Chapter 30
THIRTY
ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?
Adrienne
“Room service,” someone shouts with a knock at my door.
I look out, and Eli is standing guard outside the hotel room next to a young man with a room service cart.
I pull the door open and let them both in. I sign the room tab slip and leave the man a healthy tip as well.
“Thank you,” he says before hustling back out the door.
“Everything okay?” Eli asks once the door clicks behind the room service kid.
“Of course,” I lie with a smile. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know,” he answers as he watches me carefully. “You just seem… off.”
“Thanks.” I laugh. “That’s just what every girl wants to hear.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s probably just race nerves,” I reply. “I need some carbs in my body and a good night’s sleep, and everything will be fine tomorrow.”
“You’re sure?”
Somehow, he knows I’m freaking the fuck out about everything but the damn race.
“Of course.”
Eli sighs and shakes his head, before muttering, “Whatever you say,” and then he heads back to his post in the hall.
I walk over to the table in the room and uncover my supper. I ordered pasta with grilled chicken and broccoli to fill me up before tomorrow’s race. I nibble here and there, but I’m just not hungry.
Kingston’s words from earlier keep playing through my head like a broken record.
“Don’t give up on him.”
I sigh and drop my fork into the bowl with a clank. I just don’t know what to do about Gabe. I feel like everything is coming to a head, and I don’t think it’s going to be good. In fact, I have a sinking feeling it’s going to be catastrophic.
“Don’t give up on him.”
I should let him go. I should move on. Focus on my career and let that be my life.
Maybe Mom and I will grow old and be spinsters together.
That sounds nice. Hugo would eat all of the food, but my life would be full of family and love and golden retrievers with poor table manners. What’s not to like about that?
But is it enough?
“Don’t give up on him.”
Shit, shit, shit.
It’s not. I want him. I want the way that he makes me feel when he smiles and the way he calls me baby when I cry. I want his broody moods and surly disposition. I want the way he makes love and then holds me afterward.
I want to heal his broken heart.
“Don’t give up on him.”
I’m in love with him.
I’m in love with Gabriel Navarro, and I have a feeling he gave his heart to a woman named Macy years ago.
And when she died, he never got it back.
I’m afraid that beautiful man doesn’t have a heart to give me because it’s already gone.
He said he died when she did and just kept moving among the living until it’s his time to join her.
Until me.
He said I made him feel alive, but most of all, I just made him feel. Whether it’s right or wrong, I make him feel. I’m weak and selfish, and I want him for myself even though he never stopped loving Macy.
This line of thinking is getting me nowhere.
I need to relax and get ready for tomorrow’s race.
I cover the remnants of my dinner and move into the bathroom.
I twist my long hair on top of my head and turn on the taps in the bathtub.
Maybe a hot soak will ease some of the tension. Then again, maybe not.
I strip off my clothes and drop them to the floor, not caring where they fall.
Usually, I like my space neat and orderly but tonight, I just don’t care.
There’s way too much weighing on my mind.
My dad always said, chaos in the home equals chaos of the mind—I feel that but backward.
My mind is jumbled and it’s bleeding out all around me.
I bend over the tub and run my hand under the tap to check the temperature, letting out a little squeak when a large body wraps around me from behind and nuzzles the side of my neck.
“You scared me.”
“No one is going to get past Eli, and you know it,” Gabe says.
“You did,” I remind him.
“I’m different,” he says. And isn’t that just the crux of all my problems?
Gabe is different. If he was just like everyone else, everyone who wants a piece of me or to get to my dad, every man who didn’t really care about me or make me feel like I mattered, then he wouldn’t matter, but he does. Gabe makes me come alive.
And I’m in love with him.
I’m not falling, because I already fell. Isn’t that just a kick in the balls?
He reaches around me and shuts off the tap. “You can have a bath later. Now, I’m hungry.”
“You can have my pasta on the table,” I say helpfully, even though there’s no doubt that’s not what he’s asking for as one of his hands slides up from around my waist and plays with my nipple.
“That’s not what I’m hungry for.”
“Well then, what are you hungry for?” An electric current has taken hold of my body.
“You.”
He scoops me up in his arms and carries me back into the bedroom. He’s turned the lights down low and pulled the curtains. The funny thing about Vegas hotel rooms is if the curtains are drawn, you’ll never know what time of day it is. It’s always dark, because that’s where the sins happen.
He lays me on the bed, and I watch as he strips off his shirt and then his jeans. He already kicked off his boots by the door before he surprised me in the bathroom. I watch him, his beautiful body on display just for me to appreciate. And he is beautiful, scars and all.
It feels like a fist clenches my heart. I’m so in love with this man, and he’s not mine to keep. I can’t let him know I’m not okay. He’ll end things before we come together, and like an addict for him, I will always want one last time.
Gabe climbs up the bed, and I let my legs fall open for him.
I have nothing left to hide from him, it’s all his for the taking.
I’m his even if he doesn’t know it. It’s fact—more than passionate words spoken in the heat of the moment.
