Chapter 32 #2
“Because he loved her too much, and to stay with her would have hurt her. So he made the worst mistake of his life, but one he would never take back. He left to keep her safe.”
I leaned into his hold, feeling my tears pushing for recognition again. “I was devastated, but then I had you, and you brought light back into my life.”
“But not back into his? If you were the light in his life, how did he survive?” He was too smart, too aware for someone his age.
“I didn’t,” Gabe said. “I went through life with a hole in my chest that never went away. The darkness swallowed me, and it wasn’t until she came back into my life and told me about you that the darkness lifted again.”
Reid’s eyes bounced between us before he hopped from the rock. He took Gabe’s hand and pulled him down, his hands going to his cheeks. After turning Gabe’s face back and forth, he squinted his eyes at Gabe. Looking back up at me, he said, “So the stocking belongs to Gabe?”
I laughed, the anxiety holding my muscles hostage slipping away. “Yes,” I replied, nodding.
“We need to get glitter, and I’ll show you how to add your name.” He took Gabe’s hand and dragged him up.
“What stocking?” Gabe asked, his brows knitted in confusion.
“Your stocking. Mommy puts one out every year, and Santa never fills it. This year, he knows who it belongs to.”
Gabe took my hand when I looked away. Meeting his eyes, I saw the understanding there. The truth that I’d told him, and Reid had just admitted. That I’d never stopped loving him, never allowed room for anyone else because Gabe took too much.
If our confession to Reid had any effect on him, he didn’t show it. He acted just like he had, and it made me curious if he’d known, if he’d subconsciously recognized that Gabe was his father.
As we rode back to the house, he fell asleep between me and Gabe, his body leaning into Gabe’s hold. The look of adoration in Gabe’s eyes when he looked at Reid let me know I’d made the right choice.
“So, I have a stocking?” he asked, his fingers drifting through Reid’s hair. Hazel orbs took my breath away when they turned to me.
“I was alone in Boston the Christmas after you left. It was horrible and lonely. Gabe was only a baby, and I was on maternity leave. My family wanted me to move home, but I knew I needed to keep working and maintain my independence. I didn’t think I would heal if I did.
” I looked out the window. “Not that it helped. To keep my mind quiet, I decorated, only all my decorations were ones we bought together. I wasn’t in my right mind, and somehow having those up comforted me.
It was almost like you were there, and as much as I hated you, I wanted you there. ”
Scratching my nose, I turned back to him, meeting his guilt-stricken eyes.
Sadness shadowed them, and I wondered if we could ever truly heal.
“I put my stocking up and the one for Reid, but it didn’t look right.
Maybe it was the hormones still running rampant, but I packed Reid up and went out that night to buy one more stocking.
No name, no decorations, just a plain red and white stocking.
I hung it next to Reid’s that year and every year after until he was old enough to hang it himself. ”
My eyes dropped to my lap. “I never had an answer for him when he would ask whose stocking it was.”
His fingers pushed my hair back from my face, and I lifted it to him. “I’ll be there this Christmas and every one that follows.”
I leaned into his touch. “I know, and you can replace it with your own stocking.”
Head shaking, he said, “No, that’s the one I’ll use.
Besides, I don’t have one. I haven’t decorated for a holiday since the one with you.
I never could bring myself to because it reminded me too much of you, and I wasn’t as strong as you are, Tori.
Holidays are nothing but reminders of what I lost, so I avoid them. ”
All the pain I had suffered, the times I had cursed him because I was so sure he was enjoying life without me, leaving me too wrecked to move on, and he was suffering his own hell.
I pulled his face to mine. “From now on, we celebrate every holiday together.”
His smile lit his eyes, turning them a beautiful golden hue. “That sounds perfect.”
I kissed him as certainty washed through me. This was real, and it wouldn’t disappear this time. We wouldn’t let it because there was no coming back from the damage a second time. It would devastate us both.
Reid rushed into the house, kicked his boots off and threw his coat on the floor.
“Reid!” I called after him, frowning as I picked up his coat.
“I have a daddy,” I heard him tell my father, who was sitting in the living room watching football.
My sight jumped to Gabe, nerves striking me, but it wasn’t tension I found in his face. It was awe. How long since discovering he had a son had he been waiting to hear that? I hadn’t given it thought, only wanting to keep Reid safe and not thinking about Gabe’s emotions.
Taking his hand, I moved into the main room, seeing my father’s surprised look as Reid told him all about it. Cash was on the couch, a beer in his hand, his eyes intently focused on me.
