Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Morning comes too soon.
I wake to the smell of coffee brewing and bacon sizzling, and I stay under the covers for a moment, staring at the painting of myself and taking stock of all the things that have shifted in the cyclone that has been these last few days.
Gabriel is alive.
Gabriel believes me.
Gabriel painted me like something precious, even when he hated me.
All of these things are true. All of these things should make me feel something—joy, relief, hope, anything.
And I do. I feel all of that.
But somehow I feel hollow, too. As if all his confessions and kisses and apologies will never be enough to fill the ache that looms inside me like some dark, empty, hungry place.
But hungry for what? His apology? He’s already given that. His love? I truly believe I still have that. His trust?
Maybe.
Because no matter how much he might have loved me five years ago, he still didn’t trust me.
He had good reason. The little voice in my head is right. But I’m done thinking about it. Instead, I push the thoughts aside, then pad to the bathroom in my shirt and underwear.
I find a robe hanging there and put that on before heading to the main room and the scent of breakfast.
He’s at the counter, shirtless, wearing only a pair of low-slung sweatpants. The scars on his back are as brutal as the ones on his chest—long, raised welts that crisscross his skin like a roadmap of suffering. He must have heard me because he turns, and his face softens when he sees me.
“Morning.” He gestures to the counter. “Coffee’s ready. No kitchen, but we can go up to the hotel restaurant. Or I can ask Anissa to bring something down.”
I know there’s nothing between them, but just the idea that she takes care of him like that makes me unreasonably jealous. “The Gabriel Grimm I knew wouldn’t be without cereal.”
He laughs. “Kashi it is. I can even manage a banana cut up on top.”
I laugh. “Such refined taste.”
“That’s me. A born aristocrat.”
I pour myself coffee, then follow him to the tiny table for our breakfast. It’s surreal, this domestic scene. Gabriel making me breakfast like we’re a normal couple. But that’s not the real surprise. No, that’s the way being here feels. Comfortable. Relaxed. Both casual and intimate.
It’s as if the last five years didn’t happen. Like we didn’t spend part of last night fucking out our grief on a velvet couch surrounded by paintings of our lost love.
“You saw the painting,” he says quietly. Not a question.
I pause, a spoonful of cereal frozen in mid-air. “The one by the bed? It would have been hard not to.”
“I painted it about a year after Aspen. Couldn’t stop myself. I tried to destroy it a dozen times. Couldn’t do that either.”
“Gabe.”
“I hated myself for still wanting you despite what I believed you’d done.”
He shakes his head. “Anyway. We should eat before this gets soggy.”
He’s deflecting. Protecting himself before the conversation gets too real. I recognize the tactic because I use it too.
“Okay,” I say, letting him have this one.
As soon as I finish my cereal, I take the bowl back to the sink, then lean against it, watching him eat.
His eyes narrow. “What?”
“Just thinking. This place—it’s you, but it’s not. I guess it makes me realize I don’t really know you anymore.” The words come out before I can stop them. “That five years is a long time, and we’re both different people now, and I don’t know how we bridge that gap.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you want to?”
“Yes.” The answer comes immediately, without thought. “Yes,” I repeat, meaning it with all my heart. “I’m just afraid we don’t know how.”
Gabriel leaves his bowl on the small table, then comes to stand beside me, both our backs to the sink.
He stands close, his arm sliding around my waist, and I lean against him, warm and solid and here.
That’s what’s overwhelming. That he’s here.
I’d gotten so used to him being gone that every touch, every glimpse feels like both surprise and celebration.
“Yes,” I say again. “I want to get back what we lost.”
“Then we figure it out,” he says. “Day by day. Conversation by conversation. We learn each other again.”
“And if we don’t like what we find?” I’d spoken the words without thinking, and now I wish I could call them back. They seem to hang in the air between us, and I see the flicker of fear in his eyes—the same fear that lives in me.
The fear that we’ve been through too much. That the people we’ve become can’t fit together the way we used to.
“Then at least we’ll know,” he says finally. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because when I look at you, I still see my Izzy. And I have to believe that means your Gabe is still in here somewhere, too. We’ll find each other again,” he says. “I know we will.”
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him.
But there’s still that empty place that his words can’t soothe.
That place inside me that cries out that he believed me capable not just of murder, but of murdering him.
And, yeah, I get that he was tortured and manipulated and broken into believing it.
But understanding isn’t the same as healing.
And healing takes time.
I’m willing to give it all the time in the world. I hope to hell that he is, too.
“Okay,” I finally say. “We’ve got this. Day by day.”
He smiles then, a real smile, wide and toothy. The first one I’ve seen since he came back from the dead.
It transforms his face, makes him look younger, softer. And even with the beard, it makes him look more like the man I fell in love with.
I try to smile back, and almost manage it this time.
It’s not everything. Not yet. But it’s a start.
We spend the afternoon apart—me at the Monarch, putting out fires and dodging my father’s calls, him doing whatever it is he does in that underground world of his. But when I slip back into his apartment as the sun sets over Atlantic City, he’s waiting.
