Chapter 19 Darvill and Denise #3
“I got that callout to a victim I’d had a relationship with, I had mandated therapy,” he said.
“I took it and took the referral to have more of it. Am I over seeing Denise like that? No. Will I ever be over it? No. Have I been given the tools to deal with it? Yes. Where I am now is, I used to have that nightmare a lot, reliving walking up to that body, seeing her hair, knowing who it was before I even got close to her, but because I talked shit out with someone, it comes rare these days. Our brains process crap when we sleep. After I made the decision to take it there with you, it doesn’t surprise me I had it for the first time in, maybe, at least two years. ”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“So that dream isn’t fun, but it isn’t surprising I had it,” he concluded.
“Right,” I replied.
“And as for your high-school boyfriend, I’m aware you probably think I overreacted.”
“Well—”
“You’d be wrong.”
I squinted irritably at him.
“I’m not gonna go barreling into this man’s place of business and deliver a beatdown.
I’ve asked Brody to look into him. We’ll see what comes of that.
But if one of those women who Trevor videoed without their knowledge, just one, had gone to the cops or someone like NI&S and reported what Trevor was doing, a stop would have been put to it.
Maybe this high school ex of yours learned his lesson about thinking with his dick when he was sixteen.
Maybe not. I’m just saying, if he hasn’t by now, I’m gonna make sure he will because someone has to do it.
He dicked with my woman. That means that someone is gonna be me. ”
“And I’m not going to be able to talk you out of it,” I deduced.
“No. Though I will ask why you’d try.”
“Because it might be a waste of resources and time.”
“And if he’s dicking with some other woman?”
Hmm.
Something to consider.
“Willow.” He gave me a gentle shake. “I’ll rephrase my question. Is the damage he did surfacing to do more damage because I’m on about this? Because if that’s what you’re not saying, we got other things to talk about.”
Ah.
“No, Gabe, mostly it’s just, until I had Robbie in my life, and he didn’t come around until I was eighteen, I never had a man who looked out for me. I don’t have a lot of practice with that. So I guess you’re just going to have to be patient with me while I get used to it.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
He suddenly had other things on his mind.
“Are you tired after practically no sleep last night?” he asked.
I was exhausted.
But I saw the look in his eyes.
So I lied, “No.”
“Wanna fuck?”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic,” he muttered.
Then he was out of the couch.
I was out of the couch.
Apparently, our thing was going to be him carting me to bed over his shoulder.
I didn’t make a peep.
Why would I?
I was all the way down with that.
* * *
“Gabe?” I called quietly.
It was post fuck. Post cleanup. Even post cuddle session.
Though we were still cuddling, it was just that neither of us had said anything in a long time, and since I was draped down his side, I’d heard and felt his breath even out, so I spoke super quiet because I was worried he was asleep.
But that night we’d done a deep dive in the getting-to-know you stuff.
And this was Gabe, my man.
I wanted to know everything about him.
And there was something that I’d wanted to know since he brought it up.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Were you asleep?”
“No, baby.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he invited, and I noted, when he did, there was no tension in his body.
He was completely relaxed, and as such, the shit was behind him (behind the both of us), and now I could ask him anything without bringing pain by making him relive a nightmare.
Sweet relief.
“How do you know about people back in the day eating stuff in aspic?”
“In what?”
“Aspic. Essentially, savory Jell-O folks use to encase meat or fish for a dish.”
“Say again?”
I lifted up to look at his shadowy face. “When we were discussing all the reasons we shouldn’t be together, which to you were all the reasons we should…”
The white slash of his smile wasn’t all that shadowy.
I ignored it.
“…you mentioned men wearing stiff collars and eating food in aspic.”
“Mm,” he hummed (delicious) then turned into me and rounded me with both arms (even more delicious).
“Although that was a very good metaphor for why I was thinking a touch irrationally—”
“A touch?” he teased.
I ignored that too.
“It was an interesting one.”
“One what?”
“Metaphor.”
“Babe,”—he smoothed a hand over my hip—“I work out and do what some might consider tough-guy shit for a living, but I still read.”
Some might consider?
I saw him drag a man out of a car one-handed.
After deflating the dude’s airbag with a bullet from his gun.
I didn’t get into that.
“I didn’t mean to—” I began.
“Shh,” he shushed me, verbally as well as by touching his lips to mine.
