by May, W. J.
She slipped it into her pocket but was temporarily unable to speak. Her mouth went dry and she tried to swallow. It took more effort than it should. Shoot, breathing took more effort as well.
“You and Miss Skye sure get a lot of foot-traffic going in and out of your place,” Raphael joked good-naturedly, trying to lighten the mood.
“Yeah, well,” Rae’s voice came out scratchy and low, “it looks like there’s going to be one less person for you to worry about. ‘Night Raphael.” Without another word she headed for the elevator and pushed the button to go to the top floor. The second the double doors were closed, she collapsed against them, bringing her hands up over her face and doubling over in a silent scream.
How could this have happened?
She and Devon started out the morning in bed, wrapped up together in a tangle of sheets and limbs, and complete and utter bliss.
Now…?
The elevator dinged, and she stepped slowly through the doors into the penthouse. It was empty. The peace and quiet she’d been searching for since yesterday morning was finally here.
Great.
A parade of hot tears streamed down her face as she stood in the doorway, shivering.
That’s just great.
Just to be sure she was alone she went from room to room, checking for inhabitants. No one was there. She assumed that Luke and Molly had gone back to his place, and Julian and Angel had gone back to his. As for Gabriel…Rae found she didn’t much care where he was.
Once she was done making her sweep, she headed off to take a long shower—only to pull immediately back when she saw her pile of wet, dessert-stained clothes on the tile floor. She stared at them for a moment, still silently crying, before she left to take a shower in Molly’s bathroom instead. When she was finished, she conjured herself some thick pajamas and padded her way across the quiet living room to climb into bed.
The sheets were freezing with no one else there to heat them, and she curled into a little ball, holding her knees to her chest as the sadness washed over her in heartbreaking waves. She wanted her Mom. She wanted Uncle Argyle and Aunt Linda. She wanted to go home. Except she didn’t know where home was. Everything sucked.
I deserve this, she thought with self-loathing as she lay there by herself. If anyone deserves this, it has to be me.
Ever since Devon had come into her life all those years ago, he had been perfect. She said that with no exaggeration, bias, or pretense. Ask anyone and they would tell you the same thing.
Devon was perfect. The perfect gentleman, the perfect agent, the perfect friend, boyfriend, lover. There was not a single thing he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, do for the people he loved.
When she needed a mentor, he taught her the ropes. When she needed a friend, he stood by her against the world. When she needed a rescue, he jumped off a cliff. When she needed to live, his body found a way to fly them back up again.
That was Devon.
And what had she done?
She’d kissed Gabriel.
Another wave of sobs choked her and she curled herself even tighter, rocking gently back and forth as her tear-damp hair stuck against the pillow.
How could she be so stupid? How could she risk something as precious as him? When he was the one kind thing life had seen fit to throw her way…
But even as she thought the words, a sudden surge of anger mixed in with the sadness like a poisonous drug. It wound its way through her otherwise-despairing brain, corrupting everything it touched like a cancer.
She might have ruined her life tonight. But she certainly hadn’t done it alone. She’d had help.
The persistent, unrelenting, refused-to-wear-a-shirt kind of help…
* * *
Ten minutes later Rae was pounding on Gabriel’s door. She’d used Julian’s ability to find him. The hotel where he was staying wasn’t far from the penthouse, and although she was too respectful of Devon’s warning to use her tatù again in public, it had taken almost no effort to con Raphael out of his car keys.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she heard Gabriel grumble from the other side of the door.
It was coming up on three in the morning, and by now most everyone on the hotel floor was asleep. There was a soft shuffling sound, and then the door opened to reveal a recently awoken Gabriel, squinting at her with bloodshot eyes.
Eyes that widened slightly when they took in her general appearance. She hadn’t bothered to change out of the flannel pajama set she’d conjured. His gaze came to rest on her face.
“Rae, are you…” he winced slightly as he pulled open the door, “are you okay?”
She didn’t say a word; she just pushed past him and stormed into his room.
It was untidy, like she would have guessed, with clothes and random receipts and other bits of mess strewn out all over the floor. There was a little nest of sheets in the middle of the bed from where he’d been sleeping, and a pile of bloody bandages lay in the trash.
The blood threw her for a minute and she just stood there. “Julian really got you good, didn’t he?”
“You know…I always discount the psychic.” Gabriel winced again as he shut the door and flipped on a light. “Dumb mistake.”
He was wearing a pair of boxers and a loose black tank, presumably to give his newly injured ribs as much room as possible. His blond hair was as shaggy as ever and still faintly damp from his nightly shower, filling the air between them with that same mouthwatering citrus smell.
“Devon broke up with me,” she said with no further preamble. Her voice was choppy. Clipped. And very, very angry. No matter how many deep breaths she’d taken to steady herself on the way here, there was only a very thin layer of control keeping her from crossing the room and ripping Gabriel’s beautiful head off. As partially misdirected as that might be, she believed deep down that it would make her feel better.
Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise. “He did?” Words failed him and he shook his head. “Wow,” he said softly. “I didn’t think he’d ever do that.”
Rae folded her arms tightly across her chest and glared. “Yeah, me neither.”
