Chapter Eight
Gideon
The chisel bites into granite with a sharp crack that echoes through my workshop, the sound reverberating off stone walls like a gunshot. My hands are steady like they always are when I'm working, but my mind is pure chaos, replaying every second of my last interaction with Lucia.
Somewhere behind me, Cinnamon peeks through the door leading from the house to my workshop.
The tiny feline stares right at me with his green eyes and meows like he owns the place before hastily making his retreat inside the house.
In the three days since I brought him home, he made it clear the entire household revolved around him.
A fact which Martha gleefully reinforced.
I don’t remember ever seeing my mother as happy as when I greeted her on the doorstep and pulled out the tiny bundle of fur from inside my coat. Just thinking about it makes me smile. Martha deserves to be happy after all the heartbreak she’s been through.
And I have Lucia to thank for this.
I slam the chisel deeper into the stone, and it splits wrong. Jagged. Useless.
"Fuck," I mutter under my breath, tossing the ruined piece aside. That's the third block I've destroyed this morning, and I've got actual paying work to finish. The Hendersons' fireplace surround won't carve itself, and they're expecting it before New Year's.
But every time I try to focus on the clean lines of the design, all I see is Lucia's face. My phone’s text ringtone pings and I put down my tools before hurrying to retrieve it.
I haven’t texted Lucia since that day at the winter market.
I’m not sure where a conversation with her would even begin.
There’s a small part of me that fills with hope each time the phone rings or I receive a text.
When I glance down at the screen, it’s not her, and I grunt in frustration.
Just another client asking about a quote for a custom piece.
I can’t complain. Business is booming and has been steady for years now. Still, this wasn’t what I was looking for, and I can’t help the disappointment in my chest as I answer with my next availability.
The workshop door creaks open, letting in a blast of December air that does nothing to cool the heat radiating from my skin.
“If you’re looking for that ginger devil, he’s in the house,” I say, not looking up from my work. “He’s going to try to convince you that he’s starving, but don’t believe him. He’s a liar and I fed him just an hour ago.”
Martha is going to spoil that cat rotten.
Except the footsteps that cross my workshop floor are too short, too measured to belong to my mother.
I glance up to find Ernesto Reyes standing in my doorway, bundled in a heavy wool coat, his breath forming small clouds in the frigid air. His dark eyes are sharp and assessing as they take in the scattered chunks of ruined granite and the tools I've left around on my usually tidy workspace.
"Mr. Reyes." I wipe my hands on a rag. “What can I do for you?”
"We need to talk." His tone is clipped when he speaks, making my stomach drop. This isn't a social call.
I gesture to a workbench. "Have a seat."
He shakes his head, staying on his feet with his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. "I'll stand. This won't take long."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken tension. Ernesto's always been a man of few words, but there's something different about his demeanor today. Something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"You're a damn fool, Gideon Flintman. The biggest idiot I've ever met," he says, his voice flat and matter-of-fact. “And you need to leave my daughter alone.”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. My hand tightens around the chisel I'm still holding, and I hear the subtle creak of metal bending under pressure.
"Mr. Reyes—" I begin.
He lifts his hand, shutting me down completely.
"Do you have any idea the state she was in that summer when you ghosted her?" He continues with the air of someone who held his tongue for a long time and knows exactly what he wants to say. And won’t stop until he said it. "Do you have any idea of how many nights she cried herself to sleep? She didn’t just lose her boyfriend that summer, she lost her best friend. Worst of all, you didn’t even have the decency to tell her why you discarded her like she meant nothing to you. "
I set the chisel down carefully, forcing my movements to stay controlled even though my pulse is hammering in my ears. "It's not what you think."
"Isn't it?" His eyes narrow, and suddenly I can see exactly where Lucia gets her stubborn streak. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're playing games with my little girl's heart. Again."
The accusation stings because it's not entirely wrong. I did kiss her. I did flirt with her in text format. I did it knowing full well that I had no right to touch her, no business opening wounds that should have healed years ago.
"That wasn't my intention," I say quietly.
"I don't give a damn about your intentions.
" Ernesto's voice rises, echoing off the stone walls.
"You want to know what I care about? The fact that my daughter has never found love.
Every time someone gets close, she runs.
Every relationship she has ends the same way.
With her finding some excuse to push them away before they can hurt her. "
Each word lands like a punch to the face, and I have to grip the edge of the workbench to keep myself steady.
