If You Leave

by Courtney Cole

  “Smart,” the cop tells me. “There’s too much drunk driving out there. Good to call a cab.”

  “Except for when the cab explodes,” I mumble as I put my driver’s license back in my purse. The cop smiles wryly.

  “Yeah. Good point. At least no one was hurt.”

  I eye Gabriel uncertainly as I head back toward him. I’m not too sure about that. He’s still got his eyes closed, but his foot is tapping wildly against the pavement.

  When I reach him, I kneel down in front of him.

  “Gabriel, did you hit your head in the crash?”

  Because that would make sense. Maybe. Would a concussion cause someone to freak out like this?

  Gabriel looks up at me. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I need to go home.” He doesn’t even sound like himself now. He’s speaking in a strange monotone, completely unlike the husky sexy voice he had before.

  It’s freaking me out.

  I sigh. Because I can’t leave him here.

  “Where do you live?”

  He just stares at me.

  I realize that I’m still holding his wallet, so I open it up and look at his driver’s license. His address isn’t that far away. We’re actually within walking distance. Thank God. I don’t want to get into another cab anytime soon.

  Reaching down, I tug on Gabriel’s muscled arm.

  “Come on,” I tell him. “I’m walking you home.”

  He comes with me without protest, pulling at his collar.

  “I can’t breathe,” he mutters to me. I look up at him. His collar isn’t too tight.

  “You’re going to be OK,” I assure him.

  Although I’m not sure of that myself.

  I hold on to his arm, although I don’t know why. After we’ve walked a couple of blocks, Gabriel starts muttering incoherent words under his breath. I can’t understand him, but when I ask him to repeat them, he just looks at me.

  This is seriously freaking me out. I highly doubt I should be walking anywhere alone with this guy. Why in the world didn’t I just tell the cop to deal with him? I’m clearly not equipped to handle this situation.

  “Is there anyone I can call for you?” I ask him, hoping that there is. He just looks at me again, almost like he doesn’t understand.

  When I look into his eyes, they are vacant and glassy.

  Like he’s not there.

  I gulp hard.

  Within a minute we’ve reached his building and I’ve never been so happy. A doorman recognizes Gabriel and greets him by name.

  “He’s not himself,” I say by way of explanation, because I’m honestly not sure what to say. “I’m walking him to his condo. Can you tell me his condo number?”

  The doorman is actually kind enough to walk us up to the condo and then unlock the door for me with his master keys. I smile at him.

  “Thank you,” I tell him simply as I walk Gabriel through the door. Gabriel isn’t speaking at all by this point.

  The doorman looks at us.

  “If you need anything else, let me know,” he tells me, staring at Gabriel curiously before he takes his leave.

  That’s interesting. He’s obviously not used to seeing Gabriel like this, so maybe it really was an injury in the accident. Maybe he did hit his head. For a second I wonder if I should call an ambulance.

  But Gabriel is already walking back toward his bedroom, mumbling. I can see his neatly made bed through the open door. I follow along at his heels and almost run into him when he abruptly stops and slams his fist into the wall. His movement is strong and unexpected and packs enormous power. So much power that he shakes the entire hallway and leaves a hole in the wall.

  I gasp and freeze when he turns to me. Fear floods every part of me, every last nook and cranny of me. Because as Gabriel turns his face, a small illogical part of me almost expects to see someone else. Someone terrifying.

  My father.

  My heart pounds in my ears and memories from long ago flit through my head. Fists and blood and arguments and fear.

  But of course Gabriel isn’t my father. And so I force my breathing to slow and my heart to calm down, even as I balance lightly on the balls of my feet, poised to run if I have to. I swallow as Gabriel looks at me.

  “I hate this,” he tells me. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are slightly glazed and his hand is still curled into a fist at his side, his knuckles scraped. I eye it and take a step back, because I know what can happen with a fist.

  “You hate what?”

  Emotion fills his eyes, something dark, something pained. “I hate the way it controls me.”

  I definitely feel panicked now. “What controls you?”

  But he doesn’t answer. He just walks into his room and drops onto his bed. He’s calm now, quiet. As though he didn’t just punch a hole in the wall.

  As though he didn’t just tell me that something controls him.

  What the fuck is wrong with him?

  Ignoring my still-racing heart, I bend in front of him. I can do this.

  “Does your head hurt?” I ask him. When he shakes his head, I look into his eyes. His pupils seem the same size. I heard somewhere that if you have a concussion, it makes the sizes of your pupils uneven.

