by Amity Hope
“We could,” Ava decided. “Maybe driving through town, seeing familiar sights will help.”
Gabe shrugged. “Is my…is Rafe still here? In town, I mean?”
A little shudder raced down her spine. “Yes.” She gave him a brief summary of her recent encounter with his brother. “He’s obviously looking for you. As far as I’m concerned, that means we should do our best to stay away from him.”
Gabe nodded slowly. “It’s not like I want to talk to him or anything,” he assured her. “I was just wondering.”
“You and your brother,” she shook her head, “well, I told you what your relationship was like. It wasn’t a good situation. I don’t know what he’ll do when he finds out you’re back.”
***
As Ava had driven them to Granville, he’d tried to make sense of everything she’d told him. He’d tried to pull it out of his memory but it was like grasping at an empty darkness. It was surprisingly exhausting.
He had wanted to protest when she’d told him that at his father’s directive, he was to end her life. Of everything she’d told him, that had been the hardest to believe. He was meant to kill her? And yet, he had believed her because there was a goodness about her that was hard to miss. Even if Molly had not pulled him aside, he could see it every time he looked at her.
He could understand why he had taken his own life instead of hers. He couldn’t imagine hurting her. Seeing her cry and knowing it was because of him had ripped him to shreds inside.
And she loved him. Not only had she said it, but he could feel it in the way she held him. Both in her sleep and when she’d been upset. To have someone feel that way about you? The realization was confounding. If only he could remember her.
Just something. Anything. Even just a glimmer.
But there was nothing.
She’d driven down by a river. Apparently they had been there together many times. Not only that, she’d told him that Molly and Julia were convinced they’d seen him there recently. The disappointment on her face when he’d told her nothing looked familiar had caused unpleasant feelings to stir inside of him.
For whatever reason, whether it was a stirring of his past or the connection he was creating with her now, he didn’t like to see her unhappy. It frustrated him that he seemed to be doing just that. He was constantly making her unhappy and disappointing her and he’d only just met her.
He didn’t like it.
Now they were shopping and he was letting his mind wander, wondering if he’d ever be able to remember and give her what she seemed to want. She was flipping through shirts hanging on a rack, trying to find a few more to add to their growing pile.
“Gabe? Are you okay?” she asked as she reached over to take his hand.
She startled him and he didn’t mean to snatch it away. It was just a reflex but her face fell and she took a step away from him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Ava’s lips moved into a forced smile. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just habit. So, are these okay?” she asked, changing the subject and holding up a pair of jeans.
“Yeah,” Gabe told her. He didn’t really care what he wore. Ava was choosing clothing for him and he was trailing around behind her, carrying it all.
“Have we shopped together before?” Gabe wondered as he looked around.
Ava stopped in front of a display of shorts. “We have,” she carefully said. “But not here. We’ve never been to the mall together before. When we shopped it was down by the boardwalk at a few specialty shops. I thought a department store would be better today considering that you need, well, pretty much everything.”
He nodded as his eyes scanned the store. They were in the men’s department and they seemed to have the area pretty much to themselves. They’d already circled their way through most of the racks and displays. His arms were laden with enough clothes to last a week or so. Ava had just wanted to get a few more pairs of shorts and then they would be done. For now. They could always shop later if he needed something else.
“These are pretty plain but are they okay?” she asked, holding up a pair of swim trunks. They were blue with a simple white panel down the sides. “Sometimes I swim in the lake so I was thinking you might need a pair, just in case.”
“Sure,” he said with a nod.
“You don’t really seem to care what I pick out,” Ava noted, trying to keep her voice neutral. This was a new development. She was sure Gabe had always put a lot of care into what he wore.
Before.
He shrugged. “You seem to have good taste. You haven’t picked out anything I don’t like.”
“Okay. I think we’re done. Unless,” her gaze drifted over to the center of the store where glass cabinets held what looked like hundreds of little bottles, “do you want some cologne? You always wore cologne. And I think they carry your body wash here too.”
“You know what kind of body wash I use?” he curiously asked.
She blushed. “I stayed at your house once. I saw it in your bathroom.”
He nodded again, feeling uncomfortable. It was a distressing feeling to know someone else knew you far better than you knew yourself. He felt guilty that it bothered him because he knew really, he should be grateful for it. If not for Ava, he would probably still be out there, just wandering around. Or whatever it was that he had been doing.
“Let’s finish up here and then we can go get some lunch,” Ava suggested. “Is down by the river okay with you?”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised she was asking his opinion when he obviously didn’t seem to know a single thing about anything.
She smiled at him reassuringly. “What I meant was that if this is getting to be too much, we could just go home. I know you spent some time down there, not just with me. It might trigger a memory…or it might not. I can’t imagine how strange all of this is. I just don’t want it to get to be overwhelming.”
“No, I’m okay, we can go eat somewhere,” he assured her as they neared the counter.
“Alright, if you want to get cologne,” she pointed to a tray of men’s cologne samples that sat on the end of the long countertop, “that one, the pale blue bottle, is the one you used to wear. If you want to grab it, I’ll see if they carry the body wash.”
