Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“S o, ah, where am I taking you?” Michael kept one hand on the wheel of his truck and rubbed the back of his neck with the other. Carefully, he navigated the exit onto I-15, which would take them south toward the Strip, Gabe’s former hotel, and Forza Elite Motors.
“I…I don’t know.” Gabe’s gaze was still on the paper in his hand. His birth certificate. His real one. With the names Joseph and Theresa Forza listed as his parents. When he’d gotten his driver’s license at sixteen, his mother had handed over another one, with Luke and Lucille Armstrong’s names on the Mother and Father lines. Focused on passing the driving test in a few minutes, he hadn’t bothered to examine it. Had it also been stamped by the state of Nevada?
“Gabe.” Michael’s voice was louder this time. “Am I dropping you back at the Bellagio?”
“No,” Gabe said quickly. Michael had to be wondering what the hell was going on. He’d been clutching his suitcase handle in one hand and a stolen pillowcase in the other, one that still smelled like orange blossoms, when Michael drove up in front of the hotel that morning. Between the argument, Sunny’s walking out on him, and his conversation with Brandon, Gabe had forgotten he’d agreed to go with his brother to the records office. Forgotten anything but getting away from the room that reminded him of all he’d lost.
Michael had asked no questions, not about the suitcase Gabe had heaved into the back seat of the crew cab, not about Gabe’s wilted silence. They’d exchanged a minimum of words in the complicated process to get a birth certificate for Gabriel Forza, someone who hadn’t existed for thirty years.
Now, apparently, Michael was done waiting.
A glance in the rear-view mirror at Gabe’s suitcase. “Something happen?”
An understatement. “Yeah.” Out the left window, the spires of the New York New York Hotel loomed. Gabe didn’t know if the coaster was visible from the highway, but he averted his eyes anyway, staring at the other cars on the road.
“Why didn’t they tell me?” he burst out. “Why didn’t I ask? It seems obvious now.” Gabe stared at Michael’s profile. Same sturdy jaw, same olive coloring, same dark hair. Like Gabe’s, his head almost brushed the ceiling of the cab. “I don’t look like them at all. Never liked the cold. Was better with a socket wrench than a spreadsheet.”
Michael tightened that massive jaw. “I’m not good with the touchy-feely stuff. That’s Mary. But.” He chewed on his words for a while. “Family’s a funny thing. They’re always yours. The good and the bad. But it’s not because of the blood in your veins or even the DNA. It’s because of the…the love.”
Michael winced when he said it, and his fingers twitched on the wheel. He probably wanted a mallet in his hand as much as Gabe did.
“And I bet your family in Ohio loves you. Whatever they say about blood and water, it’s true about love, too. Love’s thicker than water.”
Gabe squinted at him. “Huh?”
Michael flipped on his turn signal and took the exit, less gently this time. “Fuck! You know what I mean. Love! It’s important.” Then he mumbled, almost too softly for Gabe to hear, “Like what you’ve got with Sunny.”
The air conditioning was off, but cold washed over Gabe, freezing him to the seat. He couldn’t get enough breath in his lungs to make the words louder than a whisper. “She doesn’t love me.”
Michael snorted. At the stoplight, he turned to look at Gabe. “Bullshit.”
“She doesn’t love me.” He said it louder this time. “She left me.”
Michael shook his head, but then he glanced into the back at the suitcase. “You fucked up, man.”
“Yeah, I did.” He glanced out the window at a palm tree. She had to be home by now. At least he hoped so. He’d wanted to give Cinderella a tune-up before she left. Change the oil. It was a long drive to do alone. But that had been her plan since the beginning. “She was always going to leave.”
“Was she?” Michael’s words were heavy. “Seems to me she stayed longer than she needed to. Think she would’ve gone out with Mary last night if she didn’t care?”
The white tiger sign came into view. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve known our sister for over thirty years. Believe me, I know. She’s a lot. The answer is no.”
“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Gabe’s voice was sulkier than he’d planned. Mulish. “She’s gone now.”
Michael pulled into the parking lot and pulled around the back of the building. “Maybe,” he said. He turned off the engine and got out of the car.
Gabe got out, too. “What now?”
Michael rounded the hood and clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I like you, Gabe.” The stern lines of his face softened enough for one corner of his mouth to turn up. “But you’re Mary’s problem now.”
Michael turned on his heel and, whistling, strode through the shop door.
* * *
Gabe bumped his suitcase over the threshold to the office at Forza Elite Motors.
Mary, wearing her black logo polo, raised her head from her screen. “Gabe! I wasn’t expecting you today.” She eyed him. His luggage. The pillowcase that stuck out of his jacket pocket. “You staying or going?”
