Robin des Bois ✓

twenty-one. Safe Haven

And I could never repay them for it.

Until now, it seemed.

I took a deep breath and his scent —now feeling more familiar than it should —filled my lungs. "I know." I pulled away from him, because his proximity was dizzying. It made my body buzz with a nervous sort of energy and it made my thoughts feel sluggish, as though they were wading through mud.

"If you ever need to take a break or just vent, you know how to find me." He dug his phone out of his pocket and waved it at me.

"Thanks for everything, really." It didn't feel right to leave just like that and so I leaned in and placed a quick, chaste kiss on his cheek. The brief contact of my lips against his skin felt like a spark that could ignite a fire that would destroy anything and everything in its way.

Even though all I wanted to do was to stay there with him in the warmth and comfort of his car, I opened the passenger door and darted outside before I could change my mind. The way he looked at me, his dark eyes filled with an emotion I couldn't quite place my finger on, sent my blood rushing faster through my veins and made me feel warm all over.

Just don't overthink it, I told myself as I climbed the stairs to get to T&T's apartment. The thing was, the harder I tried not to think about it, the more I did, until I could hardly even picture anything but Gabe's face in my mind's eye. His ferocious eyes, the gentle slope of his mouth curving into one of his cynical smiles and his mop of dark hair —it had been in an artful disarray that morning, making him look as though he'd just rolled out of bed. By the time I'd slipped the key into the lock and got inside, my cheeks were warm and my mind was teeming with images of him and I knew that the only way for me to exorcise him from my head would be to draw him.

T&T's apartment was quiet, the silence disturbed only by the soft tapping of the rain on the windows. I shrugged my thin jacket off and rubbed my arms to smooth over the goosebumps that had erupted on my skin, but to no avail. It seemed that the chill from outside had permeated me to the bone, settling deep within me. I tiptoed to the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge until I found what I was looking for —namely eggs and bacon —and then I started to make breakfast.

Tyler was the first one to wake up, and he paused at the entrance of the kitchen when he saw me there, his face frozen in an expression of mild surprise.

"Isis," he began carefully, but before he could continue, I rounded the counter and wrapped my arms around him, reassured by how solid and strong he felt in my arms. He was motionless for a while, but then his arms surrounded me and his hands clenched into fists around my shirt. He clung to me as though I was the strong one, the solid one —as though I hadn't been the one to run away like a coward.

"I'm sorry I left yesterday," I whispered.

"You're here now, it's all that matters," he breathed back, still not letting me go. "I'm just glad you're back."

"Is there anything I can do to help? I want to do something. Anything."

Tyler let me go, his arms falling away from me slowly, as if he didn't want to pull away just yet. I finally took a good look at him and my heart constricted in my ribcage —he looked as though he'd aged ten years during the course of one night. There were dark shadows underneath his eyes and his eyes looked haunted, as if the shadow of what he'd learned yesterday had darkened his irises.

"You could move in," he said softly. "At least for now. Your father says it'd be easier if he didn't have to go back and forth between the two apartments. Mom said we could just as well start looking for a new bigger place so that we could all move in together for good, but Tina, your dad and I agreed that moving right now probably isn't a good idea. We just wanted to know what you thought about it before we made any official decisions."