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“That’s funny?”
“Yeah.” I wipe my eyes.
He grins at me. “Okay. Good. They were nice shoes, too.”
I laugh harder.
He leans in, nuzzling my cheek, his breath warm on my skin. “Not really. They were shitty old shoes, and I’d lose them a hundred times to get you to safety.”
“Okay.” I drag in a rough breath. “Well, thank you. For rescuing me. I can call an Uber, I guess?”
“Do you have your phone?”
I wince. “No. It’s on the boat. In Ethan’s stateroom.”
He growls. “We’ll get you a new phone. Is that one locked?”
My heart plummets. I can’t afford a new phone. “Yes, but?—”
He opens the passenger door of a pickup truck and deposits me on the seat. “Do up your seatbelt, bunny.”
“Where—”
He closes the door on me.
I try again once he’s behind the wheel. “Which way are you heading?”
He pauses. Turns to me. Frowns. “I’m taking you to my cabin.”
“No, wait.” I wave my hands. “Gabriel, this is insane. I need to go back to my dorm.”
“That’s not safe.” He looks me over. “And you need clothes before you go back there, anyway. Once it’s safe.”
I press the gauzy dress to me. I lost the bikini top somewhere, too. He’s not wrong. “Umm… Where is your cabin?”
It’s half an hour on the other side of the highway, it turns out. Up the road toward Virgin Peak, which is so on-the-nose not funny it makes me laugh anyway.
For the short drive through Conception Ridge to the highway, Gabriel is quiet. Vigilant, I realize. But once we’re across the highway and climbing into the mountains, he relaxes and looks across at me. “How are you feeling?”
I blush, grateful that the cab of the truck is pretty dark. What’s the right answer here? There’s a mess between my legs. My body thinks I rode a wild stallion through ocean surf at top speed. I have no idea how I’m going to face my classmates next week. And underlying all of that, there’s a painful awareness zapping through me.
So, that’s sex.
“I feel a bit empty,” I confess.
His mouth firms up and he nods. “You’ve been through a lot.”
I didn’t mean it like that. But that’s true, too. I feel drained, emotionally. But I also feel like he made a Gabriel-shaped space where nothing existed before.
And part of me wants to know when it will be filled again.
After I have a bath or a shower, I might just ask him if we can do it again. He didn’t seem to hate it. He’s even calling me bunny now, which is nice.
I look at his profile as he drives.
I’m glad he isn’t what I thought he was. I’m going to have to get that photo back from Dr. Adler somehow, I think idly as I start to drift off, the warmth of the truck cab and the soothing road noise lulling me to an exhausted sleep.
I wake up as he carries me into his cabin. Cling to him as he pulls a warm, clean t-shirt over my head, then puts me in his bed.
