Chapter 17 Not Even Close
SEVENTEEN
NOT EVEN CLOSE
I was in the kitchen in my apartment, close to being finished with decorating the birthday cake I was delivering that evening.
I’d also whipped up a quick batch of cupcakes to give to Duane that night.
And I’d packed all the stuff I was going to lug to SC the next day to start on my other weekly orders that afternoon.
Therefore, I was good to get what I needed to get done, hit the motel with my team after Shanti, Harlow and Jessie’s shift was over, and then get home to have lots of sex with Gabe.
Sure, after very little sleep, I was dragging.
But now Sunday was only four days away.
This was where I was at when I heard two sharp raps on the door, the locks started to go, and I smiled to myself because I knew it was Gabe.
A surprise visit.
Nice.
And it was Gabe.
But my smile died the minute I caught the look on his face.
“What—?” I began as he prowled to me, his expression thunder, his eyes a storm.
But that was all I got out before he shoved his phone, screen out, at me.
“You didn’t tell me about this,” he growled.
Completely flipped out at how mad he oh-so-obviously was, and completely mystified as to why he would be, I tore my eyes from his face and looked at his phone.
At what I saw, like any time that shit reared its ugly head, my lungs deflated, and my heart felt like it was going to explode.
“What the fuck, Willow?” he demanded.
On his phone was an old social media post about me being easy in high school, when I was not easy.
Even if I was, it was nobody’s business.
And to be easy, boys had to be easy too, so I shouldn’t have had to bear the brunt of it.
Then again, it happened in high school, so at that time, I hadn’t progressed enough in my thinking to understand everyone was being more of an asshole than they were actually assholes by putting me through all of that.
“How did you—?” I began.
He pulled the phone from my face. “When all the shit kicked off with the Angels, Brody did deep dives on all of you. As you add Angels, he does the research. He heard about us getting together, he thought I’d want to know.”
I’d never met this Brody, but when I did, I was going to kick him in the shin.
But now, I had to deal with…
Whatever this was.
I was shedding the residual fear and anxiety that automatically surfaced with any reminder of all of that and how it felt at the time, and I was beginning to get ticked because I wasn’t a fan of being confronted with it like I’d done something wrong, when I hadn’t.
And anyway, why was Gabe so mad about it?
We hadn’t shared cherry-popping stories yet, but I was pretty sure he knew he didn’t pop mine.
“It wasn’t what they said it was,” I told him.
“I don’t give a fuck what it was,” he shot back. “Who the fuck started this shit?”
“I…” Still perplexed, since all this happened over a decade ago, I asked, “What does it matter? That happened in high school.”
He held his phone toward me and scrolled through a bunch of shit that was still up (a lot of it had been taken down when the cops got involved, oh, and when Mom lost her mind publicly at a school board meeting). All of what he was scrolling through was about me.
Gabe dropped his phone, declaring, “It matters.”
“Gabe, I’m over it.”
He bent toward me, I leaned back, and he shouted in my face, “Well, I’m not!”
Holy shit.
“Baby,” I whispered, shocked to my core at his fury.
“Does it occur to you that I wasn’t only dealing with what that asshole did to you when I was trying to get you here with me?” He thumped his fist over his heart before he jerked his phone up again. “I was dealing with this too?”
Yes, that had occurred to me.
And yes, he was right, he’d been dealing with all of it.
Even so.
“It was a long time ago,” I said carefully.
“It marked you,” he gritted. “Like your dad did. Like that asshole Kevin did.”
“I wasn’t keeping it from you,” I replied. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve only just gotten there very recently.”
“No, Willow, that is far from lost on me,” he said dangerously.
Hmm.
I guess, point made.
“What else is there?” he demanded.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Who else fucked you over?”
I had to finish this cake and make the delivery, but since my list wasn’t very long, we had the time.
So I gave it to him quickly in order that Real Logic didn’t butt in and underline the fact my list wasn’t very long, it wasn’t like I was the only woman who faced this kind of crap, and I shouldn’t have held back from Gabe as long as I did.
No, I’d done it because I was just smarting due to the ugly mess Trev and Kev made, and I let it get to me.
Yuck.
“Well, after I got slut shamed for not being a slut,” I hurried on after I said that because Gabe’s scary face got exponentially scarier, “my second high school boyfriend cheated on me…a lot. But, um, that’s it.”
“I’m not gonna step out on you,” he stated.
“I didn’t think you would,” I replied hesitantly.
He shook his head. “No. Fuck no with that uncertain tone, Willow. I am not that man. You’re in my bed, I’m in yours, ours are the only beds and bodies that are gonna be in this relationship. You got my vow on that. I will never step out on you. Not fuckin’ ever.”
