by Amity Hope
“Sir?” Gabe said, knocking as he walked in.
His father motioned him to his desk.
“Rafe tells me things are going extraordinarily well.”
“They are, sir. What is our next step?” Gabe asked. He hoped he sounded as business like as he intended. As if his only intention was to carry out the plan to appease his father.
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that yet.” His father’s eyes were cold on him, appraising, assessing everything from his breath to his mood to possibly even his thoughts.
Thoughts that Gabe tried to guard.
“I feel I could do a better job if I knew what end result we are looking for,” he carefully told his father. This might be his only opportunity to throw the question out there. He hoped he sounded humble, as if he only wanted to work harder at pleasing this man.
“Is that why you are not doing your job as well as you should be?” he asked, turning the question around on Gabe. “Are you implying that I have not given you enough information to do your job well? Because I am aware that Rafe has compiled a rather extensive file on the girl, to help you along. And yet, you still seem to be fumbling.”
“Fumbling? Sir? I thought you said Rafe reported things were going extraordinarily well?” Gabe asked. He felt his heart give a fearful jolt in his chest. Not only had he lost his one chance at getting an answer but his father was displeased.
Perhaps he had found out that he and Ava had fought that morning. No, it wasn’t even a fight. It was a disagreement, at best. But how could he know that? This conversation was quickly spinning out of Gabe’s control. He tried to mentally brace himself for the impact of h ke i. But how is mistake.
“It has come to my attention that our girl is singing a solo tomorrow. Now, I understand a young lady might not necessarily invite a young man to church,” he said in a voice that was as slick and slimy as an oil spill. “But given the circumstances, a solo, I am disappointed that you were not invited.”
Gabe pushed down the knot of dread. So it wasn’t the events of the morning. But how did his father know about her solo? Did he know that Ava had invited him, or only that she was singing? Did he know that his son had turned down her offer? Was this just a test? Which begged another question…Just how closely was Rafe still watching Ava? Had he carelessly assumed that because he and Ava appeared closer, that Rafe would have backed off? Feeling his part was done?
“If you prefer to remain mute, I could arrange to make that a permanent condition,” his father threatened. Gabe knew it was not an idle threat. He was rather attached to his tongue and would prefer not to part with it.
“I’m sorry, sir. She did invite me.”
“Splendid!” he cried as he jumped up from his desk.
“I…I declined.” Gabe worked to keep his voice even, tried to keep his posture from looking too defiant. His heart rattled around in his chest. Not for the first time, he wondered if his father was capable of hearing the commotion it made. He waited with forced patience for his father to go on.
The jovial smirk had vanished. “Then, I suggest you un-decline.”
“But…sir? A church? She’s singing in a church!”
“Yes,” he said cruelly. “I know.”
Gabe was dumbfounded. Arguing with his father was never wise. It never, ever had an encouraging outcome. He did not mean to blurt the words, “There is no way—”
He nearly tumbled to the floor with the agony of his lungs tightly constricting. His father had clenched his hand into a fist, pulling every last molecule of air out of his son’s lungs as he did so.
Gabe staggered, stumbling into his father’s desk, bracing himself while fighting valiantly not to fall flat on the floor. His father rotated his fist and Gabe felt his lungs twisting inside of his chest, tearing away. He would be gasping in agony if he were allowed to breathe. His father’s office began to blur, swirling into curious shades of gray and green. He fell to his knees and his father chuckled mirthlessly. With the very last ounce of strength he had, he managed to nod his head.
“I thought so,” his father replied. He came around the side of the desk, smacking Gabe roughly on the back, knocking out the bre kg on>
Chapter 15
“Gabe! You came!” Ava cried as she ran down the sidewalk to greet him. She flung her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. Not trusting himself to speak last night, he had sent her a text, telling her he was too busy to talk. He had apologized for his behavior and told her he would see her in the morning. He could tell by the look on her face that she had not been sure he would follow through.
He looked around nervously. He did not want to have to face Pastor St. Clair. It was bad enough to see the curious glances as people made their way from the parking lot to the church. Ava didn’t seem to notice as she disentangled herself and led Gabe down the sidewalk.
He paused momentarily before entering, looking to the sky above, expecting a great bolt of lightning to strike him dead where he stood. When that didn’t happen he turned his attention to the ground beneath his feet, nearly expecting it to open up and swallow him whole.
What he was about to do was all kinds of unnatural. He was breaking the rules on both ends and somehow, someway, he knew he was going to pay for this.
When Ava held out her hand, he took it, holding it tightly as she towed him forward. He felt as though she was navigating their way through a minefield, not simply a church filled with parishioners. As she pulled him over the threshold that led into the church, the air hit him like the back draft from an oven door. The impact on his skin was intense but bearable. His first breath was more of a challenge—choked ng on> been su—as the air scorched a path down his throat and filled his lungs. The second breath he took was more controlled as he concentrated on the oxygen it contained even as he tried to mentally separate it from the noxious content that permeated it. It was easier, that second breathe. As was the third and all subsequent breaths that followed as he allowed himself to push through the unpleasantness that he had been trained to fight.
