The Other Side of Envy: The Ghost Bird Series: #8 (The Academy) (37 page)

That didn’t sound like North. “North didn’t want to do this himself?”

“No. He called it a birthday present from the team.”

I was quiet for a long moment. Somehow in the midst of all the chaos, North devised a way to get Gabriel and I together for the evening. He knew I’d been worried about him.

North. I pushed my hand over my heart. He’d helped me.
Us
. He said we were in this together. My eyes watered, and I wished I could thank him. “Happy birthday,” I said softly to Gabriel.

Gabriel rolled over, pulling me in again. “I don’t even care right now. Fuck it all. We’ve got a whole day to ourselves tomorrow. Maybe we’ll go to the aquarium. Or maybe up to Myrtle Beach. I wonder if the park is open this late in the year.”

I sucked in some air to calm myself. “Where’d you get the bike?” I asked.

“Went and bought it,” he said. “Did it after school. It’s what we were doing, leading McCoy around for a while. Lost him for a bit to see if he’d catch up.”

“You...bought it?”

“Yeah. For myself for my birthday. Spent nearly everything I had on it.”

A Moped. Something North probably wouldn’t approve of. No wonder we couldn’t find it on that road. I rolled my eyes in the dark, amused, and eager to talk to North and laugh about it. He had been right. The muscle car wasn’t Gabriel’s style. We assumed he wanted a car. “So you like Mopeds?”

“I didn’t want a full motorcycle,” he said. “I like this one. Custom made. I want to do some things to it. Dress it up. I’m thinking...I don’t know. I keep going back and forth on it.” He sighed. “I don’t want to think of it right now. I’ll be up all night.”

I sighed and settled back into the bed. It’d been a crazy evening.

Silence surrounded us. I still wasn’t sleeping though. I turned over in his arms. I swished my legs between the sheets.

“Trouble,” he moaned. “Stop.”

“Gabriel?”

“Hm?”

There was so much to ask him. Questions floated through my head.

He squeezed me before I could come up the best one to ask first. He dipped his head close and kissed my temple. “You know, North talked to Luke and me. About…about the plan.”

“Oh?”

His fingertips brushed the skin along my arm. He traced it delicately, causing goosebumps, but I liked it when he touched me.

“At first, he threatened me, saying if I left, you’d be heartbroken. Said that he left and you were crying because you thought I’d run off, and he was going to drag me back to you. Said if I ever left you again, he’d beat the shit out of me.”

My heart pounded in my chest while the rest of me froze. I didn’t dare move or breathe. North said all that?

“The truth is, I almost considered leaving,” he said quietly. “When I thought about it, I was sure it wouldn’t work. We’re young. We’ve been through a lot of shit. We think we know what we want. I didn’t know how I was so stupid before. Thinking we’d just go on like we’ve been doing.”

“I was willing,” I said quietly.

“It was North that made me think. He kept asking the same thing. ‘What do you want? How do you feel about her?’ I said I didn’t know. He called me a liar. I almost punched him.”

I snuggled into him more. “Gabriel…”

He tilted his head toward me, pressing his nose to my forehead. “Sang,” he said. “The thought of leaving, I hated it. My heart hurt. Bad. I didn’t want to. I told him that. He said that’s how you know it’s the wrong thing to do. If your heart hurts just thinking about leaving, don’t leave. He asked me how I felt about staying. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t hurt.” He pressed his lips to my forehead then and as he spoke, his lips tickled my skin. “He said then it might be because the path isn’t clear, but maybe it was still in the right direction.” He kissed my forehead. “Motherfucker’s a psychologist.”

I smiled. “I wasn’t sure how I felt about it,” I said. “It feels like a selfish thing to want.”

“I feel selfish asking you to stay with me,” he said. “With
just
me. To maybe sign up as a couple team for the Academy. Or even just run off somewhere.” He pressed his palm against where he’d traced on my arm, rubbing, like erasing the imaginary lines. He started tracing again. “Fuck it all, Sang. Let’s just do it their way. Or our own way. I don’t want anyone else. Maybe we’re young and stupid and when we’re older, we’ll split up and blame it on being young and stupid. At least we tried it out.”

