11
EMERSYN
Gabe drove me to a spot high up a hill where could see the lights of the city. He pulled up to the edge of the lookout and turned off the engine. The illuminated streets of the city spread over the valley like strands of a gridded web.
Gabe fiddled with the stereo, skipping through his playlist until he found a song he was content with, and then reclined his seat and threaded his fingers together behind his head.
“This place is definitely dark and creepy,” I said, glancing around the nearly empty parking area.
“Don’t worry. I promised not to murder you, and I am a man of my word.” He winked. “So, judging by the fact that we’re apparently dating now, dinner with the parentals went well, I take it?”
“About as well as it usually does.” I opened the glove compartment and started rifling through the contents.
“Sure, go ahead. Make yourself at home,” Gabe chuckled.
“You got anything to eat in here? I’m starving.” My fingers brushed over foil, and I pulled out a protein bar.
“I wouldn’t eat that. Fuck knows how long it’s been in there.”
I shrugged, pulled the wrap off, and bit into it. It was hard. Super hard. The sort of hard that meant it had possibly been in there for years. Still, I chewed and managed to swallow.
Gabe shifted to his side so he could look at me.
“What?” I mumbled through my mouthful.
“Tell me about them.”
“My parents?” I snorted. “Don’t know why you’d want to know about them.” My cheeks flared at the thought that he already knew my father. If he remembered old staff.
“I like hearing about people’s messed-up families. Makes me feel better about mine. And besides, this is what we do, right? We’re friends. Friends talk. Or are we dating now? It’s hard to keep up.”
I bit off another chunk of the protein bar. “You first. I’m eating. What makes your family so messed up?”
Gabe let out a low whistle. “Where do I start? My father is onto his third marriage. My brother just married the woman I thought I was in love with—”
I feigned a frown. “I thought he died?”
“No, Clark died. I’m talking about Tyler.”
I sat up a little straighter, acting surprised. I was a little uncomfortable with how easily deceit came to me. “Tyler’s with Isabel now? That is fucked up.”
“No.” Gabe laughed. “It’s fucked up alright but not quite that fucked up. Tyler is married to Lauren, and I used to date her.”
I shook my head and blinked. “Let me get this straight. You’ve had two serious relationships in your life. The first girl you had a relationship with was dating your brother but ended up with you, and the other was dating you but ended up marrying your brother?”
“Correct. Well, pretty much.” Gabe shrugged.
I let out a low whistle. “That is messed up.”
“I told you.”
I leaned back against the seat again, getting comfortable. “Tell me about her.”
“Who?”
“Lauren. What made you love her, or at least think you loved her? How did you guys meet?”
Gabe let out a long sigh. I knew that sound. It was a sound of regret and resignation. “It was stupid, really.”
“Loving someone is never stupid. Even if it is the wrong person.” Even as I said the words, I knew they weren’t true, but why start telling the truth now?
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.” Gabe’s voice was low.
“I might be. Actually, I’m not even sure I believe in love, so just ignore what I said.” I glanced over at him quickly. He was staring at me intently, both hands tucked beneath his cheek like he was ready to go to sleep. His eyes seemed to shine brightly despite the lack of light. I looked away again, not wanting to get caught in them. The last thing I needed was to feel some sort of attraction to Gabe Thornton. Or rather, some sort of deeper attraction to him. He had pretty packaging. Nothing more. Well, that’s what I was going to keep telling myself.
“You don’t believe in love?” He almost looked sad.
“I do. But I don’t. I guess I just don’t believe in ‘the one,’ you know? I don’t believe there’s just one person out there who we’re supposed to be with. I think it’s more about who you choose to make it work with, if that makes sense.”
“It’s a little sad though, isn’t it? Not to believe there is that one person who gets you, who’s meant just for you?”
“I think it’s sadder to believe there is and then never meet them. There are a lot of people in this world; the chances of meeting the perfect person are pretty slim. And you know what they say about the perfect person.”
“No, what do they say?”
“If you find the perfect person, don’t date them. You’ll ruin their perfection.”
