The appearance of the antebellum architecture meant it was most likely hundreds of years old. There had to have been so much that happened inside the walls of the house. So much life, and so much death.
And then I heard it, the voice from my nightmares, coming from inside my head. The old woman screaming shrilly, “id-hab-bee-in-who-nah!”
The front door opened, and I stumbled as I took a step back. A hand reached out, steadying me, and as Gabe helped me up, I realized with some dismay that I didn’t remember knocking. I took the knocker in my hands, but the house had distracted me before I could do anything more.
“Mara?” Gabe asked, holding my arm warmly in his strong hands. “Is everything okay? I thought I wasn’t picking you up for another two hours?”
“No, you’re right. I just … I wanted to see you.” I tried to smile, but everything felt off, like I was just waking up from a dream I couldn’t remember.
I stared at his crimson-red front door and the cast-iron door knocker.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked, and looked up at Gabe.
“I thought I heard someone outside,” he replied vaguely. “You’re soaking wet. Why don’t you come inside and dry off?”
I followed him into his house, trying to shake off the increasing chill growing in my chest. The last time I’d been here had been in the middle of Selena’s party, and I’d been doing my best to take in the full beauty and opulence of the mansion by stealing glances around party guests.
“I’ll grab you a towel,” Gabe offered, leaving me to stand dripping water onto the hardwood floor.
Gabe returned a moment later and draped a thick fluffy towel around my shoulders before handing me another for my hair.
“Who decorated your house?” I asked Gabe as I dried my hair.
“My mom, mostly, but Selena helped a bit.”
“It’s so stylish and hip,” I commented as I spied a Jackson Pollock painting hanging in the grand entry. “Whoever decorated like this seems like they’d have a very cosmopolitan sensibility.” I paused. “One that clashes with the way of life down here.”
There was clearly a culture clash growing inside this house. The crown molding and antique chandeliers contrasted sharply with the furniture in bold primary colors and modern art. It was like a mashup of Pee-wee’s Playhouse and Gone with the Wind.
“I think my mom would’ve been happier in New York,” Gabe admitted.
“Then why did you move back here?”
Gabe let out a deep sigh. “The Brawley legacy.” He looked around the entry at the grand staircase and refurnished fixtures. “This house has been in our family for nearly two centuries. My mom couldn’t let it go.”
“Well, I’m glad,” I said. “If she had, you wouldn’t be here with me now.”
He looked at me then, his deep golden eyes meeting mine, and I saw a heat in them that I felt reflecting in my own. It wasn’t lust or the hunger I felt when he kissed me or even the way my pulse quickened every time he was near.
It was something deeper. The comfort that I found in his presence and the way my smiles felt easier when he was around. The way I wanted to know everything about him, and how I wanted to tell him everything about me, even the things that I’d never told anybody.
I realized that’s why I’d come over here today. Everything about today had felt off and wrong, and I knew that Gabe would make me feel better, safer, happier.
He reached out, taking my hand in his, and his skin felt even warmer than normal, nearly scalding.
“You’re freezing!” His eyes widened with alarm. “At the risk of this sounding like a line, I think you should get out of those clothes.” I arched an eyebrow, so he added, “I’ll throw your dress in the dryer, and in the meantime, you can put on some of my warm, dry clothes.”
I smiled. “That sounds fair.”
Gabe took a step back toward the staircase, still holding my hand as he did. “My clothes are upstairs in my room.”
“Why do I feel like you’re always looking for excuses to get me into your bedroom?” I teased.
“Maybe because I always am,” Gabe admitted, making me laugh again.
He led me to his spacious bedroom, where the wallpaper was carefully concealed with a multitude of band posters. His bed was unmade, hidden beneath a pile of blankets and pillows. The blue teddy bear I’d won him sat on his dresser next to his Nintendo, causing me to smile.
With his back to me, he rummaged through his closet looking for something suitable for me to wear. I pulled my dress up over my head, and since it was sopping wet, I didn’t want to just drop it on his floor.
“So I think this will—” He started turning around, holding a T-shirt in his hand, but then he saw me standing in my white bra and panties, and he just stopped, gaping at me.
Then he shook his head and lowered his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t know you’d already taken off your dress.”
“Don’t apologize.” I laughed. “I knew you were right there when I took my dress off.”
He lifted his eyes slowly, as if expecting there to be some kind of trick, but when I didn’t freak out, he brightened up and said, “Hey, there’s your other tattoo.”
I glanced down at the tattoo that was scrawled across my abdomen in large bold letters.
It’d been my first tattoo, one I’d had to use a fake ID to procure at a rundown tattoo parlor in Denver when I was only fifteen. Roxie had gone with me, and she’d held my hand when it hurt.
Gabe moved closer to me, filling in the few steps that had been between us, and he tilted his head. “What does that say?”
“Lusus naturae. It means ‘freak of nature’ in Latin,” I explained.
He shook his head, and his forehead creased. “Why would you get that?”
“Growing up in a circus sideshow, I always felt that way.” I shrugged, but his reaction made me feel self-conscious, so I hugged my wet dress to me, hiding the tattoo.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said hurriedly, realizing that his words had stung. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re just so beautiful and wonderful and kind, and I can’t imagine anyone ever making you feel like less than that.”
