GABRIEL SPENT THE NEXT two hours staring at the sky.
He was freezing. It was the first time he’d felt so cold. His mind kept on reeling on every unpleasant thing he’d done. Things he had been told. Things he’d seen. Things that could have happened differently if he’d controlled his emotions; if he’d listened to the warnings.
Ethan reminded him greatly about his childhood. What his mother’s infidelity had caused him. There was no one to help him and pull him out of his misery. There was no one willing to sit and understand what was wrong with him and he was unwilling to believe anything was wrong with him.
Gabriel walked into the house. He passed by Sydney’s room and saw she was asleep. He went to Ethan’s room and pushed the door open quietly.
Ethan was moving on the bed. His eyes were tightly shut. A wince was planted across his face as he kept on turning. He seemed to be having a nightmare.
” Don’t shoot him, don’t shoot him please.” Ethan cried.
Gabriel went to him quickly, he sat on the bed and touched his forehead. It was something one of his stepmoms did to stop his nightmares.
” Don’t shoot my Daddy, please! Daddy, get out of the way. They want to kill you. Why aren’t you moving?!”
” Ethan, breathe, calm down; no one’s going to shoot,” Gavin whispered assuringly.
Ethan grabbed Gabriel’s hand and pulled his shirt roughly. ” Help, help me, please. They want to kill him.”
Gabriel ran a hand through Ethan’s blonde locks gently. ” It’s just a nightmare he’s fine. He’ll be fine.”
” No, no! Something is wrong. The man who owns the Tesla is here. He’s pointing a gun at him but Daddy keeps staring at a card.”
” Open your eyes and you’ll see it’s just a dream.”
” He’s pulling the trigger. He’s pulling the trigger!! Help him, help him, please. ” Ethan shouted and almost fell off the bed but Gabriel quickly grabbed him and pulled him to his body.
Ethan panted loudly, his tears soaked Gabriel’s shirt. His eyes were open now, he was fidgeting.
” Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. ”
” It’s just a nightmare, Ethan; calm down.”
Ethan pulled away from Gabriel quickly and pushed himself far away from him. His green eyes seemed to have lost all their color. His body read fear, fear, fear.
” No, no, something is after my Daddy. Someone is chasing after his life. Someone wants to kill him. ”
” That man with the Tesla. He was holding my hand today in the Hospital, he whispered to me that I’ll make a great fighter. He is after my Daddy. ”
Gabriel scowled in confusion. He remembered having nightmares that eventually became real. He remembered Gavin saying he didn’t have time. He couldn’t be there to help Ethan.
Gabriel’s eyes took the shape of the moon. ” How does the man look like, what’s his name? ”
” I don’t remember his name. The man has tattoos and piercings on his eyebrows and eyes. He looks like he’d been burnt in a fire. ”
Gabriel’s mouth hung for a while as he tried to place where he’d heard the same description before. After a moment of brain-racking, he remembered the man he’d bought the torture house from telling him about Antonio’s brother. He gave the same description but without the eye piercings.
” He’s a devil; he’s worse than Antonio. He lures men to make deals they wouldn’t be able to resist. Deals that would eventually kill them. I don’t know why but he’s planning something something big. The whole Mafia is. ”
Gabriel stared into nothing, trying not to believe Gavin wouldn’t have been one of the people who fell into his trap.
Gabriel remembered his phone calls with his father. How he’d talked about Gavin Reed. How Gavin rose to fame in such a short space of time.
Alfred was so keen on finding out how a man could become a billionaire in less than five years that he conducted fake interviews asking Gavin questions Gavin cleverly answered. Alfred couldn’t find any answers to his question.
It was a futile attempt.
” Gabriel.” Ethan, who’d cooled down, called, knocking Gabriel back to reality.
” Yes?” Gabriel looked at him.
” I’m sorry for all the bad things I said. I was afraid you’d hurt my mommy. That’s why I talked to you that way. I don’t want to die without telling you sorry. ”
Gabriel lost consciousness for half a second. His heart died so quickly that he wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive.