Not at his easel. Not on the couch. He’s standing beneath the high window, staring up at the sliver of sky, and when he turns to look at me, there’s something raw in his expression. Something hungry.
“Everything okay?”
“No.” He crosses to me in three long strides, and before I can ask what’s wrong, his hands are cupping my face and his mouth is on mine.
This kiss is different from last night, both at the gallery and when we came back here. That was wild desperation. This is slower. Deeper. Like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my lips, the taste of my tongue, every small sound I make against his mouth.
“Gabe.” His name is as soft as breath.
“I spent all day thinking about you,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine. “Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t paint. Couldn’t do anything except remember how you felt in my arms last night.”
Heat pools between my thighs. “And?”
“And I realized something.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “Last night was about anger. About grief. About trying to fuck away five years of pain on that damn slippery velvet.”
I laugh. “It worked,” I whisper.
“I guess it did. His thumb traces my lower lip, and I shiver. “Because I woke up this morning and I still wanted you. But not to punish. Not to prove anything. Just...to have you. To be inside you. To watch your face when you come apart.”
Oh god.
“So that’s what I want now.” His hands slide down my arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
“I want to take my time. I want to learn your body again—every curve, every sound, every place that makes you gasp.” His lips brush my ear.
“I want to make you come so many times you forget your own name. And then I want to do it again.”
My knees actually wobble. “That’s...very specific.”
“I’ve had all day to think about it.” He’s smiling now—that wicked smile I remember from before, the one that always meant I was in for a very long, very satisfying night. “Any objections?”
“Not a single one.”
He kisses me again, and this time there’s no hurry. Just the slow, devastating exploration of his mouth on mine, his tongue sliding past my lips like he has all the time in the world. His hands find the hem of my shirt, then slip underneath to trace the curve of my waist with agonizing patience.
“Bedroom,” I manage against his mouth.
“Eventually.”
He walks me backward until my shoulders hit the wall, then drops to his knees in front of me. My breath catches as he looks up, those ice-blue eyes burning into mine while his fingers work the button of my slacks.
“Gabe—”
“Shh.” He tugs the silk down my hips, taking my underwear with it. “I told you. I’m taking my time.”
And he does.
His mouth finds the inside of my thigh first—soft kisses, the scrape of his beard, the hot press of his tongue against sensitive skin. I’m already trembling by the time he reaches the apex, already wound so tight I might shatter.
Then his mouth is on me, his tongue teasing my clit, and I stop thinking entirely.
He knows my body. Even after five years, even after everything that fell down around us, he knows exactly how to take me apart.
Slow, devastating strokes of his tongue.
The press of his fingers inside me, curling just right.
The way he groans against my flesh like I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted.
I come with his name on my lips and my fingers fisted in his hair.
He doesn’t stop.
“Gabe,” I gasp as he works me through the aftershocks and straight into another climb. “I can’t.”
“You can.” His voice vibrates against me. “Again.”
The second orgasm hits harder than the first, a wave that crashes through me and leaves me boneless. My legs give out entirely, but he catches me, rises, presses me back against the wall with his body while I remember how to breathe.
“Bedroom now?” I manage weakly.
“Now,” he agrees.
He carries me there—actually carries me like I weigh nothing—and lays me on the bed with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. Then he strips off his shirt, and I watch the scars ripple across his skin as he moves. Beautiful and brutal.
Mine.
“Your turn,” I say, reaching for him.
He lets me undress him. Lets me trace each scar with my fingers, then my lips. The bullet wounds. The burns. The raised welts that crisscross his back. I kiss every one of them, feeling him shudder under my touch.
“Izzy.” He catches himself. “Bella.”
“You can call me Izzy.” The words surprise me, but they’re true. “When we’re like this. When it’s just us.”
Something cracks open in his expression. “Izzy.”
“Yeah.” I pull him down to me. “Now stop talking and fuck me.”
He does.
But not fast. Not rough. He slides into me inch by devastating inch, watching my face the whole time, drinking in every gasp and moan like he’s dying of thirst and I’m water. When he’s all the way inside, he goes still.
“I missed this.” His voice is wrecked. “Missed you. Every single day.”
“Show me.”
He moves then—long, deep strokes that hit places I’d forgotten existed. His mouth finds mine, swallowing my cries. His hands are everywhere, touching, claiming, worshipping.
We build together, slow and steady, a fire that burns rather than explodes. I feel another orgasm coiling in my core, and from the way his rhythm falters, he’s close too.
“Together,” I whisper. “Please.”
“Always.” He drives deeper, harder, and I shatter around him just as he groans my name and follows me over the edge.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, sweat-slicked and breathing hard. His hand traces lazy patterns on my hip. My head rests on his chest, right over his heartbeat.
“Day one,” he murmurs.
I smile against his skin. “Day one.”
It’s a beginning. And right now, with his arms around me and his heart beating under my ear, it feels like it’s enough.