CHAPTER ONE
“Emma, open the door!”
“Go away, Gabriel!”
The door knob rattled violently. “Emma, please! Don’t do this!”
I almost slammed my hand against the wall, only pulling back at the last moment. I clenched my fingers into a tight fist. “I’m not going to talk to you right now. I can’t.”
I heard what sounded like his forehead hitting the stout door. Gabriel’s voice came out low and tortured. “Baby, please don’t do this. Don’t shut me out. It kills me when you do it.”
Just like that my anger drained through the sieve of my heart. My palm rested where I imagined his beautiful face to be. “It hurts me too.”
“Then let me in, Emma. I need to be with you. I love you…”
I slid down to the door, feeling tears roll slowly down my waxen cheeks. I wondered how the hell I was going to last the next five minutes without him, much less the rest of my life. I couldn’t breathe through the pain. I whispered his name softly. He heard me and whispered mine in return.
“Please, Emma…”
Sitting there, legs sprawled and body battered with longing for the man only inches away from me, I wandered back through the corridors of my mind. Past the last devastating hours, further back to a time when I was a young girl who had done everything to stay out of Gabriel’s ruined sphere.
Back before he was Gabriel Gordon, photogenic billionaire and world’s most eligible bachelor, he was simply Gabriel Gordon—heartbreaker of Pine Woods High.
Gabriel Gordon was mad, bad, and ...well, you probably know the rest.
Despite his heavenly name and matching beauty, Gabriel was anything but angelic. Rich, spoiled, and far too cynical for his age, he could easily charm the skirt off a prim beauty or a young teacher or two. I watched him from afar in equal parts disgust and fascination for four years.
Logically, I had understood the allure. He spoke the right words, courting his targets with just the right amount of disinterest and zeal. Reputation notwithstanding, Gabriel managed to make each one think she was special—the one. Not necessarily through lies, but by showing just enough of the vulnerable boy hiding behind the exterior of polished arrogance to make him worth loving.
It always fell apart.
Sometimes quietly with just a note of farewell and our lively, lovely French teacher replaced in mid-year. Usually, it was a spectacle of gossipy delight that had the tongues wagging for weeks to come. I had stepped past enough dustups in the hallways to wonder what it was about Gabriel that made those previously well-mannered girls beat against his wide chest in rage, heartache, and more than a bit of desperate longing.
Gabriel’s eyes would lock onto mine as he bore their abuse just as stoically as he had their love—never yelling in return or raising a hand in defense.
And if it seemed that his gaze softened, looking apologetic and ashamed…well, that surely must’ve been my imagination. Studying the silent boy and the screaming red-faced girl, while skirting the ever-widening crowd, I couldn’t help but judge the tantrum that would forever mar how the rest of our classmates looked upon them.
Fallen. Ruined. Insane.
How could they be so torn up over one guy? Didn’t they understand no one was worth losing it like that?
My pride was a mighty thing once, making me hard on those who didn’t possess it to the same degree. If I only knew then what I’d become now…
Usually the rejected girls faded into the background, bitter by their loss, while others developed a ‘flair’ for dating. Apparently, Gabriel had taught his exes well. It was unfair and shitty how the girls’ reputations suffered but his had only grown more attractive.
Worse, what made the sordid affairs scintillating was the very same girls who had slapped his face for our sport were rumored to secretly come back on figurative hands and knees just for another taste of sin. Which he doled out quite lavishly as I could confirm after stumbling across one heated encounter during senior year.
Even now the image was just as razor-sharp.
Their bodies had been locked in a state of half-undress. She on her back, he over her on the lab table. Gabriel had his hand wrapped around her neck as he pounded into her. He looked at me, angelic face slack with pleasure, and mouthed the words “I’m so sorry.”
I backed up, arms limp and cheeks aflame. He never looked away. Gabriel kept me pinned with a crystal-blue stare as I silently slipped out of the empty classroom. The power of his tormented gaze stayed until I had collapsed on the ground outside by the football field.
Knees drawn up to my chest, I blindly stared at the girls twirling their turquoise banners for flag practice. The circular blur of color matched my thoughts in speed and tempo. What exactly was he sorry for? That he didn’t have enough self-control to turn down a pretty girl’s plea for more? That he exposed me to seeing something I had no business seeing?
What?
I was never able to come up with any satisfactory answer, no matter how many times I replayed the “I’m so sorry.” Just for that Gabriel should’ve earned my contempt, but even then I couldn’t bring myself to really hate him.
Judge him as a playboy? Yes.
See him as an obviously bright person who was wasting his talent by sleeping in class and blowing off his work? Yes.
Envy his wealth and social standing, knowing circumstances dictated that no matter how hard I worked there were certain experiences closed to me?
Absolutely.
Still as time passed, I found my eyes drawn more and more to his slouched figure. We had several classes together which meant the opportunities to examine him were endless. Every time I caught myself studying the long, lean line of Gabriel’s back, I burned with the insane pull all those girls must’ve felt for knowing that glorious, dangerous angel.
