Taking his hand, I moved into the main room, seeing my father’s surprised look as Reid told him all about it. Cash was on the couch, a beer in his hand, his eyes intently focused on me.
“That’s great, Reid. Why don’t you go find Shelby and tell her all about it? She’s in the basement watching a movie with her mom and Grandma.”
“Okay.” He ran off just as Cindy came into the room, giving me the same look Cash was, and I knew she’d heard it all.
“I told him,” I said, the need to defend Gabe rising in me.
Cash leaned forward, rolling his beer between his hands. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“He deserves to know.”
“But with his track record.” He pointed to Gabe, and the tension returned to Gabe’s body.
“Shut up, Cash,” Cindy said, flopping on the couch next to him and putting her feet on the coffee table. “She’s right. He needs to know, and we said we were giving Gabe a second chance, just like Tori is.”
“I won’t hurt him,” Gabe said. “If I thought there was a chance, I would have left Tori to hate me and never put myself back into her life. I would have refused the interview and sent them both home.” He rubbed his neck, looking over at me. “The only reason I ever pursued her in Jacksonville was that I thought I could find a way to keep her. I was certain because I knew she was special, that she was the one. If I’d known…”
“You still would have asked her out,” Cindy said, taking Cash’s beer and drinking it.
“Hey!” He snatched it back. I swore sometimes they were the brother and sister. Cindy had been my best friend since kindergarten, and Cash was as much her older brother as he was mine.
“You two are inevitable,” she continued, jabbing an elbow in Cash’s side. “I saw it when I visited you in Florida, saw it whenI scraped her from the depths of depression, saw it every time she tried to move on and couldn’t, and I see it now. There was no avoiding it, which is why you asked her out in the first place.”
Leave it to Cindy to sum the two of us so simply. Inevitable. It seemed the perfect word for us. Gabe’s finger brushed over mine, and I glanced up at him. For a moment it was just the two of us, and we were back to the beginning, that first day when his hazel eyes met mine, when his attention had only been on me and had remained on me. When he had been my world.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Inevitable.”
Gabe broke the contact, but heat swarmed in my stomach and stung my cheeks.
“That’s not what you told me when I called you,” I told her, dragging Gabe into the room and pulling him down on the loveseat.
“Eh, that’s because I was still pissed at him.”
“And you’re not anymore?” he asked her.
“It comes and goes,” she said with a big grin.
“Great.”
Cash rose and handed Cindy his beer. “Finish it. I’m getting a fresh one since you infected this one.”
She took it and stuck her tongue out at him.
“Scotch, Gabe?” he asked.
Gabe twisted his fingers in his hands. “Nah, a beer sounds good.”
Cash waved for him to follow. “Come pick your poison.”
Hand draping over mine as he walked away, Gabe followed, and the emptiness that had claimed a spot in my life for years returned. My father’s heavy gaze had me turning my attention to him.
“Was it your decision or Gabe’s to tell him?”
“Mine. I didn’t tell Gabe. It just…felt right.”
He nodded, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. “Let Gabe talk to him alone. I think he needs it and probably needed to tell him in his own way.”
Standing, he came over and kissed my head. “I know you meant well, and you’re putting your trust back in Gabe, but I suspect he needs to take these steps himself in order to do his own healing.”
