43. 43 Parker
I'LL BE
Gigi sat across from me, a plate of untouched pancakes in front of her and a dumbstruck look on her face. I reached for my water glass and covered my smile with it.
The silence while I ate had given me time to think. Time to absorb. Time to lay the facts out and examine them alongside the torrent of feelings rushing inside me. Somewhere around the second slice of bacon, it hit me: Gigi was Grand Gesturing me.
I hadn’t correlated the plot points of a romance novel to my relationship with Gigi until tonight, too lost in the heartbreak of it all to hope there was something more on the other side. The happy ending my resident romance authors had waxed on about. But now, with Gigi sitting across from me, bathed in the warm light from the over-the-top candelabra between us, I knew how this story was going to end:
Happily.
Gigi still stared at me, her brown eyes glowing nearly bronze in the candlelight. Poor girl had no idea what was going on. Clearly, she was prepared to grovel her perfect butt off, and I’d thrown a fork in the gears.
Putting my glass down, I shifted in my seat. She blinked, like a hypnotist’s experiment coming out of a trance.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a cute little wrinkle on the bridge of her nose. “For a minute there, I thought you said you forgave me?”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. “Oh, yeah.” I shook my head and frowned. “You must’ve misheard me.”
She nodded, almost disguising the disappointment on her face. “I thought so. I mean, why would you say that when I haven’t even said I’m sorry yet? Not that saying sorry automatically means forgiveness. That’s not a guarantee. I just meant—”
“Gigi.”
She stopped talking, eyes finding mine. There was a deep flush staining her cheekbones, and her eyes sparkled with emotion. My heart swelled against my ribs. I love you, I thought. I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little nervous.”
I started to reach across the table for her hand, but the giant candelabra got in the way. Gigi winced as I slid it to the side. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s too much, I know.”
“It’s perfect.” I covered her restless hands with mine. It was the first time we’d touched in weeks. A glimmer of rightness ignited beneath my fingertips and my eyes flew to hers. The way her pupils dilated told me that she felt it, too. Holding her gaze, I turned her hand over and let our fingers tangle.
Silence fell over us then, and the space between us was charged with memory. With hope. With a delicate thread of optimism, golden and glittering as it tied our hearts together.
I found my voice first. “You were so good,” I said, “the other night. Like, I’ve seen you perform before, but that night…you were astonishing.” Shaking my head, I tried to put into words the things I’d felt, watching her onstage. My eyes burned as the emotions resurged. “All I could think was, I made the right choice. Leaving her was the right choice. ”
“Parker—”
“I don’t think I was wrong.” She was going to protest. I could see it in her eyes. Reaching across the table, I pressed my finger to her lips for the second time that night. She stayed quiet. “If I had let you choose me, you wouldn’t have been on that stage. You know it’s true. I know it’s true. And it’s okay.”
I watched her thumb trace over the palm of my hand, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. “I thought that was it. I tried really hard to convince myself that it was fine. That I was fine. But…” I shook my head, piecing the words together. “Everything happened the way it was supposed to.”
She frowned, confusion scrawled on her face. “But I hurt you.”
“I hurt you, too.” I squeezed her hand. “And it sucked. A lot.”
“I’m sorry.” She shifted in her seat, eyes narrowed. “I’m not following. Why was both of us getting hurt the way it was supposed to happen?”
“Because if I’d let you choose me that night, you would have never said yes to the band. And, if I had let you choose me, it would have been yet another decision made for me.” I pulled my hand from hers and wrapped a lock of hair around my fingers, twisting. “I had to take control of my life. You had to own yours. Otherwise, we’d have just been…” I trailed off, searching my brain for the right words. “Two half people searching for someone to make them whole.”
Gigi looked me over for a long moment. I shifted in my seat, sure I’d said too much. I was good at saying too much. Finally, she grinned, shaking her head. Her smile, the first of the evening, was brilliant and it knocked the air right from my lungs. “You’re completely hijacking my grand gesture, you know that?”
I laughed. “Sorry, sorry.” Straightening, I folded my hands primly on the table. “Continue.”
She narrowed her eyes, mouth twisting to fight off another smile. “Why, thank you for granting me permission to perform my own grand gesture. You know, the one I spent days planning.”
“You’ve been planning this for days?”
Her expression said duh and I laughed again. “From the moment I lost you in the crowd at The Ledge.” She picked up her fork and raked it over the top of her pancake, spreading the melted butter over it like a breakfast Zen garden. “I looked for you, you know. But your sneaky ass had already left.”
“I wouldn’t say sneaky . I walked out the main entrance and everything.”
She glared. I grinned.
“ Any way.” Putting her fork down, she took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I spent days figuring out what to say to you tonight. Huge, sweeping apologies and promises never to hurt you again, and whatnot. But now that you’ve taken the wind out of my sails…I got nothing.”
