Chapter Twenty: Gabriel
“I have to go back home now,” she announced as she stood in the bathroom doorway.
She was wrapped in the huge hotel robe, leaning against the door frame.
“Why?” I asked.
“I've been here for three days, Gabriel. Three days,” she said and held up three fingers, in case her words weren't clear enough. “Three.”
I leaned back on the couch and patted the cushion beside me.
“Come sit with me.”
“Three days is long enough,” she said again as she walked across the room and sat down beside me on the couch.
“Three, you say,” I asked with a smirk.
“It’s not funny.”
I put my arms around her shoulders and pulled her close.
“Don't try to change my mind.”
“Just one more day,” I whispered and kissed her neck.
She resisted, pulling out of my embrace and looked at me.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Stop it. We can't stay like this.”
“Like what?”
“In this bubble. We both have responsibilities and the bar has been closed for days. I have to go back to my life. I have employees and I need to do something about Dad. I can’t stay holed up in this hotel forever. I have things that must be done.”
“But what about me, and us?”
“I’m serious. I have to go back to my life, and you need to go back to yours.”
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close again.
“This is what I want. You. This. All of it,” I whispered.
“You want hotels and take out?”
My hand slipped up under the robe and I breathed against her neck.
“No, not hotels and take out. I want to take you home with me. Back to Maine.”
“What would I even do there?” she asked.
“Anything you want. You could sleep all day. Read trashy magazines. Bake. Decorate cakes. Go to school. I don't care. As long as you're with me, I don't care.”
She didn't respond and I asked, “What would you like to do?”
“I don't know. Honestly, I’ve never had a chance in my life to think about it.”
I sighed and ran my fingers through her hair, twirling the ends around my finger. “You want to know what I’d like to do?”
She looked at me with a suggestive look on her face.
“What?”
“I want to tell you that I love you, Lynette,” I said softly.
When she opened her mouth to respond, which I knew she would, I covered her mouth with my hand and shook my head.
“If I let you start, you'll never let me finish. I love you. I want you and all of your problems and fears.”
When I was done, I removed my hand from her mouth and looked at her, awaiting her response.
“You can't love me,” she said. “You've known me for less than a month.”
“I know all I need to know about you.”
“I can’t just go to Maine.”
“Of course you can. You can do anything you want to do.”
“But what about the bar?” she asked.
“What about it?”
She hesitated slightly and shook her head. “What do I do with it? I can’t just leave it.”
“Sell it?”
“I can’t. My dad built that bar.”
“Into the successful thriving business that it is now? Get real.”
She pulled away from me and stood up from the couch.
“Let me take you home with me. Things will be so much less complicated there.”
“I should just leave my dad here by himself? He would be dead within a month and then I would have nobody but myself to blame.”
“That would not be your fault.”
“Take me home. I need to go. It’s been too long.”
“Don’t be like that. There’s nothing here for you any longer. What are you going to do here?”
She looked at me for a few seconds and her shoulders slumped.
“I don't know.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
“But it’s the truth. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don't know how I feel. I don't know how I want to feel. I’m scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“Not for me. You make me feel, like I'm naked, exposed.”
I ran my hand up her body, pushing past the tie to her bare side.
“You are naked.”
She sighed and turned her face to me.
“I meant on the inside. Take me back home. I can’t escape forever.”
I nodded, smiling sadly.
On the way, she asked me to stop by the bar, since she had left her phone and her house keys there through all the chaos that happened that night. I wasn't even sure whether it would still be there.
As we arrived, we saw the broken window had already been boarded up. When she tried the door, it was locked.
“Shit,” she muttered and stepped away.
I walked up to the door and said, “Allow me.”
I used my cane to pry the board loose just enough so that my hand could fit through, and I opened the lock.
She glanced at me with an impressed looked on her face and said, “You’re a regular MacGyver, aren't you?”
“We’re taught a lot of things in the Army.”
“Like breaking into buildings? Was that part of your basic training?”
“Nope,” I said with a smile.
Although basic training didn't include breaking into buildings, it did teach us to use whatever was around us to stay safe, stay alive, and kill if need be. Of course, I’d never tell her that.
I opened the door and we stepped inside. The sunlight glittered on the broken glass scattered across the floor. I noticed she hesitated as she glanced at the shards, and the dried blood that stained the wooden floors. It looked like a crime scene, only the body was still alive.
“Hey,” I said. She looked back at me. “It’s okay.”
She nodded and took a deep breath.
“I’m going to get my keys, and my phone. Hopefully they’re still there.”
I nodded and sat down on a nearby barstool, waiting for her.