Chapter 17 #2
I beamed. “I’ll have an old fashioned with an extra orange twist.”
“This is Marswood Harbor,” Gideon reminded me.
“Right. I’ll have a beer.”
He nodded and stalked off. Caroline was grinning at me. I bit my lip, but I couldn’t help grinning back.
“Girl,” she said in a flat voice, and I laughed.
Then the music cut out, and someone started handing out sheets of paper and pens. Trivia night was starting. Gideon returned with drinks for the whole table while we were deciding who would write down our answers.
“If I see either of you pulling your phone out at any point tonight, you’re both barred from Knead More Bread. We don’t cheat at trivia night at this table.”
I put my hand on my chest. “I would never.”
“I wasn’t talking to you. Mars?” Caroline narrowed her eyes at Gideon, and I could see the ghost of a smile on the corner of his lips. He was enjoying himself. He nodded, and Caroline was satisfied.
We came in second place, which meant we didn’t win the free round of drinks. But someone kept refilling my beer, and my cheeks hurt from laughing. By the time we stumbled outside, I was pleasantly buzzed and feeling like I never wanted to leave this town.
Gideon was stalking toward his car, so I caught him by the hand to slow him down. “Did you have fun tonight?” I asked.
He looked at our joined hands, then at me. “It was okay.”
“You’re such a liar,” I said, and he smiled. I loved it when he smiled.
“I had fun,” Gideon conceded.
I leaned into him, inhaling his scent as I looked at the stars above. There were so many. The air was pleasantly cool, a breeze ruffling through the green leaves on the trees. “Have you ever seen Miss Congeniality?” I asked.
“The movie?”
“Hmm,” I said, nudging him toward the car.
“No.”
“Well, there’s this part in it,” I said, turning to walk backward as I faced him, my lips spreading into a smile as I quoted Sandra Bullock, “‘You think I'm gorgeous, you want to kiss me... You want to hug me... You want to love me... You want to smooch me.’”
Gideon laughed, tugging on my hand so I crashed into him. His other arm went around me, and he looked down at my face like he’d never seen anything so beautiful. Then his smile faded and he said, “You’re drunk.”
“Only a little.”
His warm hand reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear, and then he leaned down and pressed his lips against my forehead. “We can talk about this tomorrow,” he murmured against my skin, then opened the passenger door so I could get in.
Disappointment crashed into me, along with something worse.
The familiarity of rejection didn’t ease its sting.
It still hurt so freaking much to be tossed aside.
Again. So when my phone started ringing, I used it as an excuse to shift away from Gideon and hide my face.
I clicked my tongue at the spam call from an unknown number and pressed the side button to ignore it.
By this point, Gideon had come around to the driver’s side and was buckled in. My phone rang again, and he glanced over. “Who is it?”
“Just these stupid spam calls,” I answered, then frowned when a text came through.
UNKNOWN
He’ll never love you. You know that, right?
Cold froze the pit of my stomach.
“Sadie?”
I tried to angle my phone away, but Gideon had already seen. He took the device from my hand and scowled at it. “Who’s this from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have they contacted you before? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jesus, Gideon, I said I don’t know!” My head pounded.
I didn’t want his protectiveness. It wasn’t warm and safe anymore; it was suffocating.
I felt so ashamed for throwing myself at him earlier when it was so painfully clear he would never want me that way.
When would I finally understand that Gideon was a one out of ten, the way I’d lied and said I was?
“Sadie. Someone is threatening you. I need to know about these things.”
“I thought they were spam calls,” I snapped. “That’s the first text I’ve gotten.”
Gideon squeezed the steering wheel with one hand, glaring at my phone.
Because I was feeling tender and pitiful and self-destructive, I said, “They’re not wrong, though,” nodding at the text.
Gideon’s eyes were sharp as he looked at me. He opened his mouth, reconsidered, and closed it again before handing me my phone. Then he turned on the car and started driving. “Let’s go home,” he finally said. “I’ll get my guys to up the patrols around the cottage. We’ll find out who’s doing this.”
I nodded, hollow inside. We drove home in silence, and when we got there Gideon started setting up the couch for sleep. When he dug a knuckle into his back, I clicked my tongue.
“Just take the bed, Gideon. Please.”
“I’m not making you sleep on that thing,” he replied, not looking at me.
“So sleep next to me! I won’t touch you, I promise,” I sneered.
My headache had turned into a jackhammer on the inside of my temples, and I didn’t have the energy to be civil.
Besides, my ego was bruised and I was starting to think this whole experience was just one big bout of torture.
I could glimpse my perfect life, full of friendship and laughter and joy, but I could never actually make it reality.
Gideon finally lifted his eyes and met my gaze. Then he glanced at the phone I still held clutched in my hand, and he finally nodded. “Fine,” he said, and I wondered how much of his agreement was due to his sore back, and how much of it was because he was feeling responsible for my safety.
I rushed through washing my teeth and face, put my PJs on, and curled up in a ball. The bed dipped when Gideon got in beside me, and a pit opened up in my stomach. Even after all these rejections, I still wanted him.
I was such a fool.
GIDEON
I lay awake for a long time listening to the sound of Sadie’s breathing. I stared at the lump in the blankets that was her curled-up body, wondering if I should have kissed her when she’d invited me to. She’d been radiant in the moonlight.
But would she still want me if there was no threat? If she didn’t need a protector? If she had another option, any option but me?
My defenses were crumbling. Was there any point resisting her at all, if I already knew that when she left Marswood Harbor, it would destroy me?