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“You...bought it?”
“Yeah. For myself for my birthday. Spent nearly everything I had on it.”
A Moped. Something North probably wouldn’t approve of. No wonder we couldn’t find it on that road. I rolled my eyes in the dark, amused, and eager to talk to North and laugh about it. He had been right. The muscle car wasn’t Gabriel’s style. We assumed he wanted a car. “So you like Mopeds?”
“I didn’t want a full motorcycle,” he said. “I like this one. Custom made. I want to do some things to it. Dress it up. I’m thinking...I don’t know. I keep going back and forth on it.” He sighed. “I don’t want to think of it right now. I’ll be up all night.”
I sighed and settled back into the bed. It’d been a crazy evening.
Silence surrounded us. I still wasn’t sleeping though. I turned over in his arms. I swished my legs between the sheets.
“Trouble,” he moaned. “Stop.”
“Gabriel?”
“Hm?”
There was so much to ask him. Questions floated through my head.
He squeezed me before I could come up the best one to ask first. He dipped his head close and kissed my temple. “You know, North talked to Luke and me. About…about the plan.”
“Oh?”
His fingertips brushed the skin along my arm. He traced it delicately, causing goosebumps, but I liked it when he touched me.
“At first, he threatened me, saying if I left, you’d be heartbroken. Said that he left and you were crying because you thought I’d run off, and he was going to drag me back to you. Said if I ever left you again, he’d beat the shit out of me.”
My heart pounded in my chest while the rest of me froze. I didn’t dare move or breathe. North said all that?
“The truth is, I almost considered leaving,” he said quietly. “When I thought about it, I was sure it wouldn’t work. We’re young. We’ve been through a lot of shit. We think we know what we want. I didn’t know how I was so stupid before. Thinking we’d just go on like we’ve been doing.”
“I was willing,” I said quietly.
“It was North that made me think. He kept asking the same thing. ‘What do you want? How do you feel about her?’ I said I didn’t know. He called me a liar. I almost punched him.”
I snuggled into him more. “Gabriel…”
He tilted his head toward me, pressing his nose to my forehead. “Sang,” he said. “The thought of leaving, I hated it. My heart hurt. Bad. I didn’t want to. I told him that. He said that’s how you know it’s the wrong thing to do. If your heart hurts just thinking about leaving, don’t leave. He asked me how I felt about staying. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t hurt.” He pressed his lips to my forehead then and as he spoke, his lips tickled my skin. “He said then it might be because the path isn’t clear, but maybe it was still in the right direction.” He kissed my forehead. “Motherfucker’s a psychologist.”
I smiled. “I wasn’t sure how I felt about it,” I said. “It feels like a selfish thing to want.”
“I feel selfish asking you to stay with me,” he said. “With just me. To maybe sign up as a couple team for the Academy. Or even just run off somewhere.” He pressed his palm against where he’d traced on my arm, rubbing, like erasing the imaginary lines. He started tracing again. “Fuck it all, Sang. Let’s just do it their way. Or our own way. I don’t want anyone else. Maybe we’re young and stupid and when we’re older, we’ll split up and blame it on being young and stupid. At least we tried it out.”
I wanted to answer him. I wasn’t sure what we were in for, thinking to do it like this. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “All I know is, I want to stay with you. I’d like to stay with the team. I…I’ll try, but only if everyone says they want to. I don’t even know what it’ll mean.”
“I don’t either,” he said. He kissed my temple again. “But who cares, right?” He shifted until he was propped up on an elbow, looking down at me, barely visible in the darkness. I was on my back, gazing up at him. He smoothed a lock of my hair away from my forehead, and then combed my hair with his fingers. “Who cares what it means? If you want us to stay a team, and we want to, too, then that’s what we do. They said stick with you, no other girlfriends for us. Well, fuck other girls. I’m busy. I can only handle one.”
