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“So? It’s probably her mother.”
“Not unless her mother is a bodybuilder. Look at the muscle.” I draw around the shape of the shoulder with my finger. My throat tightens.
“I bet it’s Isaac looking after his girl.”
“Isaac has tattoos. That arm is perfectly clean.” I know that arm. It’s Eli. I know it.
Eli’s in George’s bed.
Fuck.
“Whatcha looking at?” A hand drapes over my shoulder, and a warm cheek grazes mine. “No offense to George, but that is the worst amateur porn I’ve ever seen.”
My throat closes as a heady, smoky scent fills my nostrils.
“GABRIEL?”
I whirl around, my heart leaping into my throat.
There he is. Standing around like he never left, like he was never dragged out of school by the cops or stuck in a jail cell for three days. My fallen angel laughs as he wraps his arms around me, pulling me under the spell of his sultry pagan scent. He’s wearing his leather jacket over his crumpled Stonehurst uniform, and it crackles as his hands roam over my body as though he’s trying to commit my curves to memory.
“Miss me?” His lips pull back into a cocky grin. He’s got a week’s worth of stubble on his chin, and it suits him.
“That’s a stupid fucking quest—” Gabriel swallows my words with his mouth. I gasp as his kiss whips the air from my lungs. He forces my lips open and dives his tongue inside. This kiss is so much more than anything we’ve shared before – this isn’t flirty, playful Gabriel whose body is like a drug I can’t get enough of. This is Gabriel who has dragged himself out of the desert and fallen into a lake of crystal clear water. This is my fallen angel getting his wings back.
He pushes me against the lockers, and I don’t give a fuck that we’re in the middle of school, that all around us people are whispering. I want to crawl into his skin and live inside his scent forever. When I suck his bottom lip and he lets out a beautiful moan, I taste how close I was to losing him, and I plan to cling to him and never, ever let go.
Someone wolf-whistles. Along the corridor, a smattering of students cheer – the same people who only a few days ago were denouncing him as a killer. I want to burn them all, and I will, but not now. Not yet.
Right now, I live for Gabriel’s kiss.
His lips are like silk, and his tongue plays a melody only I can hear. His eyes are wide open, like he needs to drink in the sight of me after so much time apart.
Gabriel pulls back a little, gasping for breath. His hair has fallen over his eyes. I reach up to tuck it back so I can topple into those beautiful grey orbs, all stormy at the edges and crystal clear in the middle.
“Don’t scare me like that again.” My nails dig into his shoulders. “What are you doing here? Did you tunnel your way out with a rusty spoon?”
“Don’t tell me, you bribed a guard with a bit of British totty.” Noah grins. Even his dark eyes are brighter today.
“I’ll have you know, this derriere was in high demand.” Gabriel grins as he slaps his ass. “But alas, I was saved from becoming the darling of the prison. They let me go.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He doesn’t look as happy as I expect. “They don’t think Dylan killed himself, but they don’t have enough evidence to charge me. The British police are here. They’re supposed to be running a joint investigation, although they kind of steamrolled in and took over. They made Cleo hand over her laptop and they found the unedited video. She may even get charged with obstruction of justice, since she’s the one who alerted the police to it in the first place.”
I can’t help the grin spreading across my face. At least two things have gone right today. “So you’re cleared of all charges?”
“For now.” Gabe frowns. The storms swirl around his eyes. “They want me to stay close by in case they need to ask me more questions. It doesn’t matter, anyway. This isn’t about Dylan’s death anymore. It’s about the story.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gabriel digs his phone from his pocket and pulls up an email. He tosses the phone to me. I scroll through the email. It’s from his record label. I’m too incensed to read past the first sentence, but random phrases leap out at me. “…long history of unreliable behavior…”, “…becoming a liability…”, “…several warnings…”
“They dropped me,” Gabriel says. “With all the stuff that’s coming out online and the murder investigation, I’ll never find another label. Hell, I won’t even be able to find musicians to play with me. Octavia’s Ruin is over. And that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is it’s my own fucking fault. I should have shown you this earlier. Instead, I dealt with it the way I deal with everything – by diving headfirst into oblivion so I could forget. But if I’d said something, maybe none of this would have happened.”
He taps on another email and hands the phone to me. I’m shocked to see the sender’s name. At first, I think it’s a spam email, because who will call themselves ‘The Duke of Blackwich.’ But then I realize it’s Gabriel’s father.
Gabriel’s father, who he hasn’t spoken to since his very public estrangement two years ago.
