Mind Over Matter

by Kaia Bennett

  "Since you're here, before I forget..."

  He took her hand before she could protest and led her into his bedroom.

  "Gabriel..."

  He pretended not to hear the plaintive tone in her voice and reached for a CD on his desk.

  "This is for you," he said, turning on his brightest smile. He ran a shaky hand through his hair. Yeah, something was wrong, very wrong, and he didn't know what it was. He didn't want to know. He just wanted to wipe that sad look off her face.

  "What is this?" she asked. The curiosity in her voice was dulled by the edge of sadness, but he pressed on.

  "All those songs you liked from back in the day, the ones we listened to when you helped me sort through all of this," he said, sweeping his hands over his music collection. "I put them together for you, so you wouldn't have to look for them yourself."

  She stared down at the CD for a long moment, speechless.

  "I know, I'm wonderful and awesome," he quipped to break up the dreadful silence. "You don't have to thank me, it's just enough for me to give back to the fans."

  When her eyes started to tear up and her chin began to quiver his faint smile dissolved completely. "Nicole?"

  She shook her head over and over again.

  "Why, why did you have to do this?" she whispered to herself, before the first set of tears began to fall.

  "Nic? Fuck, please tell me what's wrong," he whispered. He reached for her but she backed away, quick and skittish.

  A bad day. A moment of weakness. That’s all it would take for all of this to fall apart. That’s all it would take for them to fall into each other again.

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything, but I can't... I c-can't do this anymore. And I can't take t-this," she sobbed, holding the CD out with a shaking hand, her eyes averted.

  She spared a lightning-quick glance in his direction. He was boiling over with so many emotions, but at the forefront were fear, anger, and heartache. Confusion. He knew how he must look. He knew he was silently asking her, "What did I do wrong?" to which she replied back with beautiful and empathetic eyes, "Nothing.”

  He hadn't done anything. He didn’t need to. If she felt for him the way he felt for her, that was enough.

  They both knew that's what was coming next. He knew already what she meant, right down to the marrow of his bones. But still he would ask, and she'd have to spell it out with painful clarity.

  "What do you mean you can't?" he whispered. "What does that mean?"

  "I understand if you hate me. I do, because I know this is all my fault. I shouldn't have done this. I was selfish and I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry. I just... I thought I could make it work."

  "Nicole," he said and his voice trembled.

  "I thought I could have my cake and eat it, too. I was such a bitch to do this to you. I didn't think about how I would hurt you or him."

  "Don't do this..." The words were so quiet he could almost pretend he hadn’t said them.

  "I can't accept this," she said, as firmly as she could. She stepped around him and set the CD back on his desk. "I can't be your friend, Gabriel. I'm sorry."

  His hands reached up to push his hair back away from his face, but he didn't feel the strands under his fingertips. He didn't feel the mechanics of his body as he turned to face her. Everything was on autopilot.

  He stood watching her cry, his insides crumbling at the same rate as her outsides. There were a million things he wanted to say to her, all of them jumbled up and lost in the hot flashes of loss coursing over his skin. Déjà vu again. Only this time he knew better. This time he knew what he'd be giving up.

  He couldn't trust fate or time to fix this tangled mess. He couldn't wait to be good enough for her, or for her to see that she really belonged with him. He was going to have to fight to keep her in his life where once he'd just let her drift away.

  "It was bound to happen sooner or later," he said with a strained chuckle. "I didn't expect it to happen this soon, but you're right, Nic. I was never meant to be just your friend."

  She nodded her head, as if to say she knew, she understood. Perhaps this was why she was so heartbroken. Maybe all she needed was the right wake-up call. Maybe deep down she knew what he'd known since the moment he saw her on Jackie's front porch all those weeks ago.

  "I know I messed up, Nicole. So many times it's ridiculous. But I get it now. It took losing you to understand that I was afraid of all the wrong things. Afraid of us turning into my parents. Afraid of letting you down, of something as real as what we have."

