Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
AVERY
My feet, cocooned in my fluffiest socks, pad over the scratched wood floor and into the kitchen. Ruby gets up from where she was sleeping in the living room and leans against my thigh, asking for an early dinner.
“Might as well,” I say to her, giving her a belly rub and filling her bowl.
While she eats, I prepare a pot of coffee. It’s mid-afternoon, but the snow outside leaves me wanting something warm to drink.
The coffee brews, Ruby eats, and I lean against the kitchen sink, staring mindlessly at the world beyond the window. Like a television with just one channel, the only thing playing in my brain right now is Gabriel.
A part of me is shocked at what happened between us. A larger part of me is more shocked that I’m shocked at all.
What does it mean?
Should it mean something?
Should it mean nothing?
I’d been the one to knock down the metaphorical dam. I want you. This. Us .
What about?—
“Overthinking.”
I turn. Gabriel stands in the entrance to the kitchen, leaning against the wall. His hair is mussed from our post-coital nap, his eyes not yet fully open. “You’re overthinking.”
“I don’t know how not to.” The coffee gives a final whir, and I busy myself pouring two cups. “I hope you feel like afternoon coffee. I want something to warm my core. Kind of chilly in here.” I shudder to prove my point.
“I’d love a cup,” he says, his tone warm and sated. His gaze is on me, and I feel it deep down, bypassing my skin and diving straight into my heart. “What were you thinking about? Your shoulder blades were pinched together.”
“What do you think I was thinking about?” We both know what had my shoulders drawn, but are we ready to name it?
He reaches past me, grabbing the coffees and carrying them to the couch. He sets them on the coffee table, then starts toward the fireplace. The logs are in place, but I'm clueless as to how to build or start a fire, so I haven’t touched it.
Gabriel palms the mantel. “Do you want me to get this started?”
“Yes, please.” I settle on the couch, tucking my legs under me. “You’re good at that,” I comment, as Gabriel rearranges the logs and drops a lit match from a box on the mantel.
He turns around and gives me this look, part pleasure at my compliment and part flirtation. “I can put out fires, and start them.”
I say nothing of his euphemism, but I can’t control the smirk appearing on my lips. The fire pops, the flames beginning their ascent up the split wood. He backs away, retrieving his coffee cup and handing me mine before settling beside me.
“Do you want to talk about…” He points toward the bedroom. “Or should we pretend it didn’t happen?” His voice is strained, and I wonder if he knows he’s frowning. “Call it a mistake? A moment of passion?”
I study the droop of his shoulders as he prepares himself to hear me backpedal. “Why are you giving me an out?”
“In case you need it. In case you want it,” he adds.
“I don’t need or want it.” I sip from my coffee, then admit, “I don’t know how to label us sleeping together. I only know how not to label it.”
He nods slowly. “I can accept that.”
Ruby comes to sit between our legs. She props her head on the couch and gives me her ‘I need to go outside’ look.
“Ruby has needs,” I say, setting my cup on the table and standing.
Gabriel gets up with me. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“No,” I say quickly. It’s the second time today I’ve discouraged him from leaving. “I mean, if you don’t have anything more to do, you should stay. Keep me and Ruby company.”
Gabriel smiles. “I would love that.” He glances out the window. “There’s enough snow to sled. The owners have sleds somewhere around here. I’ve seen people using them.”
I don’t know what constitutes enough snow to sled, but it sounds like fun. “You lead the way,” I say, gesturing outside.
Gabriel looks for the sleds, while I get dressed in more appropriate attire. I grin at the bed when I walk in the room. It’s rumpled, and the sheets are tossed aside. Gabriel never did like making the bed.
I pull on jeans over my leggings, and a sweatshirt over a long-sleeve shirt. I find Gabriel in the one-car garage. There isn’t space for a vehicle, because it’s packed with other things. Bicycles, an old dresser, and a disassembled bed.
“Found them,” Gabriel announces, holding up a bright red sled. A burnt orange sled leans against his leg.
He carries both out the back door, Ruby at his heels. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but she’s here for it.
I grab my jacket from the back of a chair and pull it on as I follow Gabriel out. I make a sound when I step out, something unintelligible. It’s cold.
Gabriel looks back at me. He pulls his beanie from his pocket and slides it over his head. “Do you have a hat?”
I shake my head and tuck my hands into my underarms. “It’s April. I thought I was safe from snow.”
Gabriel pulls off his beanie in one swift movement and hands it to me. “Wear this.”
“What about you?”
He dismisses my question with a small head shake, as if there is no way he’ll wear a hat when I don’t have one.
I slip the fabric over my head while I follow Gabriel around the house, to a spot between our cabins.
He tosses the sleds on the ground and looks back at me. “You ready for this?”