“People really say that?”
“Nope. They said it about joining churches or something. I just kind of paraphrased it for the occasion.”
Gabe chuckled. Then he quieted, chewing on his bottom lip. “So is Conrad the one who hurt you?”
“What makes you think he hurt me?”
“Because you’re not willing to give anyone else a chance.”
He was staring at me so intently I had to look away. I swallowed the discomfort lodged at the back of my throat and mustered a small laugh. “That’s way too deep for our level of friendship.”
Gabe turned away, looking back out over the lights of the city. Music played softly in the background, an old song from the eighties.
My brain scrambled to think of something to break the strained silence. “Do you listen to anything from this decade? Or even this century?”
Gabe laughed. “I like old things. Modern music is rubbish compared to old-school rock,” he said, repeating what he’d said before.
“Clearly you’re not listening to the right stuff.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my playlists. “Here. Let me put something on.”
Gabe pushed buttons on the control panel of the car, connecting it to my phone.
“Rather fancy car you’ve got here,” I said when my music popped onto the screen.
“Thanks. My daddy bought it for me.” Gabe winked and turned up the volume of the stereo. “Technically it’s a company car as I was working for him at the time, but I never gave it back when I quit.”
We fell into silence as the music filled the space. It was a new song, Broken by Lund , and it had not long been released. I closed my eyes to the sound of the gentle guitar, swaying my head slowly to the beat of the music. I sang softly while Gabe stayed quiet. When the final strains fell, I opened my eyes again. Gabe was staring straight at me.
“That was fucking depressing.”
I smiled softly. “I know. Beautiful, isn’t it? I love depressing songs. They’re so haunting.” I moved so I was curled to my side, mirroring his position. “Tell me more about your family.”
“Oh, so your relationship is off-limits but my family isn’t?”
“Something like that.”
Gabe shrugged. His face was illuminated by the faint light coming from the control panel of the car. It tinted his skin a pale shade of green.
“Not sure what else there is to tell. I didn’t really have a lot to do with Tyler and Jake when I was young. They were off at boarding school, and then Tyler went to university while Jake joined the army. I tried to run away from everything after Clark died. I went overseas, sowed my wild oats, so to speak.”
I wanted to look away from the pain in his eyes, but it was like something drew me to him. I just hoped he couldn’t see the guilt behind my eyes.
“It was Lauren who sort of led me back to them. And Jake. I went to visit when he came home and kind of got caught up in everything again.” Gabe glanced at the next song that came up. “Nope,” he said, skipping it. “There’s no way I’m listening to this.” He skipped through a number of songs before he sat back again, content with his choice. “But I feel like our discussions are a little one-sided, so you have to tell me about Conrad. What made you love him? You know so much more about me than I do about you.”
I chewed my bottom lip. Gabe was right. But he didn’t realize just how right he was. He was completely aware of the invisible threads connecting our lives. I knew a lot about him—more than he knew I knew. In fact, I knew more than he knew about himself. So, I decided to open up. Just a little.
I took a deep breath. “He was a friend of the family. He’s a little older than me, and according to him, he’d always had a thing for me but never thought I’d share the same feelings. It sounds totally creepy now, knowing I was like fourteen when we first met, but he was right. I didn’t think of him like that. But then he became my boss.”
Gabe’s brows shot upwards. “When you were fourteen?”
“No, this was years later, once I’d left school.”
“Okay,” Gabe said cautiously, “I’ll hold my judgment. Continue.”
“I worked at a burger joint for a while, and Conrad came in one night. We already knew each other, of course, but I hadn’t seen him in a while. He was drunk. We flirted. Of course, I was flattered that he even showed me any attention, and then he got me a job at the local paper.” I looked at him pointedly. “As his assistant.”
Gabe’s eyebrows knitted together. “Go on.”
“I was rather smitten with him. He knew so much more than I did. He was quite a bit older too. I guess I was rather na?ve.” I chewed on my lip a little harder. “He was also engaged at the time.”