"It's because of you," he continues, his voice getting louder with each word.
"She's never gotten over you, Gideon. She's spent ten years measuring every man against the ghost of what you two had, and they all come up short.
She can't love anyone else because she's still in love with a boy who didn’t even have the courage to break up with her face-to-face. "
"Stop." The word comes out rough and the air around me shimmers with heat.
"No, I won't stop. You need to hear this.
" Ernesto steps closer, and I can see the fury burning in his dark eyes.
"If you're going to hurt her again, if you're just here to mess with her head and then disappear like you did before, then stay the hell away.
Leave her alone and let her move on with her life. "
"You think I wanted to hurt her?" The question explodes out of me, and my control finally snaps. "You think leaving her was easy?"
For the first time in ten years, I say it out loud. All of it.
"I left because I loved her," I continue, my voice cracking with the weight of a decade's worth of buried truth.
"Because I knew I could never give her what she deserved.
Lucia had dreams. She wanted to leave for college, she wanted to travel and see the world.
She wanted more than this small town could offer her. "
I swallow, then say the part that hurts out loud. “And I couldn’t give this to her. I knew I could never leave Saltford Bay. Not with my father gone and my mother relying on me.”
The heat radiating from my skin makes the air shimmer like a mirage, and I can see sweat beading on Ernesto's forehead despite the cold.
"I knew that if I asked her to stay here with me and give up on her dreams, she would have," I say, my voice raw. "She would have given up everything for me, and I couldn't live with that. So I made the choice for both of us."
I close my eyes, remembering. Lucia in her midnight-blue dress, so beautiful it hurt to look at her.
The way she smiled when I told her I loved her.
The trust in her eyes when she said she loved me too.
How right it felt to hold her, to be with her that way, like every piece of my life had finally clicked into place.
"Golems are made of stone," I whisper, heat and pain mixing in my blood, turning into a potent poison. "It’s not in our nature to change. We mate for life. One woman, one heart, forever. "
The confession hangs in the air between us, raw and devastating. Ernesto stares at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
"I knew Lucia was my mate the moment I saw her when we were just kids. I also knew that keeping her here for my sake would break her. She’s talented and independent and smart. She deserved to be free."
"So you decided for her," Ernesto says, and there's something like understanding in his voice now. "You made yourself the villain so she could be the victim."
"I made myself nothing so she could be everything." I drop onto the workbench, suddenly exhausted. "I don't deserve her. I never did. She deserves someone ten times better than me."
Ernesto leans toward me despite the heat radiating from my skin, then pats me on the knee.
"You're right," Ernesto says bluntly. "You don't deserve her."
The words should sting, but they don't. They're just the truth I've been carrying for too long.
"Just like I don't deserve Candy," he continues. "Your father didn't deserve your mother, either. My boy Mateo sure as hell doesn't deserve that beautiful troll wife of his. I’m sorry that your dad wasn’t there to tell you this, Gideon, but we never deserve women."
I look up at him, confused by the sudden shift in his tone.
"You know what the difference is between you and me?
" Ernesto asks. "I wake up every morning and try to be the man my wife deserves, even though I know I'll never measure up.
I work my ass off to give her reasons to keep loving me, even though I can't understand why she chose me in the first place. "
He leans even closer, his voice growing gentler but no less intense.
"That's what men do, Gideon. Real men. We don't run away because we think we're not good enough. We stay and we fight and we do our damned best to become worthy of the love we've been given. Anything else is just being a coward."
The words hit me like more than any shouting or insult ever could, and I feel something crack open between my ribs. All these years, I've told myself I was being noble. Selfless. Protecting Lucia from a life she didn't want.
But maybe I was just protecting myself from the possibility of not being enough.
Ernesto gets up, then pats rock dust from his pants.
"She was the best thing that ever happened to you," Ernesto says, heading for the door. "And you let her go."
He pauses with his hand on the doorframe, throwing one last warning over his shoulder.
"But she’s here now. Don't make the same mistake twice."
The door closes behind him with a soft click, leaving me alone with the wreckage of my workshop and a truth I've been running from for longer than I care to consider.
I sink forward, burying my face in my hands, his words echoing in my ears.
You're a damn fool, Gideon Flintman. The biggest idiot I've ever met.
For all these years, I told myself I was doing the right thing, making the noble choice, sacrificing my happiness for hers.
But saying it all out loud doesn't make me feel righteous.
It makes me feel like exactly what Ernesto called me.
A coward.