4. Gideon
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Gideon
I had imagined finding her a thousand different ways in the last eight weeks.
None of those versions had her standing behind a scratched counter in a pastel apron, a god-awful pink hat, and one hand braced protectively over a rounded belly I hadn’t known existed.
For a second, my mind just… blanked.
She was pregnant.
My wife was pregnant, and she’d been hiding in the middle of nowhere alone, scooping ice cream for strangers while I tore the city apart looking for her.
Then everything hit me at once. The sleepless nights, the dead ends, the private investigator’s curt call that he’d “located the subject.” The image of Ellie lying in a ditch somewhere that woke me up in a cold sweat every night. It all condensed into a single, blinding, ugly thought.
She was running away with my child.
“That’s my child,” I heard myself say, even though my eyes were already fixed on the curve beneath her T-shirt. My voice didn’t sound like mine. Rough. Scraped raw.
Her fingers tightened on the metal edge of the counter, but there was no fear in her eyes when she looked at me. Nothing soft, nothing like the way she used to look at me when I walked into a room.
“Yeah,” she said calmly. “I’m pregnant.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides. “And you thought the best plan was to disappear? With my baby?” The word came out strangled. I hadn’t let myself think it before. Baby. Ours.
“I wasn’t running because of the baby,” she said calmly. Her voice stayed infuriatingly even. “I needed space. Time to think.”
“A week?” I barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. “Ellie, you’ve been gone for two months.”
“I’m aware,” she snapped. Looking down, she rubbed her hands on her belly. “The second day I was gone, I realized how many periods I’d missed. I was nauseous. I just took the test. And everything changed.”
The thunder rumbled again, and she jumped and closed her eyes. I wanted to hold her. To tell her that it was fine, but I didn’t trust myself. I couldn’t even begin to figure out what I was feeling.
“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded. “Everything changed how?”
Her eyes snapped back to mine, sharp now. “It means I started thinking about more than just me.”
“You didn’t think about me,” I shot back.
Something ugly twisted in her expression. “You want to talk about who you were thinking about, Gideon? Because I remember exactly who you were thinking about the last time I saw you.”
The gala terrace flashed through my mind in vivid detail - the cool night air after hours trapped in that ballroom, Meredith’s hand on my arm, the weight of my mother’s expectations sitting on my shoulders like lead.
“It wasn’t what you thought.”
She cut me off with a brittle little laugh that didn’t sound anything like her. Then, to my horror, she mimicked my voice, low and flat.
“It’s not just who you were with. It was what you fucking said.
‘The spark is gone. Maybe my mother’s right.
Maybe I made a mistake.’” She lifted her brows at me.
“Pretty hard to miss when the man you married is standing three feet away, talking about how he never should have put a ring on your finger.
“When we were dating,” she went on, her voice softening, and somehow that hurt more, “you made me feel like the most important thing in the world. You showed up at my crappy apartment with takeout and coffee when I was studying. You listened when I talked about the future I wanted, about how much I wanted to make a difference. You looked at me like I was… bright. Like I was good.”
“You are good,” I said hoarsely. “You are the best person I know.”
She shook her head, that sad little smile ghosting over her lips. “But somewhere between then and now, I stopped being your bright, good, important thing, and I became your mistake.”
The word landed like a blow.
“I should never have said that. I know that. I was frustrated, Ellie.”
Her shoulders lifted and fell. “That doesn’t change anything.
If I go back, what’s different? Your mother will still hate me.
Your board will still wish you’d married someone ‘appropriate.’ You’ll still have a company to run.
I’ll still be… alone in that house while you work until midnight and pretend not to hear what people say about me. ”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she didn’t give me the chance.
“In fact, if anything, it’s going to be worse now. There will be a baby, and if you don’t want me, how can you want this?”
Denial exploded inside me, swift and hot. “No. Jesus, Ellie, you can’t think that. You can’t ever think that. I want all of you, always, and a family? You know I want a family with you.”
“Do you?” she asked softly. “Or do you just want everything to go back to how it was so you don’t have to feel guilty anymore? To prove to someone that you didn’t make a mistake?”
The question hit so close to the bone I flinched.
She nodded once, as if I’d answered even though I hadn’t.
“That’s what I was afraid of when I saw that second line on the test,” she said.
