CHAPTER THREE
Caitlin
“You’re something between a
dream and a miracle.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It’s not real. People don’t come back from the dead. This is just another horrible dream. It isn’t real.
This. Isn’t. Real.
My head spills out an endless, silent litany of despair, but my heart is shattering with happiness. Every cell in my body is catching fire, shining so bright I could illuminate a universe, because Gabe is alive.
He is alive and I’m never, ever going to let him go.
I pull him closer and he presses his lips harder to mine, kissing me with the hunger I’ve missed so much. Our tongues tangle and his taste floods my senses and it is the best taste, the sweetest, most miraculous taste. It breaks my heart only to heal it and break it all over again, but I don’t care. I don’t care that this moment is so beautiful that it hurts. I don’t care about anything except the fact that Gabe is in my arms.
We hold each other so close my ribs feel like they’re bruising, but it still isn’t close enough. I need to be closer, I need to thread my spirit through his bones so tight no one will ever be able to tear us apart again.
“You’re here,” I whisper against his lips. “You’re really here.”
“I tried to find you, but I couldn’t,” he says, his fingers digging into my skull, that hint of discomfort enough to confirm that this isn’t a dream.
Gabe is alive. Alive.
“She told me you were dead,” I sob, clutching at his shoulders when he tries to pull away, refusing to let his body move more than a few inches from mine.
“What?”
“Your mother. She told me you were dead,” I repeat, the words coming faster. “I didn’t want to believe her. You hadn’t been admitted to any hospital, and none of the funeral homes had your body. So I broke into Darby Hill, looking for clues, but I found an email, and ashes, and then your father sent me a letter telling me I shouldn’t come to the funeral.” I pull in a shuddery breath, but I refuse to start crying again.
“I don’t understand.” Gabe’s brows pull together. “Whose funeral?”
“Yours. They had a funeral. For you,” I say, knowing I’m rambling, but too keyed up to stop. “Or they faked a funeral to make sure I stopped looking for you. I don’t know. I have no idea how they could do this, how they could—”
“Hold on a second.” Gabe blinks and uncertainty flickers in his ice blue eyes, those eyes I’ve dreamed about so many times, but have been positive I would never look into again. “You think my parents faked my death?”
“They did,” Sherry pipes up, reminding me that we have an audience. “I know it sounds crazy, but I was there. I saw the letter your dad sent.”
I glance up to see Sherry standing behind Gabe with the kids gathered around her. Sean and Ray looked stunned, Emmie still seems sleepy from the nap we took in the van on the way here from the airport, but it is Danny’s expression that catches my attention. Danny is staring down at me with an “oh shit” look on his face I haven’t seen since the time I caught him drinking one of Dad’s beers when he was eleven years old, and lit into him with enough fire and brimstone to make sure he hasn’t looked sideways at an alcoholic beverage since.
I can’t imagine what has him so spooked, but then his eyes shift to his left and my gaze follows, and there she is—my big sister, Aoife. She’s wearing a gauzy floral sundress, and practically glowing with health. She looks more like a kindergarten teacher than the strung out mess I remember, a transformation that, with Gabe back from the grave, is too much for my brain to make sense of.
Our eyes meet, and a nervous smile flickers at the edges of her lips.
“Hey,” she says. “Should I come back later? This seems like…a weird time.”
My first instinct is to tell her to go and never come back—we’ve managed for four years without her, and I have bigger things to deal with—but then I realize she must be here for the wake. No matter what a shit mother and big sister she’s been, I can’t very well tell her she’s not allowed to mourn her father.
“Can you give me a couple of hours?” I ask in a tight voice as Gabe helps me to my feet and stands beside me. For a moment, I feel the loss of his touch like a physical blow, weakening my knees, but then he takes my hand and my knees firm up again. I look up at him, holding his gaze as I tell Aoife, “There’s a lot going on right now.”
“I understand,” she says, then adds in an upbeat tone. “Would it help if I took the kids with me? We could catch up, give you two some privacy. Maybe I could take everyone for ice cream, if we can find a place that’s open this early?”
I open my mouth to say “hell no,” but Sean is already shouting that he wants two scoops of mint chocolate chip, and Emmie is smiling up at Aoife, clearly willing to accept this stranger as a friend if she’s offering ice cream. Emmie discovered a passion for raspberry sorbet a few months ago. Since then, she has been willing to eat any number of previously reviled vegetables in order to earn her scoop of dessert after I’m finished cleaning up dinner.
She, of course, has no idea that the woman offering to buy her a treat is the mother who abandoned her. The mother who never called, sent a single email, or offered so much as a dime to help cover the costs of raising a child. The mother who has no idea that her daughter has struggled to meet so many developmental milestones because she was using drugs and drinking for four months before she realized she was pregnant. For years, I’ve wanted to tell my sister all of it, to tell her how deeply she fucked up, and watch her face crumple as she realizes what a waste she is.
