Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
T he day that Mia had gone back to school had been the day Gabriel found out that an apartment could be just as much of a prison as his old cell.
He’d languished on the couch that day and every day since, his too tall frame forcing him to leave his legs dangling over the arm rest as he flipped through the channels. He’d never been much for TV, that had been Alex’s distraction, and he hadn’t quite been able to face the box he’d carried out of prison to find his art supplies. It carried too many memories in between the cardboard walls, and he had been afraid that the smell of it alone would somehow take him back there, that he’d wake up and find he was still locked up on the inside and everything that happened since had been nothing but a fanciful dream.
Still, at least the prison had given him a job. A shitty one, but it had helped him pass the time. There was nothing for him to do in Mia’s apartment, and even if he’d had a license a quick check of the news every morning had been enough to let them know that his face was still plastered across every channel. They weren’t exactly shy about showing Mia, either, from that day at the courthouse, but her part in it had been rendered less important by the stunning verdict and by the time it had hit the national news they’d spent much less time focusing on her.
The few that bothered to mention her painted her as a victim of his manipulations, so they were relatively certain that it was safe for her to go out, that she was less likely to get swept up in an ugly incident if she showed her face in public.
After that morning at Target, he had stayed behind while she went out to get them whatever they needed.
Food.
Dish soap.
Condoms.
Mia’s tiny drawer in her bedside table held almost exactly a week’s supply at the rate they were using them. A fact that made her blush furiously, but she never turned away when he reached for her, and she’d woken him up more than once with her eyes already wanting and her hand on his dick.
That week had been good for them. Mia had refused to go to work or class, and she hadn’t let anyone into the apartment to visit or tried to drag him out to meet her friends or have dinner with her dad. They called, usually several times a day and at odd hours, to check on her, but she remained stubborn about their need for privacy.
It had been a week of bliss, of late-night talks and early morning cuddles and fucking each other senseless on every surface in the apartment.
It had kept him busy—though not so busy that he’d forgotten to call and schedule an appointment with Amy to discuss his trust fund money, and busy meant he hadn’t had time to dwell on anything.
Then Mia had gone back to school, leaving him with nothing but his thoughts, the TV, and a cell phone that she’d bought for him so he could call her in class if there was an emergency while she was out. He still hadn’t figured out how to use it and his fingers were too big for the buttons.
He was bored and alone.
Lonely.
But not lonely enough to give in to the urge to see or talk to anyone but Mia. She was the only one that had been there for him while he was in, and she was the only one he wanted to see now that he was out.
Amy’s assistant had passed along a message when she’d made his appointment for the next week, giving him the contact information for some of the witnesses that had showed up for him at the trial—Michael, Brittany, Vincent. They wanted to keep in touch, now that he was out, but he couldn’t find it in him to reach out. He was grateful that they’d come, but bitter about the years that they’d let him suffer in isolation.
This day was no different, and by the time he heard Mia’s key slide into the lock, he was restless and frustrated from being trapped in the small apartment.
All of that fell away when he got a good look at her tear-soaked face as she flew into his arms, launching herself at him without bothering to close the front door behind him and nearly knocking him back down onto the couch before he’d fully managed to get his feet under him.
“What happened?”
“They found me,” she cried. “On campus. They were waiting for me when I got there, shoving cameras in my face and asking me questions about you. Asking me for interviews. Asking me to ask you for interviews. It was awful. Campus security had to chase them off the property.”
“Shit,” he said, tightening his grip on her and trying to nudge the door shut with his foot as she wiped her nose subtly on his T-shirt. “Did they follow you back here?”
“I don’t think so,” she said with a shake of her head. “I didn’t see them when I left campus.”
“How did they even find you?” He didn’t really expect for her to know the answer, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said, wiping her eyes as she dropped down heavily onto the couch. “But whoever keeps tipping them off seems to know a lot about me. My friends, my school.”
“But they don’t know where you live,” he said, filling in the obvious gap. “So, someone who knows you but not someone close to you.”
She nodded and pressed her face into her hands, elbows on her knees as she curled into herself and hiccoughed softly.
“Mia …” What could he possibly say after everything she’d gone through for him? “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve caused you nothing but trouble since the day that first letter came.”
She looked up at him, eyes red rimmed and cheeks pink with fury. “That’s not all that you’ve brought me,” she said. “You’ve brought me happiness and love. After all that, one bad day with a bunch of reporters isn’t going to make me regret it.”