  Physically he seems fine. No bumps, no scrapes, no bruises. I stare down at him uncertainly. He stares back, but it’s like he’s not even seeing me.

  I sigh, long and loud.

  “Let’s get your shirt and jeans off, at least,” I finally tell him. “Then I’m going to go.”

  He stands up obediently and unbuttons his pants, letting them drop to the floor. When he sits back down, I strip his shirt off over his head, then fold down the covers on his bed.

  He immediately drops back into it, curling onto his side and closing his eyes.

  As I cover him up, I can’t help but glance at his body. It’s sculpted and cut, and it’s apparent that he works out. A lot. He has the body of a triathlete. Or Olympian. Or Greek god, maybe. He’s got a tattoo on his bicep, a skull wearing a beret over a pair of crossed swords. Words are scrolled above and below it. “Death Before Dishonor.”

  Hmm. Where would he get that? Is he a marine, maybe? He doesn’t have a marine haircut, though.

  I sigh again. This whole turn of events is so unfortunate. If I was gonna have a one-night stand, this was clearly the guy to do it with. He’s freaking hot.

  At this exact moment he moans and thrashes, throwing off the covers as he mutters into his pillow.

  He’s also apparently crazy because something controls him. God. Just my luck. I meet a hot guy who hears voices or some shit. Or he hit his head and he’s just delirious.

  I shake my head as I pick up the covers and pull them back up over him.

  I take in his clenched jaw and furrowed brow. One part of me wants to call an ambulance to be on the safe side. But another part of me thinks it’s not my place to do that, especially since I don’t know if he needs it. I don’t even know if he has insurance.

  I honestly just don’t know what to do.

  Finally I decide that I’ll hang around for a just a little while, to see if he gets any worse.

  It’s the least I can do. I wouldn’t feel right otherwise. If he wakes up and acts dangerous, I can be out of here in half a minute.

  I find the bathroom so that I can pee and it is surprisingly clean for a guy’s bathroom. It’s decorated in various shades of gray, even a gray-tiled floor. There’s no evidence whatsoever of a woman’s touch, so he must be unattached. Or at the very least unmarried. At least he’s not a scumbag like the married guys who troll the clubs for a piece of ass.

  Out of curiosity I open the medicine cabinet. Q-tips, razor, razor blades, shaving cream, and a bottle of sleeping pills with his name on them. There’s nothing that would suggest that he’s crazy. There’s no psychotropic prescription pills or anything.

  That’s good, right?

  I walk back out into the dining area, looking around with interest. Everything is nea
t, modern, masculine. On one wall is a mahogany case, as tall as I am. It’s so shallow that it can’t hold much, so it piques my interest. I open it and suck in my breath at the neatly lined-up guns facing me.

  Holy shit. Is he expecting WWIII? Who in the world would have this many guns? He’s crazy after all. As I’m backing away from it, unreasonably afraid of the guns, a certificate catches my eye. It’s lying on a short stack of paper at the end of the black-and-white granite kitchen counter.

  I stop and look at it and find that it is actually a diploma, issued a few years ago by the United States Army Ranger School, and it’s got his name on it.

  Gabriel is a Ranger. Or he was one. One or the other. Either way, that explains the amazingly cut body. And the tattoo. And the guns. Thank God. I feel an incredible amount of relief right now… apparently I’m not in the home of a psychopath.

  Unless he was kicked out for being crazy, which seems like a real possibility at the moment.

  Yikes. I’m suddenly incredibly uncomfortable being here.

  I walk quickly back down to his bedroom, which is decorated just like the rest of his house—gray tones, dark wood, masculine.

  He’s still sleeping and he’s no longer muttering. I stare down at him for a second, watching him breathe.

  He seems fine now.

  Fine enough for me to leave him alone without feeling guilty, anyway.

  Before I can rethink it I’m out the door, down the stairs and on the street again, breathing in the cool night air. When the doorman waves at me, I walk over to him.

  “Gabriel isn’t feeling well,” I tell him. “I think he’ll be OK, but maybe someone should check on him later. If you know anyone to call, that would be great.”

  The doorman nods and assures me that he’ll take care of it.

  His assurance makes me feel slightly better, but I still feel like I’ve been bitch-slapped by tonight. It’s all been so bizarre.

  But that’s OK. It’s over now. I just have to make my way back to the club, get my car, and then leave all this weirdness behind me. In a few minutes the crazy hot guy will be a distant memory.

  * * *

  Gabriel

  I wake up in a cold sweat.

  I’m not sure where I am.

  This isn’t unusual, so I force my breathing to slow, to regulate. I need to gain my bearings.

