Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The pizza arrives at eight, and Harper tips the delivery guy with a twenty she pulls from my wallet.
“I’ll pay you back,” she says, dropping the box onto my coffee table and flipping it open.
The smell of garlic and melted cheese fills my living room, mixing with the salt air that drifts in through the balcony doors I’d left cracked.
From forty-seven floors up, the Atlantic is a dark ribbon beyond the boardwalk lights, and the distant crash of waves is just audible beneath the hum of the city.
“You won’t,” I say from my perch on the sofa. “And I don’t care.”
“Good. Because I definitely won’t.” She grabs a slice, ignoring the plates I’d set out, and folds it in half the way she’s done since we were kids. Grease drips onto her silk blouse. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“Eat something,” she tells me. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
“I’m sitting down,” I say, “so falling isn’t an issue. And if you bring me a slice, I’ll eat it.”
She does, and my stomach growls the moment she puts the plate in my hand.
“See?” she says. “Don’t argue when I’m mothering you. Oh, good!” she adds, as David emerges from the kitchen with an open bottle of wine and three glasses.
I’m already settled in the middle of the sofa, and now they take a seat on either side of me. As they do, I say a silent thank you for the No Talking About Gabriel rule we’d laid down before we ordered the pizza.
“Anything else,” Harper had said. “But no Gabe. And,” she’d added, with a narrow stare aimed at both me and David, “no talking about running a casino. Some of us are only interested in the betting side of things.”
I’d met David’s eyes and we’d both shrugged. “No problem,” I’d said. “We can talk about Tarot cards. Anissa’s been teaching me.”
“Or we can just sit around and drink and watch TV,” David had countered.
Since that sounded both fun and easy—and required very few brain cells—David’s plan won, and just over two hours later, we’ve done significant damage to the pizza, watched a movie that was either a very bad comedy or a darkly comedic drama, and have moved on to a reality show about people buying tiny houses.
Harper’s moved to the recliner and is providing running commentary on the tiny house folk and how they must be better people than her, who thinks ten thousand square feet is really, really cramped.
By the time nine o’clock rolls around, I’ve polished off three slices of pizza and two glasses of wine and am nicely buzzed and comfortably settled long-ways on the couch with my feet in David’s lap as I sip wine and suck up the awesomeness of simply spending a non-productive evening at home with friends.
The knock at the door comes at nine-fifteen.
We all freeze. Harper’s hand tightens on mine, and David straightens in his seat, suddenly alert.
“Expecting anyone?” Harper asks.
“No.”
“Probably your father wanting another photo of our happy engagement,” David says.
For the first time ever, I hope he’s right, and it is my dad at the door.
The knock comes again. Louder this time. More insistent.
David stands. “I’ll get it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” He crosses to the door, then checks the peephole. His shoulders stiffen. When he turns back, his expression is carefully neutral.
“It’s Gabriel.”
Yeah. Father’s never around when I want him. Which, considering that’s pretty much never, works out well.
Except that now I have to deal with Gabriel.
“You don’t have to let him in,” Harper says. “You don’t owe him anything tonight.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. I could tell David to send him away, then deal with this tomorrow when I’ve had time to sleep and think and rebuild my defenses.
But the truth is, I need to set some freaking boundaries. To tell him very firmly that today was bullshit.
And if I’m going to do that, I need to at least have the balls to do it in person.
“Let him in,” I say.
David hesitates. “You sure?”
“No. But do it anyway.”
He opens the door, and Gabriel steps inside.
He looks terrible.
That’s my first thought.
He looks even worse than he looked earlier, which shouldn’t be possible.
His dark hair is disheveled and could use a wash, his beard is a mess, and his eyes are red-rimmed like he’s either been crying or rubbing the shit out of them.
He’s still wearing the same clothes from the gallery, which makes me wonder if he’s even gone home.
Or has he spent pretty much the whole day wandering? Pacing. Maybe punching things?
No matter what the details, I think it’s a safe bet that this man I love—this man who is driving me batshit crazy—has been stewing in his own misery for hours.
His gaze sweeps the room. The way Harper and David stand there like bodyguards. Two wine bottles and a pizza box. Reality TV playing silently on the big TV screen.
All evidence of a night spent trying to forget him.
When his eyes finally land on me, something in his face cracks.
“Izzy—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharper than I intended. “You don’t get to ‘Izzy’ me right now. You don’t get to walk in here with those eyes and expect everything to be okay.”
He flinches. Actually flinches as if I’ve struck him.
Good.
No, not good. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want him to understand.
“I’m sorry,” he says. The words are rough, scraped raw. “I know that’s not enough. I know I keep saying it, and then I keep fucking up.” He shakes his head. “And I did it again. I saw David leaning toward you, and I didn’t think. I just reacted. Like a goddamn animal.”
“Yeah, you did.”
He looks across the room. “For what it’s worth, David, I’m sorry.”
David looks utterly befuddled, but he tilts his head in acknowledgment as Gabe turns his attention back to me.
“I know you weren’t doing anything with him.
I know David is your friend. I know—” He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture so familiar it makes my chest ache.
“I know all of that. But when I walked in and saw you together, all I could think was that I was losing you. That you’d finally realized I’m too broken, too fucked up, too much work. That you were already moving on.”
“So your solution was to prove me right? To storm in and act like a possessive asshole, confirming every fear I might have about whether you can actually handle being in a relationship?”
Another flinch. But he doesn’t look away.
“Yeah. Pretty much. I told you—I didn’t think. I just reacted.”
