AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Two of them? Couldn't warn me about that, Gabriel?
Patrick shook his head. No matter. He could handle a couple of pixies, particularly when they were so enrapt in the scene up ahead.
"What are you talking about?" Liv was saying. "Fix what?"
Patrick had been ignoring their conversation. Now Gabriel was saying, again, that he didn't know what Liv was talking about. Patrick watched the pixies, timing his attack.
"You just said you had an hour to fix it," she said. "What does--?" She stopped, as if the realization hit her at the same time it did Patrick. As he whispered, "Cach," she echoed it in English.
"Okay," Liv said. "You've been infected with pixie dust. We can handle this. One hour, huh?" She muttered under her breath, "Couldn't get the usual forty-eight, could you? Gabriel Walsh requires a real challenge."
"Olivia, I have no idea--"
"Yeah, yeah, you don't know what I'm talking about. Just hold tight. We'll get this...Gabriel?"
"Yes?"
A thud. Then Liv's voice. "What the hell? Get your--"
Another thump. Patrick ran to the corner and swung around it to see Gabriel there with his hands wrapped around Olivia's neck.
TWENTY-SIX
GABRIEL
Gabriel had often heard the phrase "wanting to throttle" someone. Longing to put your hands around a person's neck and squeeze. It was, he presumed, an expression of frustration rather than an actual desire to kill. Normal people didn't smile when they said they wanted to shoot someone or bash their head in. They would, however, chuckle or roll their eyes when expressing a desire to strangle.
When Olivia texted him this suggestion, she'd even acknowledged that. Pretend to strangle me. I'm sure you've wanted to do it often enough LOL.
Except he hadn't. Any frustration he'd felt was exasperation, usually when she did something reckless, and it would hardly make sense to have the urge to kill someone because she was doing something that could get her killed.
Olivia, though, had likely battled the impulse to strangle him. Throttle some sense into him--that's how she'd put it. Understandable. But he'd never had that frustration with her. Even when she'd suggested he feign strangulation, he'd wanted to text back and say no, he'd rather not. He'd refrained only because he recognized that this was the best plan.
So he put his hands around her neck and squeezed, and it was one of the most difficult things he'd done in his life.
He had no issue with violence--that was the language of the streets. This was different. He put his hands around Olivia's neck, and he heard the pixie's words again, about fixing the problem, and it didn't matter if there was not one cell in his body that believed killing Olivia would fix anything in his life, that was still what this felt like. The culmination of all the tumult she'd brought into his world, twisted into a nightmare where he put his hands around her neck and squeezed until he was free.
It didn't matter that his hands barely cinched her neck. Didn't matter that she snuck a smile at him before she closed her eyes. That she stuck her tongue out the corner of her mouth, faking comic-level strangulation. That she did not tense, even for a second.
She trusted him.
Olivia let him put his hands around her neck, knowing the pixie had tried to convince him to kill her and trusting that he would not.
He didn't deserve that trust. Had not earned it. Wasn't sure he wanted the responsibility of it.
But it wasn't a matter of what he wanted. One didn't ask for trust. One received it as a gift. Olivia gave him hers, and he did want it. Any thoughts to the contrary arose from fear--the terror that he could not live up to the responsibility of her trust and therefore it was safest to refuse it.
He might not like even pretending to throttle her, but he did, gritting his teeth and carrying through with the plan and--
"Gabriel!" a voice shouted, and he did not need to wonder who that was. Nor did Olivia, her green eyes flying open in a death-glare aimed in the intruder's direction, as her lips formed his name: "Patrick."
Of course it was Patrick. Doing exactly what he did best: interfering. The bocan shouted for Gabriel to stop as he raced forward, and the pixies launched themselves at him, taking him down.
"Just keep going," Olivia whispered, which was rather like carrying on a stage play while a riot erupted in the audience.
Patrick had come to their rescue. Damn him.
This was precisely what they had tried to avoid, ignoring his texts, giving him false directions and GPS coordinates. Gabriel would pretend to kill Olivia, and then once the pixies were convinced of success, they'd turn the tables. If they needed Patrick's help then, he would be within shouting distance. They did not, however, actually want him on the scene. And yet here he was, brawling with pixies.