That felt so nice, I shushed.
“In one of my psychology lectures, a professor said there’s some research to support the theory that if you keep your mind active, specifically learning new things, you can stave off Alzheimer’s.”
Fascinating.
“Really?” I asked.
“That’s the theory,” he answered.
If that was true, I needed to notch stepping out of my box on my daily to-do list.
And then he went on, sadly making me realize my innocuous question, which I thought was just more getting to know my man, was not that at all.
“My gran, Mom’s mom, had early-onset Alzheimer’s.
It tore Mom up. It tearing Mom up tore Dad up, and he was torn up already because he loved Gran too.
And me and Kacie hated every minute of all of it, especially what that disease was doing to Gran.
She was a great gran, not like that stereotypical shit about milk and cookies.
She was about adventure. Taking us on bike rides.
Going off the beaten path. Dragging us all to different restaurants to try different foods.
Talking Mom and Dad into letting her take us on a tour of Europe on a bus when me and Kacie were old enough to appreciate it. ”
Wow.
His grandmother sounded awesome.
“She does sound like a great gran,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “So when she started losing it, and how fast she declined, what my professor said stuck.”
“I can imagine,” I murmured, pressing closer to him because, regrettably, though unknowingly, I’d led him into sharing yet another unfun story.
“So since then, even if this obviously didn’t work for her, just in case, I make myself watch TV, read books or hit movies I normally wouldn’t be into,” he shared.
“And try food I think I might not like. Or I do shit I wouldn’t normally do.
Anything to keep my brain engaged, challenged, learning something new, experiencing something different.
I got on a jag of reading shit like Dickens and Austen, which led me to read some history books about England, the politics, the aristocracy, the class structure.
And I watched some documentaries about all of that too.
So that’s where it came from. Though, I only saw pictures of that stuff, I didn’t get into any culinary history. ”
Although I thoroughly enjoyed learning this about him, and I thought it was super cool he did this stuff, I really had no other response other than, “Oh.”
“Thinking about it, it makes sense. A narrow mind leads to a closed mind, and I can see that might even happen neurologically,” Gabe continued.
It was also super cool my guy was so smart.
“You’re right, it does make sense,” I replied.
There was humor in his deep voice when he asked, “That answer your question?”
“Yes.”
He pulled me closer, and his voice dipped lower, “I know you wanna know, baby, and you don’t want to take me there, but so you have the full story, it was a relief when Gran passed. I hate it that it was, but she went downhill so fast, it not lasting long was a good thing.”
Ugh.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too, but at least she isn’t suffering, and everyone else doesn’t have to watch her do it.”
“Yeah, at least,” I mumbled.
He ran the tip of his nose along the bridge of mine (gah! could he get more awesome?) and whispered, “It’s life, baby.”
“I’m just upset I brought it up when we should still be mellow after great sex.”
“Sharing with you doesn’t make me less mellow, cupcake,” he replied. “It’s fuckin’ awesome you wanna know about me.”
Uh-oh.
Gabe felt my abrupt shift in mood, so he said firmly, “Babe, she’s gone.”
“So I take it Ariana didn’t ask much about you either.”
“She’s gone.”
She didn’t ask much.
That bitch.
“Did your Gran die—?”
He cut me off to confirm my not-fully-asked question. “Yes, right before I got together with her.”
“So this was also after—?”
He interrupted me again before I could say “Denise.”
“Yeah.”
Oh.
My.
God.
Ariana was such a bitch.
“So you get to hunt down Christian and hand him his ass, verbally only, of course, and I can’t be pissed as shit about Ariana?” I demanded.
“There are no words to express how little she’s worth your emotion,” he stated unequivocally.
And that unequivocally was seriously unequivocable.
Oh.
Well then.
He rolled to his back and tucked me to his side, ordering, “Shake it off and go to sleep.”
“Our deal is, you’re only allowed to be bossy on certain occasions, Gabriel Stark,” I reminded him.
He sighed.
Then he rolled into me again.
About forty-five minutes later, after Gabe exerted some effort into showing me one of the occasions it was good he was bossy, I was a human noodle, and he was rejoining me in bed after cleanup part two.
“Sleep,” he grunted.
“Awright,” I mumbled, so sexed out, I was unable to fully enunciate.
Gabe chuckled.
I fell asleep.