Gabrielle

by Lucy Kevin

  I had to shake my head, had to tell him, “No, Bradley, you know it wasn’t.”

  He lifted my hands to his mouth, placed a kiss across each of my knuckles.

  I couldn’t breathe as I held still, as his lips softly brushed across my skin.

  Finally, he said, “It was.”

  My heart fluttered uncontrollably in my chest.

  “You’re smart. Beautiful. Talented. And so damned sweet I can hardly believe my luck whenever I’m with you.”

  He was saying everything I’d ever wanted a guy to say to me. Only, I knew Bradley’s situation, that he needed to marry a woman he didn’t love to save his family. He had said how impossible it would be for him to get out of it. I opened my mouth to say this to him, but he put one finger across my lips before I could.

  “I know you don’t want to be a courtesan. I don’t want you to be one, either. But I can’t stand the thought of you being with…”

  He obviously couldn’t bring himself to say Dylan’s name.

  “Being with someone else. Someone who isn’t me. Someone who doesn’t know what you’re going through, how strong you are, how special you are.”

  From anyone else’s mouth, those words might have sounded like a script. But I knew Bradley genuinely felt, truly believed everything he was saying to me.

  I knew it because I always felt special with him. Strong. And secure in the knowledge that I could be honest with him about absolutely everything. Especially my family’s dirty little secrets.

  This was exactly why I had no choice, no other option but to hold up the truth of his situation and put it firmly between us.

  “I know how much you love your family, Bradley.”

  “You know I do, Gabrielle, but—”

  This time I was the one putting my finger across his lips. “You would never forgive yourself if something happened to your brothers and sisters.” I shook my head. “I would never forgive myself either.” I barreled on with, “I hate what you have to do to save them. I hate that you have to be the one to do it.”

  “Everything has changed, Gabrielle. I never imagined you.”

  “But apart from me, nothing else has changed,” I reminded him. “If I had money, I’d give it to you.”

  I didn’t have any money, though, and it didn’t seem that my grandmother had much left, either. Every day I worried a little bit more about it. And wondered if there would come a day in the future when I would have to sell myself to the highest bidder, just as Bradley had.

  Despite my reminders as to the bleak truth of his situation—and my own—that determination I’d seen on Bradley’s face when I’d first seen him standing in my doorway had not only not disappeared, but it had intensified.

  “I’ll find another way to get the money, Gabrielle. I’ll get a job. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  I hated having to ask him, “How much money does your father owe?”

  His eyes clouded over. “More than you could ever possibly imagine.”

  Even though we’d never talked dollar figures before, I’d known this all along, hadn’t I?

  That was why I’d made Bradley tell me.

  There was no point living a pipe dream. No point in praying for something impossible.

  He didn’t say anything more and when he didn’t continue his arguments for why I should choose him, I knew exactly what was coming next.

  The only argument he had left.

  Perhaps the strongest one of all, given our connection.

  Seconds later his warm hands were on either side of my face, the tips of his fingers were threading through my hair as he raised up on his knees high enough that his face was right at the same level as mine.

  “I want to kiss you, Gabrielle.”

  Oh God. Why did he have to say that? Why did he even have to think it?

  There was right.

  There was wrong.

  And then, in the thick of it all, there was Bradley.

  His mouth was on mine a second later, desperate and so sweet that I couldn’t stop him, couldn’t push him away.

  Not when I suddenly had to face how much I’d wanted this kiss.

  Bradley’s kiss.

  Before I was ready for it to end, he pulled away from me. His eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them before. “You’re so beautiful, Gabrielle. So incredibly beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful, too.” I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. “But I—”

  At my obvious confusion, he stood up and let go of me. As he moved toward the door, my heart broke a little bit more with every step he took.

  Away from me.

  I couldn’t stand to see him go, to know that I’d been the one to send him away, and had to scrunch my eyes shut to try and stop the pain.

  Finally, the footsteps stopped and I thought he was gone. That it was safe for me to open my eyes again.

  But when I looked up, he was standing in the doorway, his brown eyes almost black now.

  “You don’t have to agree to anything now. You don’t have to agree to forever. Please, Gabrielle, just give me a chance. That’s all I’m asking for. A chance.” He paused. “You know I’m falling in love with you.”

  I felt like an emotional hurricane had come into my bedroom and ripped through my chest, holding my heart hostage.

  “Bradley.” His name was a whisper of need. Of confusion. Of longing. Of self-hatred.

  And emotion I couldn’t hold back. Not any more. Not now that we’d finally kissed and I knew his kisses to be just as true, just as real, just as moving as Dylan’s.

  “You know In fell for you practically from the first moment I set eyes on you. I came here planning not to leave until you made your choice. It’s killing me to give you space to make your decision.” He closed his eyes, looking like a man warring with himself. “I know none of this is fair to you. I know I’m asking for too much. I also know that I’m not going to stop feeling like this about you.”

  A moment later he was gone.