I smiled, unable to help it. “The others…”
“Listen,” he said, his palm touching my face. “I don’t know what they’ll think. Here’s the thing, though. Those that want to stay, they’ll stay. Those that don’t like it, they’ll leave. In the end, it’s those that stay that…well… if you want us to, we stick by each other. If it’s all of us, or if it’s only a few of us.”
“But we can’t break up the team,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“If we’re going to be a team, we all have to agree to it, or we’re not a team anyway. We’re in this together or we’re not together. Right? I mean that’s how other relationships work. Sometimes you have twenty friends. Sometimes you outgrow a few and you end up with only two. You might gain new ones.” He leaned in and kissed my brow. “No matter what, though, I’m staying with you. If you’ll let me. If you want me to.”
I reached out to him, wanting to hug him.
He pulled me in, and his lips fell against mine.
I wanted to talk more, but I melted into it the moment his mouth met mine. I answered him in a kiss instead of speaking out loud.
Yes. I wanted to stay with him. I wanted to stay with the team. Mr. Blackbourne and the others were right. We couldn’t force it. We could only ask if they’d like to stay. If not…I couldn’t think of that now.
Whatever path we were on now, we were in it together. I vowed to do what was necessary to ensure they were happy. Being with them was what I wanted. No Academy rules or requests could stop that.
As Gabriel kissed me, I realized in that moment our happiness depended on two things: on staying together and ensuring the Academy could protect us. It might mean working with the Academy and proving to them, once we were ready, that we wanted to stay together.
If I wanted to do that, I needed to face my fears. If the Academy wouldn’t be totally happy about our choice to stay together, we could at least prove ourselves in other ways.
That meant looking into my past. The Academy would want to know. It would be required to join.
I’d spend the day with Gabriel for his birthday, but as we snuggled close and drifted off to sleep, I knew that tomorrow, I’d talk with him about it. I’d want him to go with me to find the truth.
I’d have to discover my past to gain the future I wanted.
~ A ~
Gabriel Coleman sat in an observation room, watching as Sang and Marie Sorenson headed in to talk with Mrs. Sorenson. Sang’s features were grave, magnified by the
dark circles under her eyes. It was one of the few times Gabriel thought of makeup for her face, only he disliked using it. Once she had a week or two of proper full night’s sleep, she’d get rid of those shadows.
Her eyes were too beautiful to be shadowed. The green was too perfect a color to replicate in paint or inks. He’d tried many times, especially in the last week. Especially the other day when he’d been lost in his own thoughts and the only thing he could draw was her face, over and over, trying to get it right. Never doing it justice.
The wall had a wooden rail, reminding him of a ballet barre and Gabriel gripped it, leaning so close to the window, that his forehead pressed against the glass. He’d smudge it, but he didn’t care. It was a small, one-way mirror meant for doctors to observe patients while they slept, or if they got tied down and went into a tirade.
Mrs. Sorenson hadn’t attacked nurses physically, but from what Dr. Green said, she often was abusive, showing a narcissistic personality, belittling the nurse when she was alone but then when others were around, she played like she’d not said anything at all. Nurses felt safer going in as a group.
It seemed even if Mrs. Sorenson wasn’t sick, she’d still be a burden to Sang and Marie. If they stuck together while visiting Mrs. Sorenson, they’d less likely have issues.
This made it seem like Sang going in with Marie was a better idea. If they were together, maybe Mrs. Sorenson would behave.
At least Mrs. Sorenson had been moved to the Academy hospital. She hadn’t had visitors since Mr. Sorenson left to be with his other family.
Gabriel still wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not. Sang hadn’t liked the idea of confronting her stepmother at all.
She’d insisted, though. She was right: the Academy would make her delve into her past. If she learned it from her stepmom, or at least got started there, it’d be better in the end.
He had to respect that request. He rocked his head right and left against the window. He couldn’t refuse her. Not now. If he was going to make their plan work, he needed to stand by her.
