"I said that I'm glad you let her be my friend."
Carl turned back around, leading the way through the forest. "You're welcome. But I would like you to back off a little. Hanging out at school is fine, because I don't go to hers, but no more of this going for sodas in the evening and picnics on the weekend. That's for boyfriends." He glanced back. "Get it?"
Peter's voice cooled. "I have never made a move--"
"Course not, because you know you wouldn't get to first base. She's got me now. You don't stand a chance."
"Then you shouldn't be concerned." Peter's voice had gone ice-cold.
"I'm not." Carl resumed walking. "I'm just saying it looks bad, and other guys talk. I don't want that. You can be her school chum. That's it. You don't like that?" Carl waggled his rifle, his back still to Peter. "Remember what a good shot I am."
"Is that a threat?"
"Only if it needs to be, Petey," Carl said with a smirk in his voice. "But you know your place. And it's not with Alice." He glanced back. "Not ever with Alice. Remember that. As long as I'm around, she's mine. I'll never let her go."
"Yes, I know," Peter said.
"Good lad."
They continued walking. I could feel Peter seething as he watched Carl's back. They went another ten paces. Then Peter said, "Is that a deer?"
Carl stopped and surveyed the forest. "Where?"
"Up there, to the left."
Carl waved for Peter to stay where he was and crept forward, his footfalls silent. When he'd gone about five steps, Peter lifted his rifle and aimed it square at Carl's back.
"No!" I said, stumbling forward through the forest.
Peter pulled the trigger. The shot hit Carl between the shoulder blades and he flew face-first into the dirt. I heard a voice shout, "No!" but it wasn't mine, it was another, a familiar, deep voice, and I tumbled through into the garden, hitting the concrete of the patio, my cheek against the cool stone, hearing Gabriel shout, "No!"
SPOKES ON A WHEEL
Gabriel whiplashed back to the present. He could feel the cold patio beneath his hands. He could smell burning leaves in the air. He could hear Olivia saying his name. All that told him he was back, and yet his mind stayed trapped in the forest, the shot looping over and over.
Standing there, watching a boy he knew was supposed to be Gwynn--supposed to be him--shoot Arawn in the back. It sent him tumbling into memory, of being in the abandoned psychiatric hospital, when Ricky had been knocked out in the belfry. He'd been hanging there, wounded, as the voice in Gabriel's head whispered.
Look at him. He's barely hanging on. He's bleeding badly. It's a four-story drop. The fall would likely kill him, and if it didn't, he'd bleed out before help came. All you need to do is stay right where you are. Or better yet, walk away. No one knows you were up here.
Gabriel knew now it had been Tristan, trying to convince him to abandon Ricky. Let him fall. Let him die. But Gabriel could never shake that first impression. In his memory the voice was Gwynn. And Gwynn was him.
And what was worse, there had been--for one second that seemed in his memory to stretch to an eternity--a moment where he'd considered it.
Ricky gone. Olivia yours.
That guilt--that incredible guilt--was like nothing he'd felt before. There had been a moment where he'd thought of Ricky dead and been glad of it. Now he'd seen it happen to another Gwynn, another Arawn. A Gwynn without his Matilda, unable to bear seeing her with him, convinced that if he was gone, the path would be clear. Opening that path with cold-blooded murder.
Gabriel dimly heard Olivia saying his name, felt her shaking him. But it was as if she called from another dimension, one he could not reach because he was trapped in that forest, seeing the boy shoot over and over, and thinking,
That could be me.
Yet there was also the beginning, when he'd first fallen into Olivia's vision, when he'd been Gwynn. Running to her after she fell, his heart pounding, the relief when he saw she was all right. In that moment, there was no barrier between Gabriel and Gwynn. It'd been him running to Olivia, because that was who he saw, who he heard, in Matilda's voice and her words and her smiles and her gestures. Olivia as Matilda, as much as he was Gwynn, feeling exactly as he felt when Olivia was hurt.
At that moment, he'd understood what Olivia meant. What she'd wanted to show him. That the figure he held in his head--the arrogant, thoughtless, obsessive bastard--was not the whole of Gwynn. Not even, perhaps, a significant part of Gwynn. Instead, he'd been a boy, deeply in love, unable even to think of the pact he'd made with Arawn, because if there was even a flicker of hope that Matilda might reciprocate his feelings, then he could no more remember his vow than he could remember to breathe when she turned that smile on him. Foolish, yes. Dangerous, certainly. But that was the power of hindsight. Being Gwynn, feeling what he felt, it was forgivable.
He'd cleaned the blood from her lip, and he'd run through the storm carrying her, and he'd huddled in that cave with her, and she'd teased him and they'd laughed, and it felt like some forgotten memory. Like something he'd shared with Olivia, but had slipped his mind, and now he had it back and he wouldn't push it away again. He'd put it back where it belonged, on a shelf in his memory, bright and shining, ready to be picked up whenever he wanted it. And he would thank Olivia for it. Thank her and apologize, because she was right. This was what he needed. An understanding that there was so much more to Gwynn than he'd realized.
And then came the other memory, of the other Gwynn, the boy in the forest. It took that pleasant memory and shattered it like glass against stone.