Now, I just want her to disappear. I don’t have time for Aoife, or anger, or anything else, but Gabe.
“I’ll go with them,” Sherry says, obviously sensing that I don’t want Aoife left alone with the kids. “You two take all the time you need.”
I nod, silently thanking her, my heart flipping in my chest when she smiles and tears rush down her cheeks. She knows how monumental this is, and I know she’s as happy for me as if it were the love of her life who had just been resurrected.
“Okay, guys. Let’s get buckled up.” Sherry herds the kids toward the van before turning back to Aoife with raised eyebrows. “You want to meet us at Two Scoops?”
“Sounds perfect. Meet you there,” Aoife says, starting toward a silver car parked at the curb. It’s only when she turns that I notice the telltale roundness beneath her dress.
I realize she’s pregnant, and my breath rushes out like I’ve been punched. The pain of losing Gabe’s and my baby hits all over again, made fresh by the realization that I’ll have to tell him what happened. I’ll have to tell Gabe that I lost our child, that he was a boy, and that I loved him so much it hurt, even though he was dead before he left my body. I have so many things to tell the man I love, so many awful things, but the awful things are now suddenly bearable because he is alive.
Alive.
The word keeps exploding in my brain, destroying everything I thought I knew was true. But it is the best kind of devastation. It’s a flood wiping the earth clean, giving me a chance at the life I was so certain I’d lost.
I turn back to Gabe as Sherry pulls the van out of the driveway, staring up into his face, memorizing the slope of his cheekbones and the way his dark lashes flare around his eyes and his hair falls over his forehead. I don’t ever want to look away. I want to stand here staring until this feels real, until I know he isn’t going to disappear the moment I turn my back.
“I don’t know where to start,” I say, breath rushing out.
“It’s all right.” He brushes my tangled hair behind my ear, reminding me I must look a mess after the long flight and my nap in the van. But it doesn’t matter. The way Gabe’s looking at me leaves no doubt I’m the most beautiful thing he’s seen in ages.
“We’ll figure everything out,” he continues. “I’m just so glad you’re okay. I recovered a memory of you a couple of weeks ago that…scared me.”
My forehead wrinkles. “Recovered?”
“I had the surgery.” Gabe turns his head, lifting his thick, nearly black, hair with one hand, revealing a long, pink scar. “Since then my memories have been patchy.”
“Oh my God,” I say softly, letting my fingers brush across the puckered skin. “But you’re okay? You’re better?”
“I’m tumor free.” He drops his hand, letting his hair fall into place as he turns back to me. “But I lost most of last summer. The memories have been coming back, but it’s slow. I didn’t remember your name until January, and it’s only been in the past few months that I’ve remembered…other things.”
“Other things,” I repeat numbly, my pulse thudding unhealthily in my temple. Gabe lost most of last summer.
Lost. That means he lost the months we fell in love, and all the memories of who we were together.
I’m already starting to panic even before Gabe says—
“I know we used to steal things, but I don’t remember why.” He glances over his shoulder toward the house before continuing in a softer voice. “And then, a few weeks ago, I had this memory of my hands at someone’s throat, and an image of you, your neck covered in bruises. After that, I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” The thud in my temples becomes a pain that digs into the back of my eyes. Surely he can’t mean…
“I was afraid I had…hurt you,” Gabe says, looking down at me with shame in his blue eyes.
Shame.
Gabe doesn’t do shame. He rarely does regret. I’ve heard Gabe say he was sorry a handful of times, but I’ve only seen him genuinely filled with regret once. It was the night we killed Pitt, but he didn’t regret the murder. He regretted the lies he’d told, and that he’d let us fall so deep in love when he knew he would be dead before the year was out.
And now he’s standing in front of me, alive, but missing pieces of what made him the man he was. The old Gabe would never have thought that he was capable of hurting me, not for a second. The old Gabe would have fought for me, killed for me, died for me. I knew it, and he knew it. It was the kind of thing that went unspoken between us, so obvious that there was no need to say the words.
Sure, the old Gabe wasn’t your conventional, upstanding citizen, but he was a man who knew himself, inside and out, and made choices based on his own marrow-deep beliefs in what was right and wrong. They weren’t the same things society calls right and wrong, but Gabe’s convictions were stronger because he had worked through the big questions and come up with his own, authentic answers. But now, he seems to have lost touch with those answers, and may have lost more than just his memories of last summer.
What if he’s lost the parts of him that made him unlike anyone I’ve ever met, the parts he was so afraid of losing, he chose to die rather than risk a surgery that might leave him profoundly changed?
