Gabe's Bride

by Penny Alley

  But, when had they left the school? She hadn’t noticed.

  Neoma looked back, but the building was naught but a tan and brick blur, broken up by the fuzzy black holes of windows and doors, and Gabe didn’t stop. Maybe he thought she’d try to go back. If she’d thought it was an option, she might have. But he didn’t let her go. He kept her moving. He kept her breathing too.

  “In,” he directed, and she gulped for air. “Out.” She let it go.

  When they reached the car, the only candy-apple red blur in the drop-off and pick-up zone, he let go of her elbow long enough to fish his keys from his pocket. As soon as the passenger door was open, he dropped her to sit half-in and half-out of the car and that change in altitude seemed all her body needed to break down completely.

  “Oh!” She grabbed her stomach with both hands, and then her mouth.

  Squatting before her, Gabe held her, one hand on her knee and the other on her shoulder, and let her cry without a single word of censure. Unable to stop the flood of tears, Neoma covered her eyes. She couldn’t stop him from seeing her weaknesses, but so long as she couldn’t see him, she could pretend it wasn’t happening.

  Gabe waited until the storm had passed and all that was left was a few scattered sniffles and hiccups. His hand shifted from her shoulder to the back of her neck and, no longer content to let her hide, he pulled, increasing gentle pressure until her instinctive resistance collapsed and she at last lay her head upon his shoulder. Hot against her ear, he said, “I will never let anything happen to him. That’s a promise.”

  But if he wasn’t here, how could he stop it? Neoma didn’t say that out loud. She worked to slow her breathing, letting the softness of his shirt absorb the last of her tears.

  “All right?”

  She made herself nod, but she doubted if he believed her any more than she did him.

  Popping the glove box, Gabe dug through it, pulling out a folded napkin and a condom packet so yellowed by time and temperature that it probably predated the car. That, he tossed back in before shutting the door. He handed her the napkin. “Here. Wipe your eyes.”

  She did.

  “Blow your nose.”

  She did that, too.

  “Are you going to live?” When Neoma nodded, Gabe let her go and fished his wallet from his back pocket. Handing over his bank card, he stood. “Here. I want you to drop me at work and then go to Grady. Stop at the bank first, pull three hundred from the ATM and get whatever you think you’re going to need. If you need more than three hundred, we’ll talk about it when I get home.”

  Stunned, Neoma stared at the bank card until her already burning eyes began to tear again. She didn’t take it, or the keys he held out next. “I-I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.” He jingled them, coaxing her to accept both.

  Neoma shook her head. “I can’t drive,” she confessed.

  “As in, you don’t know how or you’ve had your license revoked?”

  A shout from the playground, just barely glimpsed around the fenced-in school, signaled the release of students and the beginning of morning recess.

  “You need permission to get a driver’s license in the compound,” she told him. The possibility that she might catch a glimpse of Scotty was impossible to resist. Her gaze drawn, she searched the scattering crowd of running, laughing children until Gabe shifted to block her view. He filled it instead. “Only soldiers get permission.”

  A childish scream drew both their attentions, but it was only two girls racing one another to the monkey bars. Gabe continued searching, his dark eyes sweeping the playground long after she gave up. His body (neither as tall nor as powerfully built as the Alpha Lauren’s) lied to her, claiming a relaxed stance that his sharp eyes did not echo. His hands—he had such big hands, broad and thick-fingered—were calloused from a lifetime of working outdoors, scarred and strong. Her knee and shoulder tingled where he’d touched her.

  “So what?” he asked. “You walked everywhere you had to go?”

  He turned from the playground, looking down at her again, so stiff and still with threads of anger not quite veiled enough to keep her from seeing it. But while his dark eyes were locked on her, Neoma didn’t for a second think any of that anger was meant for her. That surprised her.

  “Everyone walks,” she hedged, afraid she might be misreading him. “The compound is only five blocks.”

  “What do you do when you leave the compound?”

  That surprised her all over again. “Nobody leaves the compound. Not without permission.”