The worst part of it was I couldn’t judge their fascination anymore. Not after what I had seen.
The quick flash of seeing Gabriel with Brandy Peterson had branded itself into my mind. I couldn’t forget it no matter how hard I tried. The images would crash into me at the worst times—while I worked on a challenging Calculus problem, as I cleaned tables at my part-time job, when I was in the shower…
I’d seen enough to know Gabriel hadn’t just used Brandy as a receptacle for his lust. He had been making love to her in a way I didn’t understand, but recognized nonetheless. It was then that I understood just how dangerous Gabriel Gordon could be to a girl.
My panic would’ve escalated if I’d had any clue that I was about to personally find out.
Maybe it was because pickings were slim or maybe Gabriel had noticed my gaze one time too many, but I entered his line of sight one week after walking in on him.
Fixated on Gabriel when I should’ve been listening to a discussion about Macbeth, my curiosity finally became my undoing. Gabriel lifted up his head, hair deliciously tousled from his nap, and locked his undivided attention onto me. My cheeks reddened and my mouth parted in shock. Pleasure flooded his gaze. He had smiled and mouthed “Pay attention, Emma.”
It hadn’t mattered that I whipped my head back around and pretended I hadn’t been caught doing exactly what I had been doing. Gabriel didn’t let me slink away unscathed. He began waiting for me in the mornings by the student parking lot. I’d get out of my old red Beetle to see him standing next to his late model Mercedes silver convertible one spot over.
“Hello, Emma,” he’d murmur while looking half-asleep with a beautiful smile fixed to his ridiculously handsome face.
“Go away.”
“Now why would I want to do that? I like being here with you.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You will. I promise.”
His arrogance rubbed me the wrong way. His gentleness seduced. I was constantly pulled and pushed away because of it. I knew what he was, what he was capable of, but a large part of me began bending. I started to look forward to seeing him everyday even if I didn’t enjoy the attention his presence brought me.
The stares followed us everywhere. It seemed like the whole school was waiting for my inevitable fall. Gabriel’s words had been especially sharp to those whispering bystanders.
“Take a f**king picture, a**holes. It’ll last longer.”
He waited for me at my locker after class and slid beside me at lunch. I felt the stares of his friends most intently then. They were like a pack of jackals, eyes cruel and mouths parted in a mimicry of friendliness. The malicious glee pointed at my direction burned a hole through my hard-wrought shell.
“Don’t pay attention to them.”
“Who? Your friends?”
“Those are not my friends. More like a**holes or leeches. All of us are, Emma. That’s why you shouldn’t pay attention.”
“Even you?”
“Except me.”
I’d fallen silent but it didn’t matter. He seemed content to do all the speaking. Sometimes he’d managed to coax a sentence or two out of me, but then I’d clamp down. Gabriel’s gaze would dim afterwards and I’d feel the pain of wounding him.
But I couldn’t relent. I had known how the story was bound to end. I didn’t want any part in helping to make it a tragedy. I did not want to be the scorned Fury screeching in the hallway, sobbing because Gabriel didn’t love me how I loved him. I was not going to be a fool by falling into the trap of reading more into him than what he actually delivered.
It wasn’t going to happen.
What was going to happen was I would keep my perfect GPA. I’d earn my numerous scholarships and get the hell out of a town where economically disadvantaged people like me tended to stay. I had no time for fallen angels who whispered my name ever-so-gently and made me yearn for the possibility of something different.
I wasn’t going to indulge the fantasies that popped up more and more during my waking hours either. And I wasn’t even going to consider the explicit ones populating my dreams. No way.
So of course Gabriel had managed to steal my first kiss.
After a month of my noncompliance, he’d confronted me outside during Prom. He’d been swaying, more than a little tipsy, and demanded to know why I wouldn’t dance with him. We exchanged words, but the ones I especially remembered from him were “Why won’t you look at me, Emma? Don’t you know the only one I’ve ever really wanted the past four years is you? What can I do to get you to like me back? I’ll do anything you want…be anything you want…just say you’ll be mine, Emma.”
I vividly remember my legs going weak, but I couldn’t let him see how much his words affected me. I lifted my chin, proud of myself for seeming so composed. I didn’t believe him and said so using very explicit language.
Gabriel suddenly rushed me. He pressed my body against the brick wall and caged me within his expensively attired arms. No tuxedo rental for him.
“I’m not lying,” he swore right before pressing his soft lips against mine.
I could’ve screamed. I could’ve bit him. I didn’t do either of those things because I really didn’t want to.
His mouth was perfect. He was perfect. Anything I could’ve imagined, daydreamed about collapsed as the pale imitation it was. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the drugging sensation of having him kiss me. I melted against Gabriel, reaching out blindly to entangle my fingers in his golden hair.