Gabe moved to the side, reaching for a blue bottle. He squirted it into the air. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he really didn’t like the scent. He definitely didn’t want to have to smell like that all day.
She turned around holding two bottles, body wash and shampoo. She could not miss the grimace on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh,” he said as he glanced at the offensive bottle he still held in his grip, “I’m not sure I like this. I don’t think I can wear it.”
“Maybe,” Ava said as she edged closer and plucked it out of his hand, “that’s because you grabbed the wrong one. I was pointing at this one.” She handed him the bottles she was holding before picking up the correct bottle of cologne. She spritzed some onto a little white strip.
Gabe leaned in and inhaled. Then he smiled. “I like that one.”
“Good,” Ava said, feeling relieved that yet one more thing about him, regardless of how small, was still the same. “Now let’s pay for all of this so we can get out of here. Then we’ll get some lunch and after that, you need a haircut.”
Hours later, they had eaten, driven around both Hunter Falls and Granville, walked through Granville and lastly, gotten Gabe a haircut. He’d paid for everything, even insisting on buying Ava her lunch, with the money in his wallet. They’d both agreed that it was best not to touch the credit cards. That would likely be the fastest way to alert Rafe to his return. Ava had offered to cut them to bits as soon as they returned home. Meanwhile, his purchases hadn’t even made a dent in the amount of bills that were still left inside.
On the way back to the cabin, Gabe asked what it meant to be Nephilim. She told him what she knew. What limited information she had had come from Gabe himself. She r
eminded him they healed quickly and he immediately realized that his razor nicks were gone by the time Ava’s friends had left. It was no wonder Molly had looked so surprised. In fact, he was fairly certain they’d been gone before he’d come out of the bathroom the second time.
Ava also told him she knew they were nearly impossible to kill. Apparently they—unfortunately that also meant his brother—had special gifts or talents. Talents that were often used to carry out malevolent deeds.
Gabe was silent for a long while. Everything that she told him made complete sense to him.
“I know that since I told you that you heal quickly, you’re probably wondering about the scars on your back,” she said, finally disrupting the silence in the car.
Gabe looked at her, head cocked to the side. “What?”
“The scars on your back? For some reason, they never went away,” she explained, simply because she felt Gabe’s mind was wrapping itself obsessively around unsavory issues like malevolent deeds and the wickedness that so often was tied to the Nephilim. She didn’t want his mind to get stuck there.
He shrugged. “On my back? I didn’t notice any scars. But I guess it’s not really like I looked.”
And that had been the end of it.
Until they arrived back at the cabin and Ava ushered him into the bedroom as she suggested he change into something new. She used the excuse that she should bring the baggy basketball shorts and the ancient fishing derby t-shirt back to the church. While that was true—she planned on returning the borrowed donations—that was only part of it.
Seeing Gabe dressed in an outfit like that was so out of character for him. While she knew that just having him change clothes was not going to bring his memory back, selfishly, it would make her feel better if he looked more like himself. She’d carefully picked out clothes that reminded her of things she’d seen him in all those months prior.
He hadn’t argued as she sent him into the bedroom with an outfit she’d plucked out of the bags. He’d only been in the bedroom for a few minutes before his head poked back out. “Ava?”
“Yeah?” she asked as she spun around from where she’d been gazing out at the lake.
“You said I had scars?”
Ava’s stomach felt like it flipped over. She nodded slowly.
“On my back?” he asked as he turned around. He worked his new shirt up, showing Ava the smooth, flawless skin of his back.
Ava was speechless for a moment, worried that Gabe would think she’d been lying. “Gabe, I swear they were there! It was, well, honestly it was a mess. You didn’t even want me to see it. We were together months before you showed me and even then, it was only because I was ready to beg. But the scars, they were there,” she insisted, almost frantically as she waved her hands in the air.
Gabe grabbed her by the wrists. “Ava, calm down. I believe you. I mean, if I came back from,” he took a deep breath, “from being dead, then really, scars disappearing are nothing compared to that. I just wanted to show you. I thought you’d want to know. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a small nod, her voice flooded with relief.
“But there’s something else,” he admitted.
“What?” The tone of his voice sent a spiral of apprehension through her.
“I do have this?” he said, the question in his voice filling the air between them as he lifted the front of his shirt.
Directly over his heart was a scar, approximately an inch long, the width of the blade that he’d pierced his heart with.
Seeing the scar made the memories of that night flood back to Ava with the force of a mental tsunami. The world blurred, faded as it swirled.
Gabe barely had time to catch her before she hit the floor.
Chapter 8
A week had gone by since Gabe had reappeared in Ava’s life. Her world had so completely changed and yet, during the past week, things with Gabe had stayed disappointingly the same. He remembered absolutely nothing of his past.
Ava was trying hard to not let it bother her. He was back. He was with her, physically if not mentally. That, for now, was good enough.
Most days.