I wanted to answer him. I wasn’t sure what we were in for, thinking to do it like this. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “All I know is, I want to stay with you. I’d like to stay with the team. I…I’ll try, but only if everyone says they want to. I don’t even know what it’ll mean.”

“I don’t either,” he said. He kissed my temple again. “But who cares, right?” He shifted until he was propped up on an elbow, looking down at me, barely visible in the darkness. I was on my back, gazing up at him. He smoothed a lock of my hair away from my forehead, and then combed my hair with his fingers. “Who cares what it means? If you want us to stay a team, and we want to, too, then that’s what we do. They said stick with you, no other girlfriends for us. Well, fuck other girls. I’m busy. I can only handle one.”

I smiled, unable to help it. “The others…”

“Listen,” he said, his palm touching my face. “I don’t know what they’ll think. Here’s the thing, though. Those that want to stay, they’ll stay. Those that don’t like it, they’ll leave. In the end, it’s those that stay that…well… if you want us to, we stick by each other. If it’s all of us, or if it’s only a few of us.”

“But we can’t break up the team,” I said. “I can’t do that.”

“If we’re going to be a team, we all have to agree to it, or we’re not a team anyway. We’re in this together or we’re not together. Right? I mean that’s how other relationships work. Sometimes you have twenty friends. Sometimes you outgrow a few and you end up with only two. You might gain new ones.” He leaned in and kissed my brow. “No matter what, though, I’m staying with you. If you’ll let me. If you want me to.”

I reached out to him, wanting to hug him.

He pulled me in, and his lips fell against mine.

I wanted to talk more, but I melted into it the moment his mouth met mine. I answered him in a kiss instead of speaking out loud.

Yes. I wanted to stay with him. I wanted to stay with the team. Mr. Blackbourne and the others were right. We couldn’t force it. We could only ask if they’d like to stay. If not…I couldn’t think of that now.

Whatever path we were on now, we were in it together. I vowed to do what was necessary to ensure they were happy. Being with them was what I wanted. No Academy rules or requests could stop that.

As Gabriel kissed me, I realized in that moment our happiness depended on two things: on staying together and ensuring the Academy could protect us. It might mean working with the Academy and proving to them, once we were ready, that we wanted to stay together.

If I wanted to do that, I needed to face my fears. If the Academy wouldn’t be totally happy about our choice to stay together, we could at least prove ourselves in other ways.

That meant looking into my past. The Academy would want to know. It would be required to join.

I’d spend the day with Gabriel for his birthday, but as we snuggled close and drifted off to sleep, I knew that tomorrow, I’d talk with him about it. I’d want him to go with me to find the truth.

I’d have to discover my past to gain the future I wanted.

~ A ~

G
abriel Coleman sat in an observation room, watching as Sang and Marie Sorenson headed in to talk with Mrs. Sorenson. Sang’s features were grave, magnified by the dark circles under her eyes. It was one of the few times Gabriel thought of makeup for her face, only he disliked using it. Once she had a week or two of proper full night’s sleep, she’d get rid of those shadows.

Her eyes were too beautiful to be shadowed. The green was too perfect a color to replicate in paint or inks. He’d tried many times, especially in the last week. Especially the other day when he’d been lost in his own thoughts and the only thing he could draw was her face, over and over, trying to get it right. Never doing it justice.

The wall had a wooden rail, reminding him of a ballet barre and Gabriel gripped it, leaning so close to the window, that his forehead pressed against the glass. He’d smudge it, but he didn’t care. It was a small, one-way mirror meant for doctors to observe patients while they slept, or if they got tied down and went into a tirade.

Mrs. Sorenson hadn’t attacked nurses physically, but from what Dr. Green said, she often was abusive, showing a narcissistic personality, belittling the nurse when she was alone but then when others were around, she played like she’d not said anything at all. Nurses felt safer going in as a group.

It seemed even if Mrs. Sorenson wasn’t sick, she’d still be a burden to Sang and Marie. If they stuck together while visiting Mrs. Sorenson, they’d less likely have issues.

This made it seem like Sang going in with Marie was a better idea. If they were together, maybe Mrs. Sorenson would behave.

At least Mrs. Sorenson had been moved to the Academy hospital. She hadn’t had visitors since Mr. Sorenson left to be with his other family.

