by Mia Sheridan
“I live a couple of miles from the quarry where I work.”
“And what exactly does one do at a quarry?”
“We sell slabs of granite for various uses—countertops, memorials, stairs, all kinds of things. But I’m a stone sculptor. I use a few different materials—marble mostly—to create pieces for customers.”
I paused, surprised, and not sure why. He was an artist? Well yes, I could see it now. Quiet, intense, steady. I supposed you’d have to be all those things to chip away at rock all day—not that I really had any earthly idea how one went about creating things from marble or any other type of stone. “Interesting.”
I saw him smile slightly from my peripheral vision, but he didn’t respond. We completed the rest of the trip in virtual silence. I watched the scenery go by as we left the town of Havenfield and headed toward Morlea where I knew the quarry—and Gabriel’s home—was.
We turned off the highway and drove through the small downtown, moving toward the heavily wooded outskirts. The trees were still green and lush, the forests thick with summer growth. But fall would be upon us soon, bringing the changing leaves and cooler weather and … what? What would fall bring for me? What was there to look forward to?
Gabriel turned down a paved back road, and then made another turn onto an unpaved road that ended in a driveway leading to an elegant yet rustic home of both wood and stone. A front porch spanned the entire length of the house, a porch swing swaying gently in the breeze.
I swallowed. It was beautiful, the most beautiful home I’d ever seen. “I guess stone sculptors do well for themselves,” I said, not taking my eyes from it.
“I’m glad you like it,” Gabriel said, shutting off his truck and getting out, walking quickly to my side. He opened the door and then paused, a look of mild distress coming over his face. Oh.
“I can … I can try to get out if you just hold my hand,” I said. “Or …”
“No,” he said immediately, an insistent edge to his tone. “No. I’ve got you.” He reached up and supported me as I maneuvered myself out of the truck. I felt dizzy with the pain of my broken ribs, and I had to take a moment to get my bearings.
Gabriel’s arms slipped around me, holding me up, and though his stance felt stiff, his grip was solid, his expression one of resolve, and the lean strength of him gave me comfort. His hazel gaze caught mine, his eyes wide, his jaw set with focus, and I could see the obvious effort he was exerting in being this close to me. Was he holding his breath? It stabbed at my heart, breaking through my own pain. He’d touched me—supported me—because I needed him to. Offered something so very difficult for him.
He reached behind the seat with his other hand and grabbed the hospital crutches. I took them one at a time, situating them so I could walk the short distance to Gabriel’s front door.
He walked slowly beside me and helped me up the two wide steps to his front porch, opening the large wooden door and leading me inside.
I stopped in the foyer, taking a moment to look around. The whole space was wide open, with cathedral ceilings featuring massive, dark wood beams. There was a living room area directly ahead and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace separating what looked to be a kitchen at the back of the house. A set of French doors off the dining room area to the right made the whole space light and airy.
I didn’t think I’d ever been inside such a beautiful home. My entire apartment could fit in the living/dining room area alone. I tried to admire it, to look around at the particulars, but my body hurt more and more by the second. I just wanted to sag down onto something soft.
“Where’s your brother?”
“He’s on a fishing trip.” There was something odd in his tone, but I didn’t attempt to analyze it.
Gabriel led me through the living room to a short hallway on the left and used his foot to nudge open a door. I hobbled behind him, and when he turned, he must have been able to tell by my face that the short journey from the truck to this room had worn me out completely. He guided me quickly to the single bed, made up with what looked to be a handmade quilt, the simple wooden headboard stacked high with pillows, and helped me ease down onto it. I groaned with the movement, my midsection screaming in pain. It didn’t feel as if my lungs had enough room to expand.
“Where are your pain meds?”
“They’re in my purse,” I mumbled, closing my eyes and grimacing again. “I forgot my bag and my purse in the truck.” Shit.
