Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(69)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Hand in his hair, he paused on his way to the door. “And Sara?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.” Maybe that was too much, too soon, but he needed to say what he knew to be true. He had never spoken those words to a woman, had never understood the true joy of loving another person, but he did with Sara. It was a beautiful and amazing thing to feel at complete peace in another’s presence, to look at someone and know you were better for being with them.

She didn’t answer, but he didn’t expect her to. She was too overwhelmed to offer him the same commitment at that moment, under the circumstances, but he had fallen in love with her, and he would give his life for her, and he needed her to know.

After a quick good-bye he hung up the phone and tossed it back to Raphael, who was following Gabriel out the door.

“How are you going to Florida?” Raphael asked. “I thought you were bound to New Orleans.”

“I am.” Gabriel strode down the hallway and took the steps two at a time.

“If you defy your binding, you’ll never gain your freedom . . . you’ll be stuck here forever.”

“I know,” he said grimly. It wasn’t an attractive future, but he had no other choice. He wasn’t going to sit there and let Sara be killed just to save his own worthless ass.

“I can go to Naples. I can bring Sara back here.”

“No, I’ll do it.” There was no way he could wait, not knowing if Sara was safe.

Raphael’s footsteps pounded behind him as they jogged across the front room, back through the office, and out the back door of the kitchen. “I’m going with you anyway, you know. Marguerite . . . she’s my problem.”

“She’s a demon child. She’s both of our problem.” Gabriel crashed through the brush on the side of the house, jumping over the bricks, letting his demon legs make use of their full immortal speed.

“It’s me, you know. She’s doing it because of me. Marguerite’s wanted me to marry her since, well, the beginning . . . but I had no idea, I swear, I had no clue she was doing this. I never thought she was capable of something so horrible.”

Gabriel glanced back at Raphael, who was running at pace with him. Raphael was pasty white and looked like he was capable of throwing up at any given second. Like he was truly sickened by the realization of what Marguerite had done. Gabriel wanted to believe him.

“We can’t change the past, Raphael. We can only change the present.”

He finally understood that.

Chapter Nineteen

Sara wasn’t sure if fear or frustration was winning. Gabriel had frightened her with the tone of his voice, the way he’d been so adamant that she needed to stay and wait for him. But she was also completely angry—boiling blood mad—that everyone seemed to know what the hell was going on but her.

She was a self-professed control freak, and not having all the information available to her was maddening. Especially when it appeared to exist, but no one saw fit to share it with her.

As far as she could tell, Gabriel had confessed three things to her. That he knew Rafe and Marguerite. That he thought Marguerite had killed her mother. And that he was in love with her.

She hadn’t expected any of that, and she wasn’t sure which had shocked her the most. She hadn’t seen any of them coming, but his profession of love had sideswiped her, and she hadn’t been able to process it in any way and give him a response before he had said good-bye and hung up. Which was probably for the best, because she didn’t know what she would have said in return. She had thought she loved him. Still did. But it worried her that there were so many apparent secrets, so much he had withheld from her. And nothing about any of the murders, past or present, made sense. She was on emotional and intellectual overload, with no answers in sight.

“Do you love him?” Jocelyn asked, handing Sara a glass of wine.

Sara took it and swirled the liquid around and around in the glass. “Yes.” Whether that was a mistake or not, she didn’t know. But it was what it was and she couldn’t change that. She loved him quietly, passionately, softly, wondrously.

“I’ve never seen you in love before. It was pretty obvious to me from the second you said his name.”

Crossing her legs and pulling her skirt down over them on the sofa, Sara looked at Jocelyn. “I don’t fall in love easily. Or I didn’t think I did. You’ve known me, what, six years? I’m emotionally reserved. I know that. I try not to be, but I can’t help it.”

“I wouldn’t say that about you at all. I think you’re very emotionally giving . . . you’re loyal and loving and incredibly generous. But I think that’s why there are few people you really reach out to—you give so much, all of yourself, to relationships, that you can’t have a crowd of friends and lovers. You’re selective, with meaningful friendships instead of superficial ones, and I appreciate that about you.”

Sara felt so raw, so scraped and banged and smacked that Jocelyn’s words had her sucking in a huge breath to avoid tears, to hold it together. She would keep it together. “Thanks. That means a lot to me. And I do love Gabriel . . . I can’t explain how or why it’s happened so fast, but I met him and it seemed from that very first day, our paths were meant to cross. That we’re connected . . . that we knew each other already because we’re so similar.” She took a sip of her wine. “God, that sounds weird, but it’s true. I just adore him.”

Sappy and pathetic as it was, she did. She had never understood, never realized how uplifting and exciting it would be, to feel the kind of emotion she did for Gabriel. She had thought she’d loved men before, but this was different, deeper, richer, more exciting, more enticing, more all-consuming.

“So what’s going on? What’s with all the DNA, and why are you here in Florida and he’s in New Orleans?”

“I hope you don’t have any plans tonight, because it might take awhile to explain this.”

“I have no plans and I’m all ears.” Jocelyn kicked her shoes off and pulled her legs up onto the sofa. “There is obviously a story here.”

Sara didn’t know where to start, exactly, but she figured the easiest place was to explain why she was really in New Orleans. So she told Jocelyn about Gabriel contacting her, the book concept, meeting and working with him. The strange evidence that seemed to dead-end, the parallels between the cases. Two hours later, she thought she had Jocelyn pretty well updated, leaving out personal details like Gabriel’s unwillingness to have sex with her, and the absinthe encounter.