Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
S hopping with Mia was both easier and much harder than Gabriel had imagined that it would be. Following her around the aisles of the nearest Target as she tossed clothes in a red shopping cart held none of the stuffiness that he remembered from his days of being dragged from one fancy boutique to another by his mother, and none of the rush that had come with dashing out the doors with whatever stolen item had caught his attention as he had done during his days with Seth.
He was grateful for the normalcy of it—for the bright florescent lighting and the shopping cart’s squeaky wheel and the underwear that she held up for his inspection before shrugging and adding it to the top of the pile—but somewhere between socks and t-shirts he began to notice the looks.
First the odd glance over someone’s shoulder and then mothers tugging their toddlers away from him as they entered the aisles or simply turning around and leaving altogether the next item on their lists forgotten entirely in their rush to get away.
“Does it all have to be black?” Mia asked, peeking at him from over the top of a black button down.
“Yes,” he said, barely glancing her way before frowning at the old man that scowled at him over a rack of men’s jackets. He glanced down at the white shirt he was wearing, checking for the third time to make sure that the prison hadn’t stamped the word “felon” on the front without him noticing.
The fabric remained stubbornly blank.
“Why does everyone keep staring at me?” he asked, running a frustrated hand through his hair and turning his back on the old man.
She bit her bottom lip and shrugged. “Impressed by your incredible good looks?”
“Mia,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and raising one eyebrow.
“Fine,” she said, her mood turning sour as she glared back at the old man, her expression so ferocious that he finally huffed and disappeared into the nearby electronics section. “The news may have done a few stories on your release.”
He uncrossed his arms and glanced over his shoulder. There were far more people subtly watching him than he’d realized. “A few?”
“A lot,” she admitted. “It started out local, but it’s been picked up by the national news stations now.”
“Didn’t they get enough sensationalist bullshit when they locked me up?” he grumbled. “It’s been thirteen goddamn years.”
“Amy warned me that it might happen after the reporters showed up at the trial. It was a high-profile case back then and you are still a senator’s son,” she reminded him. “Victim’s advocacy groups are furious that your case might set a precedent for future rulings.”
“Jesus,” he said, grabbing the cart and steering it toward the front as she trotted along behind him, trying to keep up with his longer strides. “We’re getting out of here before someone decides to spit on you for being with me or something.”
“No one is going to hurt me,” she said, planting her feet stubbornly and refusing to follow.
“You don’t know that. People are cruel and they hate with their whole hearts.” He wished he didn’t have to explain that to her, that she could keep her innocent belief in their inherent goodness forever, but he knew she wasn’t safe with him right now.
She sighed as people turned to watch, as they squinted at him skeptically and waited to see if he’d move to hurt her in the middle of the store at nine a.m. on a weekday morning. More than half of them looked like they expected her to be the first of a new line of victims, the continuation of a pattern that he’d started all those years ago with his father.
“Let’s go,” she urged, taking back control of the cart and leading him toward the checkout line. “We didn’t get everything you’ll need but we got enough for now and we’ll order the rest online. If you’re uncomfortable being out then we’ll just stay in for a while, wait till it all blows over.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“It will,” she said. “Something new will come along and it’ll push you out of the news completely.”
“I hope so,” he said, but he hated the way that everyone’s eyes lingered on them as they walked and the cashier’s suspicious gaze as Mia loaded everything from the basket onto the little conveyor belt and attempted to make small talk.
They were all watching him, but doing so meant they were also watching her, too … invading her privacy and giving pitying little shakes of their heads as they whispered behind their hands.
And he wondered, for the first time really wondered, about what their relationship looked like to the rest of the world. He’d wondered about how it would affect Mia and how it was perceived by people who knew her and cared about her, but he’d never given a shit about anyone else.
The people he’d worried about were people that knew Mia. They knew how stubborn and passionate she was, and they’d seen how happy she was with him. These people, the rest of the world, didn’t know Mia and all they saw was a young woman barely on the other side of adulthood that had been sucked into the life of a man nearly a decade older than she was. A murderer. A manipulator. Someone who was taking advantage of her youth and inexperience.
He wouldn’t have to hurt her for her to be a victim in their eyes. His presence in her life was enough.
He shifted uncomfortably under the accusatory look of the cashier, his mind flooded with images of Mia’s early morning kitchen and the sounds she’d made when he’s driven her over the edge into her orgasm, her thighs clamped around his cock before she’d even had a chance to clear the sleep from her eyes. She was a fucking virgin for Christ’s sake, and he’d been on her like an animal, lost in the memories of his disgusting past life. He’d sank back into the filth in his nightmares and then he’d taken her down with him.
Her cheeks were pink, but her face was defiant as she slipped her bank card into the machine and paid for his socks and new pants, the bathing suit trunks she’d said he was going to need for this afternoon when she took him swimming. He’d have money of his own as soon as he talked to Amy and found out how to access his trust fund, but what if he hadn’t been a silver-spoon fed trust fund baby?
No one knew about that, all they saw was her dropping money she’d worked for to feed him, clothe him. Like he was a fucking parasite on her and her life. Living in the apartment she paid for, riding around in the car she was making the payments on. He didn’t even have a fucking driver’s license, couldn’t do a damn thing on his own right now.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and said nothing else as they walked to the car.
