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“Summer, I think—”
“Leave,” Gabriel warns, stepping forward.
It doesn’t take more than that for Andrew to rush down my steps. He goes so fast he completely misses the last one nearly face planting on the ground. He quickly gets his feet back under him and rushes to the car. He pulls out of my driveway so fast the tires make a screeching sound and the smell of burnt rubber assails my nostrils.
“Well, I guess it’s safe to say I won’t get another date with him,” I say before turning back to Gabriel.
However, I don’t find that miniscule smile I normally get when I usually make an ill-timed joke. Instead, that sadness is back in his eyes.
“Come on,” I say, heading to the front door and opening it for him to enter.
He follows me to my bedroom. I open the door and turn on the light before kicking my heels off.
“Sit,” I point to the bench at the foot of my bed.
I continue into the bathroom to grab my first aid kit out of the cabinet along with a soapy warm rag. I carry my things back out to the room. I place the objects on the bench beside him, before kneeling between his legs.
“Is any of this yours?” I ask looking over his hoodie.
He shakes his head.
“Jeez, Gabriel. What did you do?” I unzip his hoodie and push the fabric off his shoulders and down his arms.
“Bar fight,” he says.
I shake my head. “You mean to tell me, for the last three days you’ve just been picking fights?”
When I glance up at him, he’s staring at me, but he doesn’t answer.
Knowing I won’t get any more answers from him about that, I let out a deep breath. Pulling the hoodie further off him, I drop it to the floor. “Take off the shirt,” I say next.
He quickly removes the shirt handing it to me. I toss it with his hoodie. When I turn back to him, I notice something new. A tattoo of the number 50 written in thick old English. I was about to ask him about it when something else catches my eye. Actually, it’s a lot of something else.
I didn’t get a close-up look at his body the night we met. However, I was not ready for the thick and thin lines of scars all over his torso and arms.
My finger runs across a thick scar on his chest right above the tattoo over his heart. It’s about two fingers thick and is the length of my hand. The way the skin has healed and stretched leads me to believe it’s a very old wound.
Although he has never told me much detail about his childhood, I’ve been able to put pieces together. The fact that when he goes into this dark place to kill, he allows his mother to take over his thoughts is a huge sign that something was wrong.
Seeing the pale lines makes my heart ache for the small boy with beautiful green eyes that must have endured pure hell to get these. Gabriel’s mother didn’t only abuse him mentally, she fucked him over physically as well.
Suddenly, Gabriel’s large hand covers mine. When I look back up at him, he uses the same hand to wipe the tears off my face.
“They’re old,” he tells me. “Don’t cry over them.”
Everything I know about him tells me he’s not one for pity. Plus, he doesn’t need it. So, I do exactly as he asks. I tuck my chin to my chest, and then wipe my eyes.
“Are you sure you’re not injured anywhere,” I ask as I go back to looking over his body.
“You don’t have to do this.”
I roll my eyes, “Shut up, and show me your injuries.”
He smirks and shakes his head, before showing me his hands.
“It looks like you punched a wall,” I say, grabbing the wet cloth, I run it over his knuckles cleaning the blood off.
“I did.”
