6. Gideon
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Gideon
I made it as far as the stairwell.
Sitting on the step, I stared at a crack on the wall like it could somehow explain how the hell I’d let my life fracture this badly.
Ellie thought I wouldn’t fight for her.
For us.
For our child.
I’d never put her first. Not really. Not when it counted.
I’d put out fires at work, soothed my mother’s temper, schmoozed board members and investors and politicians, all while assuming Ellie would just… be there. A soft place to land. A warm bed. A ready smile.
And when it became unmistakably clear that she was pulling away, I’d blamed her for being oversensitive instead of looking in a damn mirror.
Soulmate.
I’d known it the first night I met her, when we’d stayed up until dawn talking in her shoebox apartment about everything and nothing.
I’d known it every time she’d fallen asleep with her head on my chest, mumbling half-coherent dreams about nursing school and community clinics and making some corner of the world better.
Now I’d fucked up so poorly, she didn’t believe I’d fight for her.
Dropping my head into my hand, I blew out a shaky breath. “How did I let this happen?” I muttered.
As if it would provide an answer, the front door downstairs opened with a creak, followed by the rhythmic thump of small, determined footsteps. I lifted my head as an older woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs, arms full of grocery bags and breathing heavily.
Immediately, I jumped to my feet. “Let me,” I said, jogging down the last few steps.
Her head snapped up. She had sharp blue eyes, a mass of white curls, and a thin and faded floral dress. She clutched the bags tighter.
“Do you intend to rob me?” she demanded.
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m just trying to help.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her gaze raked over me, and I realized I probably looked like a wreck. The beard had definitely seen better days. “You look like trouble.”
“Accurate,” I muttered. “I’m Ellie’s husband. Gideon.”
Her eyes narrowed further. “A deadbeat husband can still rob me.”
“Fair point. But I promise you, while I haven’t exactly been Husband of the Year, I’m filthy rich and have no need to steal your groceries.”
One of her brows inched up. “Filthy rich, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I lifted my hands, showing her my empty palms. “Vastly overpaid. Morally questionable, financially speaking. Zero interest in your canned soup.”
She huffed. “Well. Any man who admits he’s a lousy husband and filthy rich can carry my bags. Come on then. Third floor. And don’t you dare bruise my bananas.”
Taking the bags from her, I grunted at their weight and followed her up. The tiny thing was stronger than she looked.
“So,” she said as we climbed, “you’re the idiot.”
I blinked. “Pardon?”
“The idiot who let a delightful girl like Ellie slip through his fingers. Hot and rich, and she’s a forgiving girl. You must have done something truly spectacularly stupid.”
“Several things,” I admitted. “Over an extended period.”
She snorted. “Figures. Did you cheat?”
“No, ma’am. I could never do that to her, but I haven’t been there for her.”
By the time we reached her floor, she’d extracted a surprising amount of information from me with nothing more than pointed questions and well-timed silences.
“So you let your mother talk to her any which way,” she summarized as she shuffled down the hall. “Didn’t back her up. Worked too much. Forgot you had a wife until it was time to trot her out like a show pony. Then you insulted her within earshot and wondered why she packed a bag.”
When she put it like that, even I wanted to punch myself.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly.
She stopped at a door decorated with a crooked wreath made of fake sunflowers and fumbled with her keys. “And now she’s here, trying to build herself a life that doesn’t revolve around your mother’s whims and your meetings.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve chased her,” she added, glancing up at me. “All the way from whatever marble palace you crawled out of.”
“Yes.”
She clicked her tongue. “Well, at least you’re not lazy.”
She pushed the door open, and I carried the bags into a small, cluttered kitchen that smelled like cinnamon. She pointed to the counter.
“Put those there. And since you’re filthy rich and full of guilt, you can put the milk in the icebox, the cans in the cupboard, and that box up there on the top shelf. My shoulder’s been giving me fits.”
I obeyed without argument, stacking groceries while she watched me like a foreman.
“What’s your plan, then?” she asked after a minute.
I paused with a jar of pickles in my hand. “My… what?”
“Your plan. To win her back. A man with that much money doesn’t haul himself out to a town like this unless he intends to woo a woman. You’d send a henchman.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “A henchman?”
She gave me a withering look. “Don’t mock me, boy. I read. I know how these things go. Flower deliveries. Groveling. Grand gestures. We live in a civilized society.”
“I think you might be reading too many books,” I said, setting the pickles down.
“There’s no such thing.” She reached for a box of crackers and swatted my hand when I tried to take it. “So, the plan?”
Heat crept up the back of my neck. “I don’t really have one,” I admitted. “She kicked me out of the apartment. I made it as far as your stairwell and stalled out.”
She stared at me for a long moment, then sighed, the sound long-suffering but not unkind. “You rich men,” she said. “All that money, and not a lick of common sense.”