He was infinitely grateful to Ava when she pulled him into a private alcove.
“I know you’re not comfortable being here,” she quietly admitted. “And that just makes me appreciate that fact that you did come, that much more.”
He tried to give her a smile but was sure it came out barely a grimace. “I’m fine,” he lied.
She gave him a sympathetic look. “You don’t look fine. Goodness, Gabe. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were allergic to church or something.”
Having an allergy sounded pleasant.
The ‘or something’ was not.
“It’s just…well, yeah. I’m uncomfortable. I don’t really belong here,” he reminded her.
“Don’t be silly. Of course you do. And you are definitely welcome here.”
His body was arguing to the contrary but there was no way he was going to let Ava know that.
She gave him a shy smile and slid her arms around his neck as she hugged him tightly. “I’m just so happy to see you.”
That hug almost made it worth it. If he could just stay where he was, with Ava’s arms around him, his attention wrapped around her, he thought the whole ordeal may not be so bad.
But she couldn’t stay with him. She had her solo to sing. Her solo being the sole reason he was here.
“Um,” she said as she slowly disentangled herself from him again. His hands lingered around her waist as if he was afraid to be on his own. “Are you going to be okay? I’ve got to go. Or I could walk you in, if you want?”
He shrugged as he finally, hesitantly let her step away. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just probably sit in the back?”
“Of course,” she said with a nod. She glanced around to be sure no one was looking and then placed a chaste kiss on his cheek. “See you in a little while.”
She darted out of the alcove and Gabe walked back to the main entry. The crowd had thinned as everyone had trickled into the sanctuar
y. Gabe, fighting not to take a deep breath—because it would be anything but calming—followed the last of the stragglers in through the double doors.
The buzzing in his marrow began immediately. As if his body had tumbled into an electrical outlet. He looked to his left to find the last pew was filled with a couple and their toddler. The last pew on the right was open. He slowly made his way to it and sat. He took a few careful, steady breaths.
Ava’s father came in and greeted his congregation. He dove into a litany of announcements which Gabe did not hear one word of.
I can do this, he told himself with annoyance. He’d managed his way through worse. So much worse. He knew Ava’s solo was at the beginning so at least there was a limit to his torment. Unlike other times, at his father’s hand, when torment could last for days without end. With that realization firmly lodging itself in his head, he realized that this, this in comparison would be quite tolerable.
Until the organ pounded its way into the opening lines of a hymn and Gabe felt as though God himself had slammed an explosive rod of lightening down his spine. He nearly bit his own tongue off trying not to cry out in pain and shock. In his haze, he noticed everyone else was on their feet. He knew he might stand out but he couldn’t, at that moment, rise to his feet if his very life had depended upon it. Instead, he sat—relieved he had managed to find a seat in the last row—and tried to regain his composure.
He closed his eyes to block out the religious depictions of the stained glass windows, the artwork and the tapestries with Bible verses splashed across them. He thought of Ava. The smile she’d had on her face when she’d spotted him. Not just any smile but a smile so radiant she appeared to be glowing with happiness. That smile had been for him.
That smile had made his misery worth it.
With that thought, for the first time in his life, he realized what Ava had meant when she had told him at the carnival that doing something for others could be the best feeling in the world.
His eyes flew open with this sudden epiphany.
He nearly screamed out in terror.
Grier was staring down at him in that disturbing way that only she possessed.
“Stand,” she ordered. She handed him an open hymnal as he stood.
He tried not to drop it as the pain of a thousand little sparks lighting up at once shot out from the book, biting at his fingers.
To his horror, Grier took her place beside him.
But for once, finally, for once, fate was on his side. The song came to an end before Grier had her own hymnal out. Pastor St. Clair asked the congregation to be seated. Without looking Grier’s way, he sat.
He had the wall on his right, Grier’s menacing body on his left. Unsure of what to do with the offensive hymnal, he gingerly placed it on his lap.
Ava was standing at the front of the church, still glowing with the vital radiance that was hers and hers alone. Across the pews, across rows and rows of people, her eyes found his and held them.
He felt…His mind had to search for the correct word. It was a word nearly foreign to him. He finally found it.
Comforted.
Another first for him. No one had ever once, in the life of Gabriel Castille, made him feel comforted.
When she began to sing he knew without a doubt that hers was the voice of an angel.
When my sins become too much to bear
It is my burden that you share
He knew this about Ava because he felt rivulets of sweat begin to run down his back, scorching a trail down his skin. He began burning from the inside out. The very marrow of his bones began to vibrate and hum, grating along his nerve endings in excruciating protest.
A droplet of sweat raced down his cheek and landed with a grotesque splat against the hymnal.
Grier let out a grunt of disgust and handed him a tissue. He took it, barely looking her way. Before he could dab his face with it she let out another contemptuous grunt, louder than the last. Pulling it from his hand, she dabbed the book in his lap, clearing it of the offensive puddle he had inadvertently made. When she was finished to her satisfaction she handed what was left of the crumpled up wad to him. He dragged it, quite ineffectively, across his face.
