Chapter 22
Gabe
Ihad thought being a jackass would make this easier, but it hadn’t.
The look of revulsion that had splattered across Tori’s features before she left my office had ensured it was hell.
I hated that she’d witnessed that side of me, that she now thought worse of me than she already had.
I was tempted to tell her the truth, to let it all spill out, but I doubted my confessions would do anything.
There was no taking back the pain I’d brought to her.
The fact that I’d left her. What made it worse was that she thought I’d left her for another woman.
That piece was driving me mad because it wasn’t true, and I didn't know how to make her believe me. She’d sounded like she had confirmation, and that made no sense.
As the day ended, I knew I needed more answers. If she’d give them to me. I knocked on her open door, and her head lifted from where her focus had been on packing up her bag.
“I don’t have the figures finished yet,” she said as I approached her desk.
“That’s fine.” I hadn’t expected her to have any reports done since she was still learning the systems and the company.
I picked up the picture on her desk, relieved to see that it wasn’t of another man but of Reid playing with toy cars.
His grin was ear to ear. He reminded me of the times before everything had changed.
When I was still innocent and oblivious to pain.
I wanted to get to know him, to learn all about him, but I didn’t think I had that right yet.
Not when I’d been absent in his life all these years.
“I need to catch the train,” she said.
My sight jumped to hers. “A car can take you back to the hotel.”
“No, Reid is with my brother in Fairfield. His wife, Brandi, is watching him for me until I can find daycare.”
So, her brother had married. I wondered if seeing his wedding come to fruition had hurt her as much as I imagined it had. Placing the picture back on the desk, I chose not to torment myself with the thought.
“There’s a daycare on the first floor for employees. Why not enroll him there?”
“They’re full. I called five other centers, but they all have year-long waiting lists. Until I can find something, I’ll continue to run him to Fairfield in the morning and at night to bring him back.”
“That’s ridiculous. You take the train out and back every morning and afternoon?” It was easily an hour and a half each way.
She shrugged. “I can’t bring him into the office.” A ghost of a smile formed, and I realized just how much I’d missed her smiles. “He’d have fun running his cars up and down the conference room table, though.”
“Might be fun.”
Her eyes lit before they dimmed again.
“I’m going to miss the train.”
“Take the company car. Just let the driver know your morning and afternoon schedule. No more train. I’ll take care of the daycare situation.”
“No, we’re fine.”
“Tori, let me do this. I’ve done nothing else for him or for you, let me do this.”
She nodded, her eyes dropping.
I took my phone out and dialed the car service. “The car for Miss Hent needs a change of route.”
“Yes, sir. What’s the new destination?”
“Fairfield. She can provide the address when she reaches the car. Going forward, until I tell you otherwise, the route will be Fairfield and back each day.”
“I’ll let her driver know. He’s on his way.”
I said my thanks and hung up, meeting cornfield blue eyes that had my heart skipping a beat.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I did.” I continued to hold her gaze, unable to think because she left me so rattled.
“Was there something else you needed, Gabe?” Her voice had softened, the angry edge gone.
I moved back to the door and shut it.
“That’s not a good sign. What now?” she said, her brow arching.
Clearing my throat, I said, “Tell me why you think I left you for another woman.”
A flash of emotion crossed her eyes, turning them a deeper shade of blue.
“It’s not like you gave me any answers, Gabe.
You disappeared from my life, blocked my calls, and unfollowed me on social media.
It was like everything we had was something I’d imagined.
And it hurt. Sure, you didn’t know I was pregnant, but you still left me almost at the altar. ” She rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“But nothing I did should have led to that conclusion.”
With anger contorting her face, she snapped, “You left me after telling me you would always love me. After promising your big secret wasn’t another woman. After setting me up for the most devastating thing to ever happen to me. God, I don’t want to rehash this anymore.”
“But there was no one. Now tell me why you think there was. I deserve an answer, Tori.”
“You deserve? You deserve nothing.” She stormed around the desk, her anger rolling from her in waves.