“Guilty,” I said.
She shuffled over to a small side table, dug through the drawer, and came back with a key on a plain metal ring.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a key, you nitwit. To Ellie’s place.”
My head snapped up. “She gave you a spare key?”
“Of course she did. I’m not getting any younger, and the paramedics in this town are slow.” She poked me in the chest with one gnarled finger. “If she’s worth fighting for, you’ll find a way to use that key that doesn’t make her hate you more.”
“That’s… not very specific guidance,” I said weakly.
She shrugged. “If you needed me to hold your hand through every step, you wouldn’t be worth the effort. Now, before you go, change that lightbulb, tighten that wobbly chair, and open that jar. My arthritis is a menace.”
Afterward, I walked. I didn’t have a destination in mind, but this town had been her landing when she needed it. It had been her village while she decided to leave me, and it would be her home if I couldn’t woo her back.
I tried to see it all the way she might have.
Not as the billionaire slumming it in Small Town, USA, but as a woman who’d grown up without much and had suddenly found herself drowning in too much.
I stopped in front of a storefront that doubled as a community center - fliers for yoga classes, AA meetings, and a blood drive. A bulletin board plastered with missing cat posters, babysitting offers, and handwritten ads for yard sales.
Raise a child here, I thought, trying the words on for size.
A kid who went to the local school, who knew the names of the people at the diner and the librarian and the woman at the post office. Who didn’t grow up with cameras shoved in their face every time we left the house. Who didn’t have to hear whispers about whether their mother was “good enough.”
I could see why she’d thought she might be able to build a life here. A safe life. A small life.
Without me.
The thought landed like a stone in my gut.
No.
I wanted this for her. I wanted peace and quiet and neighbors who cared more about her favorite cereal than her net worth.
But I also wanted to be in that picture.
Key in hand, I turned back toward the apartment building before I could talk myself out of it.
“This is a bad idea,” I muttered to myself.
I put the key in the lock anyway. The door opened with a soft click. I waited a beat for her to yell at me.
Her apartment was dim, lit only by the blue flicker of the TV.
A sitcom rerun played on mute, canned laughter echoing at odd intervals.
Ellie was curled up on the couch, one hand tucked under her cheek, the other resting on her belly.
Her hair was a dark halo around her face, the towel she’d worn earlier discarded in a damp heap on the armrest. Her chest rose and fell in steady, exhausted breaths.
Stepping inside, I closed the door silently behind me. Every creak of the floorboard sounded loud in my ears as I crossed the room, and when I reached the couch, I knelt beside it, studying her face.
She looked younger like this. Softer. The angry lines between her brows smoothed away, the tension in her mouth gone. There were faint shadows under her eyes, proof of nights that hadn’t been restful for either of us.
My gaze dropped to her stomach, to the gentle swell beneath her T-shirt.
Our child.
A surge of protectiveness so fierce it almost knocked me back.
“Hey,” I whispered, even though I didn’t want to wake her. “I’m sorry I let you down. Both of you.”
She didn’t stir.
Carefully, I slid an arm beneath her knees and another behind her back.
She made a soft sound but didn’t wake as I lifted her. She was warm and heavier than she looked, her head lolling against my shoulder, breath puffing against my neck.
Carrying her the few steps to the bed felt like carrying something infinitely more fragile than any deal I’d ever closed.
The bed creaked when I set her down, but she only rolled onto her side, murmuring something unintelligible. I tugged the thin blanket up over her and hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
“Sleep,” I murmured. “I’ll be here. Even if you don’t want me to be tomorrow, I’ll be here tonight.”
I turned off the TV, plunging the room into near-darkness broken only by the sliver of streetlight squeezing through the curtains.
The couch wasn’t comfortable by any known standard. The cushions were thin, the armrest was too hard, and my feet hung off the edge.
I lay there anyway, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the building settling around us - the distant hum of someone’s music, the faint clank of pipes, Ellie’s slow, steady breathing from the other side of the room.
For the first time in months, my own breathing matched a rhythm that didn’t feel like drowning.
Strangely, lying on a lumpy couch in a too-small apartment in a town I’d never heard of before today, I was more content than I’d been in a very long time.
No mother. No board. No constant buzz of my phone demanding pieces of me I didn’t have to give.
Just this stubborn, infuriating, extraordinary woman and the tiny life we’d created between us.
I closed my eyes, one hand resting lightly on my chest where, not so long ago, Meredith’s hand had been when I’d said something unforgivable.
Tomorrow, I’d have to figure out what it meant to truly put Ellie first. Not in words or in grand gestures, but in a hundred small, unglamorous ways.
Tonight, I let myself fall asleep to the sound of her breathing and the quiet, unsteady hope that maybe I hadn’t lost her completely yet.