I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know how to respond. I’d been called beautiful before, mostly by my mother, and by a few clumsy boys who’d said it as they fumbled with my bra hooks. But I’d never had anyone call me beautiful and wonderful, and really mean it, not the way Gabe did.
There was a weight in his words, and a look in his eyes, and a softness in his touch. The way when we walked together, he always slowed his pace to match mine, and he tilted his body toward me whenever he was close.
“I should get your dress in the dryer,” Gabe offered, since I wasn’t doing anything but staring at him. He reached out to take it, but I put my hand over his, stopping him.
“Wait,” I said, breathy and desperate.
His eyes met mine, confused and worried. “Why?”
Then, so I wouldn’t have to explain it to him, I dropped the dress and moved toward him. Gabe caught on then, wrapping his arms around my bare flesh and pulling me toward him as his lips found mine.
He picked me up, making me squeal in delight, and carried me back to his bed. As he laid me back down on the softness of his blankets, I realized just how badly I wanted to be with him. The few moments he parted from me—standing up to take off his shirt and reveal the wonderful sculpting of his body—felt like an eternity.
Then he was with me, his bare skin pressing against mine, and his mouth felt hungry as it trailed down from my lips to my neck. As his hands and lips warmed my skin, my body flushed with heat. For the first time since I’d gotten to Caudry, I didn’t feel a chill hiding anywhere inside me.
Somewhere in the distance—back in the real world, away from where Gabe had me enveloped in his arms, my hands clinging to his back—I was only vaguely aware of the sound of a door slamming.
“Gabe!” a woman’s voice called in a Southern drawl, and th
at snapped us both back.
“Shit,” he said under his breath, and sat up, kneeling between my legs on the bed. “That’s my mom. My parents are home.”
34. family
My dress was still soaking wet, so I quickly pulled on the Joan Jett T-shirt he’d grabbed for me. It was too big, but it was still very obvious that I wasn’t wearing any pants.
“You like Joan Jett?” I asked.
He looked at me over his shoulder as he hastily searched his dresser drawers. “I love Joan Jett. Doesn’t everyone?”
“Gabe?” his mom yelled up the stairs.
“I’ll be right down!” Gabe shouted back, then as he handed me a pair of sweatpants, he whispered an explanation. “I know that we’re adults and we can do what we want, but I am living at home for the moment, and I really didn’t want my parents’ first impression of you to be them thinking they caught us having sex.”
“Me neither,” I agreed, but my thoughts had gotten tripped on the words first impression. The addition of the word first implied there would be a second or more, that his parents would actually get to know me.
I understood for the first time that Gabe was treating this like a real relationship and me like a real girlfriend. That was part of what I liked so much about him, that he treated me like a real person, and not just a stopover as he went on with the rest of his life.
But the problem was that this couldn’t be a relationship. His sister asked me if I might consider staying, and I realized with great dismay that she’d probably asked because Gabe had brought up the prospect.
“Are you ready?” Gabe asked after I’d finished tying the drawstring of the sweatpants.
He stared down at me, his eyes wide and nervous. Then it hit me, making my breath catch in my throat and my stomach twist.
I was going to break his heart when I left.
Swallowing back the painful lump in my throat, I nodded. “I’m ready.”
Gabe went first, and my steps were filled with lead as I followed him. As we descended the stairs, I heard the click-clack of high heels on the hardwood floor, so I heard his mom before I saw her.
Then she walked into the entryway, her head down as she looked at the mail in her perfectly manicured hands. Her hair was a blond mass of curls, adding much-needed height to her petite frame, and she wore a pencil skirt made of red satin with a matching blazer.
Without her even looking up, I already recognized her. Gabe’s mom was Della Jane, the woman who had helped Gideon and me at the police station four days ago.
“Gabe, honey, have you been reapplying to NYU, because you’ve gotten another—” Della Jane had been looking down at the mail, but her words died on her lips the second she looked up and saw me coming down the stairs behind her son.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had a guest,” Della Jane said, smiling thinly.
Making matters worse, Gabe’s father walked in from another room, presumably the kitchen based on the freshly opened bottle of beer in his hand. It was just as I’d expected when I met him at the Blue Moon Bar & Grill—Gabe’s dad was Julian Alvarado. His salt-and-pepper hair was still damp after coming in from the rain, and the top two buttons of his dark shirt had been left undone.
Julian narrowed his eyes when he saw me, probably wondering how the girl he’d met a few days ago had turned up in his house, and Della Jane held the letters in her hand so tightly, they’d begun to crumple.
Since we’d reached the main floor and the situation felt increasingly awkward, Gabe decided to make introductions.
“This is Mara, the girl I’ve been seeing.” Gabe gestured toward me, and for a moment—for one second so quick I’m not even completely certain that I saw it—Della Jane looked horrified. But then it was gone, and she was smiling at me, looking like an ordinary, friendly but caught-off-guard mom.
“Yes, we’ve already met, actually,” Della Jane replied in her warm Southern accent. “A few days back at the sheriff’s department.”
