Chapter Thirty-Three
Gabe
It was not yet five, way too early for me to be up, but for some reason, I couldn’t sleep and had been awake for hours. Leo and Mitch were how I’d found them after the first time we’d spent the night together—wrapped up in each other’s arms and me on the far side of the bed.
I got up, padded to the bathroom, grabbed a few items of clothing, and quietly slipped from the bedroom, softly shutting the door behind me. In the living area, the lamps were on from the previous night, as were the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, all forgotten in our haste to get naked. The soft warm glow they emitted did nothing to stave off the morning chill, so I turned the thermostat up to take the edge off and carried my clothes in my arms to dress in the kitchen to ensure I wouldn’t make a noise.
I pulled on my jeans, T-shirt, and sweater, then headed to the counter to turn off the radio, still playing Christmas tunes, and the ensuing quiet wrapped itself around me like a blanket. After setting up the coffee machine, I sat at the kitchen table and stared out into the darkness through the kitchen window. We’d be able to leave in a few hours, and the end of our enforced confinement kept playing on my mind. On the one hand, I was looking forward to getting back to civilization, to the hustle and bustle of people going about their everyday business. Melrose Bay wasn’t a major town by any means, but I missed daily activity in general, and being with my friends even more so.
On the other hand, I’d also be leaving Leo and Mitch, and I found the idea of our separation unsettling. We’d all gotten close in the last week, closer than I’d ever intended or imagined, and now our tentative arrangement would start to fracture. It was easy to bury my head in the sand, or snow, and believe everything would be hunky-dory when the three of us remained in such a small, isolated environment, but once we went our separate ways, I had no way of telling how things would play out.
They’d both have time to analyze what we’d been doing, and I didn’t think their conclusions would work out too good for me. Both of them lived here, worked here, had their lives here. Even if I did arrange a job for Leo at our New York headquarters, there was no guarantee he’d take me up on my offer. He might prefer the slower of pace of life even with his stepfather’s tight leash. No, I was the transient one who had a job in another city, a life in Manhattan. Once I traveled home, would they both want to continue with what we had, going forward, or would I be too distant and eventually fade into the past, a fleeting memory?
Wouldn’t they be better off cutting me loose to pursue a relationship together? They’d at least have a fighting chance if they took me out of the equation, so I didn’t further complicate their time together by flitting in and out at weekends, disrupting their lives whenever I visited.
Maybe they’d be better off if I left and didn’t come back at all?
The coffeepot bubbled in readiness, so I poured myself a large mug of caffeine and, taking a few sips, let the strong taste fully wake me up.
The sound of the coffee maker must have woken the dogs from their fireside slumber, and they clicked their way over to me and laid their heads in my lap as their tails wagged lazily from side to side. “At least you guys are happy I’m around,” I crooned at them, scratching their heads and smiling at the blissful expressions on their faces.
If only a scratch of the head resolved all of my other problems. I hadn’t progressed any further in getting Mitch to sell, and quite honestly, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be, leaving me with the conundrum of what to do with the 50 percent of the land I did have. It wouldn’t feel right to build on the property and bulldoze our way through his home, especially after the memories I’d recently created here, to construct the resort the company wanted when Mitch very much didn’t.
So, what to do next? If I sold my share to someone else, an individual or a corporation, there’d be no guarantee they’d let the property remain as is. The opportunity to build more homes in anticipation of the burgeoning tourist industry would be too great a pull to resist, so that option didn’t fly.
My company wouldn’t want to hold on to their part of the land if it was of no use to them. I could sue Jared Houghton, I suppose, for selling the land under false pretenses, when he told us his brother wanted to sell the place as much as he did, but really, that wouldn’t help Mitch any. I’d still have half the land and so would he. We’d be no further forward than we were now.
“You’re up early,” the man in question’s rumbly voice broke the silence as, already fully dressed, he entered the kitchen. “Am I in an alternate reality or something?”
“Ha-ha,” I deadpanned, but smiled anyway. With his tousled chestnut hair and sleepy eyes, he made me think of warmth and home, something I only had growing up with my family and something I desperately wanted with him and Leo but had no clue how to make that happen.
“You make fresh coffee?”
I nodded and tracked him across the room to the machine, his long legs making quick work of the distance. He poured himself a full cup, added the same creamer and sat down beside me, pulling his chair in close and resting his hand on my thigh, possessively curling his fingers between my legs and making himself at home. He took a few sips of coffee before placing the mug on the wooden tabletop.
“You wanna tell me what’s eating at you to be up at this godforsaken hour?”
I chuckled to myself. There was no preamble or pussyfooting around with Mitch. If he wanted to know something, he asked straight out. After years of people’s evasion tactics being the norm in my life, his openness made for a refreshing change.