  His right hand flexed, closing around the keys. “When was the last time you had permission, Neoma?”

  He said her name as if it were a caress, so soft and gentle. Her startled laugh came out much like her tears had—in a gush of sound and despair. It didn’t last long, but once it was done Neoma was left unable to tell if she truly had been laughing, or sobbing.

  “Never,” she whispered. “I’ve never had permission.” She’d never asked for it, either. Not when the very act of seeking it risked the unpardonable sin of suggesting a female with a pup might need something not being provided for her. The Alpha Deacon took care of all his pack, from the highest ranking lieutenant to the lowest bitch on the fringes of volka society. She ought to know; she’d been that bitch for five very long years. “He doesn’t let me walk beyond the walls.”

  Gabe’s hand flexed on the keys all over again. “He let you come here,” he pointed out.

  “He doesn’t let me out of his sight, either.” More than a little bitterness crept into her words, and once out, could not be recalled.

  “Why not?”

  Avoiding his stare, Neoma looked for Scotty again, but all she could see were blurs of bright-colored clothing dashing around the playground, swinging on swings, jumping rope and kicking balls around the adjacent soccer field.

  Lowering himself once more before her, Gabe caught her chin and made her look at him. “Is that what got you whipped?”

  “Yes.” Sure. Why not? The truth burned up the back of her throat, filling her mouth with the acidic urge to simply tell him, but she couldn’t. Silence stretched between them, unbroken until a bell sounded, ending recess and summoning the children back to class.

  Gabe sat back on his heels with a soft chuff of frustration. He studied her, the burrowing of his narrowed eyes filling her belly as if with broken glass. It cut at her with every breath she took and every uncomfortable second that bled away between them.

  “Are you lying to me, Neoma?” Gabe finally asked, no trace of his earlier anger anywhere that she could now find. Rather, he seemed tired, and hearing that in his voice made her own weariness too overwhelming to ignore.

  She turned in her seat, pulling her legs into the car. “Sure.” She turned her face to the driver’s side window so she wouldn’t have to see him. “I’m Scullamy, remember? We’re all liars.”

  Gabe’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, but he didn’t press any further. The Mustang rocked when he shut the door, but for a change, it didn’t feel angry. When he circled around to get in beside her, his mood seemed more pensive than mad.

  Sticking the key in the ignition, Gabe did not immediately start the car. Elbow braced on the door frame, he rasped a hand across his mouth and down his chin. Silence filled the car, as impossible to escape as it was to breathe around. Now and then, the leather seats under them creaked. Even more occasionally, a car passed on the road that ran along the front of the school. She began to think they might still be sitting there when the lunch bell sounded, but then Gabe twisted the key, the ignition turned and the car rumbled to life. “Put your seatbelt on.”

  She never did catch that last glimpse of Scotty that she so badly wanted.

  The school was a little over a mile from Gabe’s house and, at most, a two minute drive. Staring blindly out the window, it took Neoma most of three before she realized Gabe had taken the wrong turn out of the school parking lot and Hollow Hills was now well behind them. Some time
back, they’d turned off the main road onto a single-lane dirt one. Brush and low hanging trees that hadn’t been cut back in years overgrew all sides. There were no houses here, but at one point she spotted a river-rock chimney rising up from the forest shadows out of a thick bed of twining ivy. The rest of the structure had long since rotted away.

  “Where are we going?” Neoma asked as the road climbed, curling its way up a long hill. When she looked back over her shoulder, nothing but trees and shadow lay behind them.

  “Nequalamy Point,” Gabe answered, his tone flat and his sideways glance raking over her. “The kids call it Neckin’ Me Point. It’s where local teens go to make out.”

  For the second time that morning, Neoma found it hard to breathe. He couldn’t possibly want to bring her up here for that. Her hands locked together in her lap, her fingers twisting together as she fought to keep from fidgeting. “W-why are we going up here?”