He blinked at her and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Okay, that’s fair,” he acknowledged. “I just want you to be happy and I would do anything to make sure I wasn’t in any way to blame for it when you’re not.”
She huffed, her pink cheeks puffing as she blew out a frustrated stream of breath. “I know,” she agreed. “It’s just hard for me to hear you say things like that.”
“Sorry,” he said, sitting down on the couch beside her and wrapping an arm around her shoulder as she leaned into him. “I want to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting,” she insisted. “At least not much. I just need you to be on my side with all this, just like always.”
“I can do that,” he said firmly. “Do you want me to make dinner while you take a nap or something?”
She shook her head. “Can’t. We have church tonight. It’s Wednesday and I’ve already missed last week’s Bible group and Sunday’s sermon. I can’t miss it again.”
Gabriel stiffened beside her, pulling back to look down at her as she fumbled to put her keys and bag on the coffee table. “Mia,” he said, his voice uncertain even to his own ears. “I’m not really comfortable going.”
“What?” She turned to look at him, her face puzzled. “I thought you liked my dad?”
“I do but I still—”
She held up a hand, bringing him to a stop. “You don’t think my dad is like Richard, do you? Because he isn’t. He would never do anything like that.”
“I know,” he said quickly, trying to placate her long enough to explain himself. “I just don’t think I could stand going back into a church.”
“You knew this was important to me.” Her voice was stiff, lines of conflict scrunched between her brows as she warred with herself. “My friends … everyone … they’re waiting to meet you.”
“I can meet them,” he said. “I just can’t go to church.”
“Okay.” She grabbed her keys and her bag off the table after pushing to her feet. Her tone was level, suspiciously so, and she turned her head away and refused to meet his eyes. “I can go by myself. I don’t need you to come anyway.”
“Mia,” he said, reaching her arm and frowning when she shook him off and yanked the door open.
“No,” she snapped, hurt and confusion finally spilling over. “You wait till now? Till I’m supposed to be at church in an hour to tell me that you’re not going to come and meet the people I care about? After everything else today? Fuck this.”
He flinched at that, but if she noticed, she didn’t acknowledge it, and it didn’t stop her from leaving him alone. The door closed behind her with a final click, and he stood alone in the middle of her small living room thinking he probably shouldn’t have taught her to curse.
Mia fumed about it all the way to church, cruising down the small highway that led her back to the familiar turns of her hometown probably just a little faster than was legal or wise. It brought her into town a little earlier than she needed to be and she sat in the church parking lot alone until Lilly pulled into the spot beside her.
“Bad day?” she asked, leaning down beside Mia’s window with a worried frown.
“The worst,” Mia admitted.
“Come on,” Lilly urged, opening the door and pulling her out by her sleeve. “Let’s go inside and I’ll get you some cookies. My grandma’s recipe.”
“I love your grandma’s cookies,” Mia sniffled after they carried in the snacks and supplies. “I could eat a dozen of them.”
“I have enough for that,” Lilly said, opening a Tupperware bowl and shoving a cookie into Mia’s outstretched hand. “But you’ll make yourself sick.”
“It would be worth it.” Lilly’s grandma had taught her to make several kinds of Vietnamese desserts, but these honey cookies were Mia’s favorite and she shoved half of one into her mouth to keep from crying again.
“What happened?” Lilly asked. And where’s Gabriel?”
“He’s not coming,” Mia said, flopping down in a cracked plastic chair and gesturing aggressively with the remains of her cookie. “He said he didn’t think he’d be comfortable in a church! Does he really think that I’d be coming here if it was anything like what he went through?”
Lilly hummed sympathetically and handed Mia another cookie.
“My dad is nothing like Richard,” Mia said bitterly. “He isn’t even giving you a chance! He knows how much this place means to me.” Mia shoved the second cookie in her mouth before she continued, gaining steam as she went. “ And he didn’t tell me he wasn’t coming until I was ready to leave, right after I got done crying all over him about getting cornered on campus by reporters.”
“Oh, sweetie” Lilly said, setting down the stack of cups she was holding to pull Mia into a tight hug. “Are you okay?”
Fresh tears spilled over as Mia shook her head. “I’d already had the worst day and he just … He just isn’t here,” she said. “I probably didn’t handle it very well—I know I didn’t handle it very well—but I was so damn mad. It hurt that he’d make me come alone instead of wanting to be part of my life.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all,” Lilly said, wiping at Mia’s tears with a napkin from the snack table. “He loves you, but he’s overwhelmed right now. Church has a lot of bad memories for him, and he might not be ready to face that.”
