Page 38 of If This is Love

“Gabe!”she shrieked, grabbing fistfuls of my flannel shirt and jerking me. “Get up! Get up! We shouldn’t be in here!”

I pushed off the floor, leaving the crowbar and flashlight and not looking back, and Skye and I sprinted toward the light pouring in from the front door.

We leaped outside and jogged several paces away from the door, and then I screeched to a halt, whipping around to face her, and the burn was flaring up across my shoulders. I ripped off my mask, and I was going to unleash fury on this poor woman who’d already been broken a million times over, but forGod’sfuckingsake.

“You can’t save them all!” I roared at her.

“I know!” Skye roared back, jerking the scarf away from her face. Her nostrils were collapsing and flaring with each panting breath she took. “IknowI can’t save them all. I just wanted totry. But I get it. Okay?” She turned to the building and threw her palms at it. “We can demolish it all and start over from scratch, but I just wanted…” Her breath hitched. “I just wanted totry.”

Skye was covered in dirt and grime, and she started crying in that super sad way women did sometimes. The kind with little hiccups while they tried to hide that they were crying by holding their breath. And I did that to her.

And Ruth was watching.

“I’m sorry, Skye,” I said.

She immediately turned to me, her eyes full of alarm and tears. “It’s okay. I’m okay.” She rushed toward me, throwing herself against me and wrapping her arms around my middle. “Please don’t feel guilty for any of that. That wasn’t your fault.” She pulled away and sniffled. “Seriously.”

She stepped away, weaving off to the side to grab Liza’s arm, leading her and Ruth out of the gate. Chloe was in a corner, subtly lowering her jacked up phone like she hadn’t just caught all of it on video.

This was too fucking much for one day.

I marched back through the gate and whistled at Gunner, staring at the ground the whole time.

I crossed the parking lot, rounding the corner and sitting on the curb a good fifty yards away from the entrance to the lot, and then hung my head below my shoulders as I gripped my hair with tight fists. Both my breath and heart were quick and loud, and Gunner wedged his head between my thighs and torso, murmuring a low whine.

Easy, brother, he seemed to say.Easy there.

I fought my keyed-up breathing and let go of my hair to rub his flank. And since I’d fucked the entire day over, might as well have a smoke. I pulled the pack out of my pocket and lit up, puffing while my head hung below my shoulders. Gunner pushed his head and back under my elbow, and I held the cig away from him while I rubbed him with my free hand.

I dragged and puffed for a stretch of time, resting my cheek on Gunner’s shoulder and intentionally letting my mind drift.

“Hey there, friend.”

I blinked myself back to the present, and a pair of familiar sneakers were now in front of me.

I didn’t look up and hastily hid the cigarette behind my back. “This really isn’t a good time, Ruth.”

She crouched on the street in front of me, meeting my eyes with her gentle amber gaze. “I know. I was wondering if I could sit with you.”

“I’m okay, Ruth,” I said, andJesus, had she not just seen the hellfire I unleashed on Skye? “This is really kind of…”

“Don’t feel like you need to hide that from me, Gabe,” she said, her voice as gentle as her eyes. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

My veins crackled at my nasty habit being put under her microscope. “How about the way I just screamed at a woman with a history of abuse? Does that bother you?”

“What bothers me is why you both came tearing out of there like you’d seen a ghost.” She set her hand on my knee. “What bothers me is that you both saw something so much worse than that.”

I snapped my eyes to meet hers. “You went in that building?”

“No, friend. Skye told Liza and me what y’all saw. And she…” Ruth cast a long glance across the parking lot, blinking her eyes like she was staving off tears, and then she looked at me again. “Sister isshookright now. So I know you have to be, too.”

I twitched the cigarette behind my back. “I don’t need anyone’s sympathy, Ruth.”

“Well, that’s good, because you don’t have my sympathy,” she retorted, albeit with that same steady gentleness. “You have myempathy. And empathy is climbing deep down into the pit with someone and letting yourself get just as filthy and miserable as they are, so they believe you when you say, ‘I know how you feel.’”

She inched forward and sat on the curb next to me, close but with a respectable amount of space. “I know how you feel, Gabe. And it feels terrible. My heart ishurtingright now.”

I stared forward, automatically drawing the cigarette to my mouth and not stopping myself. “Yep.”

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