“Will you show me how to do it?”
“All you need to know is to lean one way or the other to direct where you go. I’ll go first.”
Gabriel sits down on the orange sled and pushes off. Toward the lake he goes, sliding to a stop twenty feet from the waters’ edge. He rolls over on the sled and looks up at me. “Come on,” he yells.
I copy what Gabriel did, pressing my palms into the soft snow and pushing.
Air whooshes past my head. I’m probably not going as fast as I think I’m going, but it’s exhilarating. The cold bites at my cheeks, and my bare fingers.
“Lean left,” Gabriel yells, hands cupped around his mouth.
I do as he says, but it’s too late. I’m heading straight for him, and he scoots out of the way with only a second to spare before I hit his sled and am dumped on my back in the snow.
Cold seeps through my clothes as if they’re not there at all. I cover my face with my arm, laughing and blushing. Gabriel’s feet crunch through the snow, and he drops down beside me. I lower my forearm enough to peek out. Gabriel’s on bent knee, smiling down at me.
“I crashed.”
He chuckles. “You sure did.”
My lower lip juts out, and he taps it with one finger. I capture his finger between my teeth, biting down gently. His eyes darken, his face heats.
The frigid air changes. I stop feeling the cold, and instead feel the intense desire to have Gabriel again. Right this second.
Apparently, Gabriel can read my mind. He pulls off his coat, laying it down on the snow. He guides me to lie down on it, and I don’t feel the cold at my back anymore. His coat is far more suited to the weather than mine.
On my back, with my leggings and jeans pulled down just enough for him to gain access, he slips inside me. The heat generated by our bodies is enough to warm me, but Gabriel worries about me anyway.
“Are you cold? Should we stop?” His lips press to my neck as he questions me.
“No, no, don’t stop,” I whisper. “I’m perfect.”
Gabriel looks into my eyes. The tip of his nose nuzzles mine. His weight is balanced on one forearm, and with the other he strokes my cheek.
Somewhere above us, birds emerge from their shelters, and begin to call to one another. Between parted clouds the sun peeks out, sending its rays across the snow and creating a smattering of sparkle across everything.
Without warning, tears form in my eyes.
Gabriel stills inside me. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just…I didn’t spend much time reflecting over our relationship before because it was over, and it hurt too much.” My fingers move across his cheekbones as I speak. “Everything I pushed away back then is coming up now. And I was looking up, and seeing you and all this beauty surrounding us, and feeling you inside me, and it hit me.”
Gabriel places a soft peck at the corner of my mouth. “What hit you?”
“When we were together before, I wanted to be pretty for you. All the time. Not just physically, but every other way too. I wanted a life that was shiny, that looked good. And in doing so, I created a world where you could not be ugly with me.”
Gabriel’s lips twist and purse. He hasn’t moved, but still he fills me. I wait for him to deny my words, because that would be typical for Gabriel. He never has allowed me any wrongdoing.
The more I think about it all, the more I need to be in the wrong. I need to be in the space where mistakes are made, where humanness is allowed. I need to shoulder this burden with Gabriel. I need him to allow me to sit in the dark with him.
I breathe the same air as Gabriel, watching him absorb what I’ve said. His expression changes, micro movements in his cheeks and the pull of his eyebrows. Finally, he says a single word. “Yes.”
I kiss him. “I’m sorry. So sorry for not leaving space in our relationship for ugliness.”
Gabriel kisses me back. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. And it’s not ugliness. All the mistakes that make us human, they’re not ugly. They’re as beautiful as all the pretty things we do.”
He resumes movement. Filling me, leaving me empty, filling me again. The entirety of my brain and my body and my heart focuses on what’s building in my center. Gabriel must know this, and he does what he did before, when I was his and he was mine. A tuck of his hips, as if he could lift me off the ground, and I shatter, arcing up to the snow-stacked treetops and plummeting spectacularly back to earth. I’m recovering from my high when Gabriel jerks, groaning my name against my neck.
I smile up at the sky. “Snow sex is definitely going in my book.”
We eat chips and salsa for dinner. Apple slices for dessert. Gabriel locates packets of hot chocolate in the pantry, left behind by a previous guest. He heats milk on the stove and pours in the mixture. He kisses me after my first sip, swiping his tongue in my mouth and telling me I taste like chocolate.
Gabriel builds a new fire. He sits on the couch, motioning me over. I pick up a blanket as I round the couch, then crawl on his lap and drape it over us.
Gabriel cradles me, and says, “Should we address the elephant in the room?”
I look up at the side of his neck. “Which one?”
My head bumps against his chest with the movement of his laughter. “My sobriety.”
I’d wanted to ask, but how does a person ask a stark question like that? I guess you just say the words. So I do. “Are you sober now?”
