And then she did stop shivering, but she stayed pressed against him, and when he removed one hand, tentatively and reluctantly, from her back, she tensed, and he laid it back against her skin to feel her relax and snuggle deeper, sighing softly.
I'll let her get a little warmer. Maybe then she'll wake up. In the meantime, I'll think of what to do when she does wake up.
Again, a fine plan. Except he did not think of the next step. Thoughts fluttered through his brain where they usually raced. It was like a slow, drowsy waking. I'm warm. I'm safe. I'm happy. Just let me stay here for a few more minutes, and then I'll get to work.
He buried his face against Olivia's hair, tightened his arms around her, closed his eyes, and relaxed. Just for a moment. Just a moment.
It might have been more than a moment. But he did snap out of it. No, he pushed himself out of it, mentally kicking and screaming, lifting his head and loosening his arms and saying, "Olivia?" She tried to get closer, and he had to grit his teeth to resist letting her.
She's unconscious. She needs help. Focus on her. Get her awake. Get her help.
"Olivia?"
He pulled back a little more, took her chin in his hand, and tilted her face to his.
"Olivia?"
He rubbed her back with his free hand, his grip on her chin tightening.
"Olivia? Can you hear--?"
Her eyes snapped open, wide with surprise, and he tensed, waiting for her to shake her head in confusion and pull away from him. But she looked up into his eyes and smiled and said, "Gabriel."
And then she kissed him.
He would later replay that moment--more times than it needed to be replayed--telling himself he had to revisit it to be sure he hadn't taken advantage of her confusion. He had not. She kissed him. There was no doubt of that. There was also, he would admit, no doubt that he kissed her back without even a split second of hesitation.
There wasn't even a thought of hesitation. Nor a thought of whether he should kiss her. It was like seeing her fall from the bridge and leaping after her. She started, and he followed, and there was no other choice, because that kiss...
That kiss...
If there was a part of sex that Gabriel could happily do without, it was kissing. The rest was about satisfying biological urges, much the same as eating or sleeping, and therefore it could be handled in the same way he ate or slept--dispassionately and perfunctorily, getting it out of the way. Kissing was different. It served no purpose other than intimacy and therefore, to him...No. Simply no. Fortunately, he'd discovered that if one picked the right partner, kissing was not required.
That did, however, lead to a problem. One he had never considered until he'd experienced another first for him: wanting to kiss someone. On the beach, with Olivia, too much wine drunk, hearing her laugh, watching her in the moonlight, and thinking, unbidden, that he wanted to kiss her. He hadn't, of course. That would be a violation of trust, an unwanted trespass. He had thought it, though, and then, upon thinking it, he'd felt a surge of panic, as he'd realized that if it did somehow happen...? Well, the problem with avoiding kissing? He was almost certainly not very good at it.
But now she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and it was like hearing about ice cream and thinking it sounded revolting, and perhaps getting a taste or two of some cheap ice milk and agreeing it was revolting, and then tasting the real thing and realizing this was not what you'd imagined at all, not what you'd tasted before, that even to give it the same name seemed a sacrilege. Because that kiss...
That kiss was a blazing fire in an ice storm. It was a clear running stream in a desert. And yet it wasn't quite that. It was finding something that you didn't know you wanted, didn't know you needed, and then suddenly it was there, and you couldn't believe you hadn't been looking for it all along.
Gabriel had spent his life knowing exactly what he wanted. Pursuing his goals with single-minded determination. And then along came Olivia. She'd stopped him in his tracks, and he'd circled tentatively, questioning, unsure, thinking that maybe this was something he wanted but the urge was too foreign to be taken at face value. Perhaps he was wrong, misinterpreting, confusing a need for companionship for a need for more. And then she kissed him, and he knew he wasn't wrong. He was not wrong at all.
What he wanted to do most at that moment was seize it. Immerse himself in that kiss because that's what it demanded--no thought, just feeling. And for the first few minutes, he was able to give it exactly that. But then he felt the spark of an emotion never properly developed, never truly part of his admittedly flat emotional landscape until recently. Until Olivia. The emotion he liked, perhaps, least of all.
Guilt.