  I knew there was no point in trying to dry my tears, not when they would just keep falling. The melody that I had been picking out was there at my fingertips again, almost as if the past minutes with Bradley had never happened.

  But they had.

  I don’t know how long I sat there staring out of my bedroom window. Seconds. Minutes.

  Hours. And all the while his words, his kiss, played on repeat in my head, my heart, my lips. I stared down at my hands, my knees, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary problem. Not just two boys who had lodged themselves in my heart…but an ancient legacy that I couldn’t decipher.

  I didn’t want to believe the curse was real, yet how could I discount what had happened to my mother and father? How could I risk Dylan’s future by pulling him into a curse that might or might not be true? But at the same time, how could I possibly give myself to Bradley and having no more worth than a mistress?

  As the thoughts ran around and around in my head, lights were turning off and on across the city. People were living lives that had nothing to do with mine, millions of strangers who had no idea that courtesans were alive and well in the twenty-first century.

  And that the last girl they’d ever expect to be one of them was teetering on the edge of personal implosion.

  It’s been a long night so far

  I’m watching the lights come over the hills

  And I haven’t laughed once at myself

  The moon is falling down

  I’m watching my hands

  I’m watching my knees

  Thinking I’m stronger than this

  But if I’d been strong, I wouldn’t have let Bradley kiss me.

  And I wouldn’t have wanted him to keep kissing me.

  You are overtaking

  You are quickly

  Breaking me

  Breaking me

  I’d never worried about being part of a crowd. I’d never longed to be average. But, suddenly, I wished for everything to be simpler. To be nothin
g more than a seventeen-year-old girl who couldn’t decide which shade of nail polish to wear out on a Saturday night.

  Instead, I was sitting at my piano in the wake of Bradley’s kiss, feeling like the butt of a joke that should never have been told in the first place.

  Everyone knows the joke

  But I missed out

  I heard wrong

  And now I’m watching the lights come over the hills You are overtaking

  You are quickly

  Breaking me

  Breaking me

  Breaking me

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWzGEJNSldA

  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/breaking-me/id427761572

  BREAKING ME by Gabrielle LeGrande / Lucy Kevin © 2011

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Night fell and I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t.

  I had to go find Dylan. I had to talk with him again. Things had been so weird with us after bumping into Bradley and now that Bradley and I had kissed, I felt so distant from Dylan.

  He’d never told me where he lived, so I texted him. Once. Then twice. Then again.

  Asking him to please talk to me.

  When he didn’t answer my texts, I decided to call. It was after midnight, but I didn’t care anymore if I woke him or his mother up.

  No answer.

  I got out of bed and put on my jeans and a sweatshirt. I’d never snuck out of my grandmother’s house before, had never thought I’d need to.

  I knew what she’d say if I told her I needed to go find Dylan. She’d tell me not to go. And she’d worry herself sick until I came back. Heck, knowing my grandmother, she’d probably throw on a jacket and come with me.

  The thought brought an unexpected smile to my lips as I tiptoed down the stairs. I’d never really paid that much attention to which steps squeaked. Tonight it seemed like every single one was as loud as a gunshot. Finally, I made it to the bottom of the stairs. I almost went for the front door, but some devious part of my brain I’d never really had to tap into before told me it would be safer to go out the back door off the kitchen, that it was on the opposite corner of the house from my grandmother’s bedroom.

  Guilt knocked around inside me, filling me up, twisting my stomach.

  I hated the way things had been between me and my grandmother, that they had come to the point where I was actually sneaking out instead of telling her where I was going and knowing she would trust me. Hadn’t I promised her that there would be no more secrets?

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave without at least letting her know I was gone. I made myself go back to the kitchen, to write a note that said, “I had to go out to see Dylan. I know it’s late. But if you get this note, I’m okay. And I have my cell on. I love you.”

  Going back up the stairs, not letting myself try to avoid the cracking, twanging steps, I opened her bedroom door to see if she was asleep.

  She looked so peaceful lying there, all of her worries erased for a few short hours. I couldn’t wake her up. Tiptoeing over to her bed, I put the note on the pillow beside her.

  *

  Thirty minutes later, I knocked on the dark red door.

  “Who out there?”

  “Gabrielle.” No, that wasn’t what Dylan called me. “Gabi,” I said again. “Dylan’s friend from school.”

  What was wrong with me? One kiss with Bradley shouldn’t have me so unsure about my relationship with Dylan. Should it?

  “Dylan’s girlfriend.”

  When the door didn’t open, I added, “I’ve been here with him before. He made me a milkshake.”

  It was so cold out on the step and the wind had picked up to the point where I was pretty much shivering uncontrollably. I was about to give up, was about to turn around and go home and hope that I heard from Dylan in the morning, when there was a soft click.

  The man was just as scary and imposing as he’d looked the first time I met him. On top of that, I’d clearly woken him up and he didn’t look at all pleased about it.

  “I really need to talk to Dylan, but he’s not answering his phone. Can you tell me where he lives?”