  Her heart gave an odd little spasm when he looked at her again, one eyebrow arching before his mouth split into a lazy grin. He shook his head, then laughed—something that could so easily have sounded mean.

  “Really?” he asked, eyeing her periodically between driving the mountain curves. “That’s where your mind went? Not to: Is he going to kill me and bury me out where no one will ever find me? But: Let’s put the seats back and see if he still remembers how to juggle his way around a girl, a steering wheel and a stick shift?”

  Her face burned. “Why would you take me up here, then?”

  Chuckling, he shook his head again. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

  The heavy growth of trees ahead broke open and the road leveled out onto a grassy plateau. Once upon a time, this had been the site of a drive-in movie theater, with the frame of a big screen still resting against a backwash of evergreens. The screen itself was gone, a casualty of vandals and past windstorms. The graveled parking lot was overgrown with weeds, with a handful of old speaker posts rusting in neatly measured spaces amongst them. The ruin of an old plywood concession stand and a separate bathroom no bigger than an outhouse still stood.

  She picked nervously at the knees of her jeans. “No really, why are we here?”

  “So suspicious.” Bumping the door open with his shoulder, Gabe shut off the car and pulled the key from the ignition. “Get out.”

  He was removing the steering wheel and stick shift from the juggling equation, but he still had her. And yet, as she watched him walk around to the back of the car, somehow she just couldn’t believe he had necking in mind. He stopped at the trunk and then simply stood there, bouncing the keys in his hand while he waited for her to make a decision. She looked around the abandoned lot. She didn’t want to get out. It was miles back to town and all she could think of, once she’d discarded his murderous jest, was that he was going to leave her here. He might want only to talk, but if so, why bring her all the way out here? They could just as easily have sat in the car outside his office or gone home.

  Gabe knocked on the hood, then beckoned for her to join him. She really, really didn’t want to get out of the car. Unbuckling her seatbelt, Neoma did anyway. Arms folded tight across her stomach, she headed back to meet him at the taillights.

  “Head’s up.”

  When he threw the keys, Neoma caught them out of sheer reflex and then stood, staring at them in the palm of her hand as if he’d thrown her a ring of cockroaches. “What are you doing?”

  Gabe moved in closer, his crooked smile as warm as the sunshine beating down through gaps in the evergreens above. “What do you think I’m doing?” His honeyed voice made her shiver, especially when he said her name, slow and sweet, like a caress to her ear. “Get back in the car, Neoma. I’m going to teach you how to drive.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Right pedal is gas, middle is brake,” Gabe said for the umpteenth time.

  “Left is clutch,” Neoma finished for him, but she still killed the car when she shoved it out of first gear. The red Mustang jerked to a ragged stop, then died. Swearing under her breath, she slapped the steering wheel with both hands, then sighed. Heat burned her face. She already knew what he was going to say.

  “Listen to the car.” Laid back in the passenger seat, Gabe was like someone she didn’t know. Gone was the angry man who had Claimed her only because he had to. In his place, was a fount of seemingly unending patience. “When you hear the engine start to struggle, hit the clutch, the gas and then shift. It’s all about getting a feel for the car.”

  She could say that along with him too, but she didn’t. She simply started the car up again. She hated the rumbling sputter that brought the engine back to life. She hated the inept feeling that had, over the last hour, crept into every pocket of her being, and she absolutely hated that every breath she took came laden with Gabe’s scent. He smelled good. No person should smell as good as Gabe did. Maybe if she hadn’t been alone for so long, it wouldn’t have affected her like this. Maybe if she hadn’t spent that night with Wayman, feelings long buried inside her never would have been re-awakened.

  “One more time,” Gabe said, and she shifted into first. “Easy does it.”

  ‘Easy does it’ got them two-thirds of the way to the concession stand, where shifting from first to second gear killed them again. Growling, Neoma smacked the steering wheel twice more. Gabe made this look so easy, but so far, she’d tore up the gravel, flattened a lot of grass, come within two inches of backing into the men’s side of the bathroom, and almost sideswiped an old speaker post when she hit the gas instead of the brakes. That was the only time Gabe took his hand off his knee, grabbed the dash to brace himself and held his breath.

