by Jessica Roe
Gable nodded, looking relieved. “Yeah, I can't stay there any more. Too many bad memories...too many good ones. I'll just go back and grab my things and then I'll come here.”
“Would you like me to go with you?”
“Naw, I...you know I need to go back alone.”
Terelle patted her shoulder and left the tent.
Nicky caught Gable's arm as she passed by him. The room had emptied and they were all alone. Her face was pale and her eyes pink from tears and her hair was a wild mess; he wanted to kiss her so damned bad. “How you doin'?” he asked instead.
She just stared at him like he was a dumb ass idiot, which...yeah, was about right.
“Right, sorry, stupid question,” he amended, scratching his head awkwardly. “Look, I was hoping maybe we could talk—”
“No,” she interrupted, simply but firmly.
“You don't even know what I was gonna say.”
“I don't need to know. You're looking at me just like you did when we were sixteen, and I can't do this with you right now.”
Her words might have hurt him had she not added that last bit, those two little, hope giving words. “Okay, not right now.” He couldn't help smirking, even though he knew it would piss her off. It always had. “Later, then?”
She rolled her eyes and said nothing, leaving him to go up the stairs for her shoes. He adored the fact that she still didn't give him a straight out no.
“I'm not giving up on you, Gabrielle,” he called after her, his voice husky and deep. “Not now, not ever.”
“Whatever, you dumb ass punk,” she drawled over her shoulder.
He grinned.
Yeah, Nicky wasn't giving on Gable. Not a damned chance in hell.
FORTUNE DRAGGED HIS stub of chalk along the concrete floor in a short, thin line.
“How many days have you been down here?” his cell mate, Sacha, asked from where he perched on the edge of his bed.
“Six hundred and forty one days,” Fortune replied. He tried to smile, he really did, but almost two years being held captive in Pablo Nunez's underground prison cells was enough to dampen the spirits of even an eternal optimist like himself.
“How long have I been down here?”
“Three hundred and forty eight days.”
Sacha bowed his head. “She'll come for me,” he said. “Gable will come for me.”
Fortune nodded. “I know.”
Sacha looked up at him, and for the first time, Fortune couldn't see a spark of hope in his eyes. “Do you think she'll come for me?”
It was the first time Sacha had ever asked that question, and it scared Fortune. He needed Sacha to have faith, they all did. Every prisoner down there who shared their dismal fate relied on him. He kept them hopeful when there seemed to be no hope left at all.
“Yes,” Fortune said firmly. “She'll come for you, Sacha. Gable will come.”