"Don't look at it that way, sweetheart," he said so gently she felt tears prick her eyes. "Some events seem connected but really aren't. You were the victim of someone who couldn't see what was right before him. Pretty much all of us made the same mistake when we first met you."
"I guess it really doesn't matter. The past is the past and I'm fucked either way," she said. "Gabriel, if you can't find an option to save me, will you swear to let me live out what I have left in peace?"
"You mean alone."
"I mean happy, whether that's alone or not."
"Yes, Deidre. I promise you that."
"Thank you," she replied. "Did you really come here tonight to start trying to win me over?"
"I don't know." His response came after a lengthy pause.
"You sat with me for hours and don't know why?" she asked, amused.
"I have no fucking clue what to do with you."
"Good," she said, satisfied beyond her expectations. "You confuse the hell out of me, too. Though of the two of us, I'm the one who can't read minds, so it makes sense I'm clueless."
"I've only read your mind once."
"I know that how?"
The sea breeze seemed to pierce her skull and ruffle through her brain. She shuddered.
"That's what it feels like when I read your mind," he said.
"Weird. What did you see?"
"Most people don't want to know," he replied with a chuckle. "There are conscious thoughts that you're aware of and subconscious ones that you're not. Emotions, random sensations, memories, disjointed images. It's like walking from reality into a dream and back again."
"Can you make sense of it while you're in there?"
"Only because of what I am."
"Tell me what's in my head," she ordered. "I can't sort through it."
"It's like someone dropped a stone in the lake. The impact was noticeable, but it's the ripples that are tearing you apart."
"Yeah," she agreed.
"You're in denial about Wynn. You're in denial about dying. You've accepted the Immortals and even taken on the burden of wanting to right the wrongs of past-Deidre. You don't want to die, but the idea of living terrifies you as well."
She listened, dismayed but also interested in someone interpreting the insanity of her mind in a way she could grasp. She held her breath, suspecting what might come next.
"You feel the same way towards me that I do towards you." There was laughter in Gabriel's voice.
"Which is …"
"You'll figure it out."
"I'm guessing I confound you the same way you do me. One minute, telling me you don't want anything to do with me beyond your duty and the next, sitting on the beach with me for hours because you're worried I'll find a tall building to dive off of," she grumbled. "Am I right?"