Page 35 of If This is Love

“Yo,” he hollered back.

“Go grab me that toolbox from the backseat.”

“Yep.” He pivoted and jogged back out of the fence.

I paused and turned to Skye. “I don’t have a good feeling about these buildings.”

She pressed her lips together. “I want to use them if we can.”

“I don’t think we can, Skye.”

She lifted her brows. “We haven’t even seen the inside yet.”

I held up one hand as gently as I could muster. “I’m going to look, but you’re going to have to trust me.” I glanced back at the buildings. “If I tell you it’s unsafe, I mean it. It means just being in there is dangerous.”

“Iknow,” she clipped, a white blaze flashing across her pale blue eyes. “Idotrust you. That’s why I asked you to do this for me and not anyone else. But please understand theheartof what I’m doing.” She lifted her hand toward the buildings. “If that utterdumpcan be repaired andlovedenough to be safe and useful to help people, so can women whofeelexactly likethat.”

Liza suddenly clasped Skye’s hand and pressed her lips together like she was getting emotional, and Ruth brought her hand to her heart and shook her head, murmuring, “Yes, amen.”

My shoulders sank.

For fuck’s fucking sake, this was an impossible task.

Ruth looked like she was praying, her beautiful, full lips moving silently, and I looked away from her. It seemed wrong to think what I was thinking about those lips while she had the ear of God.

“Please, Gabe.” I met Skye’s icy blue gaze again. “Please.”

Please, pleads the young woman with icy blue eyes.Please.

Please. You can help us.

Please. You have a weapon.

Please. You are a good man.

Please. You can do something.

Please. You can set us free.

But there wasn’t ever anything I could do for those women; the ones over there with the hypnotically pale eyes and battered tawny skin; the ones who had eyes exactly like Skye’s and had lived through essentially the same horrors she had, except theydidn’tlive.

Because of me.

A guttural growl from Gunner caused me to blink.

Skye was still staring at me with her pleading blue eyes.

I dropped my gaze as I cleared my throat, kicking some of the weeds. “I’m going to look, Skye. Y’all just stay back here for a minute, okay?”

I rubbed Gunner’s head and went back to stomping down clumps of the brush. Slowly but surely, the broken concrete walkway that led between the buildings started to appear.

Luke showed up next to me, setting down the toolbox and joining me to finish stomping the weeds on the path to the door to the nearest building. I marched back up the path to grab the toolbox and brought it back to the doorstep. I pulled out a mask, safety glasses, a flashlight, and a crowbar and slammed the lid shut.

I pulled on the mask and slipped on the glasses, shoved the flashlight into my back pocket, and wedged the crowbar between the door and the frame.

“Stand back a sec, Luke.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m clear, bruh.”

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