Page 34

Chapter 34

GAbrIEL

F rom my spot in the parking lot, not even ten feet away, I had a front-row seat as April went down. I watched her body slam into the asphalt. Watched her bike bounce violently off the ground. Watched her roll into the middle of the road.

I threw my own bike down, already running. The harshness of her fall would have been enough to steal my breath, but then came the scream of rubber as April lay there.

Quieta como la muerte.

Still as death.

I wasn’t going to make it to her in time. I’d watch April, the woman I loved, die in front of me.

I love her.

What should have been a beautiful realization hit like a knife to the chest. Her death a twist to the handle.

The car jumped to a halt, and I stopped, too, waiting for the world to fall on top of me .

Then, my brain processed the scene. April’s helmet lay three feet away from the car’s tire. My eyes kept tracing between her and the car. I’d never appreciated empty space as much as I did at that moment. She hadn’t been hit.

I still couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Her head rolled, and she bent her knees with a groan.

She’s okay.

She’s alive.

I gasped for air, stumbling as I ran toward her again.

“April!”

The other cyclists were starting to dismount, but I wove around them, desperate to see her up close, to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me and that she was actually okay.

She unclipped her helmet with another groan, her eyes squeezed shut.

“?En dónde te duele?” I asked, helping to ease her helmet off.

“What?” She blinked through squinted eyes. I worried she’d really hit her head hard until I realized I’d asked “Where does it hurt?” in Spanish.

“Is she okay?” It was the driver, rounding the car to get to us.

A surge of anger rose at the sight of him. He could have killed her. The rage burned. Keeping my knees on the pavement took tremendous effort. I felt this animalistic need to defend April.

But then I exhaled. It hadn’t been the driver’s fault. It was a freak accident. She was alive because he had been paying attention to the road. And most importantly, April wasn’t in danger anymore. My anger lessened, but my adrenaline still ran on rabbit legs.

“I’m fine,” April leaned onto her side to ease herself into a sitting position. “I went to put my foot on the pedal, but it didn’t catch.”

I grabbed her elbows to support her. “Take it easy. ”

Our crowd of cyclists gathered and cars on both sides of the road were stopped now, hazards on.

“Her pedal is missing,” someone called. “The screws must have come loose.”

“We need to move her to a safer spot,” someone else said.

I nodded. Of course. We were still in the middle of the road. My brain felt like it was trying to catch up with my heart, hand on its knees, breathing heavily.

My eyes roamed her body. I didn’t want to make any injuries worse. I scanned for any obviously broken bones, any gushing blood, then wondered if she had some sort of internal bleeding we couldn’t see.

“April, sweetheart, where are you hurting?” I asked again—this time in English.

“I’m okay, Gabe, really. It was just a bad fall.”

I scooped her in my arms, slowly in case the movement woke up pain, but as I carried her to safety, she soundlessly laid her head on my chest.

I tried to convince April to let me call an ambulance, but she declined. And everyone else agreed with her. She’d fallen off her bike, but it had been at a low speed. I reluctantly set her down in the parking lot, making her test out all four limbs. It was decided she had some scrapes, but nothing was broken.

If my brain had been in a logical state, I would have agreed with the group. But my adrenaline was still running the show. She could have died, and my pulse was having the hardest time accepting that she was no longer in danger. Bringing her in and having her checked out seemed like a good way to calm my nerves.

Instead, it was a call to Trevor who came to bring us to the shop. I took it from there, driving April straight to my apartment. We would get some of her things the next day. Right then, I just wanted to bring her home to clean her up, get her in bed, and care for her.

On the drive, I kept her hand in mine, wanting her to know I was there but also needing the reassurance of her touch. The silence in the car was so thick, it was almost loud, and I wondered if she was doing what I was, playing the scene over and over again, thinking of all the fucking things we could have done differently to have avoided it.

We could have stopped at the barn instead of the donut shop.

I should have been at her side when we took off for that final stretch. If I hadn’t been talking to my other athlete, maybe she would have fallen into me instead of the street.

I should have walked anywhere else other than under that fucking ladder.

And I’d teased her for being nervous about it. What would that do for her fear of bad luck now? Because hell, I was starting to believe in it.

In my bathroom, I helped her strip down for the shower. When I unzipped her tri-suit, I found a scrape the size of my palm on her ribs. The top layer of skin was gone, leaving an angry, raw wound.

My breath caught, and April tried to smile, but her eyes were shining. “I’m sorry. I know we agreed I was done with wrecks.”

“April—” But that’s all I could manage. I thought my chest would crack open.

My fingers rose, wanting to do anything to make it better. Then they dropped because there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do.

“I’m okay, Gabe,” she said, but her tears threatened to spill over. “It could have been so much worse.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said, looking over the wound. “Make less of your pain. It’s okay to say this sucks.”

