36. ALEX
36
ALEX
T he doorman called up and told me I had a visitor. When I heard it was Gabe, I hesitated.
The last time we’d talked it hadn’t gone down well. But I wanted us to be friends. I missed him—he’d always been like a brother to me, and if I’d learned anything in my life, it was that good people who genuinely cared were hard to find. Once you found them, you had to hold on to them with everything you had.
“Send him up,” I finally agreed. “I’ll see him.”
It didn’t take long before Gabe was at my front door.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door. “I didn’t think I’d see you here anytime soon.”
He shrugged. “I guess we should talk.”
I nodded. “That would be cool.”
I stepped aside for him to come into the apartment and shut the door behind him.
“A drink?” I asked, walking to the wet bar.
“Sure.”
I poured us each a tumbler of whiskey. God knows I needed a drink to calm my nerves. I’d been the one to fuck up between us, and I was lucky that Gabe had decided he wanted to see me again at all. What I’d done…
“How are things?” Gabe sat on a bar stool when I handed his glass to him.
“They’re okay,” I said. “Could be better, I guess. Shit hit the fan at work—we lost two investors, so I’ve just been trying to put out fires.”
“What happened?”
I shrugged. “I wanted to make a change, and they weren’t happy with it. I guess they decided that despite nixing the idea they didn’t feel we were on the same page after all.”
“That sucks.”
I nodded and sipped my whiskey. There was a lot that sucked these days.
“How about you?” The conversation was stiff and awkward, and I hated it.
“Same old,” Gabe said with a sniff. “The trip to Texas was good, despite me hating it, and my bosses are pleased, so we keep moving forward. Onward and upward, you know?”
“That sounds good.”
The uncomfortable silence stretched out between us, and we sipped our whiskey, not making eye contact, not talking.
“Look, man. I’m sorry,” I said to break the silence. “I know I fucked up. I should have stayed far away from her.”
“Yeah,” Gabe said tightly. “You should have.”
“I just didn’t know it was her, you know?”
“Well, it was her,” Gabe snapped. “She’s been through enough hell in her life without you needing to add to it.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? It’s not like I wanted to fuck her over, screw up her life and walk away.”
Gabe shook his head. “You see, that’s the part I struggle to wrap my mind around. That’s the way you did it with every woman you’ve ever met. Come on, man. How many women have we picked up at the same time with exactly that idea in mind?”
“It was different with Charlotte,” I said softly.
“And yet, here we are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You walked away from her.”
“She walked away from me!” I cried out.
Gabe frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I say,” I spat. “I wasn’t the one who wanted to throw in the towel. I didn’t want this to end. Hell, she’s everything, Gabe. You know what she’s like—she’s impossible to forget.”
Gabe blinked at me. “I don’t get it.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said bitterly. “I know that I’ve always fucked around, that women were just a one-night thing for me. I could never be in a relationship, not with all the shit from my past. And it’s not like I could find someone who would get me, someone who would understand… until Charlotte.”
Gabe stared at me without answering, so I kept talking like the idiot I was.
“I was going to change the company for her. Release a new eco-friendly line of yachts that would hopefully change the impact our yachts have on the ocean. It was important to her, so it was important to me, too. That’s why the investors pulled out.”
“I don’t get it,” Gabe said. “If you were so serious about her, why did you break up?”
I sighed. “Because when I decided against doing the yachts, because my investors were so full of shit about it, she figured I was just like your dad.”
“What?” Gabe’s face paled a little. “She told you about him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She told me what he did, and I guess from her point of view, I get it. She just never gave me a chance to tell her what’s really going on. It’s not like I’m just doing this to get rich quick, you know? But I have to think about my family, about my employees, about everyone involved in the process of making these yachts. If she can’t see that…” I sighed heavily.
Gabe shook his head and turned his face to the window.
“I thought she was just another conquest,” he said before he looked at me again. “I thought when you were with her, you were with her because it’s what you do.”
“She’s not like anyone I’ve ever been with,” I admitted. “I can’t even begin to explain how I feel when I’m around her. How she makes me feel. She’s incredible, and…” I let out a shuddering breath. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. I lost her, and that’s the end of it.”
Gabe studied me.