He left the room, and I took the opportunity to glance around groggily. Other than the bed, there was a blue dresser that looked like it might have been in a kid’s room at some point, some sort of superhero sticker on the bottom drawer, a simple wooden bedside table with a reading lamp and a clock on it, and a rocking chair in the corner. There was a door next to the chair that I assumed led to a bathroom.
With the shade on the window closed, the room was cool and comfortable and dim, the ceiling fan whirring softly above the bed, helping to provide a slight breeze. The bedding smelled like fabric softener as if it had very recently been washed. He’d done laundry for me? A small nicety but one I’d never been given by anyone other than my mother, and that was so very long ago. I couldn’t figure out how it made me feel—sort of warm and desperate at the same time.
Gabriel came back a few minutes later with a glass of water and the pills in the palm of his hand. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and I took what he handed me and lay back, praying the meds would kick in shortly. I was suddenly miserable again, hurting, anxious, scared, and dependent on someone in a way I’d promised myself I’d never be dependent on another person again. In a way my very soul revolted against. “Well, here I am,” I mumbled, “under your control just the way you wanted.” When there was only silence, I opened my eyes, squinting at Gabriel through my swollen gaze. The look on his face hit me in the gut. Deep hurt.
“I’d never try to control you.” Oh God. His voice. I could hear the pain. I wanted to turn away, but I didn’t. He paused, even deeper torment skating over his expression. “Someone did that to me once, and I’d never do it to someone else. I only want to help you. If there’s somewhere you’d rather be where you’ll be safe and cared for, tell me and I’ll drive you there myself. I’ll make sure you get there no matter how far away it is. I don’t ever want you to feel like I’m trying to take away your will, Crystal. I couldn’t live with that.”
Crystal. It was the first time he’d called me by that name, and I didn’t like it at all. Especially not now when he’d been nice to me, and I, instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt when he’d shown me nothing except kindness and a generosity I didn’t deserve, had been cruel to him once again. I clenched my eyes shut, ashamed.
I felt the movement of the mattress as he stood, and I opened my eyes. “Eloise.”
He stilled, his hand on the doorknob, unmoving now. He turned to look at me, his expression confused. “What?”
“My name is Eloise.”
He continued staring, the confusion clearing and being replaced by … shock. Because I’d finally told him my name?
“Eloise,” he whispered, tilting his head, his hair falling across his forehead.
I sighed, closing my eyes again. The pain meds were starting to work and I just wanted to sleep, to drift away. “I know it’s old-fashioned, probably not what you expected. I was named after my grandmother. People used to call me Ellie.” A long time ago. “You can call me Ellie if you want.”
There was only silence, and I drifted closer to sleep, finally hearing the click of the door as Gabriel closed it behind him. He’d given me so much, made sacrifices to care for me, and I’d provided nothing in return.
So I’d given him my name.
It was the only thing in the world I had left to offer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Do what you can with what you have, even if it’s not very much at all.
Racer, the Knight of Sparrows
ELLIE
The next week went by in
a blur of sleep, pain, and strange, vivid dreams that caused me to wake gasping and soaked with sweat. I dreamed I was running down a dark alley that kept twisting and turning and growing tighter and tighter until I was forced to slow as I braced my arms on both walls and walked tentatively forward into the black depths. I cried in fear, the walls moving inward even closer, making me feel like they would crush me. I looked over my shoulder but the direction from which I’d come was just as black—seemingly fathomless. I stopped, sinking to the ground and wrapping my arms around my knees as I sobbed in loneliness and terror.
“You’re going the wrong way. You must turn back, sweetness. He’s waiting for you.”
Mama?
“Who’s waiting for me, Mama?”
My eyes snapped open, a desperate plea for her to answer on my lips.
“Shh, it’s just the fever, Ellie.”
Ellie.
My eyes adjusted, the dream dissipating like fog as reality took its place. Just a dream. Just a dream. Gabriel was wiping my forehead with a cool, wet cloth. It felt heavenly. Gabriel. Just like the angel. My bottom lip cracked, and I realized I must have been smiling.
