Chapter Fifteen #2
“But you didn’t. You didn’t react with violence or anything over the top. You came to warn me. How odd. I thought violence was all you had in you when it came to those you loved?”
Gabriel could only stare at his friend. Speaking as though this had all been some…ridiculous setup.
“You…” Evidence. The only one who could have had evidence was… Alex. “This was a trap?”
Alexandre shrugged. “More or less.”
“And if I’d fought him? If I’d created the scene that I’m very capable of creating?” Gabriel demanded.
“I would have sided with you,” Alexandre returned, as though he’d thought it all out, but had already known what the outcome would be.
“It might have even given me cause to dismiss the general, which would have been welcome indeed. But mostly I trusted you to make the right decision, Gabriel. Because you learned something all those years ago, whether you can accept that or not. You’re not the same man you were. Because even then you were a boy.”
Gabriel stood there, feeling a bit like he’d been stabbed through. Not the same man. But he was. How could he have changed?
Evelyne.
He shook away that thought. Perhaps some things had felt different, but that didn’t make it different. His reaction to the general didn’t make him different.
“I would like to think Evelyne and I could have made that clear to you,” Alexandre continued. “Neither of us are fools, and neither of us find you to be a monster, but it turns out Ines was right. I had to show you.”
Gabriel shook his head, trying to find some anchor amid all this crumbling inside him. If he listened to the crumbling, he’d have to believe he could…be what Evelyne and their child needed.
And he wanted that far too much to trust anything. “You tricked me. It shows…nothing.”
Alexandre lifted a shoulder, reminding Gabriel a little too much of Evelyne. “Doesn’t it?” Alex asked casually. “You didn’t know it was a trick. You reacted. Handled it. Seems to show me quite a bit, honestly.”
Gabriel was utterly speechless. He didn’t have an argument. As much as he might have liked a scene, he had rationalized it out. Because he did not wish to hurt or complicate life for Alexandre or Evelyne, he had…resisted those urges inside him.
As though he could. As though he would, when it mattered. He had done it.
“She is miserable,” Alexandre said, his voice quiet and serious. “She sits in the nursery and makes no decision. She ignores the staff trying to prod her into making decisions about the baby’s name so we can begin the royal decrees necessary.”
Gabriel rubbed at his heart, where an ache had not left him for some time but seemed to dive deeper now.
“And you are no better,” Alexandre added.
“I have been working.”
“You have been hiding. You have been wallowing. Why must you both insist on your own misery? You love one another.”
Gabriel did not know what to do with this word. Love was for people who could handle such things.
Had he handled something? Could he… He shook his head. It all felt too dangerous, too…fragile. If he gave in, he’d spend the rest of his life walking the edge of violence.
Except General Vinyes had pushed all of his buttons and Gabriel had…handled it. Could it really mean what Alexandre wanted it to mean?
Gabriel eyed his friend, trying to understand where this had come from. Trying to find some old handle on his fear. “It is not like you to interfere.”
Alexandre pulled a face. “No indeed. But here I am. Take that as a sign things are dire indeed, and now it is up to you to fix it. You are rather good at fixing things.”
He was. He was. He’d built a career out of fixing people’s security problems for them in different ways.
But this was…
“You knew I would not make the wrong choice,” Gabriel said, very carefully.
“Of course I knew, Gabriel,” Alexandre said, very seriously.
“I have been your friend our entire lives. I have also spent most of Evelyne’s life doing what I could to protect her.
I would not have allowed you anywhere near her if I thought that you also could not do the same.
Just because you fell in love with her and got her pregnant under dubious circumstances doesn’t mean you didn’t protect her. ”
Gabriel sucked in a breath. There were few people he trusted as deeply as Alexandre, because Alex had always been there—and because he knew what exactly had happened with Gia. And Alex was right, there was no one he protected more fiercely than his sister.
“There are no protocol meetings to attend, are there?”
“Of course not. Go apologize to Evelyne. Make her happy. Or perhaps I will throw you in the dungeons after all…one of Evelyne’s suggestions. Ines was a fan.”
Gabriel chuckled in spite of himself. Yes, Evelyne would suggest that, but she wouldn’t mean it. Because she loved him. She wanted him to be the man she thought he was. Not the monster he was so afraid of.
And if his best friend in the world could believe that of him, enough to set him up with the very real chance he might fight a general, Gabriel supposed he owed it to the both of them to decide to be the man they thought he was.
In every way possible.
“I will…see what I can do,” Gabriel said a bit haltingly. He stepped forward, too many complicated emotions swamping him. “Thank you, for always being the brother I needed. Always.”
Alexandre gave a sharp nod. “Likewise,” he muttered, clearly uncomfortable. But meaning it.
Gabriel left the office, the anticipation he’d felt at seeing Evelyne tenfold now that he wasn’t going to fight it.
Alexandre was right about Evelyne’s misery. Gabriel found her in the future nursery, surrounded by wallpaper samples. Crying.
His heart cracked in two at the misery pouring out of her. Because of him. Because of his fears. His weaknesses.
He never wanted to watch her cry out of sorrow for him again. If there was any monster still inside him, he would remember Evelyne crying before he gave it any credence.
She looked up at him as he stepped into the room. Her expression showed no signs of surprise.
Or excitement. Or warmth. Just…resignation.
She wiped the tears away, made no move to excuse them or apologize for them. “I have been trying to decide between a zoo theme or an alphabet theme. It is quite a difficult choice.”
