He took you there because he is not Kevin. He is not your dad. He took you there because you are worth it. And he took you there because he’s a good guy, Dreamer drilled into me.
Yeah, a good guy who’s half naked in bed with her and she’s half naked, and he knew that would buy him his place right there, Logic declared.
He couldn’t know that! Dreamer retorted.
He could. And just sayin’, we’ve been love-bombed before, may I remind you, Logic shot back.
Sick of the both of them, I squeezed my eyes tight.
And Gabe’s body jolted, his fingers that had been curled light in sleep on my neck tensed, and I heard him suck in what sounded like an uber pained breath.
Alarmed, I pushed up to an arm and looked down at him in the dim light coming from around my shades.
He was blinking rapidly, and he looked clouded, and worse, intensely, even cataclysmically troubled.
Hang on.
What was this?
“Gabe?” I called.
His eyes came to me, that expression remained for a long disturbing moment before it cleared, and he lifted his hands to rub his face like he could scrub the last vestiges of…whatever that was from his psyche.
“Nightmare?” I asked.
He dropped his hands and met my eyes.
“No. Yeah,” he stated confusingly, pushed out a breath then did an ab curl, grabbed my neck again, pressed a hard, swift kiss on my lips and rolled out of bed.
Okay.
Hang on.
Now what was this?
He was tugging on his jeans.
“Gabe—”
He hefted them over his very fine ass, saying, “You need space.”
I did, indeed, need space, but at that moment, I hadn’t asked for it.
Buttoning his fly, he went on, “And you got shit to do today. So do I. We’ll reconnect tonight. Five. I’ll be back, and I’ll bring food.”
He bent to nab his tee.
“Gabe—”
He came to me, another claim of my neck, another swift hard kiss.
Then I watched him walk out of the room.
And two seconds later, I heard him close the front door.
Late that afternoon, I was at my kitchen bar and my laptop.
The cakes had been decorated, delivered, and I’d been paid.