When the devil tries to lead me away
Some days it’s a struggle not to stray
You have no idea, Gabe thought grimly. He looked down at the hands clenched tightly in his lap. His knuckles were white. His fingernails, though short, were piercing neat, bloody little crescents into his palms.
A monstrous picture hung directly behind Ava. As if in direct offense to his senses his eyes burned as he could not help but see the picture of her crucified savior looming over her, framing her.
When I am feeling beaten down and weak
It is your strength that I will seek
The congregation was a blur of colors as he looked across the ocean of people. He let Ava’s face and her voice be his anchor. It held him in the present and did not allow him to fall into the blackness that was swirling around him as his body rebelled against being in this place.
With a troubling realization, as her voice—it was such a beautiful voice—reverberated through the church, surrounding him, comforting him, he realized that, like the words of the song, he sought out the strength that he found simply from being in her presence.
“Gabriel!” Grier hissed from beside him. She held up a tissue that she had procured from who knew where and swabbed it with a look of ultimate loathing across his ear. It came away sodden with blood. Reflexively, he swiped the back of his hand against his other ear and that, too, was laden with crimson.
I will always feel you here with me
Because your death has set me free
The crowd stood as they clapped for Ava. With a surprisingly painful grip on his wrist, Grier pulled Gabe to his feet and led him out of the sanctuary.
“What are you doing? This is disgusting!” Grier hissed as she motioned to what he could only assume was blood now trickling down his neck and settling into the collar of his dress shirt.
He didn’t see the point in telling her that he hadn’t planned for it to happen.
“The bathroom is that way,” she said, her arm flinging out to point down a hallway. “Go wash yourself. Ava does not need to know that her singing made your ears bleed.”
She said this as if Gabe actually had any control over the matter. He did what he was told, stumbling down the corridor to the appropriate restroom. He slid through the door just as the congregation above erupted into a boisterous hymn. His psyche swirled with the joyful emotion of it. He lunged toward the toilet, fighting against the intense vertigo as the nausea overwhelmed him.
“Are you vomiting?” Grier shrieked as she burst in. “You are,” she announced, quite unnecessarily.
“Can you leave me alone for two seconds?” Gabe asked through his s thp> clenched jaw. He noted that his own voice sounded foreign to him. There was a pleading quality to it and he did not appreciate that. Nor did he appreciate the fact that he had to hold on to the toilet for support. He managed to reach up and flush it before settling back on his knees once more.
“Apparently I cannot leave you alone,” Grier said angrily. “At this point, I do not trust you to not spontaneously combust and set the church ablaze.”
Gabe groaned both in misery and with the realization that Grier could, quite possibly, be right.
She handed him a fistful of paper towels she had wet in the sink. “You are capable of getting yourself home?” Grier demanded.
Gabe wasn’t entirely sure if Grier was asking him, or telling him. He wasn’t sure he could get himself home. He also wasn’t sure that Grier really cared.
“Yes,” he answered as he began scrubbing his ears and neck clear of blood. The vileness that had been welling up inside him seemed to have been purged. For the moment. He could feel it slowly ebbing again. He knew if he were to leave, now was the time. He managed to get to his feet. He tossed the wadded up, bloody mess into th
e trash, flushed the toilet again for good measure, then used one of the ridiculously small paper cups near the sink to rinse his mouth out with water.
Taking a deep breath, working hard to pretend to ignore Grier, he sidestepped her and made his way into the hallway. He honed all of his attention on the door that led outside, to untainted air, to a street that was uncontaminated with the sound of religious praise.
He stumbled into the sunshine and it, too, seemed to remind him that he did not belong here. In fact, he did not seem to belong anywhere.
He feared his father would be waiting for him at home. As a precaution, he loaded up on several bags of fast food and headed out of town.
After an experience like he’d just had, he found himself ravenous. He figured those particular tortures ravaged his insides, kicking his metabolism into overdrive as his body healed itself.
He finished off his third double cheeseburger and chased it down with his second chocolate shake. He wasn’t full, but he was better, he realized as he pulled out another packet of fries. His stomach had settled. The quaking in his bones had ceased. His hands no longer shook.
But his heart felt…not right.
It wasn’t painful, it was just bizarre.
It worried him.
He began to wonder if the church had been too much.
He beg">Of all the things his father had done, he’d never forced him into a church before.
Had it been so much that it permanently damaged him?
He finished off the last of the fries and started in on one of the apple pies. He cursed himself for not getting a container of milk, eventually deciding the vanilla shake was a reasonable substitute.
He wasn’t sure where he was going. Or rather, he wasn’t sure he was actually going anywhere. Not anywhere in particular anyway. Driving gave him time to think, which he desperately needed to do.
His phone buzzed, announcing an incoming text.
Are you okay?
His already erratic heart seemed to swirl in his chest. Not painfully, just…oddly. He tossed the phone into the empty passenger seat.