God, this child doesn’t deserve this. Gabriel screamed silently.
” You won’t die anytime soon don’t say that.”
” I almost died today. Someone wants to kill me. Someone will kill me. Someone is killing me. ” He shook as he spoke. ” I’m a bad kid, it’s good for me. It’s good for me. It’s good for me. ”
Gabriel felt his eardrums ripping apart when Ethan kept on saying the same thing over and over again. He got out, got up from the bed, and walked over to where Ethan sat. He saw himself. He saw his childhood face in him.
Broken. Unfixable.
___________
Five days had passed by.
Gabriel barely had time to talk to Sydney since she was constantly with Ethan and Emily and he didn’t want to pry in. He’d told her about getting Ethan a therapist; he was surprised to find out she was considering it, too.
Jacob called a day after the gunshot incident and reported Avery was nowhere to be seen. Gabriel was too busy worrying about Ethan and his nightmare to focus on finding Avery. However, he told Jacob to find her by all means possible. She was a goose on the loose, only God knows the evil she was capable of doing.
Gabriel walked to the lake when he saw Sydney’s silhouette sitting on the rock, staring into the bleak sky.
Gabriel sat next to her, a grin she thought she’d never see again spread across his face.
” You know you could have been mulled by a wild animal.”
” I’ve seen you come up here countless times and you are still living.” She sighed and stared at the moon reflecting in the lake.
” What time is it?” Sydney asked after a long stretch of silence. ” I’ve lost track of what I’m counting.”
Gabriel glanced at his watch.
” Eleven… Eleven fifty-five.”
” Okay.” She whispered and let her eyelids fall.
She prayed to God. Talked to her mother. Prayed that the coming year would be better. Prayed that everything would fix. At the last second, she told the past Goodbye.
On the first second of the New Year, she wished her mother a happy New Year.
Gabriel looked at the fireworks blowing off in the sky. A new year. A new chance.
” Happy New Year Gabriel.” Sydney rested her head on his shoulder.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and released the whole weight of the past year in one long breath. ” Happy New Year, Miss Morgan.”
Sydney laughed softly. ” Don’t call me that again.”
” Okay…”
” Good.”
” Miss Morgan.” He chuckled when she smacked his shoulder. ” Tell me, what do you wish for? If you had the ability to have or change one thing what would that be? ”
There was a lot of this she would have changed. Lots of mistakes she would have avoided.
” I would have listened. I would have gone back fourteen years ago and been more attentive to other people’s feelings.” She looked at him. “What about you? ”
Gabriel wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to come clean.
” I should have told you the truth earlier. ”
Sydney sat straight and looked at him with a raised brow. ” What truth? Is it about your feelings for me? I’m sorry I-”
” No, not that. ” He held up her hand and placed it to his chest. ” Can you feel it? ”
Sydney stared at her lap afraid to meet his gaze. His heart was beating faster than normal. Unsteadily.
” This is what you do to me every time you look at me. It’s what happens to me, my heart. Anytime I see you, I can’t control it. I can’t force it away, it made me crazy. Desperate. Stupid.” Gabriel filled his lungs with the cold air. ” I must tell you the truth but promise me you won’t hate me when I do.”
” Gab- Gabriel what are you saying to me?”
” Don’t be scared just yet. I promised to show you my mother’s grave, I will today, at sunset. I’ll tell you the truth. You deserve the best, you do not deserve someone like me.”
” Jesus, Gabriel what are you talking about? You are a good man, nothing you do will make me hate you. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.”
” You are too good for me.” He raised her hand to his cheek and leaned into it. ” I’m trying to stop loving you but you are making it so difficult.”
He placed her fingers on his lips and kissed the tips. ” Stay for a few days.”
” Do I have a choice? My flight got canceled. The next one’s till February.”
Gabriel smiled. ” It’s God wanting you to stay a little longer with me.” He stretched out his arm. ” Come let me feel your heart next to mine, it will give me a little peace of mind.”
Sydney smiled faintly and wrapped his arms around his waist. He engulfed her in his warmth and hoped this wouldn’t be the last time she would touch him.