Chapter Twenty-Five
Gabriel
What’s going on with you?” I ask Darcy quietly, wiping down the bar in front of her.
I’ve been cleaning the same spot for about fifteen minutes now, watching her pluck the pits out of olives and spear them on a toothpick.
She hasn’t wanted any of the fruity drinks she usually likes.
Instead, she’s opted for tonic water and a bowl full of olives.
Like she’s punishing herself.
“Nothing is going on with me,” she answers. Another olive goes on the toothpick.
I frown.
“Is it your magic?” I ask.
“My magic is fine.” Her eyes flick up quickly, then down again. “Whatever you did the other night, it’s been calm ever since.”
I fear whatever I did the other night has sliced me right open.
There’s a tuning fork in the middle of my chest that vibrates to the frequency of Darcy.
Even when she’s not around, I swear I can feel her there, tucked between my ribs.
Her fears, her worries, her wants, and her wishes.
All of it is carved into my skin like one of my tattoos.
It’s like she’s crawled right inside and made a home for herself there.
I lean forward abandoning my washcloth. “Is it Frank?”
It’s just the two of us in the bar right now, but I keep my voice low. I turned on the light twenty minutes ago, and I’m expecting the regulars any minute. With one notable exception.
Frank hasn’t stepped foot in the bar since the night he discovered the truth about Darcy. He’s been keeping the shop closed, too. I’ve gone by three separate times to try to talk to him, but he hasn’t answered the door once.
“I can talk to him,” I assure her. “Whatever he said, I’m sure—”
“I don’t want you to talk to him,” Darcy cuts me off. She stabs the next olive harder than she means to, and it goes flying behind the bar. “I’m serious. It’s not your place. I don’t want you involved.”
I do my best to keep myself from reacting to that. She’s hurt, I remind myself. She doesn’t mean it. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not something you can fix.” Her shoulders lift and then fall. “I’m not something you can fix. I am what I am.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means I don’t blame him for hating me. I took away the people he loved most.” She lets out a shaky breath, her eyes filling with tears. “I’d hate me, too.”
I duck down. “That’s what you think?”
She stays silent.
“What happened to the girl who wanted something different, huh? Who knew she was capable of good?”
Darcy plucks at the edge of her braid. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think all of that might have been foolish.”
I push off the bar, frustrated. “Bullshit,” I tell her.
Her nose wrinkles. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I brace my hands on the bar and lean into her space. “Things get hard and you decide to abandon everything you believe in.” I take her cup of olives away and dump it beneath the counter. “You’re giving up.”
Darcy’s eyes flash. “This isn’t a little speed bump, Gabriel. I took his entire family away.”
“You didn’t. It was an accident, Darcy. You did your job.”
“Semantics don’t matter. I took them away from him. I ruined his life.”
“That car did. Not you. Don’t give up on the things you want for yourself. Stay right here with me. Fight for it.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re exhausted. You cling to this idea that you need to protect everyone around you, but you’re exhausted.
I don’t see you fight for anything, Gabriel.
Least of all yourself. You value those wings of yours over everything else so desperately that you won’t even stop to consider if they’re what you want. ”
I scrub my palm along my jaw. “Not everything,” I tell her.
Her eyebrows knit together. “What?”
“I don’t value my wings over everything.
And yeah, I’m tired as fuck. I’ve existed for centuries, Darcy.
How could I not be? But you made me think there’s another option for people like us.
That’s what you’ve been saying all these weeks, isn’t it?
That we get to choose. So, choose something different.
Prove that you’re more than what the afterlife made of you. ”
Her eyes search mine. I watch all that indignation leave her in a rush, naked desperation shining through. “You don’t believe that.”
I let out a deep breath. “I watched you strip down to your underwear and jump into a river in the middle of October. Of course I believe that.” I reach across the counter and loop my fingers around her wrist, tracing the delicate jut of her wrist bone. “C’mon. Stay right here. Fight with me.”
Everything about Darcy feels like spun glass. One wrong touch and she could shatter. But she’s formidable, too. Stronger than she gives herself credit for.
The door bangs open, a group of sailors from the Naval Academy pouring in. I lose Darcy in the rush, our conversation abandoned for trays of shots and hastily poured beers. I keep an eye on her and watch as whatever progress I made is inched back.
She flinches at other people’s laughter. She shies away from anyone who approaches. She’s reserved and quiet, sitting there and picking at the edge of a napkin, gazing out the window with a frown on her face.
I take her room-temperature glass of tonic water and swap it for a drink that’s 75 percent grenadine, a knot in my stomach.
She pokes her straw around the drink, eyeing it dubiously. “What’s in this?”
“Cherries,” I answer, impatience making me bite around the edge of the word. “A shit ton of sugar. I don’t know.”
Her cheeks hollow as she takes a sip, and her eyes brighten. “It’s good.”
“Imagine that.”
She tucks the straw into her cheek, holding it between her teeth. “You’re mad.”
Mad isn’t the word I’d use. Itchy, maybe. It feels like there’s a storm coming and I’m the dumbass standing in the middle of a field without an umbrella. In fact, I feel like I’m holding a goddamned metal rod, practically asking to be struck by lightning.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I’m mad.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s been a thousand fucking years, Darcy, and I was doing just fine until—” I stop. Shake my head. Try to contain the anger that’s not anger at all, but a bone-deep desperation that I’m about to lose something precious. “I was doing just fine,” I repeat.
I never wanted anything to be mine. Not until Darcy.