And that was the question. Gabe froze next to the wedding display table filled with champagne flutes, pink sashes, and tiaras. He could stay with the Forzas. Work and get to know his new family. He’d be closer to Sunny in Las Vegas. Even if she didn’t want to see him, the thought of being in the same time zone eased the chill around his heart. He could build a new life and leave Brandon and the Armstrongs behind.
But that thought—of leaving the family who’d raised him, treated him like one of their own for thirty years—twisted his gut. His parents, too. They’d left their legacy to him. Could he let Brandon take all that away? Darlene? Ramirez? All the people who depended on him? No. Not without a fight.
“Going,” he said. “Home. There’s some business I have to take care of. I came to say goodbye.” He gripped the suitcase handle to stop his hands from trembling. The flight was going to suck.
“Where’s Sunny?”
“Not with me anymore.” Had it always been this over-airconditioned in here?
“Oh, Gabe.” She came around the counter, arms out.
He shook his head. “I don’t deserve a hug for that. I said things. And then I didn’t even ask her not to leave.” It wouldn’t have stopped her. Still?—
“Even a pig-headed Forza deserves a hug.” She folded him into her crushing embrace. “The name means power. Force. We go in, guns blazing, and we think later. You’re thinking now, right? You regret what you did?”
“Yeah.” His arms fit just right around his sister’s back.
She drew back to look him in the eye. “She was already standing at the starting line, ready to go.”
How did Mary know so much?
“I’m surprised, though, she didn’t come say goodbye.” Mary tightened her lips. “You sure she left?”
“She took her suitcase.”
“She take her car?”
“I—I don’t know. It was with the valet.”
She patted Gabe’s arm. “I’ll call her. And if she doesn’t answer, I’ll call the hotel. You go on out and see Rafe. He’s in the garage. There’s a container of Italian wedding cookies. Have a few.”
He left his bags next to Mary’s desk and walked through the door into the garage. A stretch town car was parked diagonally across the floor. No Prince played this time. It was Def Leppard’s “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak.”
Rafe spotted him first. Powdered sugar spotted the corner of his mouth, and his coverall sleeve held a streak of it. “Hey.” He approached, extended his hand as if to shake Gabe’s, but then reconsidered and flung his arms out wide for a hug. At the last second, he hesitated and ended with an awkward clap of Gabe’s shoulders.
Michael poked his head out of the limo’s engine compartment, grunted, and turned back to the engine.
Rafe frowned at Michael and then gave Gabe a lopsided smile. “You come to do some real work?”
“Not today,” Gabe said. “I’m leaving.”
“With Sunny?” Rafe asked. “Mary said she had to get to LA soon.”
“No.”
“You going home, then?” He stared at his steel-toed boot as he scuffed it along the floor.
Gabe’s stomach flopped. He hadn’t yet figured out how to talk about one part of his family with the other. “Yeah, there’s a thing with the family business. My Ohio family.”
“A thing?” Michael peered out from behind the limo’s hood.
“A vote. I don’t think it’s good for the employees or for the guests. But if I don’t support it, they’re going to move to vote me out. Of the business.” Maybe out of the family, too.
“Family doesn’t do that to each other,” Michael growled.
Rafe leveled his older brother with a narrow-eyed stare.
“Okay, okay.” Michael raised his hands in surrender. “I’m not one to talk. I had to work through some shit.”
“Are they my family, though?” The question burst out of him, and Gabe didn’t know if he was asking his brothers, himself, or the universe.
Rafe stepped closer, so close Gabe could smell the engine oil baked into his coveralls. “You may not have much choice about who raises you when you’re a kid, but by the time you’re grown, you get to choose. The people you surround yourself with, they’re your family. Whether or not they’re related by blood. They’re connected through love.” It was the most words Gabe had ever heard him speak.
“See?” Michael waved his screwdriver. “Love’s thicker than water. Just like I said.” He nodded at Rafe and turned his attention back to the engine.
Maybe Michael had sniffed too much degreaser. He still didn’t make any sense.
But Rafe did.
Love.
His parents—his adoptive ones—had loved him. They’d wanted him. Whatever reason they’d had not to tell him, or anyone, he was adopted, he’d never had a reason to doubt that he was an Armstrong. Not even when his darker hair and complexion made him stick out in family photos, not when he’d surpassed their heights by almost a foot. Until he’d gotten the DNA results, he’d never questioned his place in the Armstrong family. Always accepted that Beach Island was his legacy. That was how his parents had shown they loved him.
