He watched her carefully.
“That’s how most relationships fall apart,” she continued. “Not because of one big thing. Because of the small things people don’t say. The choices they don’t make.”
His hand moved slowly along her arm.
“If we’re doing this,” she said, softer now, “we can’t do that again. No pretending. No leaving things out because we think it’s easier. No secrets.”
His hand stilled for a fraction of a second.
“No secrets.”
She studied his face in the dim light. He looked steady and certain, and she believed him because she had no reason not to.
Chapter 15
GABRIEL
Three weeks had passedsince the weekend in the Hamptons, and Gabriel had a problem.
The problem lived in his desk drawer. A framed document with three signatures, face down for the last two weeks because Tessa had started staying over and he had moved it the night she opened the wrong cabinet looking for olive oil.
Hiding it was the lie. Not the Oath itself—a stupid college promise that had stopped meaning anything to him the night Tessa Thorne dropped a tray of champagne at his best friend’s wedding. The lie was letting Knox believe it still held weight. The lie was watching Tessa fall in love with a man she didn’t have the full map of.
His phone buzzed.
Tessa: Running late. Client emergency. Still on for 7?
Gabriel: Take your time. I’ll start cooking.
Tessa: You’re cooking?
Gabriel: I’m attempting to cook. Pray for my kitchen.
Tessa: I’ll bring a fire extinguisher.
He set the phone down and looked at the drawer.
His mother had called twice that week, and he had ignored both. The third call he had taken on Tuesday at his desk, because Camille Sterling was a woman who didn’t stop calling, and because she had finally tried him from a number he didn’t recognize.
“Gabriel. Where have you been?”
“Working. As usual.”
“You’re never too busy to take my calls. Something is different.”
“Nothing’s different, Mother.”
“When I couldn’t get hold of you, I called Knox. He tells me you’re seeing someone.”
The cold drop in his chest—the one he’d felt at seventeen, the day his mother cornered Tessa in the Ashford hallway and told her a scholarship girl from New Jersey would never be a Sterling—was still there.
“Knox has been busy.”
“Who’s she?”
“None of your business, Mother.”
“Gabriel.”