“I’m sober forever.”
I focus on his five o’clock shadow and push back against memories I wish I could erase. I don’t want to have them now. I want to live here, in the present moment. “I’m proud of you.”
He grunts. “You shouldn’t be.”
I shift, sitting up and looking down at him. How I wish I could snap my fingers and remove the shame from his eyes. “I’ve never been addicted to anything.” Except you . “I don’t know what it’s like. But I’ve watched someone I loved suffer from the disease, and it looked very, very painful.”
Gabriel reaches for a lock of my hair, slowly letting it slip through his fingers. The second time he picks it up, he says, “Loved?”
His eyes search mine. His one-word question is a reservoir, containing so many more.
I can’t answer him, because I don’t know how. Capturing his face in my hands, I tell him, “You are not the sum of your mistakes. You need to give yourself a little credit.”
“That’s a difficult task. Sometimes, it all feels like a weighted blanket, holding me down.” The short growth of facial hair scrapes over my palms as he speaks, but I keep them in place. I like the painful tickle. I nod, urging him to continue.
“I want to leave it all behind, but it’s always there. Clinging to me. It’s a thorn. Many thorns.”
My hands move to his shoulders and I lean back slightly. “Every day we are alive, we are experiencing. The joy, the struggle, the strife. We take little bits of those experiences, and we walk on into the next day. We can’t control what happens around us, or what other people do, but we make choices. We choose the hurts we cling to, the truths and lies we allow to mold us and shape us. You can allow the shame you feel about your mistakes to weigh you down and keep you from growing, or you can pick out what lessons you want to learn from them, and keep those instead. It’s your choice.”
Appreciation shines in his eyes. “There you go, being far too kind.”
I shake my head. “I’ve made mistakes, too. I lost my career, remember?”
He brushes my lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Did you really yell at a couple during a session?”
“I really yelled at a couple. I’ll change it to liposuction or a nose job or whatever else in the final draft, though, so it doesn’t violate their privacy. And change names and descriptions, obviously.”
Gabriel chuckles. “I would’ve paid good money to see that.”
“I can reenact it for you,” I joke.
“What about your dad? Did you have a heart-to-heart with him, like the therapist suggested? Or was that fiction?”
“I did, actually. It was a difficult conversation. He acted hurt, and surprised. It helped having Lara there. She guided him through it. It was oddly cool to watch.” I already liked Lara, but that was the day I began to love her. “He apologized eventually, once the hurt wore off.”
Gabriel’s hands go to my hips, his thumbs stroking my waist. “You took a leave of absence from work? Sold our house? Started your book? Like the manuscript says?”
I nod. “In that order.”
Gabriel watches his thumbs as they move over me. “I felt sad when the lawyer brought me the papers for the sale of the house.”
Our eyes lock.
Gabriel blinks and nods, breaking the heaviness of the moment. “Thank you for setting aside money from the sale. It was helpful when I got out. It gave me options, and time.”
“It was the right thing to do. Even though Sabrina told me to take the money as restitution.”
Gabriel breathes a laugh. “How is Sabrina?”
“Good, I guess. I don’t talk to her much anymore. She’s busy. Two kids.” I shrug away the pinch of sadness that flits across my heart. I'd done too good a job pushing Sabrina away, and damaged our friendship irrevocably. What I know of her life now is gleaned from social media. “We’re at very different stages of our lives. It wasn’t easy to maintain a friendship after…everything.” It’s my fault. She was married and having babies, chasing a toddler and nursing a newborn, and it was a reminder of everything I didn’t have. I stopped returning her calls and texts. She stopped sending them.
Gabriel exhales a heavy sigh. He opens his mouth, most likely to lament about why Sabrina and I are at different stages, but I place a finger against his lips.
“That’s enough elephants for one evening.”
Gabriel’s thumbs stray from my waist, traveling up my rib cage. “What do you want to do instead?”
“I have some ideas.” I trail kisses along his jaw. I’m ready to stop communicating with words. It’s time to let our bodies do the talking.
What is it they’re saying, though? I don’t yet know. All I know, and all I really want to know right now, is that I’m tucked up in the snowy mountains with a man I never thought I’d see again. It’s like magic, or an alternate reality. Fantasy land. For the rest of tonight, that’s where I want to live.
Gabriel turns into me, and we kiss slowly, as if we have all the time in the world. As if we never had to stop. That familiar feeling tugs at my chest, and I press against the growing hardness I’m seated on. Gabriel winds a hand in my hair and pulls gently.
I rock against him, and let myself pretend nothing ever came between us.
As if my last name is still Woodruff.
As if Gabriel’s mouth and heart and hands is all there is, or will be.
As if I’m not going home in a matter of days.