Here, he had the love of his siblings. It showed in Rafe’s heavy hands on his shoulders. In Michael’s trip during work hours to the records office. In Mary’s boa-constrictor hug and homemade cookies. It was still new, and they were finding their way together, but standing there with his brothers, Gabe felt their connection.
It was a lot like the connection he felt with Sunny. He couldn’t deny that he loved her, too. He’d whispered the words to her last night while she slept. Like a coward. If she’d heard them, if she’d known how he felt, would she still have left him?
Mary eased through the door behind him. “She’s not answering her phone, and her car’s not at the hotel. But I can’t imagine she would’ve left for California without telling me.”
A tiny flame of hope ignited in Gabe’s chest. “Where do you think she could have gone?”
Mary came around to stand beside him so they made a ring of Forza siblings. Even Michael circled around the town car’s hood, wiping his hands on a rag.
Mary licked her thumb and rubbed the sugar off Rafe’s face. “Did she say anything before she left?”
She said a lot of things. About Gabe’s living in the past and Sunny’s living in the future. Not only did half a country divide their homes, but time itself stood between them. “No, she just packed her suitcase and left. I thought she was going to LA.”
“She didn’t mention any unfinished business here?”
He had to flip through the images of her pale face, shocked and hurt at his accusation. Her guilty I’m sorrys . To the time before Brandon’s phone call. She’d still been packing to go, but?—
“When we first got here, she mentioned riding the roller coaster before she left.”
“Which one?” Mary asked.
“New York, New York.”
She winced. “I may have mentioned it to her last night. Sounds like you ought to go look. Rafe’ll drive you.”
“But I—” Rafe protested. “Yeah, okay.” He went to the rack of coveralls and stripped out of his.
Mary gripped Gabe’s hand. “You can do it. She might not be ready to commit, but you’re a Forza, and Forzas are persistent. Show her you’re not going anywhere, that you’re a forever kind of guy.”
He nodded, mute. Sunny wasn’t a forever kind of woman. She’d told him that.
Michael clapped him on the other shoulder. “Call and tell Mary how it goes. And we want a proper goodbye before you go anywhere. Dinner. With Rafe’s gravy. I’ll even make salsiccia Napoli. Sausage.” When Gabe stared at him, open-mouthed, he said, “What? So I know how to cook. Doesn’t make me less of a bad-ass.”
Gabe shook his head and, avoiding the grease spots on Michael’s coveralls, hugged him around the shoulders. “Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
Mary tugged him into her arms, almost liquefying him. “You’ve got this.”
Rafe scuffed over, clacking a ring of key fobs. Grabbing the cookie container from the top of the rolling tool chest, he jerked his head toward the garage door. He must’ve used up all his words on that speech earlier.
Gabe followed his brother past the vintage Mustangs, a pair of sweet Ferraris, a couple Rolls Royces, and Mary’s red Corvette to a shiny black SUV. Rafe clicked to unlock it, and Gabe levered himself up into the passenger seat. It was already pushed back to accommodate his long legs.
“This is the Tank. It’s safe,” Rafe said. “Have a cookie.”
Gabe shook his head. His stomach clenched too tight to hold anything but regret.
“One cookie. They’re amazing.” Rafe waited, the engine idling.
He needed to find Sunny, so he carefully pulled one from the tin and popped it into his mouth. When he crunched it between his teeth, nutty sweetness burst onto his tongue. He licked the powdered sugar from his lower lip.
Rafe put the Tank into reverse and raised his eyebrows.
“Delicious,” Gabe mumbled. The cookie tasted like welcome. Like love.
They rode high above most of the other cars. Rafe was right about the confidence the steel beast inspired with its silent cabin and its view over the surrounding vehicles. He probably would’ve felt the same in Michael’s truck if he hadn’t been too focused on Sunny to look out the windows. Without a word, Rafe eased the Tank toward the Strip, and soon, the marquee of the New York New York hotel loomed ahead. The lift hill of the roller coaster rose beyond it.
Gabe swallowed. “Rafe, I—I don’t know how to get her back.”
“Sure, you do. Like in the movies. A grand gesture. Some romantic shit.” He pulled the SUV to the curb.
The casino entrance was still a few blocks away. “Guess I’ll walk from here.”
“No.” When Rafe turned to him, it was like looking into a mirror. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it. Though this reflection told Gabe he was being an idiot. Rafe tilted his chin at something behind Gabe. “You need something from in there.”
Gabe turned. A jewelry shop. He whipped his head back to his brother. “You don’t mean?—”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what to do.”
He did. And he knew what not to do. He pushed open the car door and jogged straight past the jewelry store, dodging pedestrians. Keeping his gaze straight ahead and off the coaster’s loops above, he marched under the glittering neon of the casino’s marquee and through the doors.