Although what he was saying, and how passionately he was saying it, made me want to do cartwheels, I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this, and that feeling wasn’t (completely) about what could be considered—but as crazy as it seemed, I was thinking it wasn’t—his irrational fury.
“And I wanna know who pulled this shit.” He lifted his phone up again.
“Gabe, it was thirteen years ago.”
“Do you think a boy who would do this won’t become a man who would do worse?”
No.
I thought there were way too many men who never stopped acting like boys.
I pulled a Raye and approached the beast.
Getting close, I put my hand on his chest and said, “I think you need to take a breath and realize that’s over. I’m beyond it. It wasn’t fun to deal with, but Mom took my back, and it was dealt with.”
“And, babe, I think you gotta clue in to who you’re with and the fact that man is not gonna let anyone fuck you over, past, present or future,” he returned, and my heart squeezed again, this time happily (if worriedly).
“Now, I’m askin’ you to think. Is this fuck and that cheater and your dad and Kevin all there is? ”
Since this obviously meant a lot to him, I thought about it, then shared, “Well, there’s also Sheldon, who’s my ex-bestest bestie, Jen’s boyfriend, and he got her into drugs, and she and I had it out about what a bad influence he was on her, with me telling her she should ditch him.
She didn’t ditch him. And now she isn’t my bestest bestie anymore, but she is a meth-head, and I haven’t seen her in years.
But that didn’t happen to me. Though, I really loved her, and I still miss her. ”
“That it?” he demanded.
I thought about it harder.
Coming up with nothing, I nodded.
Once again, he held up his phone. “There’s a lot of this crap still up, babe, who started it?”
This didn’t give me good vibes either.
“What are you gonna do?” I asked.
“I’m gonna pay him a visit.”
I blinked and stepped back, dropping my hand. “You’re what?”
“I’m gonna look into him. And if he hasn’t cleaned up his fuckin’ act, I’m gonna find him.
I’m then gonna tell him who I am. I’m gonna remind him internet shit never dies.
And I’m gonna share with him that if he doesn’t get his shit straight, he’s gonna learn what it feels like to carry weight someone else piled on him that he can never release.
But his is gonna be so heavy, it might fuckin’ crush him. ”
Oh yeah.
I was getting a very bad feeling about this.
“And I think we might want to talk about why you’d have an urge to do that,” I said quietly. “Because, again, Gabe, it’s over. And I’m fine.”
“You’d given up on men four days ago.”
Hmm.
Well, there was that.
I tried to tease, smiling and saying, “Seems like someone talked me out of that.”
Gabe wasn’t in the mood for teasing.
“Yeah, but you haven’t clued into the man you’re with,” he ground out.
I dropped the teasing and replied earnestly, “I love that you want to protect me like that, but in this case, honestly, baby, it’s unnecessary. It was a long time ago, and I’m over it.”
Having let it slide before, he came at it directly this time and demanded, “Since you’re so fine about all this other shit, was it just the Kevin shit that held you back from me these last months?”
Oh crap.
“Not exactly,” I hedged.
“Right,” he snarled. “I lost months of you, because of them.”
I lost months of you…
And there it was again, my lungs collapsed, but it didn’t feel as bad this time.
“You’re still you because of the woman you are, the strength you got,” he kept going. “Another woman—”
He stopped talking so abruptly, his entire body jerked with it.
That bad feeling went into overdrive.
Nope.
Hyperdrive.
“Gabe—” I started urgently.
He cut me off. “If you won’t get me a name, Brody will. Just know, it’s gonna happen, babe, one way or another.”
And with that, Gabe decided to put a line under it.
He swooped in for a quick kiss (and of course he was that guy who would swoop in for a kiss after an intense discussion) before he ordered, “Remember, I want check-ins tonight. Did you bring me a cookie?”
And again, Gabe was that guy who could be cute and ask for a cookie after an intense discussion.
Wordlessly, I pointed at the little white bag that held his cookie that was sitting on my kitchen counter.
And before I could utter a word, he’d nabbed his cookie and was out the door.
I stood in my kitchen, staring at the door.
I had not forgotten how he’d woken up those days ago.
We’d been busy. I’d capitulated (happily) to an us on Sunday. We’d had sex for the first time last night, and that was Monday. Now it was Tuesday. We both had work, and I had an Angels assignment that night, and I probably wouldn’t be home before nine.
In other words, we hadn’t had the chance for deep dives into history, especially history that was so big, it changed our psyches.
Case in point, Gabe learning about what happened to me in high school before I could tell him.
But we were going to have to carve out that time.
I was going to have to carve it out.
And soon.
Because I was never going to complain about having a protective boyfriend.
But that wasn’t just being protective.
And it wasn’t just about me.
Not even close.