Chapter 23 #2
“He gave me this ring and told me to watch over my brothers when he was gone. That’s the Mars family crest,” he said, gesturing to the design on the ring.
“He said family’s all we’ve got at the end of the day, and as the eldest it was my job to watch over my brothers and take care of my grandmother. ”
“Your grandmother doesn’t seem like she needs taking care of.”
Gideon huffed a laugh. “No, she doesn’t, does she?”
I lifted my head off his shoulder and looked in his eyes. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a seventeen-year-old.”
He stared into my eyes and said nothing.
I pushed his hair off his forehead, my heart aching for the little boy who’d been through so much.
No wonder Gideon had been unsurprised when I’d told him I was leaving the morning after our wedding.
It wasn’t just his scars that made him believe everyone abandoned him.
His mother had left when he was a small child, and his father had died suddenly—and that was before his ex had rejected him for the crime of saving the lives of three kids.
Gideon had started a business and expanded it in order to employ his brothers. He’d hired his cousin Connor. The only reason he’d agreed to an arranged marriage was for them and to make his grandmother happy. He dropped everything to go bail Wendy out when she ran out of gas.
He always put me first, and not just during sex. He’d plate up my food before his own and always give me the better cuts of meat. He was protective and tender and patient.
Everyone came before Gideon. He put every single other person ahead of him, as if his needs didn’t matter.
Pressing a hand to his heart, I asked in a whisper, “And who is supposed to take care of you?”
There was a flash in his eyes. Pain and yearning, there and gone. Even now, he didn’t understand. He didn’t think he deserved someone to take care of him. Didn’t realize that that someone was me.
Because this was love unlike anything I’d experienced before.
How else could I describe the overwhelming feeling of fullness in my chest?
The fear that I would lose something I so desperately wanted?
The weightless, breathless feeling of being the one he chose?
Of finding each other when life had seemed so bleak before I saw him standing at the end of the aisle.
“Gideon, I—” I stopped. Exhaled. Tried again. Failed.
Even though he was the best man I’d ever met, I was afraid.
How could I measure up to him? He who was so patient and brave and selfless and loving? He who was my perfect man, who demanded nothing of me? He who made me believe in a future that I had thought was only a fantasy?
Why would he want someone as thoroughly inadequate as me?
Because it had barely been a month. How could I trust that things would stay good? What if in another month or a year or longer, Gideon decided that actually, he wasn’t satisfied with me? He needed more. He needed someone else. Someone better. What would happen then?
I would be heartbroken again, but it would be so much worse, because my feelings for him were immense and growing every day. If I didn’t tell him how I felt, it meant I could hide a little part of me. Keep it safe.
Gideon sighed, his hands cupping my jaw as he lifted my face. He smiled softly at me, stroking my cheeks. “I know,” he said. “It’s okay, baby.”
Even now, he was protecting me.
My heart cracked wide open, and tears fell down my cheeks.
He kissed them away then caught my lips in his, and I pressed myself up against him as tightly as I could.
I couldn’t say the words—not yet—but maybe I could show him.
Maybe the knot inside me would loosen, and when it finally came undone, Gideon would still be there, loving me.
“Stop crying,” he chided softly as he kissed my jaw. “I can’t stand it.”
“They’re happy tears,” I said. “I think.”
He huffed a laugh and kissed me harder. We forgot about the movie we were supposed to watch and focused on showing each other what we felt with touches and kisses and strokes.
A while later, when we decided to wander down to the water to look at the full moon and the brightness of the stars, I leaned my head against his arm and felt the shell around my heart crack open.
I wasn’t sure if I would design wedding dresses or plan retreats with Mrs. Gretzinger or take Etta’s investment offer.
I wasn’t even sure if I’d do more than make Lola’s dress.
But I had the space and time to figure it out.
There was no deadline looming in two weeks, because Gideon and I were meant to be.
We walked back to the cottage in easy silence.
I kept my fingers tangled in Gideon’s. In my heart, there was the soft fluttering of hope.
And then we walked up to the cottage, and reality came crashing back down on top of me.
Blue spray paint covered the blank canvas of the garage door:
GO HOME WHORE
Gideon reached into his pocket for his phone, and Jack’s face appeared a moment later. Gideon’s grip was tight on mine as he said, “I need everything we’ve got surrounding the cottage.”
“Why? What’s… Oh, shit,” Jack said when Gideon flipped the camera to show him. “Sadie okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“We’ll find out who did this,” Jack promised. “You’re one of us now. Got it?”
I looked at Gideon, who was holding back his rage with every fiber of his will. His jaw was stone hard and his eyes blazed. I was one of them. For the first time in my life, I belonged.
I gulped and nodded. “Thank you.”
We made it to the front door as Gideon hovered beside me, scanning the forest. Then we went inside and he told me to stay put, and he methodically cleared every room in the cottage.
When he was sure there was no one inside, he came over to me, wrapped me in a hug, and said, “Take what you need for a few days. We’re going somewhere more secure. ”
I didn’t protest. I packed up one of my suitcases with the essentials and let Gideon lead me back to the car. He hauled the suitcase into the back once I was settled inside, then got behind the wheel and drove.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“My place.” Gideon’s tone told me he was beyond words, so I sat back and watched the trees and the buildings and the hills go by. We parked outside the Marswood Security building and Gideon hustled me up to the top floor.
His apartment was spartan and clean, but there were a few touches that reminded me of Gideon.
He had a few pictures of his family hanging in the living room, and a fantastic kitchen with all the trimmings.
As I snooped, Gideon brought my suitcase to the bedroom.
He stalked back out when there was a knock at the door.
He checked the screen next to the door and unlocked the door to admit Jack and Knox. Knox carried a laptop. Bennett was absent.
“We’ve got a car turning onto Maple Street at 9:43 p.m. and back out twelve minutes later,” Jack said, naming the road the cottage was on. “Plates are obscured. We’ll find this asshole.”
“Spray paint seems to be similar to what Mr. Titty’s used to tag around town,” Knox said as he opened his laptop and sat down at the kitchen island. “Can’t be sure it’s the same, though.”
“We just can’t get any footage of this guy—or guys,” Jack added, frustrated.
He crossed his arms as he stared at the laptop screen, where Knox was loading up the grainy footage of the car driving onto the cottage road.
He pulled up security footage from the front of the house, where a man darted up to spray paint the garage, his face out of view.
He looked taller than the other shots of Mr. Titty I’d seen, and his shoes were different.
“You guys think whoever did this is Mr. Titty?” I asked as Knox replayed the video.
“It seems like a logical conclusion,” Jack said, shrugging. “Same spray paint. Escalation of threat.”
Gideon was silent as he glared at the screen, where the video played on a loop.
“This person is wearing dress shoes,” I said. “Mr. Titty had sneakers on in both other shots.”
The three men looked at me. Jack grimaced. “Is that enough to draw any conclusions, though? I wish we had more. Just when we were making headway, they go quiet. Not a single tag this week, so we can’t catch them. Using you as bait only brought out the town crazies.”
Gideon agreed with a grunt. “Connor said it seems like they know our blind spots.”
I looked from one brother to the other to the other to the other, waiting for one of them to state the obvious. When they didn’t, I had to: “Maybe they do.”
Three sets of blue eyes turned to stare at me.
I clarified: “Maybe they know your blind spots.”
“Our systems are secure,” Knox growled like I’d personally insulted his life’s work. And hey, maybe I had.
I nodded. “Right. But what if Mr. Titty is one of your people?”
GIDEON
My ears were ringing, and it took me a second to understand what Sadie was saying.
Then the realization hit me like a sack of bricks.
There was a traitor in our midst.