Her biggest fear had been that he would simply vanish without a trace as he had done those days by the waterfront.
His biggest fear was that his memory would continue to evaporate, as it had up until the night Ava had found him. Since that night, his memory had been solid. Stable. But only from that night forward. It wasn’t much but it was a start and with each passing day he became a little more comfortable with himself. A little more confident.
Because Ava had always been an exceptional employee, Becky had not given her a hard time when she inexplicably insisted that due to personal reasons, she needed to take some time off. Becky had agreed and had been able to cover all of her shifts but one.
That afternoon, Gabe had gone to work with her. He’d sat at one of the wrought iron tables at the front of the store, keeping himself entertained with Ava’s laptop. Ava, at that point, had still been terrified to let him out of her sight. She was afraid if she did he would wander off and not remember to come back to her. She had been relieved when Gabe hadn’t argued too vehemently about hanging out at work with her.
As each day passed and as his current memory became a little more stable, she worried just a sliver less. As an extra precaution she’d given him a key to her house and a cell phone. Or rather, she’d confiscated Grier’s old phone. She’d waited until her parents were gone one day before helping herself to it. Her foster sister had not had a need for many numbers. The only ones programmed in belonged to Ava’s family. Ava deleted them all, except for her own. She’d given the phone to Gabe and insisted that he keep it with him at all times. She’d taken it a step further and instead of simply having “Ava” listed in the contacts she’d listed it as “Call Ava”. Just in case his memory faded again and he needed that extra bit of prompting.
Thus far, he hadn’t. But that could be due to the fact that Ava knew where he was at all times.
Since the day in the department store when she had reached for him and he had snatched his hand away, she had been very careful not to touch him. He had claimed that he was just startled but she wasn’t so sure. He had flinched at her touch in the church, not looked particularly happy about it when she’d touched his knee at the kitchen table, and he certainly had not seemed pleased when she’d so embarrassingly cuddled up to him in her sleep.
She wasn’t sure if she could handle that feeling of rejection again. She tried not to give him a reason to physically push her away once again.
He was already dealing with so much, the last thing she wanted to do was push herself on him. Or even push the memory of herself on him. She was afraid if she did that it would simply be too much and it would push him away completely.
At night, they had continued to sleep in the same bed. It was Ava that suggested putting a pillow in between them so that she wouldn’t accidentally cross over into his personal space or violate any personal boundaries.
He hadn’t argued.
It was because of this, because of being so careful to not touch him that something had slipped past Ava’s notice. Until one day when Gabe was asking if there was anything else she could tell him. It was difficult, nearly impossible, for him to ask specific questions because he didn’t know what to ask.
“Actually,” Ava carefully replied, her eyes betraying the surprise she felt at having just realized something, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. I don’t really know how I could have missed it,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I guess I’m still so overwhelmed by the fact that you’re back that—”
“Ava,” Gabe impatiently interrupted, “what is it?”
They were sitting outside at her cabin. It was a hot, muggy day. They’d been in the water but now they were drying off by soaking up the sun’s rays and warmth. There wasn’t much of a beach, just a grassy embankment that fell down at a jagged angle into the water. They
were sitting beyond the embankment on lawn chairs.
They’d been discussing what would happen in the upcoming week when Ava had to return to work. She was feeling panicked about it. She was not ready to leave Gabe alone. He was arguing that if she was even considering getting him a babysitter, the thought was ridiculous. In all honesty, she had been contemplating asking Molly or Julia to hang out with him if their schedules allowed. But then the talk had turned back to Gabe again.
She slid off her lounging chair and stood in front of him. Slowly, hesitantly, she reached for his hands. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, but he did give her an openly curious look.
The gentle breeze caused her hair to flutter around her shoulders. She wanted to attribute her sudden burst of goose bumps to the breeze as well. Though she was certain they had a whole lot more to do with Gabe than the wind. She hoped he didn’t notice the fine bumps on her skin. And she was aware that she had a whole lot of skin showing with only her new, white and very skimpy bikini on.
“Do you feel anything?” she asked. His knees were parted and she stood directly in front of him, firmly holding his hands in hers. Her eyes were already devouring his face. She had her answer before he even spoke.
“Ava,” he began, an apologetic look dominated his features. His eyes, seemingly of their own volition, drifted downward, lingered longer than they had any time recently and then shot right back up again. He squirmed in his chair as he tried to keep his eyes on hers. “I actually find you quite beautiful. Stunning, really. But I’m so sorry. You know I don’t—”
“No! No, not like that,” Ava quickly said as she cut him off, her cheeks blazed a spectacular shade of red. Although, the fact he found her stunning was a pleasant revelation that she would unquestionably ponder later. “When I touch you, does it burn?”
Gabe’s apologetic expression melted into one of confusion. “Does it what?”
“Burn. Does it hurt?”
He started to shake his head slowly, and Ava wondered if this was finally going to be the bit of information that was too much. Reluctantly, she let his fingers slide from hers. She took a step to the side and settled back into her own chair.