She looked at the walls, clearly miserable. When she should feel joy and hope and excitement. All things she’d had before he’d inserted himself into her life.
Or all things she’d had until you ran away from it.
There could be no more of this. Not if it hurt her in such a way. It was no better than being a monster.
Gabriel cleared his throat, fighting past the tightness there. “I quite liked dogs when I was a young boy.”
“Dogs,” she repeated. She blinked. She looked around the room as if picturing it. “I have always wanted a dog.”
“I imagine we could have one now.” He used the we on purpose. And he let himself see it. Her. A baby. Their son. A dog running around. A family that he would protect, love, cherish.
Never run away from.
For a moment, she looked like she was considering it, then she shook her head and closed her eyes, more tears landing on her cheeks. “I wish you weren’t here,” she said, sounding a little petulant. “Go away.”
But the words hurt even if he knew why she said them. He never wanted her to wish that again. “I… I’m sorry.”
“You should be. You should be sorry about everything. Every damn thing.”
This was his principessa. No cool looks, no detachment like those weeks ago when she’d agreed with him. And he could see it for what it was now. Fake. Trying to get through to him, trying to get him to realize his mistake.
Instead, he’d doubled down.
But he was here now, a new truth inside him. And she was being herself. Emotion and truth and just…her.
All those aches and pains and desperate cracks inside him that he’d been so sure were his due, were necessary in order to know he was doing the right thing, eased.
He moved closer to her, then crouched next to her. She eyed him with a scowl.
“What if I told you I was?” he asked. “Sorry. For all of it.”
She looked up at him, tears on her cheeks he could not help but wipe away.
“I would not believe you,” she said, but she didn’t move away from his hands on her face.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m mad at you and I want to stay that way.”
“Do you?”
Her lips trembled and she shook her head. “Why are you here?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Alex…set me up. He put me in a volatile position, and when I did not react violently and obsessively, he pointed out that perhaps… I had learned something all those years ago. That actions have consequences, and I care about the result of mine.”
She lifted her chin. Sniffed. “I tried to set you up and you stayed away. Why should I be impressed Alexandre got through to you?”
“Because you love me.”
She said nothing to that, so he knew he needed more. All.
“I knew from the moment I danced with you at your eighteenth birthday ball that you would be a trouble to me. You were so vibrant and funny—even though I knew behind the scenes you were treated deplorably. I kept you at a distance from then on because there could never be surface. I felt that, even then.”
She sniffed. “Well, I thought you were pompous and too skinny.”
He grinned at her in spite of himself. “No, you didn’t. You had a crush on me.”
Her mouth twitched a little, though she did not smile. “Perhaps I thought you handsome, in spite of the pompous and the skinny. But I didn’t hold a torch.”
“No, you had the impressive Jordi.”
She laughed, and he felt all those last worries melt away. Yes, he would do anything to protect her, protect this, the family they were creating, the love that existed between them. But that did not have to mean…
He was not a young man with too many emotions and not enough sense. He had grown into his sense, his control. He had learned, in part thanks to Alexandre, and in part thanks to life.
He could trust himself. He had to trust himself if he was to be a father.
And a good husband to the woman he loved.
“I love you, Evelyne. And I have been afraid to feel anything so deep as love, but it is undeniable, and I… I am not a boy. Perhaps you are right that I stopped maturing in that moment, but I would argue I did mature and learn and grow. I was just stuck thinking too little of myself because I was so ashamed of what I was capable of.”
“And now you’re not?”
“I am still ashamed, but I can accept that I have grown and learned. I can accept I am not the boy I was, even if some of his impulses live inside me. More, I want to accept those things, so that I can truly be your husband, and a father to our child. A good one, like mine was. Like you’ve always trusted me to be. ”
Evelyne had not prepared for this. She had a few fantasies—mostly where he begged on his hands and knees to come back and she sent him away, crushed and crying.
Then there were the ones where he swept in and demanded to be back in her life. They fought and argued like they had in Maine and ended up in her bed like then too.
She’d gotten some mileage out of both fantasies, but this was real life. And so this was more.
This was rational and adult and real. The things he’d learned or realized. The work he was willing to put in to…make this love work.
Love. He’d…said he loved her. Looked her right in the eye while he did. Like he was doing now, crouched next to her sitting on the floor. It could not be a comfortable position.
“What do you want, Evelyne?” he asked. “If it is for me to go away, I’m afraid I cannot abide it.
But if it is all the things you said you wanted before, then I am here and ready to work for those things.
Love and a life. I will work as hard as I can to earn this love you’ve given me.
I will dive under every surface, fight any fear.
For you.” He put one hand over her stomach.
“For him. And whoever else may come along.”
Whoever else. Whatever tears she’d managed to fight back spilled forward again at the idea of more children. A real life. A real marriage. A real future.
“I love you, Gabriel. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to see yourself as I saw you. And admit you loved me back.”
“I will still worry that I will…fall back into the boy who took things too far. That this love I have for you, for our son, is too much. Too big.”
“Love is never too much,” she told him, trying not to tremble apart. Trying to be strong, because they both needed it. They all needed it. “But should it be, you could trust me to pull you back.”
“I could.” He framed her face in his hands, held her gaze so directly and resolutely. “I do.”
She was tired of crying, but she did have hormones to blame on some of it. “Don’t leave again,” she managed to croak.
“No. No, I won’t.” Then he was kissing her—the tears on her cheeks, her jaw. Her mouth. “I love you, Evelyne. You are mine and I am yours. Forever.”
“Forever,” she agreed.