“You’re brooding,” she said, closing the trunk of the car after they’d tossed all his stuff in.
He rolled a shoulder, not bothering to deny it. “I don’t like the way they were looking at you or the things they were thinking.”
“You don’t know what they were thinking.”
“They were wondering if I was going to hurt you,” he insisted. “They were thinking that I’m a murderer and a monster who’s taking advantage of you because you’re young and—”
“And that’s bullshit,” she said, puffing up in irritation. “What now all of a sudden you think I’m too young for you?”
“I think I haven’t let you experience anything else,” he said carefully. “You’re a virgin and look what I did to you this morning-”
“I liked what you did to me this morning,” she said angrily, poking him in the chest with her finger. “I tried dating someone else and I didn’t like it, but if you’d rather that I got some experience with someone else first—”
“Like hell,” he snapped. Rational thought and selfless impulses aside, the idea of her being with someone else was enough to have jealousy clawing painfully at his insides. Fuck that. Maybe he didn’t deserve her after everything and maybe she would have been better off with someone else, but it was too late for that now.
“That’s what I thought,” she said quietly. “I don’t want someone else, and I don’t want you to be with someone else, either. I don’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks or about what happened before.”
She crowded into him, pushing into his personal space and resolutely ignoring it as the occasional passerby slowed down to stare at them. She leaned into his chest and pressed up on her toes, curling her arms around his neck and tugging him down until he surrendered.
Her mouth was sweet, and she parted her lips for him without coaxing, heedless of the eyes that watched them or the judgment of those who stared as she teased him with her tongue and tangled her fingers in his hair. She kissed him senseless and then pulled away to place one last peck of her lips to the tip of his nose and smirk up at him in satisfaction.
“I don’t know what I could ever have done to deserve you,” he said, awed as always by the sheer vibrancy of her, the light that she carried with her into every situation.
“You were just you,” she said, “and that was always enough. Let’s go home, okay?”
He didn’t say anything else until they were settled into the car and the radio was softly playing a song he’d never heard before just loud enough to be heard over the continuous blast of the air conditioner.
“I wanted to take you on a date,” he said, squeezing her hand where it rested in his on the center console. “But with the way things went at the store … And I haven’t even tried to call Amy yet to get access to my trust fund. I need money for us, a driver’s license. I want to take care of you.”
She squeezed back, her smile bright and unconcerned. “You will take care of me, and I’ll take care of you. Things will settle down soon and then we’ll work on getting you a license. Maybe next week if you feel comfortable? In the meantime, you can work on other things. We’ll call Amy’s office this afternoon before we go swimming and later tonight we can order take-out.”
“Swimming and take-out aren’t a date,” he argued. “I wanted to do something special for you.”
She shook her head. “We’ve got the rest of our lives for fancy dinners, Gabriel. We can go if you want but it’ll be the same thing that happened at the store. I’m perfectly happy with a movie at home and couch cuddling. That’s the kind of thing I imagined doing with you if you ever got out, not eating expensive food with too much silverware.”
He thought back over the number of dinners Lilah had made him attend, crammed into a stuffy suit and shoes that pinched his feet as he listened to boring conversations that he’d have done anything not to be a part of. It didn’t compare in the slightest to the image of relaxing on Mia’s couch with her head in his lap as they watched whatever movie she’d picked out for them on her TV, and he played with the ends of her hair.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll stay in and order food.”
“I always win,” she said brightly. “I’m very stubborn.”
“Yes, you are,” he agreed. “Lucky for you I like stubborn brunettes with a pretty smile.”
She grinned at him, and he lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a quick kiss to the backs of her knuckles. The soft smell of her perfume lingered in the air and her skin was soft under his fingers. Being able to touch her whenever he wanted to felt like some kind of miracle, the kind of thing that made even someone as jaded and cynical as him wonder if perhaps there might be a God after all. Or at least the beginnings of a run of good fortune that he’d be a fool to turn his back on.
It was a feeling that he carried with him through the rest of the day.
His own incredible good luck.
It hit him as he watched her make them sandwiches for lunch, stacking slices of meat on bread as he stood beside her in the kitchen filling their plates with chips and slices of watermelon. And again, when they went down to the pool before kids got out of school for the day, when the cold blue water was still empty of everyone except the two of them. Swimming was a pleasure he thought he’d never get to experience again, and they splashed each other like two teens just learning how to flirt before coming up to breathe locked around each other, their mouths hot and hungry.
She tasted of summertime, of sweat and chlorine and sunscreen. Water ran in rivulets down the slim column of her throat, and he chased them with his lips, making her shiver with anticipation before he tossed her back toward the deep end and laughed at her indignant squeal.
When he bought her a house, he was going to make sure it had a pool.
By the time they’d made it back upstairs, he’d forgotten the world outside their little bubble of tranquility. The thoughts that had plagued him in the store earlier seemed like nothing more than a bad dream, a brief lapse of judgment on his part.
All that mattered was her and the love he felt for her, and he was sure that there was nothing outside of them that could tarnish it.