Gabrielle (19 page)

But I could tell he wasn't completely convinced.

“You would never hurt me.”

“No,” he agreed, “Never. I would never hurt you.” He met my eyes. “But I wanted to hurt him. For looking at you like that.”

How had Bradley looked at me?

“You wouldn't have hurt him.” I held his gaze. “You wouldn't have.”

It wasn't until hours later, when we'd finished going over the percussion for my songs and I was back home, that I realized he'd never actually agreed with me.

“Choose me.”

I hadn't heard the doorbell, hadn't realized that my grandmother had let anyone into our house. I'd been focusing on the melody that had been haunting me for weeks. But every time I'd tried to look for the lyrics that matched it, I kept coming up empty. Maybe because that's what I was feeling.

Empty.

And scared.

The unexpected voice had me scooting around on the piano bench to face the doorway and it took me a few long moments to process the fact that Bradley was standing there, right in front of me.

He looked heartbreakingly beautiful, just like always, just like he had from the first moment I saw him watching that jazz band at the
soirée
.

But this time, he also looked determined.

Choose me.

I swallowed hard. “Bradley, I—”

He quickly moved toward me and the door swung closed behind him. “No, Gabrielle.

Wait. Before you say anything, before you tell me no, just let me say something first. Please?”

How could I push away the person who had been my confidante through the hardest weeks of my life?

“Okay.”

I expected him to sit next to me on the bed. Instead, he went down on his knees in front of me and took each of my hands in his. Just like every other time he'd touched me, my hands tingled. My response to Bradley had always been innate.

He took a deep breath, looking more nervous than I'd ever seen him. “Meeting you was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”

I had to shake my head, had to tell him, “No, Bradley, you know it wasn't.”

He lifted my hands to his mouth, placed a kiss across each of my knuckles.

I couldn't breathe as I held still, as his lips softly brushed across my skin.

Finally, he said, “It was.”

My heart fluttered uncontrollably in my chest.

“You're smart. Beautiful. Talented. And so damned sweet I can hardly believe my luck whenever I'm with you.”

He was saying everything I'd ever wanted a guy to say to me. Only, I knew Bradley's situation, that he needed to marry a woman he didn't love to save his family. He had said how impossible it would be for him to get out of it. I opened my mouth to say this to him, but he put one finger across my lips before I could.

“I know you don't want to be a courtesan. I don't want you to be one, either. But I can't stand the thought of you being with...”

He obviously couldn't bring himself to say Dylan's name.

“Being with someone else. Someone who isn't me. Someone who doesn't know what you're going through, how strong you are, how special you are.”

From anyone else's mouth, those words might have sounded like a script. But I knew Bradley genuinely felt, truly believed everything he was saying to me.

I knew it because I always felt special with him. Strong. And secure in the knowledge that I could be honest with him about absolutely everything. Especially my family's dirty little secrets.

This was exactly why I had no choice, no other option but to hold up the truth of his situation and put it firmly between us.

“I know how much you love your family, Bradley.”

“You know I do, Gabrielle, but—”

This time I was the one putting my finger across his lips. “You would never forgive yourself if something happened to your brothers and sisters.” I shook my head. “I would never forgive myself either.” I barreled on with, “I hate what you have to do to save them. I hate that you have to be the one to do it.”

“Everything has changed, Gabrielle. I never imagined you.”

“But apart from me, nothing else has changed,” I reminded him. “If I had money, I'd give it to you.”

I didn't have any money, though, and it didn't seem that my grandmother had much left, either. Every day I worried a little bit more about it. And wondered if there would come a day in the future when I would have to sell myself to the highest bidder, just as Bradley had.

Despite my reminders as to the bleak truth of his situation—and my own—that determination I'd seen on Bradley's face when I'd first seen him standing in my doorway had not only not disappeared, but it had intensified.

“I'll find another way to get the money, Gabrielle. I'll get a job. I'll do whatever it takes.”

I hated having to ask him, “How much money does your father owe?”

His eyes clouded over. “More than you could ever possibly imagine.”

Even though we'd never talked dollar figures before, I'd known this all along, hadn't I?

That was why I'd made Bradley tell me.

There was no point living a pipe dream. No point in praying for something impossible.

He didn't say anything more and when he didn't continue his arguments for why I should choose him, I knew exactly what was coming next.

The only argument he had left.

Perhaps the strongest one of all, given our connection.

Seconds later his warm hands were on either side of my face, the tips of his fingers were threading through my hair as he raised up on his knees high enough that his face was right at the same level as mine.

“I want to kiss you, Gabrielle.”

Oh God. Why did he have to say that? Why did he even have to think it?

There was right.

There was wrong.

And then, in the thick of it all, there was Bradley.

His mouth was on mine a second later, desperate and so sweet that I couldn't stop him, couldn't push him away.

Not when I suddenly had to face how much I'd wanted this kiss.

Bradley's kiss.

Before I was ready for it to end, he pulled away from me. His eyes were darker than I'd ever seen them before. “You're so beautiful, Gabrielle. So incredibly beautiful.”

“You're beautiful, too.” I couldn't stop myself from saying it. “But I—”

At my obvious confusion, he stood up and let go of me. As he moved toward the door, my heart broke a little bit more with every step he took.

Away from me.

I couldn't stand to see him go, to know that I'd been the one to send him away, and had to scrunch my eyes shut to try and stop the pain.

Finally, the footsteps stopped and I thought he was gone. That it was safe for me to open my eyes again.

But when I looked up, he was standing in the doorway, his brown eyes almost black now.

