Chapter 20
GAbrIEL
The diner was three blocks from the Plaza, a place Gabriel had never set foot in. Cracked vinyl booths. Laminated menus. A waitress who called everyone sweetie and didn’t blink at his rumpled appearance.
The sign came with them. Tessa had insisted, for reasons Gabriel didn’t entirely understand. It sat propped against the booth, hot pink and glittering, announcing to the entire restaurant that he was WILLING TO STARVE FOR LOVE.
The waitress paused when she saw it. “Hon, we only feed for money here. If you ain’t got cash, you’re gonna have to starve somewhere else.”
“He’s got cash,” Tessa said. “He’s just dramatic.”
“Ain’t they all.” The waitress pulled out her notepad. “What can I get you?”
“Coffee for me. Two cheeseburgers, extra fries, and a chocolate milkshake for him.”
The waitress jotted down the order and disappeared.
He looked at her. “Two?”
“You haven’t eaten in five days. You’re getting two.”
The food arrived in under fifteen minutes. Gabriel ate the first burger so fast he barely tasted it. The second one, he slowed down enough to actually appreciate.
Tessa watched him from across the booth, her own coffee untouched. “Better?”
“Getting there.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Thank you. For this. For not leaving me on the sidewalk.”
“I almost did.”
“I know.”
She studied him as he finished the last of his fries. Then, quieter, she said, “Why didn’t you eat?”
He set down his napkin. “I wanted to understand you. You told me once I’d never know what it was like growing up the way you did.
You were right. A rich man choosing not to eat for a few days isn’t anywhere close to what a child feels going to bed hungry.
The desperation, the fear, the way it doesn’t leave you even after you’re safe.
I won’t pretend to understand that.” His gaze dropped.
“But I needed to try. Even if it was inadequate. Even if all it did was give me the smallest glimpse into what shaped you. Because if I’m going to love you, I need to at least try to understand the parts of you that were forged by things I never had to face. ”
He set down his coffee cup.
“I went to your building,” he said. “Avenue C. Three nights ago, while you weren’t answering my calls. I stood outside on the sidewalk for close to an hour. I couldn’t make myself go up.”
There was a silence between them.
“That’s the stupidest, most self-destructive thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I get it.”
“It’s also—“ she stopped and shook her head. “—kind of sweet. In a concerning way.”
“I’ll take sweet.”
He studied her. The way her fingers stayed wrapped around her coffee cup. The way she wasn’t quite meeting his eyes but wasn’t looking away either.
“Lucy says you need to grovel.”
“Grovel. How?”
“Extensively. Flowers. Apologies. The whole thing.” She finally met his gaze. “Those were her exact words on Monday morning. She also offered to assault you with a rolling pin.”
“That’s concerning.”
“She was being protective.”
“What kind of standards are we working with?”
“I don’t know. She was vague. Something about working for it.”
“Working for it.”
“Extensively.”
He considered her, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Working for it.” He typed rapidly. “Extensively.”
The flowers arrived thirty minutes later. Not a delivery kid. A woman stood in the diner doorway with two dozen roses and an apron that read Pine Hollow Floral, looking like she had taken a wrong turn.
“Delivery for Tessa Thorne?”
“I’m Tessa Thorne.”
“Sign here, please.”
She signed. The florist deposited the roses on the table between them, knocking over the saltshaker.
“Seriously?”
“Part one.” He was still typing on his phone. “Part two should be here in twenty minutes.”
“Part two.”
“Apologies take many forms.”
Part two was a violinist. An actual violinist, in a tuxedo, who walked into the diner and started playing something soft and romantic while the other customers stared and the waitress paused mid-coffee-pour.
“This is insane. Lucy said extensively.”
“She didn’t mean—“
She gestured at the violinist, who had now attracted a small crowd of onlookers from the street. “This is a diner. There are health codes.”
“I’ll tip the manager.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. She was trying not to laugh and failing.
“You’re laughing.”
“I’m horrified.”
“Your shoulders are shaking.”
“From horror.”
She was definitely laughing now, her eyes bright with something that wasn’t anger anymore. “You hired a violinist. For a diner.”
His phone buzzed.
“Part three is ready.”
“There’s a part three.”
“I texted Lucy forty-five minutes ago. She’s fast.”