I lifted my mug and took a drink of coffee, giving myself a minute, savoring the bitter taste tempered by the hint of vanilla. “We’ll be leaving later today.”
He agreed but didn’t say anything.
“I guess I’m not sure what’ll happen next.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re not going to sell, are you?” The way his jaw clenched, confirmed my answer. “So, there’s nothing to keep me here anymore, is there?”
I wanted him to say yes, I had him and Leo, but he didn’t utter a word, and his lack of response crushed me and only confirmed he had zero interest in spending any time with me when I wouldn’t be around twenty-four seven.
He loosened his grip on my thigh before sliding his hand off completely. “I’m unsure how this is going to work,” he finally replied. “I’m guessing you’ll be returning to the city?”
I nodded.
“So? How?” The slight catch in his voice, gave away his worries.
“I still have my beach house in Melrose Bay.” I reminded him. “I could make the drive up before the weekend, so we get a decent amount of time together.”
“What about your job? Won’t leaving New York early cause problems?”
I mulled his question over for a few moments before answering, “I already have a home office set up in a corner of my bedroom, so I can easily work from there.”
He nodded slowly, thinking things through. “What about when you have to go away?”
Ah, here we go.
This had been the major sticking point with Karl and David. Being away from them for extended periods of time with my numerous trips all over the country and abroad for work had never sat well with either of my boyfriends. No wonder they got on so much better without me. With my increased absences, they’d been forced into becoming a couple whether they wanted to or not. Whenever I did get home, I felt like I intruded on their lives and ended up becoming more a house guest than a fulltime partner.
I didn’t know what I’d do if the same thing happened here. If I had to observe Leo and Mitch get closer and more intimate, while I became the awkward and eventually unwanted third in the relationship yet again, being forced to watch them pull further and further away from me the longer I stayed around.
I scrubbed my hand over my face, annoyed and frustrated at the situation, as if I was doomed to keep repeating past mistakes. It’s why I’d steered clear from any type of relationship since my breakup. I’d been damn good at sticking to my decision, too, until Leo and Mitch came along and fucked everything up.
“What about it? I go. I work. I come back.”
“That’s it?”
My chair squeaked as I shifted in my seat. “Sometimes I have to go away on business for a while—”
“A while?”
“A couple of weeks, possibly a month or so, if there are a lot of issues needing to be resolved.”
His eyes flicked over my face, assessing. “You think it’s a good idea? To be away from us for so long?”
“No.”
“So, I can only ask again, how do you see this working, especially when we’re at such an early stage of getting to know one another?” Frustration made his tone harsher as he tried to dig for confirmation I was unable to give. I had no way of telling how things would pan out in the future any more than he did. I was not a fucking mind reader.
“Why don’t you tell me how you see this working,” I retaliated. “You’re real quick to ask me the questions, push me for an answer, so what’s your plan, Mitchell? Are you prepared to leave here and move to New York to be with me? You and Leo, once I get him away from his bastard of a stepfather and get him the job he deserves with my company, a place where he’ll be valued and appreciated. Are you prepared to compromise for us? You sell, and you’ll have a shit ton of money and no physical ties. You’ll be free to do whatever you want and go wherever want, so what the hell’s stopping you?”
“You know why I have to stay.”
“No, actually, I don’t. You’re chasing after a ghost, trying to atone for what, I’ve no idea. You hide behind the vision of a life you and Katie dreamed of like a shield. You’re trying to build something you’ve already lost and is in the past, which is preventing you from moving on, from really being happy.”
“That’s not—”
“Yes, Mitch, it is. You’re expecting the two if us to adapt to your situation, make our lives fit around you, while you what? Continue down a path, knowing it’ll inevitably consume you, is already consuming you to the point me and Leo no longer matter? Where’s the compromise in that?”
“I can’t leave here. I can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because I’m the reason she’s dead,” he roared at me. “I’m the one who killed her.”
I was stunned. “Wh-What?”
He shot up out of his seat like he’d sat on a rocket, his hands balled into fists, the torment and suffering rolling off him in waves.
“It’s my fault she’s dead. It’s all my fault.” He kept repeating the sentence over and over. I got up, wanting to reach out and take him in my arms, to try to console him. “Don’t,” he snapped, his hands up, warding me off. His complete rejection was like a knife plunged low into my belly.
“Please talk to me,” I pleaded, keeping my voice calm and low, not wanting to aggravate him any further. “How is Katie’s death your fault?”
Eyes shut tight, his breathing heavy, his chest moved rapidly in and out as he tried and failed to rein himself in, to snap the cap on the emotions leaking all over the room.
“Mitch?”
He opened his mouth a few times, his throat bobbing as he tried to get the words out.
