Chapter Twenty-Six
Darcy
Don’t look at me like that,” I tell Tater Tot, sitting with my knees tucked to my chest on the top step of the porch.
I swiped Gabriel’s pack of cigarettes when I left the bar, and I’m indulging in a little pity smoke.
I take another long pull, letting the taste fill my useless lungs before I blow it out with a gusting breath. “I did what I had to do.”
Tater Tot gives me a withering look, huffs, then pitter-patters his way down the crooked stairs of the porch to inspect the bushes in the front yard.
Gideon is here, and he says I owe him a life. I won’t have Gabriel be collateral damage for the choices I’ve made.
So I decided to put an end to it. I put an end to it to protect him.
“I was always going to have to say goodbye,” I rationalize, trying to convince myself. “Best to end it now.”
“Yeah, see. I’m not so sure about that.”
My head snaps up. Gabriel is leaning on the front gate that’s still broken, his elbows draped over the iron posts.
Tater Tot trots happily over, pressing his face between the metal bars to nose at Gabriel’s thigh.
Gabriel gives him a rough pat, then lifts his eyes to mine.
There’s a fire there. A carefully controlled fury that bleeds into determination.
I feel it like a baseball bat to the sternum.
“What are you doing here?”
“Where else would I be?” He glances at the cigarette in my hand. “You stealing my cigarettes again?”
I stare at him, trying to figure out what he wants. Why he’s here. He knows the score as well as I do. He’s torturing us both.
“Parting gift,” I offer, testing the waters.
He laughs and pushes off the fence, yanking the gate open with one rough pull. “Yeah, sweetheart. You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
I watch him as he approaches, sitting perfectly still on my top step, my arms around my legs. He takes his time about it, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, his collar turned up against the autumn chill, his hair windswept and gorgeous and his face so, so serious.
He stops at the very edge of the porch, a perfect three feet of distance between us, then squats down so our eyes are level. I can’t look anywhere except right at him, this angel at my feet.
“Here’s the thing, Darcy.” I love the way he says my name. Half a promise, half a curse. Something that belongs completely to me. “I get what you were trying to do. I really do. But it’s not going to happen that way.”
My mouth is dry. My throat tight. “I don’t want you anymore.”
It comes out strangled. Like my body is physically rebelling against the lie.
The lines by his eyes crinkle. “Try again,” he whispers.
“I don’t—I don’t want to do this with you anymore.”
“Liar. I’m the only one you want to do this with.”
I shake my head. Gabriel’s smile turns soft. “You’re really bad at this, you know that?”
I fiddle with the top of his cigarette box. “Yeah, I know.”
“You brought this on yourself,” he continues.
“Yeah. I know that, too.”
“Don’t misunderstand me.” He edges closer, circling his fingers around my ankles. “I’m not talking about the department. I’m talking about this. Me and you.”
He squeezes my legs. Drifts his hands up my calves until his palms are tucked neatly behind my knees. He stays there almost on his knees in front of me, holding on to me like I’m his anchor.
“You just had to go and make me fall in love with you,” he whispers.
I inhale sharply. It’s a direct hit, sneaking under my ribs and sending a shower of gold sparks in every direction. “Don’t say that to me.”
“I’ll say whatever I want to you,” he tells me, but his voice is as soft as his expression. No heat. “Especially when it’s the truth.”
“Gabriel, I—”
“You don’t need to say anything,” he interrupts. “I told you because I wanted to. Because I—because I needed you to hear it.”
And what a beautiful, terrible thing. That the first time Gabriel has ever allowed himself to be selfish is with this. With me. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so afraid I’d sob instead, so I do the only thing I can do in the face of his quiet, stubborn declaration.
I kiss him.
I shift forward on the rickety front porch of a house that doesn’t belong to me in a town that was only ever supposed to be temporary, and I kiss the man who was sharpened to be my enemy.
It’s too fast. I’m too frantic. My hands are shaking and I can’t hold enough of him in my palms. I make an anguished sound against his mouth and he shushes me quietly, his fingertips gentle against the swell of my cheek.
“Easy,” he says. “I’m right here.”
He unfolds me from the front porch and scoops me into his arms, one hand under my ass and the other in my hair. He kisses me just like that, halfway up the front porch with my body wrapped around his, his mouth slow and measured.