  I glance around, at the gray walls of my stark bedroom, at the white ceiling, at the familiar ceiling fan with the blades that look like large wicker leaves.

  I’m in my apartment. In my bed. One glance at the clock tells me that four hours have passed since the last time I was conscious.

  The problem is, I have no idea how I fucking got here.

  My hands are shaky as I reach for the glass of water on my bedside table, swirling the water inside the glass as I force myself to calm, as I try not to remember the nightmare that woke me. I take a gulp and force the blurs of reds and blacks out of my head, even though I know from experience they are unwilling to go.

  Darkness and blood.

  These are two things that will apparently always haunt me. I doubt I’ll ever get a full night’s rest, or that I’ll ever feel comfortable in the dark again.

  I slump against the pillows, then startle as I remember Madison.

  The beautiful girl from the club.

  We were on our way here when we were in a car accident. I hold up my hands and look at them, barely able to see them in the dim light streaming through the window. I seem to be fine, nothing on my body hurts, so apparently we weren’t injured. Or I wasn’t, at least.

  I honestly don’t know about Madison. There’s no possible way I can because I don’t even know how I made it home. I hope she’s all right. But I don’t fucking know. Everything is a black void. All I know for sure is that I’m alone now.

  I left Madison there, standing next to the twisted, burning wreck of our taxi. Even though I can’t recall much else, I remember the stricken look on her face as she realized that I was leaving.

  I’m not sure if I’m ashamed of myself or relieved. She was pretty fucking amazing. And pretty fucking hot. But there’s no way she should get mixed up with someone like me, even for only one night. Especially for only one night. I might look normal, but I’m far from it.

  I think back to Madison’s question in the cab.

  How do I know you’re not a crazy person?

  I almost smile grimly in the dark.

  I’m not crazy… exactly. The army doctors say I just need time. They call it PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder. I call it something else entirely: fucked up.

  Chapter Four

  Madison

  I open my bleary eyes, not exactly sure what woke me from my dead sleep.

  The lake crashes against the shore outside, but that’s not it. I’m used to that sound since I hear it every night. The rain is slanting against my bedroom windows, but that’s not it either. As I gaze at the ceiling, my phone buzzes, vibrating from my nightstand with a text message.

  Ah, that’s it. Mystery solved.

  I rub my eyes, glare at the clock (which surely must be wrong because there’s no way it’s that late), then grab the stupid phone.

  Where are u? Where did you go last night?

  Staring at the words, I cringe with guilt.

  Craaaaaap.

  Jacey. The friend I left at the Underground last night, the friend who just happens to work for me. She’s the best waitress I’ve got, mainly because she’s just the right mix of charm and flirtation. She’s also the best friend I’ve got, mainly because I don’t get close to that many people.

  I never found her last night and then I completely forgot about her… because I was distracted. My distraction flashes through my head, a vision of Gabriel’s face and muscled body, and my cheeks flush. I quickly put him out of my mind and turn back to my phone.

  I’m a bad friend, I text her back simply. I’m sorry.

  Where did you go????

  Apparently I’m not going to get off that easily. I sigh.

  Remember when u said I needed to get laid? Well, I almost did. But didn’t. So I came home alone instead. Did you just go home with Peter? I would’ve called, but I knew you wouldn’t hear your phone.

  Gabriel’s face pops unbidden into my head again. The look on his face while we watched that taxi burn was indescribable. Tortured, almost. But that sounds stupid to say.

  Obviously I was in shock too. It’s not every day that you get nailed in an intersection and then your taxi explodes into flames. So of course I was disturbed.

  But not to the degree that Gabriel was. For some reason my heart twinges just thinking about it, but I ignore it. I don’t know him and there’s no use wondering what the hell was wrong with him. He’s irrelevant now. I force him out of my thoughts and wait for Jacey to reply.

  It only takes her a second.

  You should definitely be sorry. I was almost worried. And why didn’t u get some??? Any man would give his left nut to take you home. I’m pretty sure I hate you for that.

  I have to smile. Jacey wasn’t worried. I’m sure of it. She probably didn’t even realize I was gone until it was time to go home.

  Long story, I answer.

  One beat passes and then she replies.

  K. My brother never showed up last night, but he’s coming to the Hill tonight to bring me my bday gift. You can meet him then.

  I smile, which hurts my pounding head. I’m glad she mentioned it. I’d forgotten it was her birthday. Maybe I really am a bad friend.

  Fine, I tell her. You’re not going to let up until I meet him, I know. And I’m bringing you a birthday cupcake.