It was only then that Gabriel seemed to realize she was angry with him. Again, his face lit in mild surprise before he folded his own arms defensively across his chest. “So I’m guessing you came here for sex then?”
An alarm clock shattered in a million pieces against the door above his head.
“…I’ll take that as a no.”
“How could you do this?!” she screamed, letting out all her anger at once.
Oh yes, their kiss included two people, she was well aware of that. But Gabriel’s sabotage had started long before that, and after the day she’d had she was either unwilling or unable to cry for even another second. She needed to yell instead. And while she might deserve a good yelling at herself, Gabriel certainly had earned one as well.
“Me?!” he exclaimed. “I’m not the one who broke up with you, Rae. And I’m not the one who went around kissing someone else when they had a boyfriend.”
A coffee pot shattered on the remains of the clock.
“Hey,” he yelled, ducking down to avoid the shards, “you’re going to have to pay for that!”
“It’s your fault!”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“You didn’t do anything?!” she screamed back, beyond all reason. “Really?!”
“Okay, fine,” he conceded, “so I’m constantly trying to get into your pants—”
“You caught my arm, Gabriel!”
The room fell suddenly quiet between them. The only movement was the rapid rise and fall of Rae’s chest as her body literally vibrated with pent-up rage.
“You saved my life! You didn’t let me fall!” She fired out each one as an accusation, eyes flashing blue fire as she concluded. “You fell in love with me!”
This time it was his face that darkened in a wild rage.
“I knew it! I knew you used Carter’s tatù on me! Wh
o the hell do you think you—”
“Of course I used it on you!” Rae realized she was standing on her toes, almost levitating off the ground she was so beside herself. “You were going to kill me and then you switched sides. I had to know what made you do that. I had to make sure it was safe for the rest of them—”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit!” he cut her off, storming across the room to face her. “You wanted to know. That’s why you did it. And you’re not sorry you did.”
“No,” her voice was quieter now, and trembling, “I am sorry I did. I wish I had never seen what I did. I wish I didn’t—” She fought back a sob, and turned for the door. “I should never have even come here.”
But before she had taken two steps he grabbed her by the arms, spinning her back around to face him. “No, you don’t get to just leave. You don’t get to storm in here, say what you said, and just go.”
“Let go of me—”
But he just held on tighter, keeping his long fingers wrapped around her arms as he leaned down and stared right into her eyes. “So Devon broke up with you…” His eyes dilated with intensity, scanning her face for every detail. “What does that mean for us?”
Her mouth fell open in shock. “For…us?”
He nodded swiftly, tightening his fingers in a little squeeze. “Yeah, us.”
The walls seemed to close in around her as she wrenched herself free and took a step back. “I come here and tell you that the love of my life just left me in a park in the middle of the night, and the first thing you want to know is…when do you and I jump into the sack?”
His face flushed slightly and he bowed his head. “Rae, that’s not what I meant. I’m sure this night’s been really hard on you; I just—”
She held up a hand and shook her head, seeing him in a whole new light.
“I found a man I loved, who loved me. Who I wanted to have a future with. Who I was willing to risk everything for. Why on earth would you think…?”
“Why on earth would I think…what?” He looked a little offended now, but he kept his temper under control and his voice as steady as hers. “You fell in love with someone you want a future with? Who you were willing to risk everything for?” He threw his hands in the air and shook his head. “There’s an attraction here, Rae. There has been from the second we met. You can’t deny—”
“—that it’s an attraction?” she interrupted. “Yeah, Gabriel. I’m attracted. But there’s such a huge difference between that and…” Her voice trailed off and she looked him squarely in the eyes. “Gabriel, there is no us.”
As soon as she said it she knew it was true.
“There never will be an ‘us’.” She had come here expecting to fight, expecting to throw things and yell it out. Expecting to try to make him feel at least a little bit as bad as she was feeling herself.
What she didn’t expect was that she was going to come here and close a door forever.
But that’s exactly what she had done.
* * *
In the course of one never-ending day, Rae had kissed two men, loved two men—albeit in very different ways—said goodbye to two men…and eaten a rabbit. She couldn’t help but tag that one on the end, no matter how much it didn’t relate to her problems at present. The entire world had turned upside down in the course of just twenty-four hours.
So when she opened her eyes to a stream of bright sunlight pouring into her room the next morning, it was more than understandable that she’d be a little hesitant to get out of bed.
Who knew what tragedy awaited her today?
As if to answer her question, there was a soft knock on her bedroom window.
At first she looked around in confusion. Then her heart leapt into her throat as she bolted upright with a beaming smile. Outside her bedroom window? Up on the fifth story? That could only mean—”
“Thank the Maker!” she whispered to herself, throwing on a silk bathrobe as she hurried to unlock it. She pulled back the curtains in the same movement, wincing slightly as the bright morning sun shot into her eyes. “Devon, I—”
But it wasn’t Devon. In fact, it was one of the last people she expected to see hanging like a monkey from the roof outside her window.
“Let me in, Kerrigan.” Angel lifted one hand off the ledge above her and frowned at the scuff marks on her glove. “Damn! This is Chanel.”