Gabe gasped in mock horror, then laughed. “I can’t really judge, can I? I tried to steal my brother’s girlfriend. Then he died. Serves me right, huh?” He was laughing, but there was pain there.
I averted my gaze. “The heart wants what the heart wants, I guess.”
“And your heart wanted Conrad?”
I looked back at him. “I thought it did at the time. Although I’d never had a boyfriend before. Never even kissed anyone. I wasn’t exactly popular at school. Or anywhere else. And Conrad came along, said all the right things, and the next thing I knew, we were sneaking around at the office, and I was caught up in this whirlwind affair. I didn’t even realize it wasn’t what I wanted until it was too late. We’d already moved in together.” I paused for a moment, knowing it wasn’t the whole truth, but it was close enough. “What about you and Lauren?”
“It was different for me. We also worked together, but I only showed an interest in Lauren because of a stupid, and frankly disgusting, dare. I was in a bad place at the time. Looking back now, I’m ashamed of what I did. But although it started out as a dare, I was soon pretty much head over heels for her. If I’d thought about it properly, it never would have worked. We were in different places in our lives. Still, it hurt like fuck when she dumped me for Tyler.”
“I know the feeling. I was the one to dump Conrad, but it still hurt like hell.”
“See, I knew you were the one to break his heart.”
My mind went back to the day I walked out. Conrad was so mad. So angry. I wandered around the house, gathering my stuff, but I soon realized none of it was mine. Only my clothes. Everything was his. It pretty much summed up our relationship. There was a part of Conrad that thought he owned me. And for a while, I believed it. I never thought I’d leave him. I thought I’d found my forever. I was wrong.
“Hold up,” I said, replaying the words he’d said. “She dumped you for your brother? Like she went straight from one to the next?” I shuddered. “That’s a little gross.”
“There was a gap in between, but it didn’t seem like much of one at the time. And then they broke up, and I thought I could win her back.” Gabe’s eyes widened. “You’ve done it again! It’s like some sort of witchcraft the way you bring everything back so I’m talking about me again.” He shook his head. “All I really know about you is your name, that you write for a living but not what or for who, you were with Conrad, and your parents’ names and Merrick and Collette.”
“Props for remembering. Oh, but I do need to confess something.”
“Go on,” he prodded.
“I wasn’t exactly honest with you when we first met.” I felt like I needed to come clean. Not completely clean, but at least wipe some of the dirt off me. “I knew more about you and your family than I let on. I’d read things online.” I waited for him to get annoyed, to accuse me of pretending not to know things when I did. Which was exactly what happened.
Gabe’s cheeks reddened. “Oh god.” He shook his head. “I don’t know exactly what you read, but not all of it is true. Some of it, probably, but not everything.” He shook his head again and covered his face with his hands. “You read some of those things and still befriended me?”
“You befriended me,” I pointed out. “I had no choice in the matter.”
Gabe cocked his head to the side. “True. So you already knew about Tyler and Lauren and me?”
I screwed up my face apologetically. “Yes,” I offered hesitantly. “But I never believe everything I read online, so technically…” I left my sentence unfinished.
“My family’s messed up, that’s true, but don’t believe everything you read about us. Those articles really pissed Tyler off, but I think it’s better to ignore them; don’t give them the time of day. Live my life. Ignore the noise. No doubt Tyler went all psycho and got the lawyers involved.”
I wanted to say he didn’t, but I couldn’t. And Gabe seemed strangely unperturbed by my confession.
“Okay then, so fair’s fair,” I said, eager to change the subject to less confessional topics. “What do you want to know? Ask me anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
Gabe mused for a while. I could almost see the questions floating through his head as he thought, then dismissed them. Finally, he settled on one.
“What are you scared of?”
His question surprised me. Again. I thought it would be something about my parents, my life, my childhood, or Conrad. It wasn’t. It was a question I’d never been asked before, but it was something I’d thought about often. It was something that had dominated my life for the last while.
“I’m scared of not being in control.”
Gabe nodded his head slowly, a smile creeping up the corners of his mouth. “A dominatrix then?”
