Page 96 of Mercy & Her Devils

He leans over the bed and pulls something out from underneath it.

“Peacock!” I gasp. “Fuck, it’s your original guitar. How did you get her to survive all this time?”

“I was careful.” Gabriel moves back to me, hugging the guitar to his chest. “Along with Mercy Dragon, Peacock is the only possession that I own, which I care about losing. That’s because Tom and you gave her to me. And because I taught you to play on her.”

The acoustic guitar is old and battered but beautiful with iridescent blue and green swirls on its body, which is why Gabriel named her Peacock.

Tom and I saved up for six months in order to be able to buy Peacock for Gabriel’s thirteenth birthday.

Gabriel’s dad had forgotten his last two birthdays, and he had no other friends to buy him anything. He was always quietly accepting of being overlooked and forgotten.

He loved music, however, and always chatted about wishing he could play his favorite rock songs.

Gabriel’s face, when his dad did forget his birthday, but then, he found our large, guitar shaped present with a bright blue bow on it, is one of my best memories.

I’ll always treasure it.

Gabriel settles himself back against the headboard, pulling me onto his lap again. He places the guitar between us. Then he holds my fingers over the frets, as he begins to strum the chords.

I can feel his cheek against mine, and his strong fingers guiding me.

It’s so familiar from when we’d sit like this in my bedroom, and he’d teach me a new song.

He’s talented.

He can hear a song once and then know how to play it.

In another life, he should have been a musician and not a solider.

But that’s not what life is like.

Others try to mold us, or families trap us within the boundaries of their expectations.

Sometimes, you need to break free.

Then I realize what Gabriel’s playing, and my heart bursts with joy.

I feel like I’m flying.

It’s X Ambassador’s “Renegades”.

Over the music that joins us together, in the past and present, Gabriel asks with agonizing hopefulness, “Do you remember?”

“Do you think that I’ve forgotten anything? I hold onto every memory of you as precious as a gem against each lonely night and sad moment spent on my knees, caged in Ace Hall. I choose the Devil pack. But more than that, I will always choose you, Gabe.”

Gabriel breaks off playing, tossing the guitar to the side.

He tumbles me onto my back.

The look in his cold eyes is hungry.

He kisses me then, hard and desperate.

It’s passionate, but speaks of all the years that we’ve been forced apart.

Yet it’s a claiming.

We’re never letting each other go again.

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