Rae blinked.
Then Angel literally kicked her aside and she remembered she was supposed to move.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, peering down over the ledge to make sure no one had seen her early-morning visitor. “Why didn’t you use the elevator?”
Angel landed gracefully beside the bed, brushing herself off and placing her gloves neatly in her jacket pocket. “I didn’t have a key,” she explained lightly, indifferent to the absurd strangeness of the feat she’d just performed. “And I didn’t want your roommate or anyone else to know I came here.”
“Molly’s gone,” Rae said shortly as she pulled the window closed. “So is everyone else. I don’t think…I don’t think they wanted to be around when I got back.”
Angel looked at her shrewdly, and for a split second Rae was almost glad that the first person she was seeing upon ‘emotional re-entry’ was Julian’s odd girlfriend. Out of everyone here, Angel had the least stake in whatever had happened last night. She was a girl who spoke her mind and wouldn’t hesitate to tell Rae nothing but the honest truth.
“You made a giant freaking mess yesterday, you little monster. You should be ashamed.”
Honestly was overrated.
Rae glared and snatched up her robe belt, feeling like a mess of tattered emotions and raw nerves. Maybe Angel wasn’t the best person for her to be seeing right now after all. “Good morning to you too,” she muttered, tying the belt.
Angel was unamused. “I went and saw Gabriel last night. He’s a mess. Said he’d made a giant mistake in sticking around here, and that if he and I knew what was best for us we would cut our losses and just go.”
Despite her early morning fatigue, Rae was stunned. Her mouth fell open as the familiar sting of coming tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. “He said that?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, he did.”
Angel paced angrily back and forth, either oblivious or just completely indifferent to the effect her words were having. Not that Rae was surprised. She had a feeling it would take a lot to make Angel really care about something. With her white-blond hair and sleek black leather jumpsuit, she reminded Rae a bit of a young Jennifer Jones. A literal angel with a giant chip on her shoulder.
She must have truly fallen head over heels for Julian to have let him get so close.
“Not that it matters,” she continued. “After what you and Gabriel did, Julian isn’t going to allow him to set foot in this house.”
Rae remembered the look on Julian’s face right before he hit Gabriel, and she sank down onto her bed with a shaky sigh. She had been so caught up in how this mess was destroying the three of them—her, Devon, and Gabriel—that she hadn’t had time yet to think about how it was affecting everyone else. They were a tight-knit group, the lot of them. It would take quite a bit to get in between them, and now that something had she wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. She’d messed it all up. Things would never be the same again.
A quick tapping caught Rae’s attention, and she looked up to see Angel bouncing her foot impatiently against the floor with her arms folded tightly over her chest. “So?”
“So, what?” Rae shot back, on the verge of tears but determined not to show it.
Angel’s icy blue eyes narrowed. “So, I didn’t come all this way, survive everything I’ve survived, just to have to choose between my brother and my boyfriend. You need to fix this.”
And with those five words it was like something in Rae finally just snapped.
Cromfield and Mallins? Devon and Gabriel? And her at the center of it all?
It was
all just too much.
“Really?” she demanded, uncontrollable tears finally spilling over. “That’s what you came all the way here to tell me? That I need to fix this?” Her voice shook as it rose in panic. “Like I don’t know that already? Like my entire life isn’t already falling apart?!”
Without another word, she physically and emotionally crumbled into Angel’s unsuspecting arms, sobbing without restraint onto her hard, leather-clad shoulder. She didn’t mean to. She certainly wasn’t planning to. But there was only so much emotional turmoil one girl could take.
“Whoa, there.” Angel caught her stiffly, freezing for a moment before lowering her hands uncertainly to pat her on the back. “Uh…you know I don’t do hugs, right?”
Rae just cried harder. Wishing she was anywhere else in the world. Wishing she was laughing with Devon instead of crying with Angel. Wishing Angel was Molly—Molly would have known better than to wear uncomfortable fabrics when there was a chance her friend might cry on them.
“Hey,” Angel’s voice softened, though she continued discreetly trying to peel Rae away from her, “this is going to be alright. You know boys. Bunch of delicate little flowers. They’ll get over it.”
Rae shook her head as she finally pulled away. “No. They won’t.”
Angel sighed and pursed her lips, staring at Rae speculatively. “Do you love Gabriel?”
An image of his face flashed through her head, and Rae hung her head. “No—not in the way he wants me to. Not in the way I love Devon.”
“Okay,” Angel said briskly, “so Devon it is, then. Problem solved. Stop crying.”
“It’s not as easy as all that,” Rae glared, wiping her face. “He broke up with me.”
Angel rolled her eyes. “So make him un-break up with you. Honestly, Kerrigan, this is not the Rae who blasted me into that wall in San Francisco. This is not the Rae who threatened to, and I quote, ‘cheerfully beat me to death.’”
Rae sank onto the bed in defeat. “What do you want me to do? Beat him into taking me back? Try to threaten him into a relationship?”
A flash of mischief shot through Angel’s eyes. “Some guys find a little excitement like that to be quite the turn-on.”