  "This isn't going to change anything," she said, wiping at her face and turning away from him.

  "You said you wanted to be in my life. What changed, other than the fact that your boyfriend didn't like it?” She was silent. He was relentless. "I mean let's just be completely honest. What's really changed between us, Nic? After all that time apart and that bullshit friends act we tried to pull, can you really pretend you don't still have feelings for me?"

  "Please, don't make me do this. Don't make me say it. I'm sorry, okay, I made a mistake..."

  "Don't make you say what?" he asked, excitement propelling him over her sadness and his fear. He grabbed her hand in his, his palm moist and his fingers clenched tightly around hers. "You still love me, don't you? You still love me as much as I love you."

  "I have to go... you have to let me go..."

  He shook his head, his own eyes starting to tear. "You can't ask me to do that again. You don't know what it would do to me. The only thing that kept me hanging on was the hope that I could wait it out. If I was patient, if I proved how much you mean to me..."

  His voice broke and he clenched his teeth to keep from crying. Real men don't cry. His father was a firm believer in that adage. But what about in a situation like this? What if the one person meant for him was about to walk out of his life for good, and making her stay depended on making her see how broken he would be without her? What if a few well-chosen words were all that stood between him and getting his soul mate back? Was it okay to cry then?

  "I was wrong to do that you. I made a promise to Travis. I-I... I love him, Gabe. I had to move on. I couldn't wait for you forever."

  He clenched his teeth harder still, feeling rage boil his blood and a wave of heat rush under his skin. "I don't care. I don't care if he told you a million times that he loves you. I don't care if you said it a million times back. He will never love you as much as I do," he said fiercely, with all the conviction he had within him. "He doesn't know how. And it's not his fault. I almost don't blame him for wanting you so bad, for wanting to keep us apart. But you'll never belong together the way we do and he knows it. So do you."

  He placed the hand he was gripping against his heart, and he knew as she sobbed and wiped futilely at her tears that she felt his heart pounding. "That's for you, Nic. This belongs to you. All of me does."

  She finally looked up into his eyes and saw him crying for the second time in her life. The first time it had been because he knew he was going to have to let her go. He couldn't commit back then, and she couldn't keep taking a little piece of him, waiting in the hope that one day he would say all he was saying right now.

  He knew it wasn't fair he should ask this of her now when she had been ready to charge forward into a future without him. It wasn't right to ask her to abandon what she'd built with Travis, her word, her hard won — if brief — freedom from the very heartache they were feeling now.

  Somehow, that didn't change a thing. When he asked again, "Do you still love me?" she was forced to acknowledge what her tears said plainly.

  "Yes."

  He sighed his relief, a forlorn smile accompanying it. One small victory. One wall scaled to get to her. "Then don't go back to him," he whispered. "Stay. Stay with me."

  "Gabriel... I can't... it's not that simple." She was trying so hard not to cry, but a steady stream of tears belied her efforts.

  "Yes, it is. It's the simplest thing in the world. You and me, sweet
heart. You and me," he said softly, soothingly, coming closer to her. "Nothing else makes more sense than that."

  He pulled her into his embrace and she melted into it. Her head was cradled against his shoulder, a large hand shaking in the soft, mussed strands of her hair. Her breath quickened against him, her chest rose and fell against his and everything in that moment was a meeting of breath, longing, and pain.

  Why couldn't they have this? He knew she’d tried to hold onto the dream, the beautiful lie of it all. She’d tried to package her love for him in a way Travis would accept, a way that would keep them together somehow.

  Travis couldn’t let that happen anymore and they both knew why. Standing in this room alone with her, in just a simple embrace was consuming his senses. He could feel her responding in kind. This was not friendship. This was not love gone by. This was real, as real as her shaky breaths against his neck, the tears dripping onto his t-shirt. It was evidenced in the way she choked on a sob when he pressed his lips to her forehead.

  He knew she meant to look up and say goodbye. She was retreating and soon she would pull away from him.

