AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My hand shakes as I stare at the screen. The email is four words, chilling in their brevity. It reads simply, “Return to England immediately.”
Claudia
Gabriel mopes around the manor all week. I watch him like a hawk – he doesn’t drink or touch any drugs other than weed, thank the gods, but I almost wish he would because sulky Gabriel is, in his own words, ‘a miserable git.’ I miss his smiling, flirting, and general annoyingness.
He doesn’t book a plane ticket back to Old Blighty, and he doesn’t email or call his parents. He also barely attends classes and refuses to help us try to ambush Eli, who’s doing a deft job of avoiding us and slamming doors in our faces.
One day I arrived home after cheerleading practice to find Gabe lying on the sofa, in the same position I left him that morning. He wore the shorts he slept in, and he tried to balance a hookah pipe on his chest while Queen Boudica made a sleeping nest out of his hair.
Something inside me snaps. I’m done with this version of Gabriel. I need him to sing the stars to me once more.
I go into his room, grab his acoustic guitar, take it back to the ballroom, and toss it onto his lap.
“Bloody hell.” He leaps up, earning a filthy look from Queen Boudica as she slides off the end of the sofa. The hookah pipe rolls across the room. “You scared me.”
“Good.” I fold my arms and glare at him. “You know what would make you feel better? Writing a song about it.”
“Meow,” Queen Boudica agrees.
“What’s the point?” Gabriel lets the guitar slide off the sofa, joining a litter of candy bar wrappers and random sketches and doodles at his feet. “Without a label, I’m never going to be able to release music again. I’m done.”
This is ridiculous. I plant my hands on his knees, leaning in close so he has no option but to face me. “Gabriel, I love you, but pull your head out of your ass.”
“I’m British. We say arse.” Gabriel gives me a sad smile. “Would you say that again?”
“You know what I mean. So you don’t have a label? Big fucking deal. There’s this new-fangled invention called the internet. Musicians have been using it to get their work in front of their fans for decades now. I know you might not have it in your freaking castle back in England, but it’s a thing here in America, and it’s pretty powerful.”
“Not that part.” Gabriel’s cheeky grin plays across his face, and too late I realize my mistake – when I’m this close to him, he draws me under his spell. “The part about you loving me.”
My cheeks heat up. “I didn’t mean—”
“Say it again.” He brushes my cheek with his finger. His words are tight, teasing, but there’s a need in them that makes my heart stutter.
“I love you,” I growl out, my chest constricting as the words hang in the air between us. “I fucking love you and you’re driving me insane.”
Gabriel throws himself at me, capturing my lips in his. Like our kiss in the hallway at school, this kiss carries so much weight and hope and promise. He dances music on my tongue, and for the first time in a long time, I see the stars flicker to life in his eyes again.
“I love you. I thought of nothing else but you,” he whispers. “You were the light that glinted in the darkness.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I say, even though his words make my heart race. “You were in jail for three nights. It’s not as if you did twenty-to-life in Sing Sing.”
A shudder rolls through his body. “It felt like three decades. It was the most horrible place. You wouldn’t believe the muck they try to feed you, and the toilet facilities…” he shudders. “No room service. No hot towels or Egyptian cotton sheets. No massage therapist for the crick in my neck I got sleeping on the concrete slab they call a bed! There wasn’t even a mirror. And then they wanted to take my photograph. I told them not until they got me a stylist because my hair was a fright.”
I laugh. He’s ridiculous. I need that now – I need someone to light up the world with their smile. I kiss Gabriel again, taking my time about it, committing every piece of him to memory. Then I slide onto the sofa beside him. “You’re out now, and your name is clear. That’s something to celebrate.”
“I know. I know we have more important things to worry about, but I can’t stop thinking about what they said,” he frowns. “Dylan was murdered. Apparently, he didn’t overdose as they initially believed. Someone sedated him so he couldn’t fight back, then injected him with grey death.”
“Grey death? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a cocktail of heroin, fentanyl, and pink, and it’s so potent you can die just from touching it.” Gabriel shivers. “They told me it’s an excruciating death – he’d have struggled to breathe, his skin would have gone all clammy, and then his heart failed. I can’t believe someone would do that to him.”
“What about Dylan’s note?” Dylan had written such horrible things about Gabriel. That note seemed designed to make Gabriel hate himself.
“The note’s in Dylan’s handwriting, but who knows? The police think the note shows the murderer wanted to get to me. Maybe the killer forced Dylan to write it. Or maybe they’re good at forging.” Gabriel smiles ruefully. “Or maybe Dylan planned to kill himself anyway, and he got someone else to help him make it look like a murder.”
“That sounds more like the plot from a thriller novel than real life,” I roll my eyes. “But then again, I’m the mafia queen doppelgänger of a rich Valley girl trying using a fake life to take possession of a mansion, so what do I know? And I’m guessing you haven’t heard anything more from your parents. Are you going to go back?”
“Because the Duke of Blackwich commands me? Bloody hell, no.” But Gabriel looks a little sick.
