Freeks(57)

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 that 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.