You aren’t fooling anyone either, just like Martha, Dreamer chided.
Mm-hmm, that was totally uncalled for and equally stupid, Logic told me.
However, Gabriel Stark, with his minor in psychology (huh), read what I needed, and with nary a word, cued up the next episode and hit go.
We watched it, and since it was getting late, as it was nearing its end, I put the hefty work in to top up my nerve.
As such, when the program was over, I took my life in my hands to reach across Gabe and confiscate the remote.
I turned off the TV.
He turned to me.
I stared into his bright blue eyes wishing the world was a better place and I’d felt safer in it, not just now, in the aftermath of Kev and Trev, but my entire life.
And then I said, “We need to talk about this morning.”
He didn’t shut down. He didn’t close off.
What he did was say gently, “Baby, if you were where I’m at with us, that would be yours to have. And I’d give it. Freely. But you aren’t. Regardless that I’m sitting here. Regardless that you made me a cupcake. Regardless that you bought me beer.” Ugh! He so totally didn’t miss any of it! “I feel you holding yourself apart from me. Until the time when you’re with me, really with me”—he reached and cupped my jaw but stroked the underside of my chin and my throat with his thumb (nice)—“that’s not yours to have.”
Fair enough.
Though the way he was, I knew whatever woke him this morning, it was something maybe even bigger than it seemed, and it seemed monstrous.
And I hated not knowing. I hated that he had it, and I didn’t even know what it was.
I profoundly hated it.
I wanted him to give it to me so maybe he’d be holding less of it.
But he was correct.
That was for whatever other woman he would meet who would not have damage and baggage and trust issues as tall as skyscrapers.
A woman who hadn’t seen that folder of video files Trev had taken of having sex with unsuspecting women who he’d used those videos to blackmail.
A woman who didn’t know her ex didn’t get his hands on that laptop and delete all those files, but instead, hid it so he could extort those women himself.
A woman who hadn’t once been a girl who’d been shredded on social media because her boyfriend was pissed she wouldn’t let him have sex with her, a turnabout in tactics, but predatory all the same.
The ugly Gabe held was for her to have, his future woman, not me.
And when he found her, I’d be nice to her, I’d be friendly and welcoming.
But even so.
I already knew her mere existence would cut me to the bone, and it wasn’t only how sweet his touch was on me in that very moment that informed me of that.
It was the fact that I belonged to him, from our very first kiss, and I wanted to belong to him, very, very badly, but I couldn’t saddle him with my issues, and I was terrified I’d never trust again.
In fact, the extreme depths of pain I felt from understanding all of this, accepting it, and knowing what I had to do next, drove me off the couch.
I rounded my garage sale coffee table (that was still nice, after I cleaned it up, of course) and faced him.
And then I did what I had to do.
For me.