“Here, drink this,” he said, holding the cold rim of a glass against my lips. I raised my head as much as I could and slurped in the ice water. It dribbled down my chin, and Gabriel wiped it away once he’d removed the glass and set it back on the table. “Sleep, love,” he said. “You’re healing.”
Healing, yes. Sleep, love. My eyes slipped closed again, and this time, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I woke again as something pulled tight around my ribs. I looked down blearily and saw male hands on a background of white as if they were a work of art being presented on a perfect canvas. Everything else around me was foggy and faded, and they were the only things I could focus on. Gabriel’s hands. They were incredibly beautiful, and though I was so tired, I couldn’t help but reach out and touch them, to trace the elegant lines of his fingers, to feel the smooth, hard fingernails, to travel back to the golden, scattered hairs on the tops of his tan hands, to run along each vein, each knuckle. They were so still as I explored them, too still, and I realized they must not be real. Gabriel wouldn’t want me to touch him this way. No, just a memory of his hands … just a … My eyes fell closed and I was in darkness once again.
The fever—which Gabriel assured me the doctor had said was normal as long as it didn’t get too high—broke, but right after that, I had a bad reaction to one of my medications. When I vomited repeatedly and felt like my ribs were being squeezed in a medieval torture device, I thought I was going to die.
All through it, Gabriel was there, steady, calm, seemingly unruffled, though I felt his body tense each time he got near me. He was forcing himself to assist me, at least physically, and despite my best efforts to remain unaffected, it made me feel an unfamiliar tenderness toward him.
He made me food and delivered it to me in bed, even spooning it into my mouth a couple of times when all I wanted to do was sleep rather than sit up and eat. He kept in contact with my doctor and made pharmacy runs. He woke me up through the night to take the pills that kept me mostly comfortable, but hazy and out of it. When the sickness had passed, he helped me to the shower, though I locked him out of the room once he’d gotten me situated. I struggled with removing my clothes on my own and putting the plastic cast cover I found waiting on the sink over my cast to keep it dry. He must have asked the hospital for some equipment as well because there was a hospital-issued stool with handles in the shower, making me feel like I was ninety. But in reality, I already felt like I was ninety, with or without the medical shower stool. My soul was as weary as that of a ninety-year-old, and now I had a body to match. Wonderful.
Near the end of the week, Gabriel knocked on my bedroom door to tell me a police detective was there to see me. A brief tremor of fear shot down my spine, but I picked up my crutches and followed Gabriel to the living room, where the detective was waiting. He was the same man who’d come to the hospital to take my statement.
“Detective Blair,” I said hesitantly as I shook his hand.
“Hi, Eloise. You look like you’re healing well.”
I made a noncommittal sound. I hardly thought I looked much different than I had when he saw me last, and I still felt mostly miserable. But at least I wasn’t flat on my back in a hospital bed. That was a small improvement.
“Would you like to sit down?” Gabriel asked, moving toward the couches, his concerned gaze focused on me.
I gave him a wobbly smile and we all took a seat. Detective Blair laced his hands on his lap. “We arrested the three men who assaulted you.”
I blinked in surprise, a trickle of numbness moving through me. I glanced at Gabriel, who was holding himself stiffly, still looking at the detective, seeming as shocked by the news as I was.
“How …?” I asked, my voice sounding hoarse. I cleared my throat.
“One of the men turned himself in and then named the other two.”
“Oh,” I whispered, recalling the hesitance in the black-haired man’s eyes, remembering as he tried to stop them, though not with much force. I had to assume he’d been the one to turn himself in.
“I have Officer Sherman here with me, waiting outside, and he’d like to administer a photo lineup. Is that okay?” I nodded, swallowing, feeling suddenly ill.
“Okay, good. Just one second. Mr. Dalton, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the room with me while Ms. Cates looks at the photos.”