It was not guilt at kissing another man's lover. Gabriel could fathom such a response in only the most abstract way. A lover was not property. If Olivia chose to kiss him, that was her business. Perhaps, though, he should feel some guilt at the betrayal of someone who was--yes, admit it--a friend. For now, though, he really didn't give a damn about Ricky. No, the guilt was for the niggling and growing acknowledgment that Olivia did give a damn about Ricky. That Olivia was not the sort of woman who'd kiss a man when she'd made a commitment to another. That if Olivia had not pulled away by now, then Olivia was not truly present, not truly awake, not truly and mindfully kissing him.
No, that's not true. She opened her eyes. She looked at me. She said my name. Goddamn it, she said my name. Not Ricky. Not Gwynn. She knows exactly who she is kissing.
Was he sure?
Yes.
Then he shouldn't mind checking.
Gabriel had witnessed children's tantrums. In school. In shopping malls. In restaurants. A child howling at the universe because it did not give him what he wanted. Gabriel had never, even as a child, thrown such a tantrum, because he had not lived a life where he could presume the universe was in any way inclined to give him what he wanted. That wasn't how life worked. But now he felt like those children, stomping his feet and clenching his fists and raging at the unfairness of it all.
She said my name. Mine, mine, mine.
And how would he feel later, if he discovered he'd been mistaken? What if, instead, she'd had too much to drink? If she'd been drugged? If she kissed him then, would he claim she said his name and that was enough?
No. He would not.
He could do many things to many people, but that was one offense he had never been remotely guilty of. However uncomfortable the act of seduction, however much he wished to get what he needed and disappear into the night, he had never even been tempted to walk into a bar and choose someone too inebriated to make a conscious decision to leave with him. If he wouldn't do that to a stranger, he certainly wouldn't do it to Olivia.
He pulled back then, cupping her face and holding it away from his own.
Her eyes opened.
"Gabriel," she said, and smiled.
There. See? See?
The child in him pointed in glee. That "proof" was enough, wasn't it? He wished it was. But the adult in him looked into her eyes and saw that they weren't quite focused, felt the awareness, in the pit of his stomach, that she wasn't quite there.
"Olivia?"
She closed her eyes and pushed her hands into his hair, trying to pull him back to her.
"Olivia? I need to ask you something."
She wriggled in his grip, frustrated that she couldn't get back to him.
"Olivia? Can you open your eyes?"
She did not.
"Olivia? Do you know where you are? Do you know what's happened?"
No answer. She started shivering and whispered, "Cold, so cold." Her hands fell from his hair, and she pulled them between their bodies, shivering against him, and when he released her face, she pushed her head under his chin, finding warmth there and snuggling back into his arms.
"Cold," she said.
"I know."
"Gabriel," she sighed, and nuzzled against him.
"I know," he said. And that he did have--the knowled
ge that wherever Olivia was, whatever she was imagining, it was with him. Not mistaking him for Ricky. Not mistaking him for Gwynn. She might not realize where she was or what had happened, but she knew she was with him, contentedly curled up in his arms, and that was, for now, enough.
--
"Ma-til-da!"
A voice shouted, somewhere deep in Gabriel's brain. No, not just a voice. Arawn. Gwynn stirred, annoyed, and felt Matilda curled up against him, his face buried in her hair, the summer sun beating down on them, lying in the meadow's long grass.
"Ma-til-da! Gwynn!"
Go away. Just go away.
You have to get up now. Before he finds you. Before he sees you like this.
Gwynn tossed in half sleep, knowing the voice was right, that they had to get up, couldn't let Arawn see them together.
And there was more, too. Something else...Something had happened...Water? Why was he thinking of--
"O-liv-i-a! Ga-bri-el!"
Gabriel started awake, and pushed up on one forearm, blinking against the darkness. Why was it dark? There'd been sunshine only a moment...
He squeezed his eyes shut, and the thought evaporated, leaving him even more confused. He was lying on cold concrete, but warmth pressed against him, so familiar and...
He looked down to see Olivia in his arms. A bridge. A fall. Olivia, not breathing. Olivia, breathing. Olivia, shivering. Olivia, kissing...