“What—"
She stood. “Guess that’s it. I gave it the old college try.” Looking down at me, she added, “Word of advice, Samuels. Next time someone tries to grand gesture you, maybe let them?” Then, she booped my nose and turned away.
“Wait!” I grabbed her hand before she could get very far. “No, come back.”
Facing me again, she quirked her brow. “Yes?”
“I don’t want a next time. I want this time.” I turned in my seat and wrapped my other hand around hers and pulled her closer. “I want you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gigi stepped between my knees, dark eyes fixed on my face.
“Yeah.” Dropping her hands, I wrapped my arms around her waist. Her hands found my face, cradling it in her palms as her thumbs traced over my cheekbones. My eyes fluttered. “Grand gesture me.”
“Oh, now you want my grand gesture,” she said, but her voice held no conviction. Instead, it was soft, husky.
“Gigi,” I murmured back, and she laughed.
“Okay.” Dropping to her knees, she knelt before me. I wound my arms around her shoulders, threading my fingers through the short hair at the nape of her neck. Her breathing stuttered as she leaned into my touch. “Okay,” she said again, as if she was hyping herself up. Then, she fixed her eyes on mine.
“I love you, Parker. I don’t know when it happened, or how I let it happen, but I love you.” Her dark eyes burned bright as she said the words, warming me straight to my marrow. “I haven’t been in a place to let people in for a long time. I’ve kind of…put myself on an island in the middle of nowhere, no life rafts, no communication with the outside world. I thought that was what I deserved.”
I inhaled, prepared to disagree, but she narrowed her eyes, stopping me. Pressing my lips together, I nodded and let her continue.
“After my dad died…I kinda shut down. It was all about survival. One day to the next. It hurt to exist. It hurt to breathe. But I deserved the hurt, you know? It was my punishment for letting my dad down. For failing my brother.” She blinked, and a single tear slid down her cheek. I wiped it away with my thumb, letting my touch linger.
Her shoulders lifted and dropped beneath my arms as she took a deep breath, then let it out. “So,” she continued, “when you and I…well, it was easy for me to convince myself that I didn’t deserve it.” Her eyes met mine, gleaming with an entire universe of emotions. “I didn’t deserve you.”
I wanted to disagree, to tell her that she deserved the whole darn world and I wanted to hand it to her. Right now. This very moment. But she quirked her brows, silencing me before I could speak.
“But,” she went on once she was sure I wasn’t going to interrupt. “After many, many, many conversations with the people in my life, it would seem that I was wrong. That I was punishing myself for the past, for things no longer in my control.” She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Something, something, martyr, something, I think was what Vaughn said.”
I laughed. “That sounds like him.”
“Right?” She grinned, a flicker of light in her eyes for the first time since she began speaking. “I do such a good impression.”
Sliding my hands over her shoulders, I found hers and linked them together in my lap. “He’s right, though. Probably, everyone else is, too.”
Her lip curled. “Ugh. Don’t tell Luke, he’d never let it go.”
Laughing again, I pulled her closer, parting my knees so she could settle between them. She laid her head on my chest. My heart swelled. “You’ve clearly heard it all from everyone, and I’m sure I’ve got nothing new to contribute to this topic, but I will say this.” Tilting her face up, I met her eyes. They were a calamitous sea of emotion. I wanted be the calm in her storm. Always. “Your past mistakes do not define who you are now. You can spend forever repenting for something everyone else has forgiven you for, or you can just…be happy.”
She nodded, blinking back tears. I fought the urge to pull her in tight against my chest, and never let her go. But I wasn’t done.
“And another thing,” I said, going for stern. Probably, it was more like a bossy toddler. “Doing the things that make you happy doesn’t mean you’re selfish. Sing with the band if you want. Run the bar. Love me. Or,” I leaned in, giving her a conspiratorial wink. “Do all three.”
A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. I pressed a soft kiss to it. “You can have it all, Gigi. I want you to have it all.”
“But what if—”
“No.”
“Okay, but how do—”
“Nuh-uh.”
She huffed out an exasperated sigh and I grinned. Looking me over, she shook her head, grinning back. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m right,” I shot back. “Now shut up and kiss me.”
Laughing, she leaned in, pushing her fingers through my hair. Her nose brushed mine, her breath tickled my lips, but she didn’t move any closer. “I do love you, you know,” she murmured, her words vibrating through me at the most perfect frequency.
“I know,” I said. “I love you, too.”
Then, her lips were on mine, fierce and hungry. Winding my arms around her, I pulled her closer, until we were heartbeat against heartbeat, soul seeking soul. I kissed her back with everything I had in me. Every want, every need, every dream of our future. Because it was there—a future with her. With Gigi. With this woman who had knocked my life off its axis. And I wanted every single second of it.
THE END