Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
We’re tangled together in his bed, my head on his chest, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my back. The apartment is quiet except for our breathing and the hum of The Beast through the corridors.
It’s been three days since I tied him to this bed and demanded his trust. Three days of learning each other again—not just our bodies, but the people we’ve become. The sharp edges, the soft places, and all of our scars, visible and otherwise.
“Can I ask you something?” My voice is barely a whisper.
His hand stills on my back. “You can ask me anything.”
“Anissa told me some of it. How Travis found you. The months of recovery.” I press my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat quicken. “But she wasn’t there for the beginning. Only you were.”
He’s quiet for so long I think he’s not going to answer. Then his chest rises and falls with a deep breath.
“You don’t have to,” I add quickly. “If it’s too much.”
“No.” He pulls me closer. “You should know. You deserve to know.” He draws in a breath, then another.
Then he looks away. When he speaks, his voice is so soft at first that I can barely hear him.
“They kept me in the cabin for three days, tied to a chair.” His voice is flat.
Detached. “They wanted information about various Grimm holdings. Access codes. Account numbers. Weaknesses they could exploit.”
“Did you give them anything?”
“No.” I hear a ghost of dark pride in that single word. “They would have killed me no matter what. But they didn’t do it fast. First, they tried everything to get me to break. Beatings. Burns. They used pliers on my teeth.” His jaw tightens. “Yanked out two of them.”
My stomach lurches, and I press closer to him, as if I can somehow protect him from the horrors of the past.
“And then she came in,” he says quietly. “The woman with your eyes.”
I go still.
“I know it wasn’t you,” he continues. “But in that moment, tied to that chair, beaten half to death—I believed it. I truly believed you’d come to finish what they started.” He lifts his head, looking right at me. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Gabe, no. I understand. You know I do.” I squeeze his hand. “You don’t have to tell me the rest.”
He only glances at me, then says, “She raised the gun. She shot me.”
His hand finds mine, and he laces our fingers together. “How the hell she missed everything vital, I’ll never know. Either she was a bad shot, or...”
“Or my father wanted you to suffer,” I finish when he goes quiet, my voice hollow.
“Yeah.” He exhales slowly. “After that, everything’s in fragments. But I remember they left me bleeding on that cabin floor, walked out, and set the place on fire.”
“But you got out.”
“Barely.” His voice is rough now, the detachment cracking. “The chair was old. Wooden. I managed to break it against the floor and got my hands free.”
I shudder as I picture it. Gabriel, shot and beaten and burned, crawling through flames because he refused to let my father win.
“They’d left the door open, and I managed to crawl out. Spat out some more broken teeth. Left my ring. Then I passed out. I remember thinking it wasn’t sleep calling me, but death, and no way was I following death home. I had to stay alive. Because if I was dead, I couldn’t get revenge.”
“Against me,” I whisper, and he nods.
“I don’t know how long I slept. But when I woke up, I crawled. Into the woods. Down into a ravine. That was as far as I got before my body gave out.”
“And Travis found you there.”
“The next morning. I don’t remember it—I was out of my mind with fever and blood loss by then. He said I was half-dead, barely breathing. He thought I was a corpse until I grabbed his ankle.” A small, grim smile. “Scared the hell out of him, apparently.”
“I would imagine.”
We’re quiet for a moment. I think about all of it—the torture, the woman with my eyes, the fire, the desperate escape.
“That’s what I found,” I whisper. “When I went to the cabin. Your ring, melted in the ashes. Your teeth. Blood everywhere.” Tears slip down my cheeks. “I thought you were dead. I mourned you.”
“I know.” He pulls me closer, presses his lips to my forehead. “I know, Izzy. And I’m sorry. For all of it. For believing you could do that to me. For staying dead when I should have found a way back to you.”
“You didn’t know. You thought I betrayed you.”
“I should have known.” His voice cracks.
“I should have known you could never hurt me like that. Even though they set me up—even though they had someone starring in the role of Isabella Hart—I should have known it wasn’t you.
I should have seen through the haze and known it was Sterling Hart. Not you. Never you.”
“Gabe.” I squeeze his hand.
“I believed the lie, and I kept believing it. And I have to live with that forever.”
I kiss his forehead. “Does it help knowing I forgive you?”
His smile is soft. “That’s the only thing that does help. That you forgive me. That by some miracle, you’re still mine.”
“Always,” I promise, then grin. “Just don’t do it again.”
As I’d hoped, he laughs. “Deal,” he says, then kisses my hand. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You do.”
“Maybe. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life earning it anyway.” He kisses me then, soft and slow. “Day by day.”
“Day by day,” I whisper against his lips.
And for now, that’s enough.