“Okay,” she said with a humorless laugh. “This sucks. ”

“Does it hurt to breathe?” I asked, gingerly feeling around the ribs that still had skin.

“No, I—” Her breath caught. “That doesn’t feel great, though.”

“Sorry,” I said, easing up. “I just want to make sure you didn’t crack a rib.”

“This doesn’t feel anything like when I broke my collarbone. It’s just tender.”

That would have to be enough. I couldn’t feel the spots that were missing skin, and I wasn’t a doctor anyway. I nodded and kissed the top of her head before unbraiding her hair and turning on the shower. She could have taken care of herself, I knew that. But I wanted to. So, I peeled off my own tri-suit and got in with her.

When the spray hit her left side, her breath hissed, and she moved away from the water. I wrapped her in my arms and rubbed her back before murmuring, “We need to clean it.”

She didn’t resist when I guided her back under the water, but she held her breath, and her body trembled. I winced. Training for long races, it was commonplace to find spots where garments rubbed you the wrong way—left your skin raw. Those burned like hell in the shower, and they were normally just dime-sized wounds. This was a massive patch of missing skin.

“Breathe through it,” I softly encouraged.

When she exhaled, a whimper released with it. She bit it down and pressed her forehead into my chest, her fingers clutching my back.

“That’s it, almost done,” I whispered, laying my head on hers.

“Eres muy fuerte.” You are so strong.

When we were both clean, I dried her off, then sat her on the bathroom counter. With just a towel around my waist, I gathered supplies to dress her wounds. It felt like a car battery charged my body, but April looked exhausted on the counter. Her shoulders drooped, and her lids looked heavy. I thought she’d fall asleep right there if I didn't hurry.

I started at the edge of the scrape, barely touching the wound to spread a layer of antibiotic cream.

“Gabe,” she said quietly.

“I know,” I said, ever-so-gently dabbing some more around the circumference.

“Gabriel,” she said, grabbing my wrist.

Her eyes were red-rimmed. I opened my mouth to apologize for hurting her, but what she said next knocked me off guard.

“This doesn’t feel casual to me anymore.” My hands dropped to her legs. The first aid I was supposed to provide completely forgotten. “And I’m sorry. We agreed to keep our feelings out of it, and I was going to wait to say something . . . but after what just happened—” Her lip trembled. “I don’t want to waste time lying to you or myself.” She kept her chin high, eyes never leaving mine. “You said you can’t give me more, but I can’t give you less.”

I leaned my forehead against hers, trying to find my bearings in the swirl of emotions in my chest. From that angle, I noticed her tiny silver butterfly was caught on her collarbone instead of hanging on her chest. I straightened it before answering. “Things haven’t felt casual to me for weeks now,” I said.

She must have read the pain in my voice because she sniffled. “Does that mean we have to stop seeing each other?”

“I can’t think of anything I want less.” My voice cracked, and I bought time to recover by pushing a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “But I’m feeling a lot, and it scares me. ”

“Please,” she said, and the tears did fall. “Please, can we just try?” The panic was so thick in her voice that it made me want to cry with her. “I’m not ready to stop seeing you.”

I wiped her tears with my thumbs. “I’m not going anywhere tonight. Okay?”

And as she laid her head on my chest, I held her tight, wishing I would never have to let her go.

That night, I had a hard time falling asleep. My brain was running the accident into the ground. Over and over, it played. I couldn’t make it stop.

Screeching rubber.

April’s body hitting the pavement.

Her head so close to the car’s tire.

April woke up and must have realized I still hadn’t fallen asleep because she ran her fingers over my arm, a light scrape of her nails making circles and patterns until my muscles relaxed.

Eventually, I fell asleep, but when I got up, I couldn’t find April.

I padded into the living room. Only it wasn’t my apartment, but the living room from my childhood. I surveyed the yellow wallpaper and corduroy couch warily. Then whimpering came from Mom’s shelf of angels. I edged forward, confused by the crying, until I rounded the couch and found April there, head on her knees, sobbing.

“April!” I reached for her, but she yanked back from my touch, and that’s when I saw the black and blue bruise ringing around her eye. The image made my blood gallop. “What happened? ”

I reached for her again, but she backed up into the wall so hard the frames rattled. “Please don’t hurt me, Gabe.”

“I would never—” I put out a hand to show her I meant no harm, but my knuckles were bloody.

I woke up gasping for air.

“It was just a dream,” April murmured, a hand on my back.

I nodded. That’s all I could manage after my sprint through hell. I let my head fall into my hands while I focused on the facts.

April is okay.

I’d never hurt her.

She is safe with me.

But is that what Dad had thought? I didn’t know. The question kept me up for the rest of the night.