Chapter 17
GAbrIEL
Gabriel didn’t sleep.
He sat in his living room with a phone that wouldn’t ring. Outside, dawn crept across the skyline in shades of gray. He watched it without seeing, his body hollowed out, his hands wrapped around a mug that had gone cold hours ago.
The framed Oath sat on his study desk where she had left it. Every mistake he had made since college, behind glass and wood where anyone who walked in could see.
By four in the morning, he had called three times and texted twelve. Each message more desperate than the last.
Gabriel: Tessa please.
Gabriel: Just let me explain.
Gabriel: I love you. That’s real. The Oath doesn’t change that.
Silence.
At six, he gave up pretending he might sleep and made a pot of coffee he couldn’t taste. At seven, he tried calling again. At eight, he accepted that she wasn’t going to answer.
Her mug still sat on the counter. Her sweater hung over the dining chair. The apartment felt wrong in all the places she had made it right.
The group chat lit up at nine.
Ronan: Breakfast? Usual place?
Gabriel stared at the message. He typed, deleted, typed again.
Gabriel: Can’t. Sick.
Knox: You’re never sick.
Ronan: What’s wrong?
Gabriel: Nothing. Need to sleep it off.
A pause.
Knox: What happened?
Ronan: Gabriel.
He watched the cursor blink. The lie felt heavy in his fingers. The truth was heavier.
Gabriel: Tessa left.
Two seconds.
Ronan: We’ll be there in ten.
Knox: Fifteen. I’m further out.
He set the phone aside. He should tell them not to come. He didn’t want to be alone.
Ronan arrived first, letting himself in with the spare key Gabriel had given him months ago. Knox showed up fifteen minutes later with coffee and a bag from the bakery down the street.
“You look terrible,” Knox said by way of greeting.
“Thank you.”
“When did you last sleep?”
“I didn’t.”
Ronan handed him a cup. Gabriel wrapped his hands around it but didn’t drink.
“What happened?” Ronan asked, settling onto the couch.
“She found The Oath.”
They both knew what he meant.
“How?” Knox asked.
“She went to get a pen from my study.” Gabriel shook his head. “I should’ve burned that thing the second I realized I was falling for her.”
Ronan turned toward him. “You should’ve told her right away. You can’t keep a secret for months and then say it wasn’t important. The secrecy makes it important.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Because she’s right.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not a lost cause.” Ronan sat back. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Gabriel stared at his cup. “I don’t know. She told me at the door not to follow.”
“Then follow her once you have something worth saying,” Knox said.
“That isn’t the part she’s going to forgive.”
Knox raised an eyebrow. “What is?”
“My mother.”
Both of them went still.
“Camille told her at seventeen she wasn’t Sterling material.
What she didn’t know, until last night, was the Oath.
The framed copy. The firm named for it. That my mother had known I was seeing someone for weeks and never learned who.
And that Knox—you, in your own way—were the one who told her. I hadn’t corrected the omission.”
Ronan exhaled. “That’s a different kind of trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother has known you were seeing someone for weeks.”
“Yes.”
“And doesn’t know it’s Tessa.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the conversation I’d have to have with her to introduce them is the conversation I’ve spent my entire life avoiding. The one where I tell her she doesn’t get a vote.”
Knox set his cup down. “You’re going to have to have it.”
“I know.”
“And the Oath is going to have to die a public death.”
“I know that too.”
Ronan was watching him carefully. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
So Gabriel told them.
The plan took shape as he spoke. The Oath. The frame. His mother. A scene he had been avoiding for two decades, finally happening, with witnesses. By the time he finished, the room was quiet.
“It’s going to humiliate you,” Knox said.
“Yes.”
“Are you ready for that?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes as long as I don’t lose Tessa.”
Knox stood. He didn’t say anything for a moment. He walked to the window and looked out at Manhattan.
“For the record,” he said without turning around, “the Oath had merit. We were trying to protect ourselves from exactly what you just walked into.”
“I know.”
“And I’m going to be the last man standing.”
“I know.”
“That’s fine.” Knox turned. “I’m not the one in the room asking for permission. Burn the frame. Bring your mother into it. Get her back if you can.”
Ronan stood too. He reached over and clapped Gabriel on the shoulder, the way he had been doing since they were twenty-one. “Tell us what you need.”
“I need a venue. I need timing. I need help to make sure she sees it.”
“We can do that.”
By the time they had finished their coffee, they had a plan that might actually work. For the first time since Tessa walked out, Gabriel felt something other than dread. A hope that would require him to be braver than he knew how to be.
He picked up his phone and called Camille.
She answered on the second ring.
“Gabriel. Where have you been?”
“I’d like to come for lunch. Tuesday. Twelve thirty.”
A pause. “Should I be worried?”
“You should be ready.”
He hung up.