a pillow. Then I say fuck it and smack him anyway. Because this is what I missed. Talking with him. Being close to him. Sharing all sorts of gooey emotional stuff with him.
As if he can read my mind, he reaches over and twines his fingers with mine. Hell, maybe he can read my mind.
“What about your brothers? I mean, you texted Leo, but why didn’t you reach out before? To him or any of them? They could have been searching for the men all this time.
He shakes his head. “No. Those men. You. Your father. They were my prey, not my brothers’.”
“But still. Just for them to know you were alive.”
“Couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk anyone being dragged into my war with your father.
And I couldn’t face them.” He stops, then looks down at the floor.
“I couldn’t tell them what had happened, what I believed you’d done.
Leo loved you like a sister. If I’d told him.
..” He trails off with a shudder and a very harsh sound.
“No,” I say. “Leo would have defended me.”
“And I would have thought he was compromised. Fooled, the way I’d been fooled.” He drags his fingers through his hair, then reaches for my hand again.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he says, his fingers twining with mine. “Wasn’t capable of it. After what they did to me, I can’t—I couldn’t—trust anyone.
“And now?” The question comes out softer than I’d intended, and for a moment, I feel like I’m made of glass.
“I guess that part of me’s healed up,” he says, just as softly. “I trust you, Bella. Looking back, I’m ashamed I ever didn’t.”
“It hurt,” I tell him. “I won’t lie. But I get it. And I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that. That my own father put you through all of that. Sorry,” I repeat, “but not surprised. I have no illusions about that man.”
“He managed one good thing.”
I frown. “Seriously? What?”
“You.”
My heart literally flutters, and I lean over to kiss him on the cheek, his beard tickling my lips.
A kiss that turns much hotter and wilder when he shifts, capturing my mouth with his in a kiss that’s wild and desperate and needy.
The kind of kiss that heats skin and melts bone and sends need running through your veins instead of blood.
His fingers twine in my hair, and his palm cups my head, holding me in place while he devours me with his kisses, wilder than I remember and full of a desperate need that matches my own, making me want and crave, my body begging for more.
It’s wild and wonderful. Familiar and yet not.
This is the man I love—the only man I’ve ever loved, and the memories flood back with each touch, each stroke, each claiming, brutal kiss.
When we finally break apart—both of us breathing hard—I expect him to rip my shirt off. To slide his fingers into my jeans. To tell me to stand up and strip. Or just to pull me close in one of those long, deep kisses that almost feel like fucking.
Instead, he squeezes my hand and whispers, “We should get some sleep.”
For a moment, I sit there, as startled as if he’d dumped a pail of cold water all over me. “Oh. Yeah. I guess we should.”
“I’ll take the sofa. There’s an actual bed back in the storage area I use as a bedroom.”
“Oh. Okay.” I shouldn’t be disappointed, but I am. “Well, goodnight, Gabriel.”
“Goodnight, Isabella.”
I nod and head down the short hall, then I open the door across from the bathroom to reveal the tiny space with only a twin-sized mattress bed and a single painting on the wall.
It’s me.
I’m sleeping, my face peaceful, my hair is longer, like I used to wear it, and spread across a pillow. The brushstrokes are looser than his usual style, almost impressionistic, like he painted it from memory rather than life.
Because he did.
He must have painted this after he thought I’d betrayed him. After he believed I wanted him dead.
And still, he painted me like this. Soft. Beautiful. Loved.
I stand there for a long time, staring at that painting, feeling something crack open in my chest.
Then I step back into the hallway and stand where I can see him still sitting on the sofa. “Gabe?”
He looks up.
“Will you—I mean, not sex. But will you come sleep with me?”
His smile is slow. “Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that.”