Love's Cruel Redemption (The Ghost Bird #12)(116)

Gabriel gripped me, shaking me softly. “Sang!” he cried out. “Don’t do this to me. Please...”

“I can’t do this,” I whispered, opening my eyes a bit but not looking at him. Blurred with tears, I shook where I stood, every part of me breaking down.

I slumped and he followed me to the floor. In a heap, I was crying again. I thought I could work through it, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the damage I was doing.

“I’m sorry you saw all that,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. He scooped me up, putting me in his lap.

I wanted to cry alone, but I couldn’t pull away from him. It was a comfort I didn’t deserve.

But I pressed my face into his shoulder anyway. It was selfish of me. He needed to get to a doctor. I needed to get to Nathan. Nathan didn’t deserve to feel like he had to run off.

But we needed this moment so I could break it down, because I’d ignored it for too long.

“Tell me it’s not over,” Gabriel whispered. His tears were flowing freely and he held me close to him. “Sang, you can’t do this.”

“I can’t do this to them,” I let out. The burning in my lungs making it one of the hardest things I ever had to say to him. “I can’t...do this to you.”

“Do what?”

I looked up, his crystal eyes blurry to me. “I can’t ask you all to feel this every time...I didn’t know what I was asking fully. But I know now. I know what Kota felt, what you feel...I can’t ask them to go through this every day...forever...”

Gabriel’s face contorted. He shook his head slowly, forming syllables but not finishing a word.

He gripped me and tightened his hold around me. “It’s not you asking us,” he said. “We’re asking you. That’s how it has to be. And it is.”

“I can’t...”

“You can if it is what we want.” His chin shifted as he spoke against my forehead. “Because I can’t ask you to pick me over Victor. Or Kota...or the others.”

Pick one?

I heard him say this, and my mind tried to keep up with the context. If I didn’t accept the relationship we’d been considering, what was the alternative?

Picking one.

Or none...

But could I ever do that?

I lowered my head until I could bury it into his shoulder again. I didn’t have an answer. It was like picking which of my fingers I wanted to keep, picking one to live with alone. It didn’t make sense.

And despite my brain telling me picking none might help them all, I couldn’t get myself to do it. My heart wouldn’t let me.

So what was left?

But I couldn’t stand this. I couldn’t take it.

“I can’t ask you all,” I said, going back to it. “I don’t want to leave, even if I should.”

“Don’t.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t,” he said again. He rocked gently with me in his lap. “You’re not going anywhere, Trouble. You’re my Trouble, remember? And if it feels wrong, it’s the wrong thing to do.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You stay. And you help us find a way to make it happen.” He pulled back to look at me. “Because the alternative...that’s not what we want.”

“It’s not fair for me to ask you all to only date,” I said. “That’s just...”

“What we were considering,” Gabriel said. “This was the plan. From the get go. We want to stay with you. We weren’t interested in anyone else, which is why we’re agreeing to it. It isn’t about going without. It’s because we want you with us. We want to be with you, because of how you make us feel.” He grumbled low and then burst. “Fuck, Sang, we all love the shit out of you.”

My lips quivered and my face ached as I tried to not cry again, for his sake. “Nathan didn’t want to. Silas...”

“They do,” he said. “He was just here trying to kill me to get to you. He fucked up...”

“That wasn’t him messing up,” I said. “It was Danielle.”

“He still shouldn’t have let it get that far. We were just about to break it up when you walked in.” He grumbled again and sighed. “We knew he didn’t want to do any of that. They said they knew about your real mom and he was willing to do anything to get what you wanted to know. And we didn’t stop him. It’s my fault, too. He’d do anything for any of us.”

I sniffed, wiping at my face. “We need to find him.” I moaned and then touched his cheek, examining the damage. “We need you to get to the doctor.”

“You can’t go naked,” he said. “Let me get stitched up. Then we’ll find him.”

His promise to help, what he was saying, it spurred just enough energy in me to move forward. I swallowed thickly, repeatedly, trying to get around what I was feeling, that I was putting those feelings on them.

Everything we’d been through together, they’d do it all and more to be with me.

I’d do anything for them.

He nudged me to get up so he could as well. He went to the second room, the smaller one, where there were more clothes. He passed me one of the bags, one marked in pink.

I opened it, spilling out the contents onto the floor to sort out. The notebook I’d been using as a journal between them fell out on top of clothing and other items. I picked it up, the page opening automatically to where I was last writing.