Chapter 8 You Done?
EIGHT
YOU DONE?
Unsurprisingly, Jacob texted me to say the cake talk was going to have to wait.
Surprisingly, although Gabe said he was going to bring food, we didn’t return to my apartment after the meeting for me to find a bounty of wonder from The Gladly or The Henry or Culinary Dropout staying warm in my oven.
We came home to the ingredients of tuna casserole, plus garlic bread and the makings of an arugula salad.
It was becoming apparent that, although Gabe very obviously worked hard on maintaining his body, he did not treat it like a temple.
Instead, as he should (IMO), he used his active lifestyle as a way to be able to consume whatever the hell he wanted.
I approved of that.
Wholeheartedly.
(I mean, duh, I was a baker.)
Since I’d practiced my strategy for that evening while I was decorating cakes and cleaning my place, I knew exactly what I was going to say when the time came to say it.
I just needed the right time and the right amount of courage to actually say it.
So Gabe and I cooked.
Yes, together.
Yes, like an old married couple.
We did this while I filled him in about my day (including showing him snaps of the panda cake, which he declared “adorable,” and the bridal shower cake, which he rumbled was “super fuckin’ pretty, you got the touch, babe”—and yes, I buried both of those compliments to take out later, after I’d convinced him we had no business doing this, and I was wallowing in self-pity).
For his part, he shared he went to the gym first thing, but mostly he had a case he was working with Roam and Knox that they saw to, and he got into zero details about that (hmm).
Onward from that, I shared my decision I was going to take a breather and explained how it was not a break.
He shared he thought that was a good idea.
And that took us through the prep of dinner.
It was easy. It was chill. It felt nice.
And in a twisted effort of self-preservation in the face of actions that weren’t even close to that, I ignored how all of it made me feel while it was happening, and after.
Without comment, Gabe rewound to when I fell asleep, and we finished the episode I missed of Shetland while the casserole was bubbling in the oven.
Then we served up and ate it in front of the next episode.
We tidied after that episode, and when Gabe came back to the couch with a fresh beer (oh yeah, and he’d shot me a knowing look I also ignored when he discovered the enlarged cache in the fridge), I unearthed what I’d hidden from him (and myself?) and brought them to the couch.
I handed his to him while his eyes stayed glued to it before I sat on the sofa beside him with mine.
“Devil’s food, strawberry cream filling, and mascarpone icing,” I muttered to explain the cupcake he held in his hand with its excessively swirled mound of frosting. “With freeze-dried strawberry pieces sprinkled on top.”
Slowly, Gabe turned from his cupcake to me.
I shut out the expression on his face and looked away.
“I noticed you liked the strawberries last night,” I mumbled while avoiding his gaze and peeling my cupcake liner back.
“Baby,” he whispered.
I ignored that whisper too and bit into the cupcake.
Damn, I was good.
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.
And for him.
“Okay, Gabriel Stark, you’re going to listen to me state my case,” I declared.
He immediately moved to foil me.
He did this by sharing, “Cupcake, couples have discussions, they don’t state cases.”
“We’re not a couple.”
He looked from the kitchen to where I’d been lounged beside him on the couch for the last two hours (not to mention, where I’d been last night) to me.
God!
He was maddening!
And this was good.
It gave me the strength to carry on.
“Fine,” I bit off. “We’ll discuss.”
He fought a smile, though he didn’t hide he was fighting it, and he settled in, all man, stretching his ripped arms across the back of the couch, spreading his long legs wide and sinking his fine ass deeper into the seat.
It was an outrageously attractive picture, and one that gave me the urge to crawl into that lap and devour his mouth before I crawled out of it to kneel between those spread thighs and do other things.
I clenched my fists.
I dug deep to tap into what I needed in order to do the heartbreaking and impossible.
And I began.
“First, I allowed Kevin to leave me in a financial lurch. Growing up with not a lot, it causes anxiety if I don’t have a healthy savings and enough money in the bank to cover me should something go down.
Say I lose my job. Or I need new tires. Or I catch some bug, and my insurance doesn’t fully cover the absurdly expensive prescription I need. Whatever.”
He nodded.
I kept going.
“I’m not close to where I’d like to be to catch up, so I’m going to need to work to get to that place.
That means I wake up at four o’clock, and often, if not every day, I’m not done until six, or even seven at night.
And I work weekends. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time to concentrate on a new relationship. ”
“You just said you’re going to take breather,” he remarked.
“Yes.” I leaned toward him. “A breather.” I leaned back. “Not a break. Six weeks, but I have Willow’s Good Stuff orders during those six weeks. I’m just not adding more in that time.”
“Okay,” he stated immediately. “For my part, I need to stay fit because it’s a prerequisite of my job, and because I enjoy it.
I’m at the gym by five every day, if I’m not doing something for work, not including Sundays.
I take Sundays off. And my job is not eight to five.
Not even close. I could be gone all night.
I could be called out in the middle of the night.
I could have an assignment that takes me to Tucson, Flagstaff, Payson, even into New Mexico, and I could be gone for days or weeks.
Each day that comes, I’m not sure what it will bring. ”
All righty…
Safe to say, first, I found every little morsel he shared about him or his life captivating (yeesh, did I have it bad).
And it was safe to say his seizing my tactic to keep us apart as a tactic to explain how we fit together was unexpected (to say the least).
So, it was safe to say, this wasn’t exactly going as I’d planned, and it was just starting.
I didn’t miss this was a bad sign.
Gabe kept talking.
“I understand my body needs rest and downtime, and I find those things. But I prefer to be busy, on the go, and, as I already told you, challenged. The woman in my life will have to understand that about me and roll with it. Obviously, since that’s the case, if she’s the same, I’m not gonna pitch a fit because she is.
I’m gonna give her the space to do what she has to do. ”
Unh-hunh.
This was not going as I’d planned.
At all.