“That’s great, Reid. Why don’t you go find Shelby and tell her all about it? She’s in the basement watching a movie with her mom and Grandma.”
“Okay.” He ran off just as Cindy came into the room, giving me the same look Cash was, and I knew she’d heard it all.
“I told him,” I said, the need to defend Gabe rising in me.
Cash leaned forward, rolling his beer between his hands. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“He deserves to know.”
“But with his track record.” He pointed to Gabe, and the tension returned to Gabe’s body.
“Shut up, Cash,” Cindy said, flopping on the couch next to him and putting her feet on the coffee table. “She’s right. He needs to know, and we said we were giving Gabe a second chance, just like Tori is.”
“I won’t hurt him,” Gabe said. “If I thought there was a chance, I would have left Tori to hate me and never put myself back into her life. I would have refused the interview and sent them both home.” He rubbed his neck, looking over at me.
“The only reason I ever pursued her in Jacksonville was that I thought I could find a way to keep her. I was certain because I knew she was special, that she was the one. If I’d known… ”
“You still would have asked her out,” Cindy said, taking Cash’s beer and drinking it.
“Hey!” He snatched it back. I swore sometimes they were the brother and sister. Cindy had been my best friend since kindergarten, and Cash was as much her older brother as he was mine.
“You two are inevitable,” she continued, jabbing an elbow in Cash’s side.
“I saw it when I visited you in Florida, saw it when I scraped her from the depths of depression, saw it every time she tried to move on and couldn’t, and I see it now.
There was no avoiding it, which is why you asked her out in the first place. ”
Leave it to Cindy to sum the two of us so simply.
Inevitable. It seemed the perfect word for us.
Gabe’s finger brushed over mine, and I glanced up at him.
For a moment it was just the two of us, and we were back to the beginning, that first day when his hazel eyes met mine, when his attention had only been on me and had remained on me. When he had been my world.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Inevitable.”
Gabe broke the contact, but heat swarmed in my stomach and stung my cheeks.
“That’s not what you told me when I called you,” I told her, dragging Gabe into the room and pulling him down on the loveseat.
“Eh, that’s because I was still pissed at him.”
“And you’re not anymore?” he asked her.
“It comes and goes,” she said with a big grin.
“Great.”
Cash rose and handed Cindy his beer. “Finish it. I’m getting a fresh one since you infected this one.”
She took it and stuck her tongue out at him.
“Scotch, Gabe?” he asked.
Gabe twisted his fingers in his hands. “Nah, a beer sounds good.”
Cash waved for him to follow. “Come pick your poison.”
Hand draping over mine as he walked away, Gabe followed, and the emptiness that had claimed a spot in my life for years returned. My father’s heavy gaze had me turning my attention to him.
“Was it your decision or Gabe’s to tell him?”
“Mine. I didn’t tell Gabe. It just…felt right.”
He nodded, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. “Let Gabe talk to him alone. I think he needs it and probably needed to tell him in his own way.”
Standing, he came over and kissed my head. “I know you meant well, and you’re putting your trust back in Gabe, but I suspect he needs to take these steps himself in order to do his own healing.”
Doubt seeped in, crushing my spirit. In my overzealous need to make this work, to get to the end when I had specifically drawn the line in the middle, I had let my emotions dictate the moment, never thinking it might not be the right moment for Gabe or even Reid.
I looked up to see Cindy’s understanding eyes surveying me.
“Did I mess up?” I asked her.
She scooted from her seat and sat down next to me.
“You were never one to keep a secret, Tor. You get too excited, and it just spills out. I know why you told him, and I agree with you. Reid needs to know Gabe is his father. But maybe it should have been a mutual decision between the two of you to tell him. You’ve been running on your own for so long I think you forget what it’s like with a partner. ”
And that’s what Gabe was. No longer was I a single parent. There were two of us in this now, and I needed to remember to include Gabe when I’d never had another voice to help guide me on my parenting journey.
She rested her head on my shoulder. “It’s still early, Tor. You’ll get the hang of it. Just take it slow. You two rushed in headfirst when you were younger. Take your time so there’s no chance anything will come between you again.”
I laid my head on hers, thinking she was right.
Slow. It had been Gabe’s motto when we’d first started dating, and he was willing to let me direct the speed this time.
Had allowed me to speed it up after I’d insisted on slowing it down.
As much as I wanted to leave the past behind, I needed to keep it present so I would remain hesitant.
Otherwise, there was a chance I would blindly rush back in and not savor the moments that built to our inevitable.