The apple compote first so that it can cool off in the fridge.
“I’d rather hear it from you.” He stops to look at me, the concern glowing in his golden-brown eyes. “I’d always rather hear it from you.”
I sigh, trying not to curl in on myself like I had done then. I’d disappeared into someone new.
Someone not quite me.
Someone I thought was wiser and worldly until it happened again. “I fell for all of the tricks in the book.”
Gabe reacts the way he always reacts—stony silence.
The glare he gives isn’t aimed at me.
I know that, so I explain in the best way I can.
“He was here visiting one of the families.” I don’t say which one. If gossip didn’t spread it, I don’t want to talk bad about a good family. It’s not their fault their friend was a jerk.
Not their fault I was so gullible.
I wash my hands and press my wet fingers to my eyes before turning back to start a spiced white chocolate ganache since it will need half the day to set up.
Once I drop the cinnamon, cardamon, and chili powder in with the hot cream and chopped chocolate, all I have to do is whisk.
Gabe’s patient, though. He doesn’t push when I’m quiet for a while. It takes me time to work through things.
“He conned me out of more than my virginity.”
He stills opposite me, muscles tightening, but his angry gaze is unfocused on the shine of the table.
When his eyes finally flick up to mine, I can read his murderous thoughts.
What could be more than my virginity?
“Our conversations were designed to get as much personal information out of me as possible.”
His shoulders roll like he already knows where this is headed but is trying to stop it by will alone.
“He downloaded the bank app, signed in as me, and transferred out the twenty-thousand dollars in my savings account.” The money I saved my whole life from babysitting, birthdays, Christmases, and working weekends at the bakery as a teenager.
It was my college fund.
My guarantee that I would get out of this town.
It still happened, but differently than I’d been dreaming of.
I didn’t do a full four-year degree.
I got an internship and went to school at night to take business and administrative classes.
Smartest thing I could do to reinvent myself.
To support myself. To prove I could do it all by myself.
I did it.
And I was miserable more often than I wasn’t.
Miserable until I got tangled up in Gabe. And Adam. And Greyson. The three of them have erased so much of the self-loathing I’ve been steeping in these last six years.