I whacked his arm. “Not in control of other people, you doof. I’m scared of losing control of my own life. Not being able to make my own decisions, having to abide by someone else’s rules.”
“Go on,” Gabe prompted.
I sighed. I’d never shared it with anyone before. The fear. This feeling that followed me constantly. I moved my eyes to the city lights as I spoke, not wanting to look at him. Not wanting him to see how much my words cost me.
“Growing up, my parents just assumed I’d follow the path they wanted. It wasn’t like they were demanding or anything; it was more that it was never even an option that I might feel differently. They never asked what I wanted. And I don’t mean that maliciously. It wasn’t a conscious thing on their part. They just never considered that I might want something different from what they wanted for me. They expected me to go to university, expected me to go into law like my uncle. I lived with this expectation. I was supposed to save them, be the one who pulled them out of poverty. It weighed on me all the time. It was heavy, you know?”
Gabe nodded. “Yeah, I know the weight of expectation, but it was different for me. I was expected to fail, expected to be a disappointment. Tyler was the one who followed in the footsteps of my father. He’s the favored child, so to speak. Jake was revered because of his time in the military, and Clark…” He fell silent. “Let’s just say I lived up to the expectation they held for me. But enough of this witchcraft. Back to you. You’re out from under your parents’ control now, though, aren’t you?”
“I thought so. Well, no, I am. Sort of.” I cleared my throat, the nervousness of laying it all out tightening my vocal cords. “I told my parents I wouldn’t be going to university as soon as I finished high school. They accepted it at first, laughing about how it was a phase. They’d say that to other people right in front of me, as though I wasn’t even there. ‘We’ve decided to let her work it out of her system,’ they’d say, like I was just a silly little girl. But I was determined to make it work. So I got the job as Conrad’s assistant, but looking back now, I know I just went from my parents controlling my life to Conrad controlling it. I thought I was making choices for myself, but instead, all I did was allow him to make the choices for me.”
Gabe’s brows bunched together. “The more I hear about this guy, the less I like him.”
“When I tried to leave Conrad, he and my parents stuck me in rehab. Conrad convinced them. He told them lies about me, which, of course, they believed. It made sense in their minds and gave them a reason for why I’d gone off the rails.”
It was like I’d opened some sort of floodgate. I’d never talked with someone like this before; I’d never wanted to, and now that I’d started, it was pouring from me. “They thought of Conrad as some sort of savior in my life, but he was far from it. Admittedly, I was drinking a lot, but it wasn’t the root cause of my problems—more a symptom of them. I was just going through a really shitty part of my life, and I needed the ability to forget everything and have fun. Or at least the ability to actually sleep. Alcohol gave me that. My parents wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t have a problem, but they believed every word that came out of Conrad’s mouth. I had no control over anything while I was in rehab. They controlled what I ate and when I ate it. They told me when to go to sleep and when to get up. And I couldn’t leave, couldn’t contact anyone. They took my phone. There were no computers, no internet, not even a paper to read. Don’t get me wrong; that place does a lot of good for many people; I just wasn’t one of them. All it did was teach me how to tell people what they wanted to hear. To lie.”
By the time I’d finished talking, there were tears in my eyes. I wiped them away angrily, annoyed at myself. “I sound pathetic, don’t I?” I gave a half-hearted laugh. “Other people have it so much worse than me, but here I am complaining.”
“We should always have empathy, but never think other people’s pain negates our own.”
Tears sprang back with a vengeance. I had to laugh to cover them. “Wow. That’s rather deep. I’m impressed you even knew the word negate.”
“Actually, I’m not sure what it means. Did I even use it right?”
It suddenly hit me how much I’d told him, how open I’d been. It was a feeling I didn’t like. A small flicker of panic wavered in my chest. Gabe was staring at me like he felt sorry for me, like he could feel my pain. It made me feel seen, and I didn’t want to be seen.
“So that’s why you don’t drink, huh?”
I laughed, but it came out sounding like I was nervous. “I don’t not drink. I just don’t drink often. But right now, I think I need one. You?”