With the shade on the window closed, the room was cool and comfortable and dim, the ceiling fan whirring softly above the bed, helping to provide a slight breeze. The bedding smelled like fabric softener as if it had very recently been washed. He’d done laundry for me? A small nicety but one I’d never been given by anyone other than my mother, and that was so very long ago. I couldn’t figure out how it made me feel—sort of warm and desperate at the same time.
Gabriel came back a few minutes later with a glass of water and the pills in the palm of his hand. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and I took what he handed me and lay back, praying the meds would kick in shortly. I was suddenly miserable again, hurting, anxious, scared, and dependent on someone in a way I’d promised myself I’d never be dependent on another person again. In a way my very soul revolted against. “Well, here I am,” I mumbled, “under your control just the way you wanted.” When there was only silence, I opened my eyes, squinting at Gabriel through my swollen gaze. The look on his face hit me in the gut. Deep hurt.
“I’d never try to control you.” Oh God. His voice. I could hear the pain. I wanted to turn away, but I didn’t. He paused, even deeper torment skating over his expression. “Someone did that to me once, and I’d never do it to someone else. I only want to help you. If there’s somewhere you’d rather be where you’ll be safe and cared for, tell me and I’ll drive you there myself. I’ll make sure you get there no matter how far away it is. I don’t ever want you to feel like I’m trying to take away your will, Crystal. I couldn’t live with that.”
Crystal. It was the first time he’d called me by that name, and I didn’t like it at all. Especially not now when he’d been nice to me, and I, instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt when he’d shown me nothing except kindness and a generosity I didn’t deserve, had been cruel to him once again. I clenched my eyes shut, ashamed.
I felt the movement of the mattress as he stood, and I opened my eyes. “Eloise.”
He stilled, his hand on the doorknob, unmoving now. He turned to look at me, his expression confused. “What?”
“My name is Eloise.”
He continued staring, the confusion clearing and being replaced by … shock. Because I’d finally told him my name?
“Eloise,” he whispered, tilting his head, his hair falling across his forehead.
I sighed, closing my eyes again. The pain meds were starting to work and I just wanted to sleep, to drift away. “I know it’s old-fashioned, probably not what you expected. I was named after my grandmother. People used to call me Ellie.” A long time ago. “You can call me Ellie if you want.”
There was only silence, and I drifted closer to sleep, finally hearing the click of the door as Gabriel closed it behind him. He’d given me so much, made sacrifices to care for me, and I’d provided nothing in return.
So I’d given him my name.
It was the only thing in the world I had left to offer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Do what you can with what you have, even if it’s not very much at all.
Racer, the Knight of Sparrows
ELLIE
The next week went by in a blur of sleep, pain, and strange, vivid dreams that caused me to wake gasping and soaked with sweat. I dreamed I was running down a dark alley that kept twisting and turning and growing tighter and tighter until I was forced to slow as I braced my arms on both walls and walked tentatively forward into the black depths. I cried in fear, the walls moving inward even closer, making me feel like they would crush me. I looked over my shoulder but the direction from which I’d come was just as black—seemingly fathomless. I stopped, sinking to the ground and wrapping my arms around my knees as I sobbed in loneliness and terror.
“You’re going the wrong way. You must turn back, sweetness. He’s waiting for you.”
Mama?
“Who’s waiting for me, Mama?”
My eyes snapped open, a desperate plea for her to answer on my lips.
“Shh, it’s just the fever, Ellie.”
Ellie.
My eyes adjusted, the dream dissipating like fog as reality took its place. Just a dream. Just a dream. Gabriel was wiping my forehead with a cool, wet cloth. It felt heavenly. Gabriel. Just like the angel. My bottom lip cracked, and I realized I must have been smiling.
“Here, drink this,” he said, holding the cold rim of a glass against my lips. I raised my head as much as I could and slurped in the ice water. It dribbled down my chin, and Gabriel wiped it away once he’d removed the glass and set it back on the table. “Sleep, love,” he said. “You’re healing.”
Healing, yes. Sleep, love. My eyes slipped closed again, and this time, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I woke again as something pulled tight around my ribs. I looked down blearily and saw male hands on a background of white as if they were a work of art being presented on a perfect canvas. Everything else around me was foggy and faded, and they were the only things I could focus on. Gabriel’s hands. They were incredibly beautiful, and though I was so tired, I couldn’t help but reach out and touch them, to trace the elegant lines of his fingers, to feel the smooth, hard fingernails, to travel back to the golden, scattered hairs on the tops of his tan hands, to run along each vein, each knuckle. They were so still as I explored them, too still, and I realized they must not be real. Gabriel wouldn’t want me to touch him this way. No, just a memory of his hands … just a … My eyes fell closed and I was in darkness once again.
The fever—which Gabriel assured me the doctor had said was normal as long as it didn’t get too high—broke, but right after that, I had a bad reaction to one of my medications. When I vomited repeatedly and felt like my ribs were being squeezed in a medieval torture device, I thought I was going to die.
All through it, Gabriel was there, steady, calm, seemingly unruffled, though I felt his body tense each time he got near me. He was forcing himself to assist me, at least physically, and despite my best efforts to remain unaffected, it made me feel an unfamiliar tenderness toward him.
He made me food and delivered it to me in bed, even spooning it into my mouth a couple of times when all I wanted to do was sleep rather than sit up and eat. He kept in contact with my doctor and made pharmacy runs. He woke me up through the night to take the pills that kept me mostly comfortable, but hazy and out of it. When the sickness had passed, he helped me to the shower, though I locked him out of the room once he’d gotten me situated. I struggled with removing my clothes on my own and putting the plastic cast cover I found waiting on the sink over my cast to keep it dry. He must have asked the hospital for some equipment as well because there was a hospital-issued stool with handles in the shower, making me feel like I was ninety. But in reality, I already felt like I was ninety, with or without the medical shower stool. My soul was as weary as that of a ninety-year-old, and now I had a body to match. Wonderful.
Near the end of the week, Gabriel knocked on my bedroom door to tell me a police detective was there to see me. A brief tremor of fear shot down my spine, but I picked up my crutches and followed Gabriel to the living room, where the detective was waiting. He was the same man who’d come to the hospital to take my statement.