Chapter Ten #3
‘Well? I’m listening, and your time’s running out.’
‘It’s too packed and noisy in here to talk.’ He glanced restlessly around him, taking in the bustling tables and the dozens of people milling around by the bar.
‘Suits me. I can’t imagine what we have to talk about that needs a whole lot of peace and quiet.’
‘You don’t have to say anything to me, Jen.
You just have to listen to what I have to say, hear me out.
I… I spent a lifetime taking you for granted.
’ He leaned forward, his voice so low and husky that she had to strain to hear him.
‘We were both kids when we met. I remember it like it was yesterday. I even remember what you were wearing when I sneaked up on you, a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt, and you were so focused and earnest. I pulled your hair, and you hit me. From then on, I teased you, and you fought back. It feels like that became our thing. I felt comfortable with you, so comfortable knowing that nothing would ever get past you. You always fought right back, never let me get away with anything. I never realised how much I needed that over the years, how much I needed you in my life.’
‘Don’t just say stuff you don’t mean, Gabriel…’ Jennifer whispered. ‘Don’t flatter me because you think that that’s the way to mend this broken friendship of ours.’
‘Never call it broken, Jen. I couldn’t cope with that.’
‘But isn’t it? The bond we used to have got broken. Things were said. This is what has emerged from it. A different relationship. It was the risk we took when…’
‘No!’ He drained his glass and stared at her with desperate intent. ‘I needed you, Jen. Always. What I didn’t realise is how closely entwined need and love are. I’ve loved you for so long that it was just something that was part of my life. Like I said, something I took for granted. And then…’
‘And then you hatched up your wonderful plan.’
Jennifer looked at him, but she was melting inside. The love she’d spent the past three months trying to stifle was slowly uncurling and coiling its way through her. She didn’t want to hope, knew that she shouldn’t. Still, something in those dark, dark eyes, the misery and uncertainty there…
Her heart was beating like a sledgehammer.
She wanted him to just keep talking, wanted to bask in the aching sincerity of his voice and hear things that sent her pulse racing and her devastated heart soaring. She wanted to live in this moment. If, somehow, she was misinterpreting everything, then so be it.
‘You saw the pitfalls,’ Gabriel said ruefully.
‘I missed them all because I was a stupid, arrogant fool. I never thought about love or falling in love. I always knew that handing my heart over to anyone was never going to happen because that’s what my head had decreed.
When I came up with the brainy idea to stage a relationship for the sake of my mother, I really thought that everything I felt for you could be contained, but I opened a Pandora’s box—and do you want to know something?
’ He didn’t give her time to answer. ‘I’m glad I did.
We slept together. If I was idiot enough to actually think that I could neatly compartmentalise the most significant thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, then I deserved every second of heartache I’ve suffered since we went our separate ways. ’
‘Gabriel, do you mean that?’
‘Every word, my darling.’ He reached out to stroke the side of her face, and she weaved her fingers into his.
‘I love you so much,’ she breathed. ‘Like I said to you, it’s just always been there, waiting to find a voice.’
‘As with me. I never knew I could feel what I feel for you. I thought that love and everything it entailed—opening up to someone else, being vulnerable—was the one thing I would never do. I was cocky and blind enough to figure that my intellect and past experiences were impregnable barriers to feelings that would never be allowed to surface. When you told me that you loved me, all the old ingrained habits slammed into place, and I did what I had always primed myself to do. I shut down. Immediately and with no questions asked.’
‘I missed you so much, Gabriel,’ she whispered in a low, driven undertone.
‘I said what I said, and I knew I couldn’t go back on any of it and didn’t want to, but I felt that it spelt the end of our friendship, and I couldn’t bear it.
I came here, turned my life on its head, but I couldn’t run away from my feelings and my thoughts and my love. ’
‘Will you marry me, Jen? For real?’
The world was exploding into a million joyful pieces.
‘Honestly, Gabriel?’
‘Honestly. You’re my friend, my lover and everything else in between. I never, ever want to let you go.’
‘I love you, my darling, so yes. Yes, yes, yes!’
And she reached across the table, cupped his head with her hand and did what she’d spent three months longing to do.
She kissed him. Kissed him with all the love in her heart knowing that yes, what had started out as friendship so many years ago was the love she’d always dreamed of.