65. Chapter 65
Chapter sixty-five
Abbie
A bbie
The minute we’re off the elevator, Dexter is bounding down the hallway, apparently feeding off my need to be in a private spot where Gabe and I can speak. Gabe catches my hand and links our fingers, and miraculously, that easily, I can breathe again. Gabe does that for me. He calms me down. He makes me feel like I’m standing with him, while my ex was always above me.
He pulls out his keys and unlocks the door. The minute it’s open, he unhooks Dexter, who bounds forward again with panting glee. He’s home and that dog knows it. I feel oddly good about being at home here, too, but that’s all the more reason for me to worry about Gabe. To worry about his family. It’s my turn to bound into the hallway and I do so, but leave out the panting. I rotate to face Gabe, and he’s shut the door, already right in front of me, his hands settling possessively at my waist.
“You need to stop worrying,” he says. “I’ve got this. I’ve got you. I’ve got us.” He turns me around and pulls off my coat.
“He’s going to smear you in the press,” I say, turning as he hangs up my coat on the coatrack, and shrugs out of his own. “He’s going to make you look like a killer.”
“He’s not going to slander me,” he replies. “That would land him in court. He’s trying to intimidate us into talking. I don’t intimidate.”
“I’m worried about you, Gabe, even if you aren’t.”
“That’s the point. He wants you to worry. He wants you to talk. He wants a story.” He takes my hand. “Come with me.”
He’s clearly not listening. He’s leading me through the living room, towards his obvious solution to our problems: the bar. Dexter is now sitting by the couch with a bone in his mouth, watching us pass by. I wave to him and he turns away as if he thinks I’m about to take his bone.
“Drink time,” Gabe says lifting me and sitting me on a barstool.
“We’ve done this before. I don’t drink well.”
He steps behind the bar and pours me a whiskey. “Try it,” he says, setting the glass in front of me. “Honey-sweet perfection, baby, like you on my tongue. We’ll get that asshole off your mind, one way or another.”
My cheeks heat. “Did you really just say that to me?”
He leans on the bar in front of me. “Would you rather me say it to someone else?”
There’s a push between us with that question that is so much more than it appears on the surface. It’s about commitment, about reassurance. “No,” I say. “I do not want you to say anything even remotely like that to another woman.”
“Did it bother you when I said it to you? Did it offend you?”
“No,” I say easily. “No, it just took me off guard.”
“Your ex didn’t talk dirty to you?”
“Was that talking dirty?”
“That was a warm-up.” He winks. “It gets better.” He points at the glass. “Drink up, baby. You’re wound as tight as a rubber band ball.”
I accept the drink and decide he’s right. I need to relax. I down the liquid, warmth spreading down my throat and settling low in my belly. “I felt that,” I say, touching my throat.
“What do you feel?”
“Warm,” I say. “Really warm.”
He fills my glass again. “Drink a little more. Don’t down it.” He lifts a finger. “Not yet.” He rounds the bar and walks into the kitchen, grabs something from the fridge and returns. He sets a can down next to me.
I inspect it. “Diet Sprite?”
“A man has to watch his waistline.” He winks. “It’s nice and smooth with the whiskey, or so my sister tells me. Before she got pregnant, of course.” He mixes the drink for me.
I take a sip and the whiskey goes down smoother. “I approve. I like it.”
He pours a glass for himself and then claims the stool next to mine, both of us facing each other, both of us sipping our drinks. His hand settles on my leg and I set my glass down. The whiskey wasn’t what made me warm. It’s him, all him.
“You,” I whisper.
“You,” he whispers. “Stay with me until this is over. And if that’s three days from now, stay longer. I don’t want you to leave any time soon. Hell, I might not want you to leave at all.”
My heart swells with so many emotions, too many emotions. “We’re moving fast, Gabe. So very fast.”
“I know what I want,” he says. “And that’s you.”
“You say that now, but wait until your firm is all over the news, and not in a good way, because of me.”
“Not because of you. You didn’t do this. My father was already involved in this.”
“But you weren’t.”
“He was looking for a way to bite us back. He would have found a way no matter what. We expected a war. We hoped we wouldn’t get one.” He rests his forehead on mine, his hand settling at the back of my head. “I will handle my father.” There is a rough quality to his voice that undoes me.
I pull back to look at him, his hand returning to my leg with his other. “He’s your father. Would he really want to ruin you?”
“He’s my father. Translation: yes.”
“What Reid said to you in the hallway—about your dark side—” I hesitate with how to continue and he reacts.
His hands fall away from my legs and settle on his own. “What about it?”
I press my hands to his. “Don’t tell me you want me here in your life, and then pull away from me. All in or all out, Gabe. I don’t care about your father. I don’t care about how dark you can get unless it includes killing people and hurting people just to hurt them. You’re an attorney. You have a job to do, and I’m not naive. I know you have to be hard. I know you have—”
“You don’t know, Abbie.” He untangles his hands from mine and reaches for his drink. “And never going to know those parts of me. That won’t change. If you can’t live with that—”
“I can’t. I can’t live with that. All or nothing, and at the park, you said—”
“You can have all that I am now . Other parts are past and buried, where they need to stay.”
Like the reason he had a vasectomy , I think, and I want to say it, but my gut says, that’s pushing him too far, too fast. “Gabe—”
He downs his drink and stands up, walking to the window, where he’s told me he stands above the city, to escape the rest of the world. To that spot he allowed me to visit with him. He let me into his space, his kingdom, his head, just not his past. He needs that to be enough. I scoot off the stool and he presses his hands to the glass. I close the space between us and slide between him and the window.
He responds instantly, tangling his fingers into my hair. “I won’t ever show you that part of me. It exists. You know. Leave it the fuck alone.”
Now I’m angry. He’s holding me and pushing me away at the same time. “Because I’m weak? Because I’m this pathetic girl you need to save to feel like you aren’t whatever monster you’ve decided to call yourself? Because I’m scared? Or maybe it’s you who’s scared? You’re scared to show me the real you.”
“Maybe there’s a reason to be scared.”
“Maybe you want me to be scared.”
“You do like to run, Abbie.”
My chin lifts defiantly. “I’m not running now, now am I?”
He stares down at me, intense seconds crackling between us before his mouth crashes down on mine; his big body pressing me against the steel railing, a wild desperate hunger in him that isn’t gentle or funny as he can be, but rough, demanding, and edgy. This is the man who can be bad and I have this sense that he’s about to test me. That he’s about to show me the real Gabe Maxwell.
And I like it.