“You told me you were coming for me, and you left, and you never got back here. I waited for you, Gabriel. For five fucking years I waited, and now you show up and almost kill a man in front of me, and you tell me to believe you?!”

She was opening to shake. If he did not handle this carefully, she was going to break.

“No,” he said, his voice low and gruff. “I'm telling you to believe the Gabriel you knew. And watch me. Because you may see, I'm nevertheless him. I promise.”

“And if you're lying?” she stated in a tiny voice.

It was a risk. They wanted to move, and he needed to get her clear on how they were going to do this. But he reached for her, traced her hair from her temple, back at the back of her ear. She closed her eyes and bit her lip when he touched her.

Just that tiny moment, that little touch… she was like a drug in his system. His heart pounded, racing faster than he wanted to run. His pores and skin throbbed with it. Nothing did that to him anymore. He was as cold as a machine. He'd been compelled to think like a machine. To be untouchable.

But she touched him, deeply. Every time.

There was something between them that defied explanation. He didn't know how, or why it had happened, though he had some suspicions. He didn't comprehend how it was possible that a soulless creature like him could sense so much. But she did that to him; she always had.

And he'd give whatever to keep her safe.

Anything.

Even himself.

Amelia POV

Gabriel staring at her and touching her was… overwhelming. His gaze accompanied her like she was the only aspect in the world, his ice-blue eyes fixed, pupils dilated. And she shivered, her pores and skin pebbling with an intoxicating combine of desire and thrill. She'd had to shut her eyes when his fingers met her skin, slid into her hair, due to the fact that her scalp prickled and she was at risk of embarrassing herself.

She bit her lip to maintain herself steady, and simply breathed. But then she caught that smell of him again.

Shit, she was a mess. A melting, glowing mess.

Then he whispered her identify and she almost whimpered. She'd ached to hear that, that tender breath of her name, the way he used to say it, in her ear, in her hair, in opposition to her skin—for five years.

Her hand slipped up to seize his, to end him, and he froze. She gave a little laugh. She wasn't even looking at him, and she ought to experience him. Could still examine him like a book.

He was terrified she was going to say no. And that was what satisfied her.

This was nonetheless Gabriel. Her Gabriel. Gabriel was good. She knew that. Knew it like she knew her own name. What he'd done… what had passed off that night… There had to be a reason.

So when she opened her eyes and his locked on, she sucked in another deep breath of his summer-time rain-shower odor and nodded. “Okay,” she said.

It mustn't be so effortless to throw her complete life away with one word.

But it wasn't, really. She wasn't throwing it away on a word. She was throwing it away on a man.

If she was an idiot for that… well… she'd tried. She'd tried to get over him. To escape his memory. To convince herself that what they'd had had been nothing but teenage fumblings and infatuation.

But it hadn't worked. And now he was here.

“Okay,” she stated again, clearer this time. “Tell me what to do.”

He stared at her like he was going to kiss her, and for a moment, she held her breath. But then he blinked and stood—hunched, because the van was exactly a foot shorter than him—and presented her a hand to help her out of the seat.

“When I open the door, we walk, just like you would any other day. As if none of this has happened, okay?”

She nodded, swallowing. She was simply going to do this.

“I'll invulnerable the apartment, however, you don't say a word—not a single word—about leaving or what's befell tonight. You can talk. You talk about seeing me again. You discuss your questions about us, anything… normal. Be angry if you're angry. Be hurt. Be scared. Whatever. But you don't speak about the truth that we're packing a bag, or that I'm making sure there's no one around, okay?”

She nodded again, hysterical laughter effervescent in her throat at the surprising intellectual photo of herself standing over a pile of underwear and socks, berating him whilst he ran through the condominium with a gun, like a hero in an awful cop movie.

“When the time's right, I'm going to fake to get mad at you and leave. I'm no longer leaving, you understand? But if you make any noise after that, it has to sound like you're damage and pissed off that I left you again. You can't… Amelia, you can't pay attention to anything I say when it's going on, you understand?”