The door opened. A delivery driver walked in carrying a large cardboard box. “Delivery for Gabriel Sterling?”
He took the box and opened it. Inside were approximately fifty chocolate chip cookies, still warm, with a note on top in Lucy’s flowing handwriting.
These are the official grovel cookies.
You earned them.
— Lucy
P.S. If you hurt her again, the rolling pin threat stands.
He handed the box to her.
She read the note, studied the cookies, then him. “You texted Lucy.”
“She’s surprisingly responsive when you’re groveling on behalf of her best friend.”
She bit into a cookie and chewed slowly while the violinist continued playing and the flowers threatened to take over the entire table. When she finished, she said, “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m thorough.”
“You hired a violinist and ordered fifty cookies and had flowers delivered to a diner.”
He hesitated. Then reached into his pocket and pulled out something small.
“This isn’t part of the grovel. This is something else.”
It was a keyring. Three keys, different sizes, on a simple silver ring.
“To your apartment.”
“To everything.” He set it on the table between them. “The apartment. The office. The car, if you want it. No more secrets. No more oaths hidden in desk drawers. My life is yours now, if you want it.”
She didn’t touch the keys.
“I spent years building walls. Keeping people out. Protecting myself from exactly this.” He gestured between them. “But you already got past all of it. You’re already inside. This is just making it official.”
The violinist finished his piece. The diner erupted in scattered applause. The waitress refilled coffee cups, working around the roses.
She set down the bill and a large, heavy-duty shopping bag. “You folks moving in, or can I have my table back?”
Tessa was laughing, her eyes bright. She picked up the keyring and slid it into her pocket. “We’re going.”
“Hold on, hon,” the waitress said, snapping the bag open and setting it on the edge of the table. “Put the cookies and those weeds in here so you don’t drop ‘em on the way out. I put some extra napkins in there too. You’re gonna need ‘em for all that glitter.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, and he meant it. He carefully slid the heavy cookie box into the bottom of the bag and nestled the two dozen roses on top.
She slid out of the booth and picked up the glittering sign.
“You’re really taking it?”
“You bet.”
Walking back toward her apartment, his hand in hers, Gabriel carrying the bag of roses and cookies, the keys in her pocket, she stopped on the corner.
“One more thing.”
He tensed. “Yes?”
“The pink glitter sign.” She bit her lip, holding it under her arm. “Where did you even get that?”
“Knox helped me make it last night. We used craft supplies from his trunk.”
“Knox carries pink glitter in his trunk?”
“Sometimes it’s better not to ask.”
She laughed, really laughed, a sound that filled the whole street, and Gabriel decided that whatever happened next, hearing that laugh was worth every ridiculous, desperate, over-the-top thing he had done.
“I’m keeping it,” she said. “It’s covered in glitter.
You’ll find it on everything for years.” She tipped her head back to meet his eyes.
“Every time I find pink glitter somewhere it doesn’t belong, I want to remember that you sat on a sidewalk in old clothes with that ridiculous thing and waited for me. ”
He pulled her closer, the bag crinkling between them. “I’d do it again. Every day for the rest of my life.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t let go of his hand either.
They reached her building and went upstairs. She unlocked her door, stepped inside, and held it for him. He followed her into the entryway and set the heavy bag of grovel supplies on her table.
She turned to him and said, “Lucy is going to be insufferable about this.”
“Probably.”
“She’s going to say I told you so.”
“Almost certainly.”
“And Devney is going to cry.”
“She does that.”
She went quiet. Then, softer: “Your mother never liked me.”
He went still. “No. She didn’t.”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, the only opinion that matters to me is yours. I told her that on Tuesday, sitting in her living room, holding a teacup. She didn’t love it. She also didn’t argue. She knows better now.”
Tessa exhaled, long and slow, like she was letting go of something she had been holding for days.
“I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“But I want to try.” She squeezed his hand. “That isn’t forgiveness. Not yet. But it’s—“
“A start.”
“Something like that.”
She was smiling. Small and tentative and real, and he found himself smiling back.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m going to say it a lot. Possibly too much.”
“Probably.”
“You should prepare yourself.”
“Gabriel.” She leaned toward him. “Shut up and kiss me.”
He did and for the first time in five days, she felt like she could breathe again.