He settles between my thighs and leans forward.
He gently swipes his tongue up the length of my opening, teasing me before he really eats me, and then he licks and bites me.
He plunges his fingers into me and pumps them in and out while he rolls my clit into his mouth.
He pushes me higher, and I cry out as I come, but he’s not done with me. Not by a long shot.
Gabe crawls up my body and lifts my thighs to hook over his arms, and then he plunges inside me. Holding me this way, I’m open for him, and I feel every bit of him as he glides in and out, filling me over and over.
He kisses me, teasing my lips with his tongue, and I taste myself as he rocks his body into mine.
I wrap my arms tight around his shoulders and hold him to me as we move against each other, gasping into his mouth as he drags the length of him across my swollen clit.
Even though I just came, I feel like I’m teetering on the edge again.
He shoves a hand underneath my bottom, angling me to take him deeper, and I love it. I love everything he does to me, but this drives me crazy as he teases me, pushing me closer and closer to another orgasm.
Only this time, I want him to come with me.
“Gabe,” I pant. My body is like a livewire in a thunderstorm. Electricity zings all around me and short-circuits my brain cells, but I couldn’t care less. I want more. I want whatever he’s willing to give me. I’m desperate for him even knowing each time may very well be the last.
“That’s it,” he says quietly as he continues to move in and out, deeper and deeper. His movements become erratic as he closes in on his own orgasm, driving me even higher.
“Gabe!” I cry out as I come undone.
“Yeah, baby,” he rumbles as he plants himself deep and follows me over the edge.
My brain is jumbled and fuzzy, and my climax seems to go on forever. And when I can finally breathe again, just a little, I accidentally ruin it all.
“I love you.”
He freezes.
Gabe’s spine snaps straight, and a coldness surrounds him.
I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I never wanted him to know my true feelings, but a secret part of me whispers that the truth is better. I feel relieved that the secret is out.
Maybe this is what he needed to finally move on.
Maybe now, we can be together.
Maybe Manny and Mom and Jett were all right and all I had to do was fight for it.
“What did you say?”
Or they could have all been horribly wrong.
“I love you,” I whisper.
He pulls out of me abruptly and swings his legs off the edge of the bed so that his feet are planted on the carpeted floor. He leans forward, putting his elbows to his knees and his face in his hands. Tension ripples off him.
I sit up and gently place my hand on his back wanting to comfort him. At the same time, I want to open my mouth and draw the words back in. Part of me wants to deny them and the other half knows that would be a betrayal to me and my heart.
“Don’t.”
“I said I love you,” I repeat. “And I’m not sorry. I didn’t plan on telling you, and I wasn’t going to, but it just slipped out.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” he snaps as he jumps to his feet.
“Well, no.”
“What else weren’t you going to tell me?” he snarls. “Would you tell me if you suddenly started wanting a baby? Would you tell me then, or would you just wait to inform me when the blessed event arrived?”
The way he says blessed event makes me shudder. It makes my heart bleed, because the way he says it sounds like he would never want me to have his babies, that he would never want to share that with me, and I didn’t realize until right now how very much I wanted that.
“Of course not,” I answer. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“I’m not feeling very nice at the moment,” he replies in an ugly way, and I do the absolute worst thing possible and open my mouth to retaliate.
“For all I know, I could be pregnant right now.” Jesus H. What the hell am I doing? I’m not this girl. I would never trick a man with a baby, real or otherwise. What I am is hurt and wanting to hurt him the way he’s hurt me.
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve fucked me left and right for months, Gabe. Months, and not once did you use a condom.”
“You’re on birth control,” he snaps. “I didn’t think I had to.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, panicking. Why would he know that? Why does he always know so much about me while I grasp at crumbs about him? I was an idiot to think we would ever have a chance, not when the chasm between us was so huge.
“I snooped through your shit in the bathroom,” he admits. “Gotta say, babe, you don’t exactly hide shit with the way you leave it out on the bathroom counter.”
“You looked through my stuff?” I ask.
My voice sounds small and broken even to my own ears, but Gabe doesn’t stop. He continues to break apart every last bit of what we had.
“I haven’t fucked a woman since my wife died,” he bites out.
“I couldn’t stay away from your pussy. It called to me like a fucking addiction, but even as weak as your cunt makes me, I needed to know who I was fucking, and baby, I do.
You take that shit every day. There is no possibility of you getting pregnant, and now there never will be. ”
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you, and you’re never going to love me.”
“Are you happy now, fresa? You couldn’t just leave things well enough alone, could you?
You had to push and push and push until you had what you wanted,” he snarls at me.
I clutch the covers to my breasts, not wanting him to see me anymore than he already does.
“Just like always, but what if I can’t love you?
What if I don’t want to love you? Did you think of that?
Did you get everything you wanted?” He stares at me, anger marring his face.
“What? No answer? I’m going out for a drive.
We’ll figure out this mess you’ve made when I get back. ”
And then he leaves me sitting in the bed that he just made love to me in, and I’ve never been more alone.