Chapter Twelve #2
He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to put himself back there so he could adequately convey the depths and breadth of his lack of control, lack of sanity and decision-making.
This thing inside him that endangered her. And their son.
“She was beautiful, charming, fun. She…was exciting. Everything about her. I wanted to spend…all my time with her and the worlds she opened up, but she worked at the café we studied at, so she had responsibilities of her own. So there was…pining, I suppose.”
Evelyne only scowled. In any other situation, Evelyne’s expression would have amused him. She looked a bit like a spoiled princess, thwarted, when she was none of those things.
“But when she did have time for me, we enjoyed each other. Early on in our relationship, she confided in me that she had a stalker. A man from her neighborhood who followed her around, harassed her, though he’d never touched her.
I promised to protect her. Happy to do anything for her, feel powerful and…
” A savior. Just as he’d felt with Evelyne.
There was simply no way he could fool himself into thinking he could handle all that warred inside him when he dove beneath the surface of feeling. He would hold on too tight. He would scare and hurt her.
He had perhaps saved Gia from one awful thing, but he had only introduced another. How could he expect any different when it came to Evelyne?
He would be the monster Gia had once told him he was. Because he was that, deep down. His need to protect or save was only a function of some dark, horrible part of his psyche.
“As much as I don’t relish thinking of you protecting any woman you slept with aside from me, that’s hardly something to be ashamed of. You wanted to help. You always want to help. You’re a good man, Gabriel.”
He shook his head. “You are very, very far off, Evelyne. I… There is the same violence in me that was in your father.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gabriel. My God.”
“It is true. I do not revel in it the way he did. I am not proud of it as he was, but it is there. One day I came to pick Gia up from her shift, and he was there. Her stalker had cornered her, put his hands on her, was trying to get her into his car.”
Gabriel hated to relive this, but surely she had to see what a risk she ran. If he could get it through to her that surface was all he could ever be, then both her and their child would be safe from this dangerous, destructive thing inside him.
“I do not remember everything in that moment. Just the rage. In the aftermath, I know I pulled him off her, and I…” Gabriel swallowed. “I cannot say I fought him, because he didn’t fight back. I simply beat him.”
“But he was hurting her,” Evelyne said softly.
Gabriel shook his head. “Yes, but there were alternatives. Beating this man did not save her. She stood there, watching. Violence on top of violence. She was screaming at me to stop by the end. Thank God for Alexandre. He waded in, pulled me off, and asked if I wished to be the same kind of man as your father. It was the only thing that saved me from killing that man.”
Evelyne was quiet for a very long time. He did not dare look at her. This story would have to change things for her. It had changed things for him. Everything.
“Gia called me a monster. And I was a monster. Even Alex saw it. He just knew how to stop it.”
Still Evelyne said nothing. Gabriel realized he was breathing heavily, winded almost. Like something was happening inside him. Some great force of change.
He shook his head, pushed the heel of his palm to his chest. There was no change. Only the truth. “It is all I have in me, Evelyne. Obsession or nothing. Drowning or skating. There is no middle ground for me. And once the switch is flipped, I cannot be trusted to make the correct decisions.”
She slid off the bed, moved over to him even as he held up a hand to ward her off. She took that hand in her tiny one.
“Gabriel, how silly to think so.”
He pulled away from her hand, took steps back. Regarded her with as much ice as he had left in him. “I was hoping you’d be mature enough to understand.”
She regarded him with that royal superiority he found infuriating. Because it made her seem infinitely mature. “You were hoping I’d run away. Since, this time around, you cannot.”
“You’d be surprised what I could do, Evelyne.”
She shook her head. “Perhaps this feeling you have inside you is true. I cannot believe it. I cannot buy into this story you’ve told yourself. Or perhaps Gia and Alexandre told you. You are no monster. You are nothing like my father. Rushing into save is not wrong.”
“It is if you are willing to do worse.” Would he have had any remorse in killing that man? In the moment, there had been none. Not until Alex had told him what he was in danger of becoming.
All because he had wanted to save Gia and make her love him.
Evelyne sighed heavily. “I cannot see this the way you do, Gabriel. I have been the woman in that scenario. And while Alexandre stepped in and stopped it when he could, I would have not called you a monster if you’d done to my father what you did to that man.
I would have cheered. And I cannot find a way to feel guilty about that. ”
He shook his head. “You don’t…” Of course, he couldn’t say she didn’t understand.
Even though she didn’t. She could only see this from her own eyes.
Not from his. Not from Gia’s. Not from Alexandre’s.
So while she might understand what it felt like to have someone step in and save her, she did not understand it to his degree.
“Perhaps you thought this story would change my mind about you, but it doesn’t. And more, it doesn’t change our reality. You have a responsibility to all the people you love, and no matter how you might wish to, you cannot walk away from it.”