Gabriel still wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not. Sang hadn’t liked the idea of confronting her stepmother at all.

She’d insisted, though. She was right: the Academy would make her delve into her past. If she learned it from her stepmom, or at least got started there, it’d be better in the end.

He had to respect that request. He rocked his head right and left against the window. He couldn’t refuse her. Not now. If he was going to make their plan work, he needed to stand by her.

The girls waited quietly, and spoke together in whispers in the room. Mrs. Sorenson was asleep. Gabriel assumed they talked about how to best approach her.

He held his broken phone in his hands, feeling the cracks that Sang had made into the screen. It almost looked like a tree. He didn’t want to replace it. She could break all his things.

He looked down, tapping at his phone. It was open to the voicemail box. He hit play on the last message, listening again to the mistaken butt dial and the other guys talking in the background.

Kota sighed. “Gabriel’s going to be busier than ever.”

“We should probably give him a year off,” Nathan said. “A vacation.”

Gabriel smirked and turned it off at that point. He suspected this might have been set up, but it wasn’t like he could confront them about it…or that he would tell them about it. Even if it was fake, he appreciated the effort. He’d been really mad over the last day, angry with them over things that weren’t their faults. It wasn’t fair of him and he blamed it on being tired and stressed out.

He’d make up for being so moody to them later. He especially needed to apologize to Victor.

And maybe talk to him about this new plan with Sang. If they were to stay together, they’d have to ensure to win her over. Victor was right, they’d have to make time to take her to the spa and do other things with her.

He glanced in again at Sang, standing by with Marie as they waited for signs of Mrs. Sorenson to wake up and notice them. Sang shifted from foot to foot, scratching at her arm, touching her cheek.

Gabriel sighed. She was nervous. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

He couldn’t lose her now. It hurt too much to even think about leaving her, or to think she’d ever leave.

Lily had been right. Mr. Blackbourne was right. Liam and the others were right. Somehow, they’d worked so hard at becoming a family, at being together, that they didn’t think of the dynamics that could come up as a result of having a girl on the team. That she was a beautiful girl and there was so much to love about her.

She needed someone to love her.

He needed it, too. Looking in on her on the other side of the one-way mirror, she couldn’t see him, but he hoped she knew he was there.

He reached a finger up, tracing a small heart along the glass, around her face.

A door opened in the observation room behind where he stood. Gabriel dropped his hand quickly. Dr. Green came in; Gabriel could see his reflection in the window. He didn’t turn to greet him. He couldn’t peel his eyes away from Sang. He didn’t trust to not watch her now. Not when Mr. McCoy and even Mr. Morris were still out there looking for her. They were away for now, on the other side of the city chasing Kota and North in different directions with the new girl, waiting for Mr. McCoy to blow his top and talk.

This was part of the war they fought now. It would take a while before it was over. It wasn’t exactly what they signed up for.

It wasn’t what Sang signed up for.

Dr. Green sidled up next to Gabriel.

They watched quietly as Sang stood back, letting Marie greet her mother. Mrs. Sorenson looked surprised to see them. Her arm had an IV needle in it. Her finger had a heart pulse monitor clip stuck to it, and a machine was nearby, with a screen showing readouts.

Marie called to her quietly. Mrs. Sorenson’s eyes focused on Marie and then scanned the room. She spotted Sang and frowned. She opened her mouth but then looked beyond Sang. The door was open. Mrs. Sorenson put on a thick smile and loudly proclaimed to have missed Marie and asked for a hug.

Even Marie seemed to hesitate at this request. Marie was wearing a light sweater and jeans, and had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She didn’t look much like her half-sister. She moved forward quietly to give her mother an awkward hug.

Mrs. Sorenson didn’t ask the same of Sang.

“She’s barely acknowledged her,” Gabriel said. He gripped at the handrail tighter. “She won’t even say hello.”

“Marie knows what to say,” Dr. Green said. “She was willing to participate. She’s a bit happier now that she has the house to herself. These little favors are easy for her now.’

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, “but Sang doesn’t need to be in there. Shit, the woman can’t even say hi to her. After everything she’s been through... Is she just going to sit there and act like Sang’s invisible?”