But I’m tired of slow. I’m tired of measured. If we only have a handful of moments left, then I want to be consumed.
I sink my teeth into his bottom lip until he grunts. He stumbles forward, my back slamming against the weathered siding of the house.
“Inside,” I demand, my hands in his hair. “Upstairs.”
He blinks owlishly at me, his eyes hazy and clouded. For a second, I swear I can see shadows flickering in his pupils. But then he grins, and I’m tossed over his shoulder. He manhandles me through the front door and starts carting me up the stairs, my arms bouncing limply against his back.
He claps his hand against the back of my thigh and I squeal. “Don’t run from me again,” he orders.
I almost sink my teeth into the curve of his ass. “Okay,” I say instead, still laughing.
He launches me onto the bed and I bounce across the mattress, my hair in my face, Gabriel’s answering smile so young and boyish it sends a pang of longing reverberating through every inch of me.
I wonder what it could have been like for us, if we had met in another lifetime.
If maybe, somehow, we did. If we’ve found each other again in this one.
If maybe, we’ll have to wait for another to have a little bit more.
He shakes his head, crawling over top of me, one knee planted between my spread thighs. He drops his weight over my hips, pinning me in place, and I relax beneath him.
“Don’t think about anything else,” he whispers into the curve of my neck. He kisses there, then drags his mouth to the dip of my collarbones, the hollow between my breasts. “Stay right here with me.”
It’s easy enough when his mouth is on my skin.
I close my eyes and sink into the bed, letting myself be exactly here and nowhere else.
I don’t worry about the future or the grains of sand slipping through our hourglass.
I don’t worry about the many, many threats hanging over our heads.
I give myself over to this—Gabriel’s fingers working down the line of buttons at the front of my sweater.
The sweet ache between my thighs and the press of his hips between them.
He loves me.
“See?” Gabriel laughs. A low, rumbling thing. “You can be good when you want to be.”
I open my eyes with a half-hearted glare, and he laughs again, abandoning my sweater for the buttons on the front of his shirt.
“Yeah, that look doesn’t land the way you think it does. I like it when you get all stern with me.”
I can see that. He’s so hard it looks painful, his chest rising and falling with every panting breath while he balances on his knees between my spread thighs.
Gabriel stares at me splayed out in front of him while he works his shirt open, my skirt rucked up around my hips and my cardigan slipping off my shoulders.
I arch my back a little bit and his hands fumble over his buttons.
He rolls his shirt down his arms, and it’s all bare skin and tattoos. Those angry, jagged scars over his heart. I reach for them and drift my fingers over their raised edges, then sit up and set my mouth there, too. Gabriel cups the back of my head, his hand shaking.
Is this what love feels like for you, I wonder, my lips against the broken part of him, this terrible, yawning ache?
He makes another low sound and threads his fingers through my hair, yanking just this side of too rough. His mouth catches mine, hungry and deep, and I relish the slip in his control.
He can be whoever he needs to be with me. Rough, broken, breathless, perfect. Every shade in between.
“I’ll take it,” I whisper in his mouth. “Whatever you want to give me.”
“Yeah,” he growls, one hand on my thigh, urging it wider. “You will.”
He guides me back against the pillows and I go willingly, watching through heavy eyes as his palms coast down the curves of my body, considering. His tattoos start to glow, standing out beneath his skin like stars in a constellation.
“I thought I wanted to go slow with you. Show you everything you’d be missing if you—” He drags his hand over his mouth. “I don’t think I can go slow.”
“I don’t want you to,” I breathe.
I want to feel the loss of his precious control. I want to be the reason for it.
His eyes flare and his hands tighten around my rib cage. “Yeah?”
I nod, smiling slightly. My own magic rises to meet his, tempestuous and howling.
This might be the only night I have with Gabriel, and if it is, I’d like for it to leave its mark.
I’d like to be able to remember everything in startling detail, a hundred and fifty years from now. Three hundred. A thousand.
“Though if you want to get on your knees and beg me for it,” I tease. “Feel free.”
“Sweetheart.” He laughs and lets himself fall over me, his palm at my hip. He brushes his mouth over mine. “I’ve been on my knees for you this entire time.”
Then he drags my skirt off my hips with a rough yank and slips his hand beneath my underwear.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “You’re a mess.”
I nod. I’m so many things. Desperate, wanting, frenzied. Needy and overwhelmed.