  His gruff expression softened. “You really like him, don’t you?”

  I was caught off guard by the question, by how sensitively it was asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. Very much.”

  So much that I couldn’t stand the thought of what I’d done with Bradley. So much that I hated myself for kissing another guy…and enjoying it. So much that I knew I had to come completely clean with Dylan tonight. Right this second, before things with Bradley could go any further.

  “He’s not at home. He’s not here either.”

  I frowned. “He’s not?”

  “They had to go away for a little while. Wait here a second.”

  Oh no. The only reason Dylan and his mom would have to go away was if they were in trouble again, right? I knew his dad had been trying to come back into their lives, but when Dylan didn’t say anything else about it recently, I’d figured he’d been dealt with. That the police had done whatever police did with abusive stalkers.

  But wasn’t it the truth that he’d just blown me off whenever I tried to ask him about it, if everything was okay?

  And wasn’t it also the truth that I hadn’t exactly pushed him to tell me more?

  Just like he hadn’t pushed me to talk about my own problems.

  Both of us had been happier pretending nothing was wrong. But if we’d really cared about each other, wouldn’t we have tried harder to help each other?

  Finally, I had to ask myself the big question that I’d been going out of my way to avoid: Had I been forcing things from the start because I’d wanted so badly to be with Dylan? Had I been wrong to try and make the two of us fit together? Was someone like Bradley, someone with his background, a better fit for me?

  The man came back in the room. “He left this. For you.”

  It was a legal sized envelope with my name and address on it.

  I felt like crying and the man must have realized it because he said, “Let me know when you’re ready to leave and I’ll let you out.”

  He disappeared, leaving me alone in the front room. I sat down on the nearest chair and stared at the envelope for a few moments, before sliding my finger under the flap and ripping it open.

  He’d written me a letter and I pulled it out, my hands shaking.

  Gabi,

  I wish I could have told you I was going. They won’t let me. They won’t let us tell anyone.

  Just in case.

  But I couldn’t just go like I have before. Not after the way things have been with us.

  We didn’t talk about it, but I know things were still weird after we practiced your songs today. They were great songs, by the way. I wish I could have heard the lyrics, but I could almost hear them, you know? In the melody. They were there, Gabi.

  But what I really want to say is that I’m sorry. For everything I’ve done. For the way I acted at the coffee shop. For everything I’ve said to you about your mom and grandma.

  I shouldn’t have said any of that. I should have only said one thing.

  I love you.

  You’re the only girl who has ever really meant anything to me. You’re the only girl who has ever cared about me.

  Wait for me to come back. Give me a chance to not fuck this up.

  I can’t tell you when I’ll be able to come back. I don’t even know where I’ll be coming from. But knowing you’re there waiting for me—at least, that you might be there—will be the only thing helping me keep it together.

  Love,

  Dylan

  The words were blurring behind my tears and my hands were shaking hard enough that I dropped the envelope on the ground.

  Two concert tickets fell out. They were the tickets to the Metallica concert.

  I bent down to pick up the tickets and put them back in the envelope. As I was folding his letter up, I realized Dylan had written a PS on the back.

  Maybe
Missy could go with you to the concert?

  He’d wanted me to go, but he’d clearly been worried about me taking Bradley with me as my guest, so he’d added in that note about Missy.

  The bouncer guy came back in the room and I stood up.

  “Thanks for giving me the letter.”

  I tucked the letter and tickets into the inside pocket of my coat. I was trying to act like I hadn’t just been sitting there crying. What did I have to cry about compared to the kids that were coming into this place every day?

  “Can I give you my phone number just in case you hear anything from Dylan?”

  The man just shook his head. “Can’t do that.” I could tell he felt bad about it as he added,

  “You gonna get home all right?”

  I had to swallow past the huge lump in my throat. “I’ll be fine.”

  At least I hoped I would be.

  One day.

  *

  Before I could go home, I had one more late-night visit to make.

  I knew where Bradley lived. He’d told me several times. I knew he’d hoped for this visit long before now.

  He just hadn’t hoped for it under these circumstances.

  Hoping he had his cell nearby, knowing this would be a seriously awkward way to meet his parents or see his sisters again, I texted him.

  I’m outside.

  I couldn’t believe how fast he came out.

  “Gabrielle.”

  I could see that he wanted to put his arms around me. And I wanted it, too. Which was why I made it a point of taking a step back just as he approached.

  “Weren’t you sleeping?”

  He stopped a foot in front of me, shoving his outstretched hands into his pockets. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me either. I went to see Dylan,” I told him.

  His eyes flashed with something that could have been disappointment…or jealousy.

  “How’d that go?”

  “It’s not fair for you to be angry,” I told him. “You knew all along that I was with him.”

  “Then why are you here now?”

  He’d never been like this before today. He’d always accepted his role in my life, as a friend who might have been so much more if circumstances were different. Which they weren’t.

  “He’s gone, Bradley.”

  He raised his eyebrows in question. “You dumped him tonight?’