Page 73 of The Beast

As soon as I finish my cereal, I take the bowl back to the sink, then lean against it, watching him eat.

His eyes narrow. “What?”

“Just thinking. This place—it’s you, but it’s not. I guess it makes me realize I don’t really know you anymore.” The words come out before I can stop them. “That five years is a long time, and we’re both different people now, and I don’t know how we bridge that gap.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you want to?”

“Yes.” The answer comes immediately, without thought. “Yes,” I repeat, meaning it with all my heart. “I’m just afraid we don’t know how.”

Gabriel leaves his bowl on the small table, then comes to stand beside me, both our backs to the sink. He stands close, his arm sliding around my waist, and I lean against him, warm and solid and here. That’s what’s overwhelming. That he’s here. I’d gotten so used to him being gone that every touch, every glimpse feels like both surprise and celebration. “Yes,” I say again. “I want to get back what we lost.”

“Then we figure it out,” he says. “Day by day. Conversation by conversation. We learn each other again.”

“And if we don’t like what we find?” I’d spoken the words without thinking, and now I wish I could call them back. They seem to hang in the air between us, and I see the flicker of fear in his eyes—the same fear that lives in me.

The fear that we’ve been through too much. That the people we’ve become can’t fit together the way we used to.

“Then at least we’ll know,” he says finally. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because when I look at you, I still see my Izzy. And I have to believe that means your Gabe is still in here somewhere, too. We’ll find each other again,” he says. “I know we will.”

I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him. But there’s still that empty place that his words can’t soothe. That place inside me that cries out that he believed me capable not just of murder, but of murdering him. And, yeah, I get that he was tortured and manipulated and broken into believing it.

But understanding isn’t the same as healing.

And healing takes time.

I’m willing to give it all the time in the world. I hope to hell that he is, too.

“Okay,” I finally say. “We’ve got this. Day by day.”

He smiles then, a real smile, wide and toothy. The first one I’ve seen since he came back from the dead.

It transforms his face, makes him look younger, softer. And even with the beard, it makes him look more like the man I fell in love with.

I try to smile back, and almost manage it this time.

It’s not everything. Not yet. But it’s a start.

We spend the afternoon apart—me at the Monarch, putting out fires and dodging my father’s calls, him doing whatever it is he does in that underground world of his. But when I slip back into his apartment as the sun sets over Atlantic City, he’s waiting.

Not at his easel. Not on the couch. He’s standing beneath the high window, staring up at the sliver of sky, and when he turns to look at me, there’s something raw in his expression. Something hungry.

“Everything okay?”

“No.” He crosses to me in three long strides, and before I can ask what’s wrong, his hands are cupping my face and his mouth is on mine.

This kiss is different from last night, both at the gallery and when we came back here. That was wild desperation. This is slower. Deeper. Like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my lips, the taste of my tongue, every small sound I make against his mouth.

“Gabe.” His name is as soft as breath.

“I spent all day thinking about you,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine. “Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t paint. Couldn’t do anything except remember how you felt in my arms last night.”

Heat pools between my thighs. “And?”

“And I realized something.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “Last night was about anger. About grief. About trying to fuck away five years of pain on that damn slippery velvet.”