Gabriel gave me a questioning look, but I just nodded at him and watched as the detective went to the front door, where he let in a uniformed police officer. After a quick greeting, Officer Sherman took several photo arrays out of a file and laid them before me individually. I took a deep breath and looked down, my eyes moving from one face to the next.
Guess we’ll just have to take what we want.
Hey, bitch.
“These three,” I breathed, my finger identifying each of them one by one. I felt cold and gripped my icy hands in my lap. I was surprised I’d been able to pick them out so easily. I’d always been good at forgetting the faces of the men I served at the Platinum Pearl. And yet, I could still picture these men clearly. Perhaps it was because the anger they’d inspired—an intensity of which I’d never been able to muster up before—had branded their faces in my brain forever. Or maybe it was because the memory had been very literally beaten into me.
Officer Sherman nodded, picking the pictures back up. “Thank you.”
After the detective and officer had left, Gabriel helped me back to bed, saying softly, “You’re safe.” I realized I was shaking slightly and made an effort to smile and nod. I did feel safe at Gabriel’s house, but it was a reminder that I wouldn’t be there forever.
The next morning, I woke up early, realizing I’d left the shade open the night before. The rising sun was just creeping over the horizon, the room awash in a pale gold hue. I stretched carefully, realizing that, although I was still very sore, it was the first morning I didn’t feel awful. I pulled myself gingerly out of bed, grabbed my crutches, and hobbled to use the bathroom.
After I finished, I brushed my teeth and pulled my hair up into a messy bun. The term messy bun had always been a style choice before; now it was very much a reality. My hair was a complete rat’s nest.
The swelling had gone down on my face, although I still sported several bruises of varying colors. I touched them gingerly, assessing the damage, finally sighing and turning away from the mirror. Not wanting to wake Gabriel, I opened my bedroom door quietly.
As I made my way down the short hallway into the main living area, the rich, delicious smell of coffee hit my nose. I drew in a deep breath. I hadn’t had coffee in a week. I hadn’t had much of a taste for anything specifically except the reduction of my pain. But now, the smell made my mouth water.
The coffeemaker sat on the counter, half-full. I opened the cabinet directly above it and found mugs there, including a
travel cup with a lid. After adding a generous amount of sugar from a dish on the counter, I tightened the lid and took a sip, sighing as the strong sweetness filled my mouth.
Limping out of the kitchen with the cup held carefully in one hand, I caught movement outside the French doors and leaned forward to look through the glass. Gabriel was outside, sitting at a table on a large patio, leaned back in his chair, his fingers laced behind his head, his own cup of coffee in front of him.
I hesitated briefly but then hobbled my way outside. At the sound of the door opening, Gabriel turned, looking momentarily surprised before a smile took over his face. He stood, taking my coffee from me. “Hey, good morning. You’re up. How do you feel?”
I set my crutches aside and started lowering myself carefully into the chair next to him. He placed my coffee in front of me and helped guide me into the chair. I sighed when I was finally seated and turned my head to Gabriel. His face was inches from mine, and when our eyes met, his widened, his breath quickening as we locked gazes. I took a big inhale, taking in the familiar scent of him: some subtly manly-smelling soap that brought to mind the woods in winter—cool and piney. I had the sudden thought that I’d forevermore equate that scent with feeling cared for … with the hand that calmed and comforted in the midst of pain.
The idea startled me and left me feeling exposed—though he couldn’t read my mind—and I turned my head away from those soulful hazel eyes holding me suspended. The movement seemed to snap Gabriel back to the moment as well, and he returned to his own chair.
I looked out to the horizon, where the sun was glowing as it rose over the trees. My eyes lingered on it for a moment before I answered the question he’d asked a minute ago. “I feel a little bit better this morning,” I said, breaking the strange tension that had suddenly developed between us.
He smiled. “Good. You look better.”
I let out a short huff before taking a sip of coffee. “Oh yeah, I’m a beauty.” I looked at him, and he was watching me with a small smile on his lips. “What are you doing up so early?”