“We argued. The night she died. We argued.” His hazel eyes opened to look at me, not revealing a single thing, his barriers fully up. “We’d been trying for a baby for a long while, but it wasn’t happening for us.” He looked away and stared blankly at the wall. “My fault. Low sperm count. We’d completed our second round of IVF.” He sucked in some air and shook his head. “It didn’t work.”
“Oh, Mitch.”
He shrugged like them not getting pregnant meant nothing when it must have meant everything to them both.
“Katie wanted to try again, but we didn’t have the money. I’d already taken out two bank loans, and they wouldn’t give us any additional funds. We argued and she…she…” He walked away from me to the sink and stared out of the window into the early dawn light, his knuckles white where he gripped the ceramic basin.
I went over to him and stood in close, without crowding him, understanding he’d refuse anything else from me. I didn’t touch him but hoped the heat from my body offered him some degree of comfort.
“She said I was to blame,” he choked. “That I wasn’t man enough to give her what she needed. She’d have to go look elsewhere as there’d be plenty of men more than willing to…” His voice trailed off, the memory too upsetting to continue. I let him catch his breath and pull himself together. “I was angry and ashamed so told her if that’s how she felt, she should leave. Go find the man who’d give her what she wanted. I told her to get out. Screamed at her to go.” A sob left his throat, the sound heartbreaking. “So, she did. I pushed her away, made her go, and…and…”
This time I did touch him, leaning my body in and nestling against him, my arms going around his thick waist and holding on.
“There’s no way you could have foreseen what would happen, Mitch.”
His hard shove took me completely by surprise, and I staggered back a few steps, shocked by his action as he spun around to face me.
“You’ve no fucking clue.”
“I—”
“If we hadn’t argued, if I hadn’t forced her away, she wouldn’t have driven off, wouldn’t have been angry and upset, wouldn’t have forgotten to buckle up. She’d have been concentrating on the road, been able to control the car. It’s my fault. I killed her. Me!”
Mitch kept repeating the same words over and over as he paced the room, and for once, I was at a total loss as to what to do. I sorely wanted to comfort him, to take away all his misery, but didn’t have the first clue where to start.
He turned on his heel at the end of the kitchen and stalked over to me, stopping abruptly a few feet away, his expression no longer tormented, instead, a mask of hostile rage, his narrowed gaze fixed squarely on mine. An iciness swept over me at the coldness in his eyes and the crackling tension emanating from him.
Suddenly, he lunged at me, roughly grabbing the front of my sweater in his fist. “You,” he growled, his breathing ragged. “This is all your fault. If you’d just listened when I told you no, I’d have been left to finish what I started in peace, alone.” His grip tightened on my sweater, sending my pulse into overdrive at the possibility he was readying to punch me in the mouth. “When the road opens, I want you out. Both of you.” His face contorted in pain, disgust, and self-loathing. “This is our place—mine and Katie’s—and is all I need. All I’ve ever needed.” He yanked me forward until my face was inches from his own. “And. It’s. Not. For. Sale.”
Shoving me away, I almost lost my balance again as he pushed past me and charged out of the room, nearly knocking Leo off his feet as he entered the kitchen.
“Mitch?” he queried, but Mitch ignored him as he headed for the front door, the dogs quick to follow their owner, the wood slamming loudly shut behind them. Leo rounded on me, his face hardening. “What’s going on? What the hell have you done now?”
Anger spiked, hot and heavy, in my veins. “Me?” I snapped. “Why am I always in the wrong, huh?” I shook my head. “You’re so fucking quick to jump in and defend Mitch and take his side.”
Leo’s eyes widened, and he sputtered his answer. “That—that’s not true.”
I stalked over to him. “Yes, it is true,” I ground out. “And I’m sick of it. Sick to my fucking teeth of being the one in the wrong all the time. The one being made to apologize for airing my own fucking opinion and having to continually battle both of you when I don’t agree with your side of the story, no matter if I’m right.” I glared at Leo, realizing I didn’t know him at all. “Two against one,” I sneered.
God, I’d had more than enough of this shit for one day and refused to take one second more. I pushed past Leo and stalked down the hallway into the bedroom. Copying Mitch, I slammed the door behind me, the sound echoing off the walls, unsatisfying to say the least.
I threw myself onto the bed, grabbed one of the pillows and hurled it across the room, before grabbing the other and doing the same. Me against them. Always me against them . Always outside. Always on the fucking outside .
Love, my ass. Stuck here together I’d mistaken my feelings of lust and the forced proximity between us for something deeper. How fucking dense was I?
The damned road couldn’t open anywhere quick enough for my liking. It was high time to get off this hellhole of a property and return to Manhattan where I belonged.