Darcy, who is staring at me with fucking pity in her eyes. Like I’ve just admitted the worst possible thing.
She turns her head toward the window. “There’s a lot happening right now, Gabriel. I’m just—” She frowns. “I’m trying to make it easier for both of us.”
“I don’t want you to make it easier.”
She stays silent, still gazing through the frosted glass. I sigh and drag my hand through my hair. “Have you eaten?”
She watches me from the corner of her eye. That pisses me off more than anything else. That she won’t fucking look at me.
“Have you had anything to eat?” I ask again, staring pointedly at her collection of olive pits. “Besides sixty-three olives.”
“You know I don’t actually need to eat, right?”
“I’m aware.” But I know that she enjoys it. That her face lit up when one night Nate brought in a basket of Old Bay fries from the food truck that parks on the corner. “You want some pickle chips? Mozzarella sticks? I think that truck you like is back.”
Her eyes soften. “Gabriel,” she whispers. “Stop trying to take care of me.”
I feel it again. That tug deep in my chest. A hook under my ribs, dragging me right toward her.
“How about you let me take care of you, huh?” My voice is brittle. A crack right down the middle. I hate that I sound like I’m begging, but there’s nothing to be done for it. I’d get on my knees if I thought it made a lick of difference. “Please,” I add.
Darcy’s eyes search mine. I let her look, hoping she finds what she needs to shake off whatever this damn fog is.
“I can do that,” she finally says, but she sounds less sure than I’d like.
“Good.” I add another cherry to her drink, just because I can. “Thank you.”
By the time I close out the bar and shove the last reluctant customer out the door, the moon is high in the sky and the streets are empty.
I make sure the man swaying down the street tips himself into a cab, and then I swing the door shut, flicking the lock.
When I turn, Darcy is slipping on her black wool coat, tying the belt around her waist.
“Where are you going?”
She looks up, surprised. “Home,” she answers simply, like she hasn’t spent the past three nights in my bed, wrapped in my sheets, her cheek on my chest and her hair draped over my arm.
I close the space between us and grab her bag before she can, setting it just out of reach.
“Why?”
Darcy brushes her fingertips across her forehead. “Gabriel,” she sighs.
I shake my head. “Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Polite,” I spit. “Like I’m a stranger to you. Like you’re already putting distance between us.”
Her eyes dart to the floor, and I grip her chin, forcing her attention right back to me. “And look at me. Not at the floor. Not out the damn window.” I fan my fingers along her cheekbone and slip my thumb over the curve of her chin. “Look right at me.”
Her eyes crawl to mine. My knees almost buckle under the weight of her stare. There are entire lifetimes of sadness there. I was afraid she was putting distance between us on purpose, but it’s worse than that.
She’s already halfway gone.
“What happened?” I whisper. Things weren’t perfect, but they had been good. “Where did you go?”
She shakes her head, her hand rising to curl around mine. I think she means to lean into my touch, but she pulls away instead.
My stomach drops.
“We need to be realistic, Gabriel. We knew we were on borrowed time.”
She leans past me to grab for her bag and slings it over her shoulder. I slip my hand under the strap and yank her to me, then lift it off of her. I toss the bag over the bar.
“Yeah. And you promised me the time you had left.”
Her mouth settles into a line. “I gave you what I had left. This is it.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I need to go now.”
“The nonchalant attitude isn’t going to work on me, sweetheart. If you want to leave, that’s fine. But you’re going to tell me the truth.”
I want to know how she went from laughing in my arms to barely looking me in the eye.
“Gideon will come for me, Gabriel. You know he will. It will be easier for the both of us if we—” Her teeth saw against her bottom lip. “If we start to put space between us now.”
My eyes search hers. “Easier for us? Or for you?”
She looks away without answering the question.
Instead, she fixes her jacket, rounds the bar, and grabs her bag from on top of the ice maker.
She slides the strap over her shoulder, then holds on to it like a lifeline.
“I know you find it hard to believe, Gabriel, but the last person I have ever wanted to hurt is you.”
She drifts past me, stopping only to brush a quick kiss against my cheek. “Thank you,” she whispers.
She slips through the door without another word. She leaves me just like that. Standing in the middle of the empty bar, staring at the place she should be.
I close the bar in a daze. I wipe down the counters and stack the chairs. I pick up the sticky menus and stack them in a half-hearted pile. I flip the lock on the door and turn off the neon light, watching the orange glow fade from the street.
I drag myself up the stairs and into my empty apartment, the silence so loud it feels like the air around me is vibrating.
Darcy left a mug of tea on the coffee table.
A stack of books right next to it with beaten up spines and dog-eared pages.
One of her scarves is draped over an armchair and there’s a pallet of blankets in front of my radiator for where her damned dog likes to sleep.
She’s everywhere. Bits and pieces of her left like breadcrumbs to my goddamned obsession. I fist my hands around my keys and close my eyes tight, trying to get control of this rumbling, roiling storm in the middle of my chest.
I try to be rational.
She’s right. There is no future for us. We have always been an impossibility, at best. If she leaves now, she might outrun Gideon. It was easy enough for that Ferryman to find her. Rafael, too.
The department is taking note.
She should go.
“It’s better,” I tell myself. I say it out loud, hoping it sticks. “It’s better this way.”
But it feels like a lie.
And I’ve always been a shit liar.
“Fuck that,” I mutter instead. I stomp across the room, grab my jacket, and wrench open the door.