People you love… He looked at her in horror as that clutching feeling in his chest threatened to make it fully impossible to breathe. “Do you think I love you?”
“No,” she said, with a sadness that cut through him like a knife. “But I think if you let yourself fall from the surface, you could. I have certainly fallen in love with you.”
The pain of that simple, easy revelation was unbearable. She couldn’t… “Evelyne, what a mistake.”
She shrugged. “People make mistakes. I have seen the width and breadth of mistakes people can make. For good reasons and for bad. I cannot… I cannot feel the way you feel about this. I’m sorry.
I know you want me to, but I remember what it feels like to be eighteen and wanting to exact revenge.
Older, in fact. If you recall, not that long ago, I was ready for poor Jordi to suffer my father’s consequences because he had refused to run away with me. ”
“That is not the same.”
“You’re right. It’s worse. Jordi simply disappointed me. He didn’t try to harm me.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Do you recall what my father was capable of?”
He shook his head. Yes, the king had been dangerous, and yes, Evelyne’s flippant remark about blaming Jordi for her disappearance had not been a decision made with clearheaded thinking, but she hadn’t insisted. She hadn’t actually planned or plotted or done anything about it.
“Do you think I fear you? Because when you were young you hurt someone in an effort to save a woman you loved?” Evelyne demanded. “You think I fear you as much or more than I feared the man who actually put his hands on me in violence? His own daughter? Not a stranger harming others?”
Gabriel could not look at her. He hated when she brought her abuse up as if it was such a simple fact of life.
But she was changing the subject, and he could not let her.
“You should fear me. That potential that marred your childhood is inside me. I saw it. I felt it. You must fear me, Evelyne. It is our only hope.”
She shrugged, so nonchalant. “I will not.”
“And if the monster I have learned to repress threatens our son because that chain breaks? Perhaps I would never lay a hand on you or him, but that is not the only way to traumatize someone with violence. Gia saw a monster in me. She could never look at me again. She was right.”
She heaved out a sigh. Frustration dug into her expression but not what needed to—that fear, concern, worry. Anything.
“I lived with a monster all my life, Gabriel,” she said very directly. “Monsters do not have remorse. They do not concern themselves with the feelings of others. They do not listen to friends who intervene. You can try to convince me that somehow you are a threat, but I know threats.”
“You cannot know every threat simply because your father beat you, Evelyne.”
She inhaled deeply, eventually nodded. Some agreement that allowed a ray of hope to pierce through all this worry. “You are right.”
Thank God, he thought, sure the heavy weight on his shoulders was just relief.
“But let me ask you this, Gabriel. Do you think I would have done anything but applaud if you’d been the one to kill my father, even in front of me?”
Gabriel didn’t know how to fully engage with that question. It was different. She was conflating things, but he did not know how to get that through her thick skull. Because clearly it was just stubbornness that she didn’t understand.
She couldn’t possibly be right about things he’d been living with for over ten years. She could not see more clearly. She didn’t understand.
“You wanted to protect a woman you loved. I cannot fault you for that. I cannot fault you for being angry enough to do something about it.”
“I would have killed—”
“You do not know what you would have done, because you did not get the chance. Alexandre may have stopped you with his words, but you allowed those words to matter, Gabriel.”
“I allowed nothing. I still wanted it, Evelyne. But I knew it would be the end of my life, and I did not want to hurt my parents. Thanks to Alexandre, I finally put something else ahead of my impulses, but only because of his interference.”
“I suppose it’s quite simple then,” she said, the word simple dripping with sarcasm. “If you are in the wrong, then so am I. Because that doesn’t bother me. Do you know how many plans I had to kill my own father? How I would have done it if I’d thought I could actually accomplish it?”
He wanted to shout. She was so frustrating. And purposefully so. Her wanting to kill her abuser was not the same. Could not be the same. “You…do not understand. You are young and na?ve. This is more complex.”
Evelyne had the nerve to roll her eyes. “Ah, yes, back to my simplistic views on life. How’s this for simple?
I think you are na?ve, Gabriel. I think you stopped maturing in that moment.
All your surface, all your…keep yourself apart.
All it is is a childish desire to control…
how you feel. How I feel. Instead of deal. ”
He found himself speechless. She was wrong. He didn’t have to engage with her accusation to know she was just…flat-out dead wrong. Confused. Sheltered for all the pain she’d dealt with.
She would not accept this. She was too stubborn. Too certain of herself. Too used to having her own opinions verified. She could not understand.
It was unfathomable.
“Good night, Evelyne. Get some sleep.”
She laughed, the sound a bit caustic. Harsh enough he felt himself wince. “Good night, Gabriel.”
And he could have sworn he heard her say, as he left her room, run away again.
But surely he was imagining things.