The Plan (Off-Limits Romance, #4)(30)

He unlocks the door and stands slowly, and when he looks at me, my heart doesn’t just flip—it outright stops for half a second, making me feel weak and shaky as it throbs back to its normal rhythm. “Yes,” he says softly. “If someone…untrustworthy was on the other side.”

“She wouldn’t do that. She knows you.”

He blinks. “Does she, though?”

“What do you mean?” I whisper.

He shrugs. “Oh—you know. How well does anyone know anyone?” He looks—and sounds—so casual, I almost don’t notice. The way his hand is fisted at his side. I see it as he steps through the doorway, into the square-ish hall around the staircase.

“Gabe?” The whisper leaves my mouth without permission.

He turns partway toward me, lifts both brows. I swallow hard. “Are you okay?”

He’s not expecting that. I know because his blue eyes flare, and then they burn. “What do you mean, Marley?”

“Are you…you know…are you doing okay?”

“No,” he says simply.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

My lips quiver just slightly. I press them together. “Yes. Of course I am. Why do you ask like that?”

He shakes his head. His hands are in his pockets. “Thank you, Marley.” He nods.

“Gabe?”

“Yes, Marley?”

I swallow hard. “I missed you. Between then and now.” His face is statue still; I fumble over my words. “I’m sorry if it’s inappropriate to say. I just…I wanted you to know. I never wanted it to end like that.”

His face hardens, and I realize my error. “I left because I was just…young and scared. Maybe the age part doesn’t matter. I was scared, though. And stupid, at the time. All the time after that, I really regretted it and wished I could go back. Give it another go. I know it doesn’t matter now. I’m rambling—because I’m nervous. Because of what happened.” Heat sweeps my cheeks. I feel like I’m eighteen again.

“What happened?” he says softly.

“You know.”

He blinks. “Say it.”

“Last night,” I rasp.

“Last night what?” The words are hard-edged—almost cruel.

“Last night we got together.”

“And?” He steps a little closer.

“You—you know. Pleasured me, I guess.”

A little closer now, as if my words are beckoning.

“Were you? Were you pleasured?”

“Yes.” I inhale audibly. “I was.”

His eyes look, for once, more gray than blue: a stranger’s eyes in a strange, beautiful face, so much sharper, so much swarthier, than the Gabe I knew. He blinks, and his face slackens—an ordinary man, just back from running.

“Good,” he says.

I watch as he moves down the stairs, feeling like a beggar in the presence of a king.





5





Marley





Mom’s condition improves. She isn’t sent to Birmingham or Montgomery, but home, after four days, and I go with her for the first night. It isn’t something I’m happy about, but I do my best to keep that from her, because it isn’t her fault she’s so weak. She needs someone on hand for when she needs to get up, and it’s only fair that it be me. Zach is seeing someone up in Auburn; after spending two of Mom’s three nights in the hospital with her, he wanted to go see the girl—he told me this blushing adorably—so here I am. Standing on the back porch looking at the moon, which peeks out from behind a gauze haze of clouds.

It rained today, and so the yard is gross and soggy. The leaves, dry and curling as they rot atop the grass, hold little bits of water, gleaming bright white in the moon’s glow. I draw my hand that holds the baby monitor close to my chest and blow my breath out, long and warm and white. It feels so clean out here—the air does. Fall to me has always felt like a baptism of some kind: the rich, warm, summer self is chilled and shriveled, at the mercy of some source of heat. My jacket always feels so cozy. I enjoy the seasonal drinks and buy myself a brightly colored pair of gloves, a new one every year. I snuggle in and sort of like the feeling that I’m at the mercy of the heater, fire, my warm, thick coat. I think I like the warming of my cold self. Something about it—it feels pure—the need inherent there.

I suck another sharp breath in and take my time blowing it out. There’s a reason that I’m out here. That I can’t stay in, enjoying the heat or a blanket.

That reason has a name. That name is Gabe.

I rub my chapsticked lips together, shove my hands into my coat pockets. The moon loses to the clouds, and dark spreads over my mom’s tiny yard.

I think I feel…bereft.

It’s been five days, and I want more.

Such blasphemy to even think that thought. So much insanity. I am insane. I must be insane. What I think about the most right now as I drift off to sleep, or when I first wake up, is just Gabe in those thick, gray, cotton running shorts. The way his knees and lower legs looked, and the shoes on his feet. I think about his hair, dried funky from sweating and sitting in the cold. I think about his shoulders, big enough to be a force all of their own; his body, god-like.