“You think they have my rental bugged?”

He snorted. “If they don't, someone dropped the ball. But I do not know if they'd already done it earlier, or if they rushed in tonight. So, we act like they can hear the whole lot in there, okay?”

She nodded, her coronary heart hammering on her chest.

He took her hand, and she breathed in sharply. “When I leave, I'll take the bag. You make whatever noise you prefer about me leaving, then you come out into the hallway like you're mad and looking for me. Then we run like hell.”

She nodded again, dumbly. “Where are we going?” she asked.

That was the

“I'm taking you home,” he said carefully.

Her face crumpled. “I can't go home, Gabriel. My parents broke up. I don't have—”

“Not your home, Amelia. That's no longer safe. They'd already have eyes on your parents. I'm taking you to my home.”

She frowned. “That little town in the center of nowhere?”

He nodded; however, his eyes had been guarded. But he did not provide her time to think that through. He reached for the handle of the van door and murmured below the roll and creak of it, “It's time. We need to get moving. Remember, talk.”

She nodded, then let him lead her out of the van and through the parking lot to the stairwell.

Gabriel POV

Amelia led him up the stairs and up one flight. He pulled the door open for her, and she glanced at him with a strange seem to be on her face; however, she darted through to her apartment, simply two doorways down the hall. Her eyes were too wide; however, in any other case, everyone watching them would have considered her tense, but normal.

Then she closed the door behind him and flipped the lock, tossed her keys and purse on the little desk in the entryway and turned, stalking him into the bedroom.

Walking into her condo was heaven. It was bathed in her scent—vanilla and apples—and there have been reminders of her everywhere—that soft, fake fur blanket thrown over the returned of the couch made him smile. She'd usually been very anti-fur, which used to make him laugh.

If only she knew.

Emotion hit him right in the chest, and he had to swallow, returning a lump in his throat. He'd imagined coming in here so many instances in the past two years… yearned for it. Ached for it. Almost snuck in just to be shut to her, even if she did not know it. But that would have been creepy. He'd given her her privacy; however, he'd desired her. Wanted to be here. Needed to be close. Keeping his distance from her had been like chewing off his own foot. And now he did not have to anymore. He could not consider it pretty.

“Five years, Gabriel,” she said, her voice trembling and high. “Five years and then… You simply show up like nothing happened? You assume me to just… what? Where the hell have you been?”

“Working,” he said, his voice a low growl as he prowled forward, making no sound at all, masking each inch of the room as they talked, checking corners and furniture, looking for something that may want to be hiding a video feed.

“Working? Twenty-four hours a day? Seven days a week? Working so difficult you could not even ship me a notice to inform me you have been alive?!”

“It isn't always the sort of work that has Saturdays off, Amelia .”

“Stop calling me that.”

He pulled up hard at that, frowning at her. “I've continually known you as Amelia .”

“You haven't known me as anything for five fucking years, Gabriel. What the hell is wrong with you?” She'd stalked into her bedroom that was simply off the small residing place, and after checking behind the TV, he went after her, twisting sideways to fit between the blanket basket and the arm of the loveseat.

He felt too massive in this place. Though the living room ceiling was vaulted, it was small. Thin gaps between the couch and the espresso table, the table and the television. He was all at once too large, like he didn't suit the space.

Then he stepped through the door into her room and recollections hit him, one after another, pelting him like hail.

Directly across from the door was a giant mattress blanketed in a soft, cream quilt. There had been nightstands on both sides of it and a dresser to his left, a door off to the right that needed to be the bathroom.

But the first aspect that caught his eye was the photograph, half-curled on itself, stuck into the body of her mirror. A picture, no longer just of them. It was one of these game night time crew shots with all and sundry screaming their smiles and fingers thrown excessive with peace signs, or horn hands. They'd all been excited because their crew had won, which didn't usually happen, and half her friends were in the band, half of his in the football team.