“That’s a difficult task. Sometimes, it all feels like a weighted blanket, holding me down.” The short growth of facial hair scrapes over my palms as he speaks, but I keep them in place. I like the painful tickle. I nod, urging him to continue.
“I want to leave it all behind, but it’s always there. Clinging to me. It’s a thorn. Many thorns.”
My hands move to his shoulders and I lean back slightly. “Every day we are alive, we are experiencing. The joy, the struggle, the strife. We take little bits of those experiences, and we walk on into the next day. We can’t control what happens around us, or what other people do, but we make choices. We choose the hurts we cling to, the truths and lies we allow to mold us and shape us. You can allow the shame you feel about your mistakes to weigh you down and keep you from growing, or you can pick out what lessons you want to learn from them, and keep those instead. It’s your choice.”
Appreciation shines in his eyes. “There you go, being far too kind.”
I shake my head. “I’ve made mistakes, too. I lost my career, remember?”
He brushes my lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Did you really yell at a couple during a session?”
“I really yelled at a couple. I’ll change it to liposuction or a nose job or whatever else in the final draft, though, so it doesn’t violate their privacy. And change names and descriptions, obviously.”
Gabriel chuckles. “I would’ve paid good money to see that.”
“I can reenact it for you,” I joke.
“What about your dad? Did you have a heart-to-heart with him, like the therapist suggested? Or was that fiction?”
“I did, actually. It was a difficult conversation. He acted hurt, and surprised. It helped having Lara there. She guided him through it. It was oddly cool to watch.” I already liked Lara, but that was the day I began to love her. “He apologized eventually, once the hurt wore off.”
Gabriel’s hands go to my hips, his thumbs stroking my waist. “You took a leave of absence from work? Sold our house? Started your book? Like the manuscript says?”
I nod. “In that order.”
Gabriel watches his thumbs as they move over me. “I felt sad when the lawyer brought me the papers for the sale of the house.”
Our eyes lock.
Gabriel blinks and nods, breaking the heaviness of the moment. “Thank you for setting aside money from the sale. It was helpful when I got out. It gave me options, and time.”
“It was the right thing to do. Even though Sabrina told me to take the money as restitution.”
Gabriel breathes a laugh. “How is Sabrina?”
“Good, I guess. I don’t talk to her much anymore. She’s busy. Two kids.” I shrug away the pinch of sadness that flits across my heart. I'd done too good a job pushing Sabrina away,and damaged our friendship irrevocably. What I know of her life now is gleaned from social media. “We’re at very different stages of our lives. It wasn’t easy to maintain a friendship after…everything.” It’s my fault. She was married and having babies, chasing a toddler and nursing a newborn, and it was a reminder of everything I didn’t have. I stopped returning her calls and texts. She stopped sending them.
Gabriel exhales a heavy sigh. He opens his mouth, most likely to lament about why Sabrina and I are at different stages, but I place a finger against his lips.
“That’s enough elephants for one evening.”
Gabriel’s thumbs stray from my waist, traveling up my rib cage. “What do you want to do instead?”
“I have some ideas.” I trail kisses along his jaw. I’m ready to stop communicating with words. It’s time to let our bodies do the talking.
What is it they’re saying, though? I don’t yet know. All I know, and all I really want to know right now, is that I’m tucked up in the snowy mountains with a man I never thought I’d see again. It’s like magic, or an alternate reality. Fantasy land. For the rest of tonight, that’s where I want to live.
Gabriel turns into me, and we kiss slowly, as if we have all the time in the world. As if we never had to stop. That familiar feeling tugs at my chest, and I press against the growing hardness I’m seated on. Gabriel winds a hand in my hair and pulls gently.
I rock against him, and let myself pretend nothing ever came between us.
As if my last name is still Woodruff.
As if Gabriel’s mouth and heart and hands is all there is, or will be.
As if I’m not going home in a matter of days.
CHAPTER 14