“Are you in love with her?”
I glanced at him. It wasn’t something I usually talked about. Hell, I didn’t even think about love overall. But when it came to Charlotte, everything was different.
Including this.
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Then you should go after her.”
I frowned. “I thought you were so against us being together. Remember the part where you said you never wanted to see me again?”
“I was wrong.” Gabe shrugged as if it was no big deal.
“How can you just say that?”
“Because admitting that I was wrong isn’t hard for me, Alex. I didn’t realize you cared about her. And I get the idea that she cares about you, too.”
“I don’t think so,” I said dully. “At least, not anymore.”
“Don’t give up on her.”
I sighed and sat down on the leather couch, looking out over the incredible view that came with this suite.
“I’m not going to push for something she doesn’t want. She deserves the best, and I’m not the best, Gabe. Far from it.”
“She deserves someone who loves her. I know you’re a good guy.”
“You said it yourself. She deserves better than you or me.”
Gabe snorted. “What the fuck do I know?”
“I’m trash, Gabe,” I said, finally telling him the truth. “There’s no fucking way she deserves to be with a low-life piece of shit like me. You were right to be mad about us being together. The fact you’re back and we could maybe be friends again is more than I expected would happen, and I’m happy with that. It’s—”
“Stop talking,” Gabe said, cutting me off. “Seriously, I’m telling you it’s fine. I’m okay with that.”
I shook my head. He didn’t get it, did he? He didn’t understand.
“I can’t do this with her. She deserves better. She deserves someone who can be with her, who can love her the way she deserves to be loved, and—”
“She’s pregnant,” Gabe blurted out.
I stared at him, feeling like someone had punched me in the gut.
“What?”
“She’s too fucking stubborn to tell you because she doesn’t want to be the one to tie you down, to make you start a family when that’s not what you want. She’s selfless that way, even when I think she has the right to be selfish.”
Blood drained from my face. Pregnant? How could I be a father? How could I fill the role my father had filled for me?
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” I finally said to Gabe.
Gabe stood and threw back the last of his whiskey. “Think about it. Do what you think is right. I’m not going to tell you what to do. I just needed you to know the facts. Without it, you can’t make a fully informed decision.”
He came to me and put his glass down on the bar before putting his hand on my shoulder.
“If you decide you want to be with her, if you truly love her, then that’s okay with me. I won’t chase you away. You have my blessing.”
“And if I don’t decide to be with her?”
“Then you just do the right thing. Do right by her, be there for the kid.”
I would never just abandon the baby. That I knew for sure. There was so much I didn’t know in life, but one thing I did know was that no matter how fucked up my life became, I would never make a child feel like they weren’t wanted.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” I said to Gabe.
“Of course.” He pulled me into a quick bro hug. “I’ll talk to you soon. We should still go out for drinks sometime. I feel like we keep postponing so that it never happens.”
I nodded. “We’ll do something soon.” I meant it, but my mind was on other things. It was spinning.
Gabe left, and I turned back to the bar to pour myself another drink, although I left it on the counter without drinking it.
Charlotte was pregnant.
I was going to be a father.
How could I be a man in her life? How could I fill the shoes of a father to look up to?
When I look at you, I don’t see a Blackwood, I don’t see money. I don’t see what the rest of the world sees. I see a man who cares.
She’d been right about that. I did care. More than I was supposed to. About her and about everything she was going through.
The thing was, no matter how shit scared I was of being a father, of being a failure. What mattered was that now, suddenly, there was a little person who deserved me to step up to the plate. It was one thing to not believe in myself, but if I was going to have a child, I needed to be someone they could believe in.
And my God, I wasn’t going to let Charlotte or my child down.
I still wasn’t sure about my past, about who I was at my core. But Charlotte and the unborn baby deserved that I do the right thing.
I realized that no matter who my parents had been, no matter what they’d done to me and where I came from, that decision alone meant that I could never be like them.
I was more. By choosing to step up, to be there for Charlotte and for the baby, I was everything my biological parents had failed to be.
And I’d been wrong about myself all this time.
It was time to set things right and show Charlotte that I wanted to be there for her, that I wanted things to change so that we could figure out life together, moving forward.
I just had to figure out how to do that.