“You don't have to agree to anything now. You don't have to agree to forever. Please, Gabrielle, just give me a chance. That's all I'm asking for. A chance.” He paused. “You know I'm falling in love with you.”

I felt like an emotional hurricane had come into my bedroom and ripped through my chest, holding my heart hostage.

“Bradley.” His name was a whisper of need. Of confusion. Of longing. Of self-hatred.

And emotion I couldn't hold back. Not any more. Not now that we'd finally kissed and I knew his kisses to be just as true, just as real, just as moving as Dylan's.

“You know In fell for you practically from the first moment I set eyes on you. I came here planning not to leave until you made your choice. It's killing me to give you space to make your decision.” He closed his eyes, looking like a man warring with himself. “I know none of this is fair to you. I know I'm asking for too much. I also know that I'm not going to stop feeling like this about you.”

A moment later he was gone.

I knew there was no point in trying to dry my tears, not when they would just keep falling. The melody that I had been picking out was there at my fingertips again, almost as if the past minutes with Bradley had never happened.

But they had.

I don't know how long I sat there staring out of my bedroom window. Seconds. Minutes.

Hours. And all the while his words, his kiss, played on repeat in my head, my heart, my lips. I stared down at my hands, my knees, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary problem. Not just two boys who had lodged themselves in my heart...but an ancient legacy that I couldn't decipher.

I didn't want to believe the curse was real, yet how could I discount what had happened to my mother and father? How could I risk Dylan's future by pulling him into a curse that might or might not be true? But at the same time, how could I possibly give myself to Bradley and having no more worth than a mistress?

As the thoughts ran around and around in my head, lights were turning off and on across the city. People were living lives that had nothing to do with mine, millions of strangers who had no idea that courtesans were alive and well in the twenty-first century.

And that the last girl they'd ever expect to be one of them was teetering on the edge of personal implosion.

It's been a long night so far

I'm watching the lights come over the hills

And I haven't laughed once at myself

The moon is falling down

I'm watching my hands

I'm watching my knees

Thinking I'm stronger than this

But if I'd been strong, I wouldn't have let Bradley kiss me.

And I wouldn't have wanted him to keep kissing me.

You are overtaking

You are quickly

Breaking me

Breaking me

I'd never worried about being part of a crowd. I'd never longed to be average. But, suddenly, I wished for everything to be simpler. To be nothing more than a seventeen-year-old girl who couldn't decide which shade of nail polish to wear out on a Saturday night.

Instead, I was sitting at my piano in the wake of Bradley's kiss, feeling like the butt of a joke that should never have been told in the first place.

Everyone knows the joke

But I missed out

I heard wrong

And now I'm watching the lights come over the hills
You are overtaking

You are quickly

Breaking me

Breaking me

Breaking me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWzGEJNSldA

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/breaking-me/id427761572

BREAKING ME by Gabrielle LeGrande / Lucy Kevin © 2011

Night fell and I tried to sleep, but I couldn't.

I had to go find Dylan. I had to talk with him again. Things had been so weird with us after bumping into Bradley and now that Bradley and I had kissed, I felt so distant from Dylan.

He'd never told me where he lived, so I texted him. Once. Then twice. Then again.

Asking him to please talk to me.

When he didn't answer my texts, I decided to call. It was after midnight, but I didn't care anymore if I woke him or his mother up.

No answer.

I got out of bed and put on my jeans and a sweatshirt. I'd never snuck out of my grandmother's house before, had never thought I'd need to.

I knew what she'd say if I told her I needed to go find Dylan. She'd tell me not to go. And she'd worry herself sick until I came back. Heck, knowing my grandmother, she'd probably throw on a jacket and come with me.

The thought brought an unexpected smile to my lips as I tiptoed down the stairs. I'd never really paid that much attention to which steps squeaked. Tonight it seemed like every single one was as loud as a gunshot. Finally, I made it to the bottom of the stairs. I almost went for the front door, but some devious part of my brain I'd never really had to tap into before told me it would be safer to go out the back door off the kitchen, that it was on the opposite corner of the house from my grandmother's bedroom.

Guilt knocked around inside me, filling me up, twisting my stomach.

I hated the way things had been between me and my grandmother, that they had come to the point where I was actually sneaking out instead of telling her where I was going and knowing she would trust me. Hadn't I promised her that there would be no more secrets?

I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave without at least letting her know I was gone. I made myself go back to the kitchen, to write a note that said,
“I had to go out to see Dylan. I know it's
late. But if you get this note, I'm okay. And I have my cell on. I love you.”

Going back up the stairs, not letting myself try to avoid the cracking, twanging steps, I opened her bedroom door to see if she was asleep.

She looked so peaceful lying there, all of her worries erased for a few short hours. I couldn't wake her up. Tiptoeing over to her bed, I put the note on the pillow beside her.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, I knocked on the dark red door.

“Who out there?”

“Gabrielle.” No, that wasn't what Dylan called me. “Gabi,” I said again. “Dylan's friend from school.”

What was wrong with me? One kiss with Bradley shouldn't have me so unsure about my relationship with Dylan. Should it?

“Dylan's girlfriend.”

When the door didn't open, I added, “I've been here with him before. He made me a milkshake.”

It was so cold out on the step and the wind had picked up to the point where I was pretty much shivering uncontrollably. I was about to give up, was about to turn around and go home and hope that I heard from Dylan in the morning, when there was a soft click.

The man was just as scary and imposing as he'd looked the first time I met him. On top of that, I'd clearly woken him up and he didn't look at all pleased about it.