The thought is so awful that, for a moment, it feels like Gabe has died all over again, only worse. Now, he is alive, but with a mind that believes he’s capable of hurting someone he loves, and a heart that could never love me the way I love him. Even if he recovers his memories, the man who made them might never return.
I take a step back, tears blurring my vision. I’m turning to run—somewhere, anywhere—when Gabe’s fingers wrap around my upper arms, holding me in place with that same tender strength I remember.
“Don’t go,” he says, voice hoarse and as pained as I feel. “I know this is hard, but you have to know how badly I want to remember. I want to remember everything about you, about us, but I don’t yet, no matter how hard I’ve tried.”
He pauses, tongue slipping out to dampen his lips, making me think of our kiss, and how it had felt like our old kisses. “But I remember that I loved you, and that you were the only person who ever made me feel worth a damn. And when I kissed you just now…I felt alive for the first time since I woke up with part of my brain gone and this feeling that something vital was missing.” He pins me with that look that always made me feel like he knew all my secrets. “That vital thing is you.”
“How can it be me?” I ask, tears filling my eyes. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know you,” he insists, with an intensity more consistent with the Gabe I knew at the end of last summer than the arrogant boy I first met. “If I were blind, I would know you. You’re the reason I’ve kept going, even when recovery threatened to kick my ass, and all I wanted to do was give up. I might have lost our past, Caitlin, but we don’t have to lose our future. We can get us back. I know we can.”
I stare deep into his eyes, seeing hope and that familiar Gabe passion, but something is missing, something I can’t ignore now that I’ve realized it’s not there.
“But you don’t love me,” I whisper, knowing I’ll start sobbing again if I say the words too loud.
“But I did,” he says, his grip loosening, becoming a caress as his fingers skim down my arms to capture my hands. “I remember I did.”
I pull my hands away. “Remembering you used to love someone, and loving them, isn’t the same thing.”
“Then I’ll just have to fall in love all over again,” he says, his words almost a perfect echo of what I said last summer.
As soon as I found out about the tumor, I’d begged Gabe to have the surgery, insisting that I would make him fall in love with me a second time if he came out on the other side not remembering who I was. But now I’m faced with the reality of a Gabe who doesn’t remember why we robbed people, or the rush we felt when we were dispensing our own brand of justice. This Gabe doesn’t remember the murder we committed, or the reasons he believed we had no choice but to kill the man who kidnapped me.
He doesn’t remember the way he made love to me that last night, fucking me until we were both bruised with pleasure, while promising to love me until men were fairy tales. He doesn’t remember the secrets we shared, or that he was my first, or that he saw the strength in me when no else did, or a hundred other things that are the reasons there will never be anyone in my heart but Gabe Alexander.
I don’t know how to start over with a new Gabe, when I’m still in love with the boy I knew before, but I have to try. This thing with him has never been easy, but it is the only thing worth having.
I knew that two days ago, when I broke up with Isaac before the kids and I got ready to fly to South Carolina. I told him we were going to the Big Island for a vacation with Sherry, and that he should take the ten days we were gone to move out. I knew if he learned that Chuck had died, he’d insist on coming to the funeral and I didn’t want Isaac stress on top of burying-my-father stress. And once I’d decided to break up, I couldn’t put it off. I’d finally admitted that friendship and sweet lovemaking were never going to be enough for me, and I didn’t want to settle for less for even a few more days.
I wanted passion and fire, I wanted to walk up to the edge of oblivion and stare into the chaos on the other side. I wanted Gabe, and now, miraculously, I have another shot with the man I thought I’d lost forever. I would be a weak, pathetic, coward to shy away from that, simply because our second chance is going to be difficult.
My entire life has been difficult. If I’m equipped for anything, it’s digging my heels in and getting through the hard shit.
“You’re going to say yes,” Gabe says, his lips twisting to one side the way they do when he’s getting what he wants. “I can tell. I remember this face.”
I take a breath, and a tiny flame of hope flickers back to life inside me. “What else do you remember? I want to know everything.”
“Me too,” he says. “You want to get out of here? Go someplace private where we can be alone to talk?”
I meet his eyes and I can tell he isn’t thinking about talking, but no matter how much I’d love to let Gabe whisk me away to his father’s abandoned office, or the barn in his parents’ back forty, or some lonely gravel road so far from civilization no one would hear me scream his name, I don’t want sex to come first. Our sexual connection was amazing, but I don’t want to make love to Gabe again until I know we’re both emotionally invested. Making love to him, while he simply fucked me, would break my heart.
“We can go into the backyard,” I say. “This is Veronica’s house now, so I wouldn’t feel right going inside without knocking, and I think it’s best to let her sleep as long as possible. She left a couple of messages on my phone last night while we were in the air. Sounded like she’d had a few.”
