George shakes her head. “It’s not important. We just… he’s not my type, is all.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. He’s a cute, stoner music nerd horror movie buff. He’sexactlyyour type. So why—”
“Actually, I think I need to finish my art project.” George stands up and dusts crumbs off her uniform skirt. “Before you destroy my phone, remember I need it to keep researching Mackenzie.”
“But you left half your lunch behind—”
“I’ll see you at home.” George runs off toward the school like she’s escaping a rampaging T-Rex.
I stare at the half-eaten carob bar she left on the seat. George never,eversays no to food – especially not junk food. Her mom Anne-Maree runs a vegan raw food truck, so everything in their house is made with wheatgrass and smells faintly of manure.
Gabriel leans back, pulling me into him. “Don’t go after her. Stay here and keep me warm.”
“I can’t make her talk to me.” I drop George’s phone into my pocket to return to her later. “I just wish… I could make her talk to me.”
“You can talk someone’s ear off for years and never say the right thing,” Gabe points out.
I know he’s thinking about Dylan, all the pretty words he wished he’d said but wrote into song lyrics instead. The investigation might’ve revealed Dylan’s death was murder, but Gabriel still blames himself. My fallen angel carries the pain of the world on his wings. His bones crack from the weight of burdens that aren’t his to carry.
“I’m fucking this all up.” I rub my eyes. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.”
“None of us do.” Gabriel strokes my hair.
I press my ear against his chest. His heart raps against his ribs – a steady rhythm, so unlike Gabriel who was always racing from one thing to another. “Areyouokay? I’ve been so focused on Eli I don’t think I’ve asked you. About Dylan and the drugs and the ranch and everything. I can’t imagine what you went through when you saw what happened to me.”
Gabriel stares off into space. His fingers touch his pocket, where he usually keeps his weed. But we just smoked his last joint. He’s trying to stop drinking and smoking so much, and I think that’s a good thing. If he doesn’t have those vices to fall back on, he’ll start writing music again, and the world will be brighter.
He turns to me, and his words slice through my chest. “I felt like I lost a piece of myself. When we arrived at the ranch and found you on the porch with Eli… there was so much blood. Your eyes were open, but you stared up at the sky, and you just didn’t move. I felt like I was looking at a life-sized doll – you looked like you, but there was no one inside. You’d left.”
He swallows. Gabriel has already lived through the pain of having someone he loves die in his arms, and I put him through that all over again. I hold him so close and so tight, and I wish I could take some of his weight for myself.
“I’m not leaving you,” I whisper.
“Dylan left, and I didn’t save him.” Gabriel’s shoulders shake. “I could have saved him a thousand times over if I hadn’t been so bloody selfish. I expected him to be in my debt for taking him away from his father’s life. I expected him to do all the boring band stuff I didn’t want to bother with, and to pick up the pieces of my self-immolation. We might’ve run away from the castle, but I still treated him like a servant. And nothing’s changed. I haven’t changed. At the ranch, everyone was running around, fetching things and helping you and protecting us. All I did was stand there and watch. I couldn’t even pray, because no god will listen to me. I’m bloody useless.”
“Don’t say that. Ineedyou.” My voice wavers. I can’t stand to see him like this.
“You don’t, though. When I saw Noah walk out into the ring and pound that guy to dust, I wasn’t even surprised. That guy will burn the world for you. And Eli’s as smart as they come. You need people like them, and George, and Antony, although he’s scary as shite. But what do I bring to your fight? I’m just a guy with a guitar who holds your beer while you storm the barricades.”
I take out my phone. It’s on its last legs. I’ve thrown it against things so often in the last few weeks that the screen is now held on with Scotch tape. I scroll through until I come to my playlist. “Here’s what you bring.”
I press play.
Gabriel’s voice comes through my speakers, tinny but still powerful and raw with emotion. The echoes of his pain sing in every note. I let the music wash over me, but instead of closing my eyes, I keep them locked on Gabriel. I let him see all the dark shit that pools inside me being dragged to the surface. I let him see how I need that darkness to keep on fighting.
On the track, Gabriel erupts into a scream of anguish as if the hounds of hell truly are tearing at his flesh. The hairs on my arms stand on end as the sound hits me in the gut.
His scream courses through my veins, and I remember screaming along with this song when the weight of being alone cracked my bones, too. And now I’m staring in that same boy’s eyes.
“Ever since I found your music,” I whisper, “you’ve screamed for me. You let all the shit out so I can be brave. That’s your superpower, Gabriel Fallen. You feel things so us mere mortals don’t have to. You eat sin and drink heartache and make it into something beautiful.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I’m that guy anymore. It feels like the music has left me.”
“I don’t think it has. I think it’s been there all along. You just don’t want to listen. You’re afraid of what you might hear.”
Gabriel’s fingers entwine with mine as the song bleeds into another. He stares out across the athletic fields for a long time. His breath makes clouds in the frigid air.
When he turns back to me, there’s a grim determination in his eyes I’ve never seen before. He brings my hand to his lips and kisses the knuckles. The kiss is hot, reverent, a pagan god to his goddess. “I think we should see my parents.”
