But in the end, he was going down.
SEVENTEEN
NOT EVEN CLOSE
I was in the kitchen in my apartment, close to being finished with decorating the birthday cake I was delivering that evening.
I’d also whipped up a quick batch of cupcakes to give to Duane that night.
And I’d packed all the stuff I was going to lug to SC the next day to start on my other weekly orders that afternoon.
Therefore, I was good to get what I needed to get done, hit the motel with my team after Shanti, Harlow and Jessie’s shift was over, and then get home to have lots of sex with Gabe.
Sure, after very little sleep, I was dragging.
But now Sunday was only four days away.
This was where I was at when I heard two sharp raps on the door, the locks started to go, and I smiled to myself because I knew it was Gabe.
A surprise visit.
Nice.
And it was Gabe.
But my smile died the minute I caught the look on his face.
“What—?” I began as he prowled to me, his expression thunder, his eyes a storm.
But that was all I got out before he shoved his phone, screen out, at me.
“You didn’t tell me about this,” he growled.
Completely flipped out at how mad he oh-so-obviously was, and completely mystified as to why he would be, I tore my eyes from his face and looked at his phone.
At what I saw, like any time that shit reared its ugly head, my lungs deflated, and my heart felt like it was going to explode.
“What the fuck, Willow?” he demanded.
On his phone was an old social media post about me being easy in high school, when I was not easy.
Even if I was, it was nobody’s business.
And to be easy, boys had to be easy too, so I shouldn’t have had to bear the brunt of it.
Then again, it happened in high school, so at that time, I hadn’t progressed enough in my thinking to understand everyone was being more of an asshole than they were actually assholes by putting me through all of that.
“How did you—?” I began.
He pulled the phone from my face. “When all the shit kicked off with the Angels, Brody did deep dives on all of you. As you add Angels, he does the research. He heard about us getting together, he thought I’d want to know.”
I’d never met this Brody, but when I did, I was going to kick him in the shin.
But now, I had to deal with…
Whatever this was.
I was shedding the residual fear and anxiety that automatically surfaced with any reminder of all of that and how it felt at the time, and I was beginning to get ticked because I wasn’t a fan of being confronted with it like I’d done something wrong, when I hadn’t.