“Not just your mother. Though God knows, she was the first person in my nightmares. I could hear her already, saying I’d trapped you, that I’d gotten pregnant on purpose to lock you down. ”
“She would never say that,” I started automatically.
Ellie’s laugh was sharp and incredulous.
“You really believe that? I know your mother, Gideon. I know the things she’s capable of when she decides someone is a threat to you or your company.
And I’m not just some inconvenient wife anymore.
” Her hand splayed over her belly. “I’m the woman carrying her heir. ”
Ice slid down my spine.
“I was worried about what she’d do when she found out,” Ellie admitted quietly. “And I was a little bit worried about what you’d do too. Because I still didn’t know what you wanted. I heard you say I was a mistake. I heard you wondering if your mother was right.”
She was scared of me. That was the life I’d built for her. The one where she realized she was carrying my child, panicked, and ran.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and the words felt too small, too fragile to hold everything I meant.
“I’m so damn sorry, Ellie. This is my fault.
All of it. I let my mother get between us, I put the company first, I…
” I dragged a hand over my face. “I took you for granted. I thought you would always be there. I swear to God, I see it now. And I can fix it. I will fix it. It’ll change. I can change.”
Her gaze dropped to my chest, to the wrinkled T-shirt I’d thrown on in the dark before waking up the helicopter pilot, then drifted back up to my face.
“You want to change because I’m pregnant,” she said quietly.
Her hand curved over her belly again, protective, instinctive. “Because there’s a baby. An heir.”
“I want to change because I almost lost you,” I shot back.
“Because I have spent eight weeks thinking you were dead!” My throat closed around the memory of those nights.
The bottle of scotch I’d poured down the sink because it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.
The way my house had echoed without her laughter. “I can’t go back to that.”
Her eyes widened a little, and she frowned. “I didn’t mean to put you through that. I assumed Jana would tell you that I was fine. That I just needed more time.”
I grunted. Her friend was more vindictive than she thought.
Her gaze met mine, and she shook her head. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
The words stunned me. “What?”
“You want to change for our child.” She shook her head.
“It’s not enough. I deserve more than that.
We deserve more than that. I’m not just a vessel for your heir, Gideon.
I’m your wife. Or at least, I used to be.
I won’t go back to that house and feel like a prisoner again.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but now that you’re here, I realize that I don’t believe you.
I don’t think you’re capable of changing.
You were right. I don’t fit in your world. We made a mistake.”
I stared at her, almost unsure I’d heard her correctly. “Ellie?”
“The baby is yours, and we can figure that out. But I don’t think I am. I’m sorry, Gideon. I don’t think I can fight anymore.”
She looked so tired suddenly. Not physically, though now that I saw it, there were faint smudges beneath her eyes, a slight swell to her ankles. Tears gathered in her eyes, but they didn’t fall, and when lightning cracked outside, she didn’t react at all.
She’d literally said the words: Our marriage was dead.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, staking the words into the sticky tiled floor between us like a claim. “Is this your home now? It can be mine too.”
Furrowing her brow, she opened her mouth and then shut it again. Frowned. “What?”
“You can stay in this town. You can keep this job. You can take all the time you need to decide whether you’ll forgive me. But I’m not leaving without you.”
Her lips parted on a soft, disbelieving breath. “You can’t just move here, Gideon. You have a company to run. A life.”
“You are my life,” I said, and for once, I didn’t care how it sounded. “The rest is noise.”
She shook her head, a faint, incredulous smile tugging at her mouth. “You say that now.”
“Ask my mother what I told her last week when she came to my office to scream about the board meetings I missed,” I said.
“Ask the private investigator how many zeros are on the check I wrote him to find you. Ask my assistant how many deals I’ve walked away from in the last two months because I couldn’t concentrate on anything but you. ”
“Ellie? Is there a problem?” One of the large freezer doors opened, and a man stepped out. Instant jealousy slammed into me so fast it stole my breath.
My vision narrowed, went hot at the edges.
“Is this him?” I demanded before I could stop myself, every ugly thought I’d had in the quietest hours of the night rising up like a tide.
I stepped away from the counter, pointing at him.
“Is this the guy who’s been hiding you? Are you sleeping with him?
Is he the fucking reason that you’re not coming home? ”