Page 101 of Gabriel

He didn’t follow.

“Remember this conversation, Amara,” he called, his voice catching up to me. “We’ll tell it to our children one day. Sooner or later, you’ll be mine.”

I never turned around, but the heat in my cheeks stayed with me all the way back to the dorms.

And I would remember every word from that day for many years to come.

It would seem Gabriel was right after all.

That moment—almost eight years ago now—had felt like standing on the edge of something vast and uncharted, much like the Ionian Sea now stretching endlessly around us.

I lay awake before the sun rose fully, my body tangled in the sheets and still tingling with the memory of last night—of Gabriel, of the weight of him beside me. His breathing was even, but the tension in his jaw told a different story.

I watched him, tracing the sharp planes of his face, the way the early light made him look peaceful—almost human—though I knew the storm beneath his calm was never far away.

We hadn’t had sex, but we sure did everything else during the past hours of touching, his skin against mine, while we succumbed to the pleasure like two desperate lovers.

It was messy and urgent, yet so much more.

But the quiet that followed wasn’t peaceful. It left me wanting with the weight of what we left unfinished, and maybe what we both knew we couldn’t finish—at least not yet.

Finally, I reached out, my fingers brushing the sleeve of his shirt where it fell across the pillow. His eyes opened, clouded with sleep, then cleared as they met mine.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he murmured.

“I keep wondering,” I said finally, “if last night was just an escape.”

“You’re asking if it meant nothing?”

I nodded, the words too bitter on my tongue.

“No,” he said firmly. “It meant something. Everything. To me, at least.”

I wanted to believe him, but the doubt was a shadow clinging to my ribs and it wasn’t helping my loyalty to my siblings or to this man who had done nothing to betray my trust. “You don’t have to say that to be kind.”

“I’m not being kind,” he said. “I’m being honest. I don’t do this”—he gestured between us—“because it’s easy. Or safe. Or to forget. I do it because I don’t want to let you go. It’s been in the making for almost eight years, Amara.”

My heart stumbled. “Gabriel…”

He reached for me then, his hand closing over mine, rough and steady.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t have answers for you. I don’t know where this goes, or if it should even go anywhere. But I know what I’m feeling isn’t just a moment.”

I swallowed hard, the weight of his words sinking in.

“Last night was real,” he added. “And if you want it to be more—if you want me—then we figure it out. Together.”

I looked down at our hands, letting his warmth ground me, and for the first time, the uncertainty didn’t feel like a trap.

It felt like a beginning.

Gabriel

She didn’t say she wanted me, but dammit, she didn’t refuse me either, and I decided to focus on the positives in this blooming relationship between us.

I stared at the dark ceiling, the question of where to go from here and what lay ahead circling like vultures overhead.

Satan’s twins were orchestrating shit behind her back. The conversation I overheard between them couldn’t be taken as anything else, and if I stayed silent, it would be Amara’s and my beginning of the end.