“That’s the problem.” I stand up, needing to be on my feet for this, needing to not feel so small. “You keep reacting. You keep letting whatever’s broken inside you take the wheel, and then you apologize afterward like that makes it okay. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t make it okay.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because this isn’t the first time. You did the same thing when you first came back—decided I was guilty without ever giving me a chance to defend myself. So how many times is this going to happen? How many times am I going to forgive you, only to get blindsided by the next explosion?”
He’s silent for a long moment. Harper and David are silent too as they watch this play out, not interfering but very clearly ready if they need to.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel finally says. And the honesty in his voice, the raw, bleeding honesty, makes something twist in my chest. “I want to tell you it won’t happen again.
I want to promise you I’ll be better. But I’ve made those promises before, and I’ve broken them.
So, I don’t know what to say that you’d actually believe. ”
“Then don’t say anything.” I move closer to him, stopping just out of arm’s reach.
Close enough to see the details I missed before—the redness around his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his hands are trembling slightly at his sides.
“Show me. Show me you’re willing to actually deal with your shit instead of just apologizing for it. ”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Therapy? Support groups? Hell, even talking to Travis or Leo or literally anyone who might be able to help you figure out why you keep self-destructing?
” I throw my hands up in frustration. “I can’t be your only lifeline.
I can’t be the only person standing between you and your worst impulses. ”
The words land hard. I watch them hit, watch him absorb them, watch something shift in his expression.
“You’re right,” he says quietly.
I cross my arms, wanting to hug him, but needing to stand firm. “I know I’m right. The question is whether you’re going to do anything about it.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Behind me, I hear Harper move to sit on the couch, and David shift his weight from one foot to the other. The tension in the room is thick enough to cut.
“I will,” he says, his voice low but firm. “Dammit, I will.”
I feel a squeeze around my heart. “Good. Because I love you. But I can’t keep being the collateral damage when your demons take over.”
“Izzy—”
“Bella.” The correction comes out hard. Maybe too hard. But I’m too tired to soften it. “Izzy was something a man I used to know called me.” I look up at him, hoping he can see the love in my eyes. “I’m hoping to find him again someday.”
Something breaks in his expression, and he nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I hope so, too.”
He starts to turn away, and without thinking, I reach out and grab his sleeve.
“Stay.” The word surprises me as much as him. And God only knows what David and Harper think about it. “Just for a glass of wine. Just to hang with us for a bit.”
“You sure?”
“I’m not sure about anything right now,” I admit. “But I know I don’t want you to leave. Not like this. Not with everything still broken between us.”
He nods. Slowly. Like he’s not sure he deserves the reprieve, but he’s going to take it anyway. “If it’s okay with…” He trails off.
David, to his credit, is already pouring another glass of wine. He crosses to Gabriel and holds it out—a peace offering. Or maybe a test.
“I’m not entirely convinced you’re not going to punch me at some point,” David says, “but so long as it’s not tonight, you should join us.”
I seriously want to kiss him. But under the circumstances, that would probably be a mistake.
Gabriel takes the glass. “I’m not going to punch you. And I’m sorry for earlier. For the whole caveman routine. I was an ass.
David surprises me by nodding. “Apology accepted. This time. But don’t pull that shit again.”
“I know.” Gabriel almost smiles. “You’ll have Harper hold me down while you give me a strongly-worded lecture.”
“I was thinking more like I’d let Harper handle the whole thing. She’s scarier than me.”
“True,” Harper says from the couch. She hasn’t moved, but some of the defensive tension has left her shoulders. “Come sit down. All of you. I switched the channel over to watch Friends, and I think something’s going to go completely awry in this episode.”
We settle back onto the sofa—me in my corner, Gabriel beside me with a careful few inches of space between us, and Harper curled up in the other corner.
David settles into the armchair. The wine gets passed around.
We laugh at the antics and the monkey on the screen.
And when Harper says she’s craving cookies, Gabriel gets up to get them without even being asked.
It’s a small thing. A tiny thing. But it feels right.
Around eleven, Harper stands and stretches. “I should go. Early meeting tomorrow.” She leans down to kiss my cheek. “Call me in the morning. And you,” she points at Gabriel. “Don’t make me regret giving you another chance.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Try harder than that.”
David blows off my earlier suggestion that he stay in his old room—for which I’m grateful. He leaves a few minutes after Harper, but first making me promise to eat the leftover pizza for breakfast and extracting a handshake from Gabriel.
Now it’s just the two of us, alone in my living room with the ocean dark beyond the patio doors and everything still uncertain between us.
“I should go too,” Gabriel says. But he doesn’t move.
“I meant what I said,” I tell him. “About finding someone to talk to. About doing the work if you want us to have any chance at all.”
“I know,” he says. “I have to earn you back.”
I shake my head. “It’s not about earning me. It’s about healing yourself.” What I don’t say is that I’m afraid the damage goes too deep. And yet, that thing called hope still flutters.
He moves toward the door, but I take his hand before I can talk myself out of what might be a very bad idea. “Will you stay with me?” My voice is barely a whisper. “Just to sleep. To be here.”
He studies my face, as if looking for some hidden meaning. “You know I can’t. The nightmares—” He shakes his head. “I don’t trust myself. What if I hurt you?”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
I hold his gaze. “Stay. Please.”
A long silence. Then something in him surrenders. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
I take his hand and lead him to the bedroom, and we undress in the dim light—separately. Just two people getting ready for sleep.
When we climb into bed, he stays on his side, and I stay on mine. But after a moment, his hand finds mine under the covers. And I let him hold it.
It’s not forgiveness. It’s not even trust, not really.
But it’s a start. A tiny, fragile start.