  Why can't you stay? Why can't we be together?

  But when she did look up, those beautiful brown eyes, glazed with tears, burned with longing and a sadness so deep he felt like he could see through her. She held him captive, waiting for her to answer his silent plea.

  Stay with me. Please, stay.

  She swallowed. She whispered his name.

  She leaned up to kiss him and without thinking he met her halfway, his lips and the hunger in his body the perfect match to her own.

  His lips smashed into hers, hungry and brutal in their quest for absolution, for her to change her mind and undo this year and a half long nightmare he'd endured. God, the taste of her, the feel of her in his arms and the way they shared one breath was what he'd wanted more than he could say. It had taken fear of losing her forever to make him show it. He wished he was stronger, but he was just a man. Just human, and it would have taken a strength he didn't possess to let her leave, to let her go the way he knew he should. But it was so hard to remember why when he felt her soft lips, the knowing licks of her tongue over his. New longing and old desire clashed and merged as the woman he loved surrendered her mouth to his.

  He backed her into the bookcase pressing an arm out to brace himself, to clutch at the sturdy wood when she moaned into his mouth and her gorgeous body writhed against him. Her hands thawed his body as they ran up and down his sides under his shirt, over his chest and then around to grasp his back. It was like she was trying to memorize him, trying to prove he was in fact still here. He let her know when his hips rolled into hers, revealing the hard, pulsing arousal trapped in his clothes. He didn't want to break from her mouth, he wanted to taste her forever.

  But somewhere beyond this hasty reunion was fear. Time. Ticking away, ticking down. Reality was just outside of this safe place of truth and yearning. It was pressing in; it would crack down the barrier soon. He needed to touch her, feel her. He needed to be inside her before reason and sense broke them apart again.

  "Nicole... I missed you, sweetheart," he moaned desperately into her ear as he tilted her head back and attacked the soft skin of her neck with sensuous kisses and nips. "Missed you so fucking much," he growled, and her shivers and whimpers in his ear drove him on. Drove him mad.

  "Gabriel," she whispered in a sob, her head tilted back as a strong hand cupped her straining breast through her shirt. She couldn't tell if she was trying to make him see reason or begging him for more. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Cognitive thought was beyond her. She was all impulse, prickling nerve endings and delicious responses. She was the girl on his bed during that first embarrassing encounter, the girl who heard down to her soul when he said he loved her that first time. She was the girl who watched him on stage, who smiled and laughed with him in bed, teased him under the flashing lights of clubs and in the dark corners of bars. She was the girl who stared at her ceiling, sweaty and spent from reenacting his touch, wondering with tears in her eyes where he was.

  She was this woman now, the one who was supposed to be beyond all of that. She was all of those things and it didn't matter. At the end of the day, every one of those evolutions of herself was in love with Gabriel. Time didn't matter. Pain was an illusion now; the logic that said she should stop was shoved into the same cage all of her love and longing had been in before it was loosed by the fear of never seeing him again.

  Even Travis, those blue eyes, those soft lips, his smile and his warmth didn't dare enter this place they'd forged. Her promise to him, the words she spoke and meant, faded into blackness under the white-hot power of Gabriel's touch.

  There was no going back now. She knew it the moment he pulled away when his fingers slipped beneath her shirt, teasing the skin of her heaving abdomen. She pulled her mouth away from his with a whimper, fighting for breath, for sanity. She was so overwhelmed with heat and longing, so unused to having what she'd craved for so long, that she felt close to passing out.

  "Do you want me to stop?" he asked in a trembling voice, a raspy growl of desire and remorse. "I would never... I would never do that to you again, Nic. I’ll never hurt you like that again. I'll stop, if you want..."

