Gabe shrugs again, and his eyes roam over my body as I dry myself off, fixating on all of his favorite parts. I know this because he gets a very animalistic look in his eyes when he sees something that he wants to taste again and, God, do I want him to taste it all again.
“Stop it. If you’re insisting on helping Atlas, then you need to stop thinking that shit.”
Getting dressed has never been so freaking hard.
“I went to visit Sage yesterday while you were gone.”
At Atlas’ words, my head snaps up from where I was completely focused on the tiles in front of me.
He’d cooked us a full breakfast with all of the trimmings and made some awful jokes about being a morning-after chef, but Gabe had just laughed along with him, happily grinning and kissing me at every opportunity as the three of us ate together. Surprisingly, having the two of them together and Atlas making those jokes didn't bother me. It felt more like the dynamic between Gryphon, North, and me than an awkward, kill-me-now sort of thing.
As soon as we had cleaned up the dishes, we went back up to Atlas’ room together to get to work. The bathroom isn't small, none of them in the house are, and the tiling job could easily take all three of us the entire day to get through.
Gabe had checked out Atlas’ work anchoring the bathtub and measured up all of the points where the faucets were going to go before we rushed into the work. Then the two of them had gone downstairs to carry up giant boxes of tiles, tile glue, and grout.
I'd offered to help, but both of them had shot me down very quickly. As though I am some delicate flower who can't carry a box. Once we had everything we needed, Gabe and I had gotten to work laying the tile while Atlas was mostly lifting heavy things for us and doing most of the manual grunt work.
“How did she look? Did you get to speak to her or just see her? Did you see Kieran or Felix? How did they look?” I fire off questions at Atlas, and he doesn't react to any of them until the stream of words has tumbled out of me. Gabe’s movements stay steady and sure from where he’s working, but a small wrinkle forms over his brow.
“Sage looks devastated. She looks like a fucking mess, to be honest. She was in a room by herself, but Felix and Kieran are close by. Gryphon had originally instructed for the three of them to be roomed together, but Sage requested to be left by herself.”
I sit back on my heels, careful not to freak out and ruin any of the very careful positioning that Gabe and I have done around us. Atlas was not exaggerating when he said that he was terrible at doing this, and he has been relegated to mixing the tile glue for us instead of helping.
“Why would she ask to be alone and away from her Bonds? No wonder she looks like a mess.”
Gabe clears his throat, careful to keep his eyes on what he's doing as he lays another tile and levels it off. “She's afraid that she'll hurt them, that's why. She has no recollection of killing Dara, no clue how someone manipulated her into doing it, and she's terrified that there's some sort of ‘kill switch’ inside of her waiting to be flipped that could be used against either of her Bonded.”
My heart drops down to my feet.
I want to burst into tears for her. I know exactly what it feels like to be terrified of something inside of you that you have no control over. The thought that she is now going through this, and going through it by herself, locked in a cell so close to the people who love her the most but completely terrified to even seek comfort from them… I just want to scream.
I swallow my tears back. “I need to go see her. I need to do more to figure out what the hell is going on and get her the fuck out of there.”
Gabe nods, and I hand him another tile as he moves our positions further towards the open doorway where Atlas is waiting for us to finish up. We only have a few left to place before we need to leave the room to let everything dry, and I'm proud of how amazing they look.
“Sawyer has been obsessive about finding whoever has done this, and Gryphon went straight back to the cells when you guys got home to continue working through the prisoners there to figure out what happened. Now that we have Giovanna, we should hopefully get some answers.”
I make a disgruntled sound at the mention of that bitch’s name, and Gabe looks over his shoulder at me. “Did she say anything to you guys when you picked her up? Is there anything at all that we can go on?”
I hand him another tile and huff in frustration. “Not really. Only that she's fully bonded now, which means that she knows who her real Bond Group is and that she had more power this time. Riley looked absolutely horrendous, like he was dying a slow death. She's definitely done a number on him.”