Oh.
He didn't move away then. Didn't feel any inclination to move away, just pulled her tighter to him, telling himself it was still cold, which it was. He shook off the last threads of sleep. He hadn't meant to doze off. He shouldn't have dozed off. Olivia might be breathing and warm, but she was still unconscious, and to simply drift off to sleep while she needed help was unconscionable. He pushed up again.
I need to...
Thought was still slow in coming. Damnably slow, like swimming through molasses.
"Ga-bri-el! O-liv-i-a!"
Ricky? That did have him pushing away from Olivia, the guilt that had failed to come earlier now surging. Well, if not quite surging, at least prickling enough for him to move back an inch or so.
Focus, damn it. Focus.
Ricky. He'd heard Ricky. Why would he...?
Because Gabriel had texted Ricky, before he went to meet Olivia. Just a quick note to say where they were, and Olivia should be done in an hour and would call him then. What Gabriel had really been doing was covering their backs, just in case.
"In here!" Gabriel shouted, as loud as he could, and while Olivia started, she still didn't wake. Goddamn it, why didn't she wake?
"Ricky! We're in here!"
His voice echoed through the tunnel. Echoed...and stayed trapped there.
He set Olivia down and moved her against the wall, as far from the edge as possible. Then he slid off the side and swam, stopping every dozen strokes to shout. He was about ten feet from the entrance when he heard, "Gabriel?"
"Here! The tunnel!" He covered the last part of the distance, dove, and came up to see figures on the shore, about fifty feet down, shining searchlights on the water.
"Here!" he shouted, waving one arm, and a figure turned and the light hit him, and Gabriel exhaled in relief.
GRACE AND UNDERSTANDING
Ricky rode in the back of the ambulance. Gabriel needed to be treated for hypothermia, and the paramedics had quickly realized it would be easier to do so if Ricky was there. He'd distracted Gabriel by explaining how he'd found them.
How much of the story did Gabriel process? Not much, Ricky suspected, but he didn't tell him to shut the fuck up--or, in Gabriel-speak, give a curt "That's enough." Which proved that the paramedics were right: hypothermia slowed mental processes.
As Ricky talked, the paramedics worked on Olivia. Every few minutes Gabriel would rouse from his stupor and demand to know why she wasn't regaining consciousness, and that was when Ricky would have liked to tell him to shut up, because he didn't need the reminder.
All that ended when, in the course of treating Liv, the paramedic discovered a thin knife wound, like a stiletto stab, on her right side, between her ribs. The ambulance ride wasn't nearly as calm after that.
--
"She fell in the river," Gabriel snarled at the desk clerk. "From a bridge. No, wondrously, she does not have her wallet with her. Meaning she does not have identification or proof of health insurance."
It was not as if the hospital was actually refusing Liv treatment. The clerk had simply asked for the information, and hesitated when told why it could not be provided. That hesitation had been enough, though, considering that Gabriel was already in a frothing temper over the paramedics' slowness in discovering Olivia's stab wound. A temper which Ricky knew was fueled by the fact that Gabriel himself hadn't realized she'd been stabbed.
"Her name is Olivia Taylor-Jones," Ricky said, as calmly as he could. "Her family owns the Mills & Jones department store. She can definitely cover her bills. If you need proof of her identity, just google her name."
The clerk still hesitated. Ricky resisted the urge to snap at her. Liv had been taken in already and was being assessed. This was merely a formality.
Gabriel snapped cards onto the counter from his soaked wallet. "Visa and American Express Platinum. A hundred-thousand-dollar limit on each, both currently empty because I use this." He waved his debit card. "If you can point me to an ATM, I can secure you a down payment and those"--he pointed at the credit cards--"are yours to keep. Does that resolve the issue?"
The full force of those ice-ray blue eyes locked on the hapless clerk, and she froze, her mouth opening and closing.
"Take the cards," Ricky said, pushing them into her hand. "We'll come back for them later." Then, to Gabriel, his voice lowering, "Let's go find Liv."