  His eyes shimmered with unshed tears at the memory, at the way he'd forced himself on her in order to prove why he'd wanted to keep parts of himself secret. He’d fancied himself a monster then, but she knew now he'd only wanted her to see the best in him. He’d only wanted her to love the man he wanted to be, and in his anger and fear he'd lost sight of that. In her fear and insecurity she’d lost sight of who he really was. No matter how much he wanted her, how scared he was of losing her, there were lines he wasn't willing to cross ever again.

  But he didn't need to. She pulled him over the threshold of uncertainty, straight into her arms and into a kiss that left no doubt in his mind. She wanted him. All of him. She'd missed him, too. The relief nearly stopped her heart, but not his hands where they roamed over her soft naked skin. He lifted her up, pulling her legs around his waist and turned with frenzied urgency toward his waiting bed.

  Chapter Twelve

  If there was ever a time in her life when Nicole was absolutely sure where she wanted to be and with whom, it was now. Divested of her clothes and wrapped up in Gabriel's arms, with his lips sliding like blessed sin against the pulse in her tilted neck. His weight, his warmth, the hard muscle and the pliant firmness nestled between her parted thighs intoxicated her, undid her, and then pieced her back together again with startling speed.

  Every touch and kiss was like the greatest plunge off her favorite roller coaster. She could almost taste the cotton candy flavor of carefree lust on his tongue, love unencumbered by time, and hurts buried in the shallow grave she'd dug for this feeling. This was supposed to be the past. This was supposed to be a "when I was a young and foolish girl" kind of fairy tale. But it all came back to life, flying off the page and changing to reality right before her eyes.

  He whispered in her ear, "Do you want me? Do you love me, Nicole?"

  She nodded. What else could she do? She couldn't speak past the whimpers in her throat when his fingers trembled down her body over the aching apex of her thighs. How could she lie and say no when he was collecting slick beads of the truth on his fingertips and circling them over her pulsing clit.

  "Let me hear you, sweetheart," he groaned breathlessly against her parted lips. His eyes were hooded, yet fixed on hers with the startling focus only lust can incite. He licked her upper lip as he drove his middle finger inside of her clenching core. A lazy grin spread his lips at her response, the ruthless dig of her nails in his back.

  Bolder and more confident now that her words matched her actions, he repeated his demand. "Say you want it, dirty girl." His thumb circled her clit the way his tongue circled hers.

  She nodded again, that naughty turn of phrase, that seductive endearment hitting her sharply in the apex of her thighs. He coul
d barely pull away before she was screaming in response. "I want it! So bad... oh, please, please, p-plea—Ahhh!!!"

  Then his finger curved over the sweet spot inside and she smashed her mouth against his again. The fire in his kiss spread through her insides, melted her core over his fingers. She could feel the heat seep into him, fed back to her through the flush of his skin caressing hers. He wasn't even inside her yet and she felt one with him.

  "Missed you... more, oh, oh — God—more!" she whimpered, and the tears blurred her vision as he called her body back from a dormant state she hadn't realized it was in. Two long, thick fingers filled her now, and she gasped like she was sinking into a scalding hot bath as her body overheated and prickled to almost painful life. She writhed, she shuddered. She beat at his shoulders, and then clutched him to her.

  She'd been dead before this. The walking dead.

  The thought terrified her, but not enough to stop the resurrection. Not enough to keep him from raising her body's responses from the grave. She smashed into the wall of climax, burst against it and fell like confetti. Slowly, slowly, floating from the heights of pleasure, riding it all the way back down to earth one colorful burst of feeling at a time.

  Just the beginning, her mind murmured with languid excitement. It practically purred and stretched with the sensation of release, remembering the days when this car crash of sensations was merely the warm up.

  Just the beginning...

  And then he was on her again, kissing the sense out of her and proving her thoughts true. Proving with his tongue, full lips, and anguished thrusts against her naked hip that it was only the beginning and she would never, ever get enough of this.

  She pressed her chest closer to his, a silent declaration that made her heart beat against the wide expanse of muscle pressing her to the bed. It was beating for him. Because it belonged to him. Because even though it felt like it might burst at any moment, it was ready for so much more.