Gabriel grinned despite himself. “Civilians ask questions?”
The big man grunted but didn’t look over at Gabriel. “I’m shit. You’re shit. Everything is shit.”
“Sorry, I asked.”
Phin’s lips twitched, as close to a smile as Gabriel had gotten in a long time. He’d count it as a win.
After a long moment, Phin asked, “Were you ever the praying kind?”
“I thought soldiers didn’t ask questions?”
“The river isrightthere.”
Gabriel chuckled and then shrugged. “Maybe as a kid.” Gabriel had some memories of kneeling beside his bed, hands clasped. More a habit than anything his academically inclined parents had pushed. “But I didn’t think God was the biggest fan of gays.”
Phin snorted. “Bigots hate. God loves.” He was so certain. Spoken with the confidence of someone who had spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it.
Gabriel hadn’t. Religion had never taken up much real estate in his mind. Maybe because it wasn’t important to his family, or maybe because he’d heard one homophobic woman in a pantsuit on a Sunday too many. Or hell, maybe Gabriel had enough reasons to hate himself without giving an asshole the satisfaction.
But this was important to Phin. Gabriel didn’t know why, but he could see it in the way he pressed his lips together, or the way his shoulders crept up toward his ears. Like he was readying himself for a fight.
“I used to pray a lot. Before.” Phin said. “And now I’m left wondering if all that praying for change brought all this.”
Gabriel blinked. “You think your prayers brought the aliens?”
“You got a better explanation?”
He didn’t. But there was something about Phin—big, quiet Phin—admitting that he thought his prayers brought this apocalypse, and that didn’t sit right with Gabriel. He’d never heard Phin talk about religion. Not even in basic before the stuff they’d seen and done changed everything about them. It was the kind of defeatist talk that got men killed.
Holding on by a thread.
Pushing himself to his feet, Gabriel began making his way toward Irving’s office. He wanted to tell Phin he was right—everythingwasshit. But he wasn’t sure if admitting there was a vindictive deity who punished a kid’s prayers for change was worse than there being nothing at all.
What Gabriel did know, what he’d known since he woke up on the bathroom floor covered in sick and shame, was that sobriety was a marathon that started with a single step. Change started with a single step.
Gabriel arrived at Irving’s office to find he was not the only person at the motel who wanted to yell at him. Alvarez’s voice carried from the lobby doors, echoing around the nearly empty room.
Judd glanced up at him as he walked in. He was cleaning up after lunch, bent over to scrub a table. Being the way he was, it would be easy to forget that Judd grew up with four sisters and was fastidious about cleaning up. He once told Gabriel that as the youngest, he always got the worst chores and had developed an affinity for them.
Judd also told him he would lie for his sisters when they snuck out to meet their boyfriends, and they’d pay him in beer and fast food, so he supposed it evened out.
He caught Judd’s eye and nodded toward the office with a raised eyebrow. Judd just shrugged.
Gabriel moved around the front desk, ready to knock, but the door was open.
“We wasted weeks waiting on Lennox’s team! And for what? Three days! That’s all the information they got. How does that help us?”
He had to hand it to Alvarez; at least he was consistent with his criticism.
“You think you could have done better?”
The soldier turned quickly, his dark eyes narrowing on Gabriel as he stepped through the door. Alvarez was shorter than Gabriel, but wider, and about ten years younger. He was handsome with his dark eyes and thick brows. In another life, he probably dressed nicely too. Maintained his haircut and took care of his body. Now, he was relegated to whatever they could scavenge that fit him. The latest coat was this purple monstrosity that looked like it came straight from the nineties. It was the highlight of Gabriel’s week when Alvarez had to put that on.
Which, in retrospect, probably didn’t endear him to the soldier.
“I do,” Alvarez answered, squaring up his shoulders. He was looking right through Gabriel, his eyes narrowed in on a spot above Gabriel’s nose. It was a tell he probably didn’t realize he had. Something he picked up from the army, when a higher-up was justlookingfor a reason to single you out. Eye contact was bad. Looking away was worse. A lot of guys developed the stare through. Gabriel sure had.
It was how the army raised you. Broke you down until you were nothing, and if you survived it, they built you back up. There were few people Gabriel couldn’t look in the eye now. Took a while, though.
