This is a companion one-shot to my Gallagher Girls 5, Spied and Seek. There are book 4 spoilers. You have been warned. Abby seeks Zach out after his last conversation with Cammie and they talk about the future. I do not own the Gallagher Girls series, Abby, or Zach. Read and Review! Enjoy :)
I can still hear her words bouncing around in the back of my mind.
We should be dead. We should be dead. We should be dead.
And as I stare out the tower window tonight, I couldn't agree more. I can still see it all in my head, burned into my brain like the sores on my skin. Only more permanent. More painful. More devastating.
I hadn't seen her in three weeks, not since it happened. I'd been avoiding her. I had to. Every time I saw her, I saw it all over again, felt it all over again. And I knew. I knew that there was nothing I could do to make it right. Joe was almost gone. And I'd almost lost her too. Hell, I might lose her yet.
She was going to run. She'd told me, and I'd understood. I understand. She needed answers. But so did I. Now more than ever. I'd once told her that I had nothing to lose, a long time ago, when the world wasn't such a dark place. But I was wrong. And I hadn't quite realized that until I'd come incredibly close to losing it all. I wasn't about to let that happen again.
She would run. And I would follow. There was no other way.
I hear the footsteps, light and coming up the stairs to our tower. They sound like Cammie's but I'm not sure. Not sure it's her. Not sure I really want to see her. Not sure there's anything left to be said.
I hear the door squeak, listen to the footsteps enter the room. Half of my brain relaxes as I realize they aren't hers, but the other half tenses as I recognize whose they are. I expect anger. I expect her to say something. To yell at me. To knock me around. I'm wrong.
She leans her forearms on the window ledge and looks out, the moonlight making her face look older than usual. Or perhaps it's not the moonlight. Perhaps the wrinkles have appeared over the last three weeks and I haven't noticed.
But it doesn't matter. She's here, next to me, staring out at the sky in silence. It's cold, unseasonably so. My hands are buried in my pockets, but her hands and forearms are bare, and I watch the goosebumps spread like a rash over them, but she doesn't seem to notice. When she finally speaks, 23 minutes later, the words are nothing like I'm expecting.
"Thank you," she whispers, without moving. "You saved them both."
"After I nearly got them both killed."
"Zach," she says quietly, her voice intense. She turns to look at me, waits for my eyes to meet hers. But they don't, so she places a hand on mine and forces me to look at her. "Thank you."
I've seen the way Abigail Cameron usually looks at me. I know that look, that mix of suspicion, wariness, and a twinge of fear. As though she's waiting for me to break her family apart again. Which I guess in a way I already have.
But tonight her eyes are different. Tonight they're sincere. And maybe, just maybe, way in the back, is a twinge of trust. A bit of apology. A modicum of understanding.
Two things I don't deserve. And one I don't want. Or maybe I've told myself I don't want it, so that when it never comes I won't long for it. It doesn't matter, because it brings the same result.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"So am I," she answers.
"You knew her," I say quietly, because I know it's true.
"Yeah," she whispers back. "But that doesn't change anything."
"No."
She's silent again, and I know why. She went to school with my mother. She knew her before she was the leader of the Circle of Cavan. So did a lot of people. They all seem to feel as though they should have done something, as though they could have stopped her from becoming what she is. But they didn't. And they couldn't. And they can't.
Some things can't be changed. But there are some that can. And in the silence I wonder. Is this one of those things? Should I tell her? I can't decide.
I care about her, more than she knows, and I don't want to break her confidence, lose her trust. But I care about her, more than she understands, and I don't want to see her hurt either. I don't want to know I could have saved her. I don't want to spend the next sixty years of my life—or however long I manage to survive in the spy world—thinking back to a cold night in May when I should have said something and didn't. I care about her. So I do.
"She's going to run."
Abby's eyes are on the stars again, and she doesn't even glance over at me, doesn't tense a muscle when she hears my words. And I know that if I had to tell someone, at least I picked the right person to tell. When she speaks, I'm surprised. Again.
"I've always loved Orion," she says, without looking over at me. "When I was little he was the only one I could find. I didn't know the other ones until much later. There are two dogs. And Taurus, the bull."
She pauses, her eyes searching the sky, and then continues. "It's funny, that group. When I was little, when I first learned there were others, I was angry with Orion for hunting the bull. But then someone suggested that maybe Orion wasn't hunting the bull for sport. That maybe the bull had attacked him, and it was self defense. Or he was threatening the bull and trying to scare it off. I never could decide."
"Are we the hunter or the bull?" I asked when she was finished.
She shook her head. "I don't know, Zach. I guess what I meant was it's complicated. Sometimes it looks one way, sometimes another. Some days you're the hunted other days the hunter. It's all a matter of perspective. But Orion and Taurus, they are what they are. Neither is inherently good or bad."
Her voice trails off, and I find myself studying her out of the corner of my eye. The lines in her face are deep, deeper than I thought at first. She appeared at the mansion the day after that night, to see Joe and Cammie. To embrace them both. To be relieved and mortified. And to figure out what was next.
She's been thrown into this war as surely as I have. Sandwiched between Joe and Rachel and dragged into the center by affiliation. Although almost bleeding to death in the street would bring you in equally as far.
I try to search for an answer in her strange metaphor, but she's right. There are too many questions and nowhere near enough answers. Among them is "What's next?"
"Go with her," Abby says quietly, as though she can read my thoughts. "You were going to follow anyway. Don't. Go with her. Go together."
"Do you really think I can protect her well enough?" I ask, afraid of what might happen. I tried to leave the circle. I'm working against them. And my mother knows that. Sooner or later, she'll use it against me. Or against the people that I care about. Because that's how she is.
"To be honest, she's probably safer with you," Abby says quietly. "No one wants to trust you Zach," she turns to face me, her eyes boring into mine. "Because of her. But I think they're wrong. Joe and Rachel tried to convince me before. And they were right. I know that now."
She steps away from the window and turns to leave, but she calls over her shoulder before she starts down the stairs.
"Go with her, Zach. Go with her."