  “Let’s stay out of the grass for now,” was all he’d said back then. He’d said it calmly, without a trace of censure, as if he taught terrible drivers how to work a manual transmission all the time. Maybe he did, but it didn’t make Neoma feel any better about her recurring failure. She just wasn’t getting this.

  “You’re doing fine,” Gabe told her.

  But she wasn’t, and she knew it. She looked out over the hood, then into the rearview mirror. “Have I set the grass on fire? I smell burning.”

  “I think that’s my clutch.”

  That was also the last straw. Stopping the car, Neoma yanked her seatbelt off and got out. She walked away, rubbing her face with both hands, but the burning embarrassment wasn’t so easily dispelled. Neither was Gabe’s scent. It followed her. With her back to the car and her nerves fraying, she didn’t realize Gabe was behind her until he touched her shoulder.

  “You didn’t do badly,” he said.

  She almost laughed at him. “I destroyed your car!”

  “You burned the clutch. Don’t be melodramatic.”

  Now she did laugh. Not because she found it funny, but because her pulse was jumping and her chest felt tight. And she didn’t like the fact that she couldn’t get his smell out of her nose. She didn’t know how to deal with non-angry Gabe. Not that she wanted angry back again, but at least if he was mad at her, then she wouldn’t run the mistake of thinking they were friends.

  She thrust his keys at him, twice because he wouldn’t accept them the first time. And when he finally did take them, his fingers brushed hers, creating a sensation so electrifying that Neoma jerked away before the sparking awareness that raced up her arm could spread any further than her shoulder. She swiped her hand against her jeans, but the feeling refused to be wiped away.

  Gabe drove her back to Hollow Hills. Neither made any effort at conversation apart from the one time midway down the hill when, while shifting gears, he observed, “Yup, the clutch is definitely slipping.”

  “Sorry,” she said, knowing she ought to say something. It wasn’t the greatest exchange, but Gabe only shrugged. She thought he would take her home, but as they passed the hay and feed store, he pulled into the parking lot instead. The thought of having to face another scene like the one with Norma at the grocery store curdled her insides. “Do I have
to go in?”

  “Nope,” Gabe said, parking in the shade of the building. He took the keys with him when he got out. The car rocked a little when he shut the door. “Be right back.”

  Neoma followed the slow saunter of his hips all the way to the entrance. He had an alpha’s walk—calm and confident, every step made with the quiet pride of a man comfortable with who and what he was. She envied that. She’d never had a walk like that.

  A truck pulled into the space beside them and, already hypersensitive to the looks she was getting from the other vehicle’s occupants, Neoma quickly turned her head. Sure enough, after only a few seconds, the truck reversed back out of the space and moved to the far side of the parking lot. Eventually, two men got out and headed inside. Blood pounded at her temples and her face grew hot. Neither said a word that she could hear, but she kept her eyes down until both vanished into the store. A few minutes later, Gabe exited with three identical boxes of clutch replacement parts.

  Popping open the driver’s side door, he dumped the parts into the backseat. “That should get us through to the weekend,” he joked as he got in.

  “And when I burn through all of those?” she tried to joke back. She wasn’t as good at it as he was. Instead of lighthearted, it came out sounding flat and bitchy. It was a fragile moment for humor between them, and like the car, she had killed it.

  “You need to know how to drive, Neoma.” Gabe slipped the key into the ignition and started the engine. “You may not have noticed, but Hollow Hills doesn’t have much of a commerce district. Most of what we need, we get from Grady.” Backing out of the parking space, he shot her a pointed look. “That’s a long walk. What if you have to take Scotty to the doctor? Even at the height of tourist season, we don’t have a bus route and we don’t have cabs. Hell, Grady doesn’t have cabs either. I’m sure in Scullamy you had someone you could call, but who can you call for help here? I’m not trying to scare you. I just want you to consider it.”