“I know he’s overwhelmed but he could have talked to me about it sooner and not after everything that happened today.” She looked up at Lilly with a frown. “I just ... I don’t understand why we’re fighting. It’s not like us. We never fight.”
“He was in prison,” Lilly said with a shrug. “You didn’t want to spend the little time you had to talk to him arguing. Now he lives with you and that’s different. You can’t just hang up the phone and avoid talking about the things that irritate you. You’re gonna have to deal with all the problems that you could sweep under the rug before.”
“I don’t like it,” Mia said.
“No one does, but conflict isn’t something you can avoid when you have to see each other every day. You’re going to disagree about all kinds of things that don’t even really make any sense. Did I tell you about the argument I had with Bryce about what kind of toothpaste to keep in our bathroom?”
Mia giggled around a mouthful of cookie. “Who won that one?”
“No one did. We switched to a different kind completely. You have to learn to fight fair and how to compromise.” She gave Mia a pointed look. “And how to make up when you’ve said mean things.”
Mia sighed. “I don’t think either of us really knows what we’re doing here.”
“You didn’t know how to be a couple while he was in prison at first,” Lilly reminded her. “But you figured it out and you did it without any real support from us. Now that he’s out it’s almost like you two have to start over. You have to learn each other all over again in a different way. It’s going to be hard, but this time you’ll have all the help I can give you.”
“I really love you,” Mia said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Lilly said. “And I really love you, too.”
The good feeling that Mia got from her conversation with Lilly didn’t last long. The arrival of the others meant the arrival of curious and judgmental eyes, the worst of which predictably belonged to Mrs. Newberry. Mia’s face had been all over the news, so there was no hiding that Gabriel was out and even though she doubted anyone had told the malicious old woman where he was staying, she would have guessed it correctly on her own.
Lilly tried to keep her voice upbeat and the discussions moving as they planned the upcoming Fourth of July picnic, sending supportive and encouraging smiles as often as she could, but it didn’t stop Mia’s cheeks from burning.
Most of them probably assumed that Gabriel was down the hall with her father, doing whatever it was that the men did on Wednesdays while the ladies had their Bible club meeting, but they would expect to see him when the meeting was over. When he didn’t show up with the other husbands and boyfriends, there would be no way for her to hide that he’d made her come alone.
It shouldn’t matter to her what Mrs. Newberry or the others thought. She knew that—she did— but even knowing it and understanding why Gabriel felt the way he did about coming with her, didn’t dull the hurt or the embarrassment.
She tried to make it to Lilly as quickly as she could after the meeting was over, to say her goodbyes and leave before anyone could stop her or make any comments about Gabriel that she wasn’t prepared to deal with, but she found her path blocked almost before she’d had a chance to leave her seat.
“I heard on the television about your young man getting out of jail.” Mrs. Newberry’s voice was sickeningly sweet, bright to the point of insult. “Congratulations. Of course, the news didn’t seem to think it was all that wonderful, what with him being a danger to the community and all.”
“He’s not dangerous,” Mia said bitterly.
Mrs. Newberry nodded, her expression one of forced pity. “I hope not, dear. For your sake as well as the rest of us. Is he here?” She looked around curiously, as though a stranger in a group this size wouldn’t have been immediately apparent to everyone.
“No.”
“Ah,” she said, teeth flashing in a practiced smile. “I’m sure he’s probably off talking to your father about wedding plans. Can’t live in sin forever, can you?”
Mia snapped her teeth together so hard she was sure that they were on the verge of cracking, forcing her lips to turn up at the corners until her own smile was nearly as blinding and false as Mrs. Newberry’s. “He didn’t come tonight,” she said, surprised at her own polite tone. “As for living in sin … His dick is big enough to make it worth it.”
Mrs. Newberry’s jaw dropped, her mouth hanging open comically as she stared silently at Mia.
“And you can tell whoever you want to that I said that,” Mia continued in a furious whisper, “because they’ll never believe you.” She stepped around the still silent Mrs. Newberry and dashed down the hallway and out to her car. She didn’t even stop to say goodbye to her father.
It took her three tries to get the door unlocked and her hands were shaking as she put the key in the ignition. She held herself together long enough to leave the parking lot and drive just down the road to the nearest gas station where she parked as far away from the door as she could, put her head down on the steering wheel, and cried.