“I’ve met her too,” Julian added, looking at me quizzically.
“You have?” Della Jane asked, her smile faltering a bit.
“She came into the bar with other folks from the carnival, looking for her friend that rents the apartment upstairs,” Julian explained, and now Gabe was giving me a bewildered look that matched his father’s.
Seeing them all so close together, the resemblance between them was uncanny. Gabe had his dad’s height and broad shoulders, but he had his mom’s cheekbones and wide smile.
“Caudry’s a small town, so I guess I get around a lot,” I said sheepishly, since everyone was looking at me like I was a puzzle they were trying to solve. The air was bubbling over with unasked questions.
“I guess you do,” Gabe agreed, but there was a tightness to his tone that made me realize that this was something we’d talk about later.
Della Jane cleared her throat and tugged at her ruby earring. “What, um, were the two of you planning to do tonight?”
“Mara walked over in the rain, and I was just getting her something dry to wear,” Gabe explained, as if it wasn’t obvious that the outfit I was swimming in didn’t belong to me.
“Gabe, where are your manners?” Della Jane scolded him. “Why didn’t you pick the young lady up?”
“I just wanted to go for a walk and get some air,” I said quickly. “I didn’t realize how hard it was raining until it was too late.”
“Well, if the two of you wanted to stay in tonight and avoid the weather, we could all watch a movie.” Della Jane pointed to a gaudy big-screen TV that took up a huge chunk of floor space in the sitting room adjacent to the entryway. “Selena just rented Top Gun and Weird Science from the video store.”
“Actually, I think I should probably get going home,” I said, and Gabe looked at me sharply.
Della Jane clicked her tongue. “Oh, that’s a shame,” she said in such a way that I couldn’t tell for sure if she meant it or not.
“You sure?” Julian asked. “You’re more than welcome to stay for supper, and I make a mean steak.”
“Sorry, but I’m sure,” I said. “I have to work tonight.”
“I’ll pull the car around,” Gabe offered, and he wouldn’t look at me as he went over and slipped on his tennis shoes.
While he went out to get his Mustang, he left me waiting inside with his parents, and it was feeling increasingly claustrophobic. Julian put his arm around his wife’s waist and told me about the restaurants he’d owned in New York, and Della Jane just kept a strained smile plastered on her face.
Gabe had this life that was solid and real, with a house that had been in the family for generations and married parents that loved each other and applications to NYU. He had a past, and more important, he had a future.
I was a girl with nothing more to my name than my name itself. If I were Della Jane, I wouldn’t want me dating her son either.
After awkward good-byes, I hurried into Gabe’s car, and I wasn’t surprised to see the tension had carried over. He sped out of the driveway without saying anything until we were almost to the edge of town.
“If you didn’t want to stay in with my parents, I totally get that,” he said finally. “But you didn’t have to leave. It’s not even seven yet.”
“I know, but I do need to get back. There’s a lot going on at the carnival,” I said, and that wasn’t completely a lie, and my mom would be happy that I was back so early.
“Like what?” Gabe asked, sounding exasperated. “You tell me hardly anything about your life and what’s going on. Like how you met both my parents.”
“I didn’t know they were your parents,” I corrected him icily. “They didn’t exactly introduce themselves and say, ‘Oh, by the way, in case you decide to date Gabe, I’m just letting you know that he’s my son.’”
Della Jane hadn’t even given me her last name—and while I had suspected that Julian might be related to him, there hadn’t really been an organic way to bring it up in the two mi
nutes we’d spoken.
“Fair enough,” he allowed, and his hands relaxed slightly from how tight they’d been gripping the steering wheel. “But you’ve apparently been going on all these adventures around Caudry.” He sighed. “I know you don’t have to tell me every little thing about your life, but I just feel like you’re keeping so much from me, and I don’t know why.”
There wasn’t some big awful reason. I just hadn’t wanted to tell him about going to the police station to try to report that my friend may or may not be missing, or about visiting a former coworker and probable drug addict who believed that this town had a supernatural pall over it.
Neither of these stories was glamorous or normal or the kind of thing you tell someone on a first date.
We’d reached the carnival parking lot, and he pulled over as rain pattered down on the Mustang. He turned to look at me, waiting for me to explain myself or just say anything.
I stared down at my hands, blinking back tears, and finally said, “I was embarrassed, okay?”
“Embarrassed?” Gabe reached out and took my hands in his. “You don’t have to be embarrassed with me. If I’ve done anything to make you feel ashamed about any part of your life—”
“You don’t get it.” I shook my head. “We only have a week together, so I just wanted to keep us nice and shiny and separate from all the crap in my life that never quite works.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. He just held my hand, rubbing the back of it with his thumb, and stared down at his lap.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” he said at length. “I’ve done the same thing before.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “But I don’t want to do that with you. I don’t want to keep you separate from anything.”
I closed my eyes, trying to steel myself from the depth of his words and the pain they brought with them. Here was someone asking me to share my life with him, and I couldn’t.
“Gabe, you’re not listening.” I opened my eyes. “I’m not your girlfriend.” My voice cracked, but I kept going. “I will never be your girlfriend. A week just isn’t enough time.”
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