Page 41 of Vicious Devotion
BELLA
Something is off with Gabriel in the morning. I come downstairs for breakfast and see him sitting at the head of the table, his jaw tight and his eyes on his plate, as if he’s a million miles away. He barely looks at anyone else, occasionally glancing at his phone, his mood so evidently dark that he might as well have a rain cloud floating over his head.
I’m not in the best of moods, either. Last night, I saw the way he looked at me over dinner. There was something in his face, an emotion that I can only describe as something close to longing, and it frightened me. After what happened in the library between us, it felt like something I needed to escape from. Something that I needed to put distance between me and it, before I gave in and said something I shouldn’t.
No matter how much he might want me, one thing has never changed when it comes to Gabriel. He’s never faltered on the point that he’s not emotionally available. He’s never said that he feels differently, that he thinks he can love me the way I hope one day I can be loved. Only that he wants me. And that makes allowing myself to have the feelings I do impossible.
If Agnes notices how dark both of our moods are, she doesn’t say anything. We eat in relative silence, broken by the occasional chattering of Danny asking why there are no puppies on the estate and Cecelia talking about paint colors for the library. Then Agnes gets up without a word, collecting the plates and then collecting Cecelia and Danny before I can, urging them out of the room with a single backwards glance at Gabriel and me.
My stomach lurches instantly. I’ve gone through too much in my short life to not know when something is wrong. When something is off. And it’s not just Gabriel who is off this morning, I realize. I can feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck as I realize that something is going on.
“Gabriel?” I turn to look at him, and he lets out a heavy breath, finally looking up at me. There’s something dark in his eyes, a resignation, and it makes my stomach feel heavy.
“I need to talk to you alone.” That resignation is in his voice, too, and the heaviness slides into my chest.
“We are alone.” I look around the dining room, which is empty of anyone other than him or me.
“Alone, and private.” He stands up, and if it weren’t for the look on his face and the dead seriousness in his voice, I would think that he has some ulterior motive. That he wants me alone for far more interesting reasons than what I think is probably happening right now.
Some instinct, buried deep in my mind, leftover from everything I endured with Pyotr on that awful wedding day, shouts that I should tell him no. That I should tell him that whatever it is, we can talk about it right here. Now. That we don’t need to go anywhere else.
But I trust Gabriel. He’s one of only a very few people in the world that I trust absolutely. So I nod, and I follow him out of the room.
He doesn’t say a word as he leads me to the library. My heart stutters in my chest as we walk in, memories of the last time we were in here a few days ago flooding me. His hands on me, his lips, the feeling of him pressed up against me, pinning me to the shelves?—
Liquid heat pools through me, and I feel my breath catch in my throat. For a moment, I forget the heaviness in his voice, the anxiety that unfurled in me when I heard it. I forget that whatever we’re in here to talk about, I felt sure a moment ago was nothing good.
I’m alone with Gabriel, and?—
He looks around the library as he shuts the door. It’s much cleaner than it was the last time we were in here, although there’s still a ways to go. The bookshelves alone are hours upon hours worth of work.
The thought instantly flees when I hear the lock on the door click.
“Gabriel—” I turn towards him abruptly. I trust him, I think, but that doesn’t stop the flutter of fear that cascades through my chest.
“I want to make sure we’re not interrupted.”
That makes a different feeling flutter through me that has nothing to do with fear. But then Gabriel turns back to face me, and the look on his face chases every salacious thought out of my head.
“We need to talk, Bella.”’
“You said that,” I whisper, my chest tightening.
“Igor attacked.” He says it bluntly, and even as I flinch back, my entire body going cold, I’m grateful for that bluntness. Over the course of the things that have happened to me since I was engaged to Pyotr, I’ve realized that dancing around the truth makes everything worse. Dragging things out, trying to soften them, it makes it all worse. Especially in the end, when the truth comes out anyway.
“What happened?” My voice is a choked whisper, and I see the muscle in Gabriel’s jaw tick.
“He burned the mansion. My home,” he clarifies. “In New York.”
His voice is flat, almost empty—or it would seem that way if I didn’t know him as well as I do. If we hadn’t spent a handful of times tangled up with each other intimately, if I hadn’t heard his voice crack with desire and longing and need. If I hadn’t heard him gentle and angry and afraid. I hear what’s underneath that flat statement—the anger, the worry.
There’s still resignation, too, and that’s what scares me the most.
“Gabriel, I—” The shock of what he just said fades, turning instantly into guilt. My stomach tightens, and I wrap my arms around myself, feeling a hot burn behind my eyelids. “I’m so sorry. I?—”
“No.” His voice is still flat, hard, but now all of that is directed at me, and my stomach twists again. “No, you’re not going to do that, Bella. You’re not going to take the blame for this. It’s not your fault. None of this is.”
“It is—” I start to argue. “If I hadn’t?—”