“You left me. Crushed me. Left me pregnant and alone. And when I tried to tell you, tried to reach out to you to let you know, another woman answered the phone. What was I supposed to believe when she told me you were in the shower and that I needed to put my big-girl pants on and stop calling? Telling me you were better off without me. What else was I supposed to think, Gabe?” Her voice broke, and I scrambled for an answer because I had none.
“I promise you, Tori. There was never another woman. I had my reasons for leaving, but that wasn’t one.”
“You’re impossible.” She grabbed her purse and stormed past me.
Grasping her arm, I stopped her right before she opened the door. She looked down at where my hand held her wrist. The contact sent currents through me, but she acted as if I’d scalded her, and I dropped it.
“When did you call me to tell me about Reid?”
“Coming back to you now? Maybe you didn’t leave me for another woman, but you sure got over me fast. Two and a half months after you left. Right after I took the pregnancy test. Right before I decided I was better off without an asshole who had deceived me. You know what hurt the most?”
I shook my head, still sifting through that time to find out who had answered my phone.
“Not that I was pregnant, or that you had found someone new, but that you had promised to love me forever, promised there was no other woman, that I was the only one and I wasn’t.”
She left me standing there, fighting to make sense of what she’d said. Time passed, yet still I remained, the scent of vanilla and cherry blossom lingering in the air.
“This is a creepy new low for you, little brother. Do you always sneak into her office when she’s not here?”
Looking over to see Liv in the doorway, a memory returned. The day I’d blocked Tori from my phone, erasing the voicemails that I had constantly replayed to further enhance my guilt, blocking her number, and deleting her texts.
“You answered the phone that morning.” I heard the heat in my tone, the edge to it.
“What are you talking about?” She glanced at her nails. “I think I went with the wrong color.”
“Fuck the color. Did you answer my phone and tell Tori to stop calling me?”
She froze, her eyes darting back and forth before they landed on mine.
“You told her I was showering? That I was better off without her? What the fuck were you thinking, Liv?”
My voice had risen, and she stepped into the office, closing the door behind her. I was livid, seeing shades of black when I looked at her.
“Look, you needed to move on. It wasn’t my fault she called when I was there. If you had been man enough to answer your phone and tell her to stop calling, I wouldn’t have had to.”
“Man enough?” My hands balled into fists as I resisted punching the wall. “She called to tell me she was pregnant!”
She flinched, and I saw the knowledge in her eyes. She knew about Reid. If she’d seen the picture, she would have known. He looked too much like me not to guess I was his father.
“And what would you have done?” she said.
“I would have gone back to her. Not let her raise our son by herself. Not let her think I was with another woman.” I dragged my hand down my face, detesting that Tori had thought that all this time because my sister had let her believe it.
“Do you have any idea what you did? She thought I left her for another woman. All this time, that’s what she thought. ”
“So what?” Her cool exterior was snapping, her irritation coming through. “It was better that way. You had a job to do, and we had a task to complete.”
“I had a son, Liv. A boy who doesn’t know I’m his father. Who is growing up without one.”
“It’s better than growing up with the one we had.” Her shoulders slumped. “You couldn’t have gone back to her, and you know it. There was too much at stake.”
“I would have risked it.”
Her eyes bounced between mine. “You would have stolen my inheritance from me? After all that I sacrificed?”
Defeat sank into my shoulders. “Yes. I loved her. I’ll always love her, Liv. And that boy is my son. I don’t know him, and I missed almost five years of his life. I would have given everything up for that.”
She nodded, but I saw the emotion there, the hurt. Hurting the people I loved seemed to be what I did best.
“We had plenty of money, Liv. The other businesses were thriving. We would have had plenty to live the lifestyle you have.”
“It was never about the money,” she said, turning her back on me and opening the door. “It was about getting to the end. Avenging Mama. In denying me my inheritance, you would have been denying us the chance to make him pay for what he did.”
“Liv, I…”
She was gone before I could even try to make it better. Not that I could. I’d always been caught in the middle, my heart torn between the woman I loved and the promise I’d made the day we buried my mother. A promise that I’d now fulfilled, but that had only left me empty.