--
Locating the correct floor would have been easier if the desk clerk had been more useful, but Ricky had always known how to get people to do what he wanted--the right smile, the right tone, the right words. He'd always presumed he inherited that from his father. It turned out he was partly right--it was a gift they'd both inherited with their Cwn Annwn blood. He hadn't yet told his father about that. He wasn't sure where to start.
They found the room where Liv was being assessed, and Ricky obtained a promise for an update ASAP, which he got from a harried doctor minutes later.
When the doctor left, Gabriel reached for his inside jacket pocket to pull out his phone or ever-present pad of paper. The coat he was actually wearing contained neither. It was Ricky's leather jacket. Under it, the borrowed T-shirt was about two sizes too small, stretching tight across Gabriel's chest. For trousers, he had a pair of jeans from Wallace's saddlebags. Between the biker jacket, jeans, tight T, and dark stubble, Ricky understood why the desk clerk had been so flustered. She'd probably already alerted the banks to their obviously stolen credit cards.
When Gabriel patted his pockets, scowling, two nurses scuttled out of the way. Ricky jogged to catch up with them and ask a favor. Then he returned and handed Gabriel a sheet of paper and a pen.
Gabriel nodded curtly and began jotting notes. When he reached into his jacket again, he didn't even have time to scowl before Ricky held out his own phone. This time Ricky got a grunt of thanks, and Gabriel went to work, fingers flying as he searched the words on his list--terms the doctor had used to describe Liv's condition.
"Can I have that back?" Ricky asked when Gabriel finished and tucked the phone away.
Gabriel started, as if from his thoughts, grunted something semi-apologetic, and returned the phone.
Ricky cleared his throat. "May I borrow your list, too? I remember most of it, but..."
Gabriel glanced over. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and when they did, he frowned. "Yes, of course," he said. "You want to know, too...Of course."
"Let's go sit down. You still seem a little out of it."
He got a frosty, "I'm fine, thank you," for that.
"Well, I'm going over ther
e to sit," Ricky said.
They sat, and Gabriel explained what he'd found, filling in what they'd gotten from the doctor.
When he got to the part about the stab wound, his voice sharpened with anger.
"You couldn't have known," Ricky said.
"I should have."
"You thought her attacker only pushed her. You didn't see the blade. Then it was dark, and the blood had washed away."
"I was careless."
"And nothing I can say will help, will it?"
"No."
"So stop trying?"
"Yes." Then, grudgingly, "Please."
Ricky shook his head and they lapsed into a silent vigil, both watching the room where Liv lay, out of their reach, beyond their care.
--
It was 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Almost thirty hours since Liv had been rushed to the hospital. Twenty-four since they'd been allowed into her room. Ricky had checked in on her at seven and then went out to get breakfast for himself and Gabriel. Liv had not regained consciousness. Gabriel had not left her side. Which meant Ricky had spent the night in his apartment, because there was only one bedside chair.
Did he resent that, just a little? Yes, he did. But it was only a little, and ultimately as pointless as...well, as trying to kick Gabriel out of her life. Worse than pointless. Dangerous.
When Ricky first made his play for Liv, he'd made sure Gabriel wasn't interested in her and then told himself he believed Gabriel's denials. But that was bullshit. He could tell there'd been more growing between them. Ricky was not an idiot. Nor, however, was he stupidly noble or generous. He wanted Liv, and Liv wanted him, and Gabriel wasn't stepping up to the plate, so...batter out.
Except it wasn't that simple, a fact he hadn't acknowledged until he got the Gwynn-Matilda-Arawn story. But even that only came as confirmation of what he'd suspected: that he didn't have Liv to himself. That he couldn't have her to himself. That, maybe most importantly, he shouldn't. Because that way lay misery and tragedy and endless grief for all of them.
Grace had asked if Ricky knew Arawn's mistake. He did. It was exactly that: Arawn thought he could have Matilda to himself.
It was easy to blame Gwynn for what happened. Gwynn broke their pledge, and he made Matilda keep their betrothal secret and persuaded her that Arawn would be happy for them. Gwynn was, indeed, at fault for that betrayal. But when Arawn learned the truth, did he realize Matilda loved Gwynn and back off? Hell, no. His sin, then, was as grave as Gwynn's, his betrayal of Matilda as deep.