“Is she going to notice we’re walking around outside?”
“I doubt it,” I say, leading the way across the grass. “And even if she does, she’ll be cool. She’s actually a pretty decent person.”
“Better than Chuck deserved?” Gabe asks in a wry tone.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Maybe. I don’t know. My dad was better near the end. I sort of wish I’d made more of an effort with him.”
Gabe stops walking several feet from the picnic table under the shade tree. I turn, not liking the look on his face. “What?”
His brows draw together, reminding me that Gabe is beautiful, even when he’s frowning. “I don’t know if I should tell you on the day of your father’s wake.”
“Tell me,” I say. “If it’s about Chuck, not much could surprise me.”
Gabe studies me for a moment before he nods, evidently deciding to take me at my word. “I came here looking for you last January. Chuck answered the door.”
My features flinch, as if they can’t figure out what kind of face to make in response to the bomb Gabe’s just dropped. “Wh-what? Are you sure it was him?”
“I’m sure. I asked if he knew where you were, but he said you’d run off, and he hadn’t seen you since last summer. He said you’d left the kids alone, and he’d sent them to live with his sister in Florida not long after.”
Pain flashes through my chest as I struggle to wrap my head around this latest betrayal. How could Chuck do this? How could he keep something like Gabe being alive from me? How could even he be such a complete and utter bastard?
“I was wrong,” I say, fighting to breathe past the painful knot fisting in my chest. “I guess Chuck still has a few surprises left in him, after all.”
“Maybe he thought he was doing you a favor?” Gabe asks, pity in his eyes. “I remember he wasn’t a fan of you and me.”
I shake my head. “No, he knew how much I loved you, and how devastated I was when you died.” I shake my head again, a little harder. “When I thought you’d died.”
“I’m so sorry. No one should have to go through what you’ve been through.” Gabe steps closer, pulling me against him. I go willingly, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face to his white polo shirt, inhaling the miraculous scent of him.
“Even thinking I might have lost you…” He takes in a breath and lets it out long and slow. “It was unthinkable. Especially knowing I might have been the one responsible.”
I lift my head, tilting my chin up until I can see his face. “But you had to know you would never hurt me. Never. I can’t even imagine it.”
He meets my gaze and the relief in his eyes is palpable. “I didn’t want to believe I would, but my parents said the tumor changed me. And I don’t remember why we did the things we did, the robberies and…all the rest of it. Especially the rest of it.”
I can tell by his tone he means the murder. “A man named Ned Pitt kidnapped me,” I begin softly, filling Gabe in on the events of the night Pitt lost his life and we burned his house to the ground. By the time I’m finished, Gabe doesn’t look relieved. He looks furious, merciless, the way he did when he was standing next to the mattress where we’d dumped Pitt’s body, preparing to set it on fire.
“That explains how angry I am in those memories,” Gabe says. “All I can think about is how much I want to kill whoever I’ve got my hands on. I swear I can taste blood in my mouth, but I can’t get a clear picture of the person’s face.”
“You were in a lot of pain,” I say. “You were blacking out. That’s how I found out about the tumor.”
Gabe’s eyes open wider and his lips tighten. He doesn’t say a word, but I can still read him as well as I could before.
“You didn’t remember that you didn’t tell me.” I don’t wait for Gabe to confirm my suspicion. “It’s okay. I wasn’t angry. I understood.”
He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “How could you?”
“Neither of us planned on falling in love,” I say with a shrug. “We made a promise to each other that we wouldn’t. We were only supposed to be together for the summer. Just one wild summer.”
“But we fell in love anyway,” Gabe says, meeting my eyes with a hopeful look. “Should be easy to fall in love again if we’re actually trying.”
As long as ghosts don’t get in our way, I think. Aloud I say—
“You want to come to the wake with me? I would rather not let you out of my sight, if that’s okay with you.”
He nods. “That’s perfect. Should I go home and change?”
I shake my head. “Shorts and tee shirts are fine. The Cooneys don’t stand on ceremony. Besides, I think it’s better if we keep us a secret, at least until we figure out why your parents lied.”
“And your dad, too,” Gabe reminds me, eyes narrowing as he glances toward the house. “You don’t think they were in on it together, do you?”
I frown. “I don’t see how. I doubt Chuck ever met your parents. They didn’t exactly run in the same social circles.”
“No, they didn’t.” Gabe nods, but I can tell he isn’t ready to let this go. “Still, we shouldn’t rule it out. We should start a file and keep all the information we collect together. Sooner or later, we’ll figure out what happened, and who’s responsible.”
“And then what?” I ask, excitement making my belly flutter. He sounds like the old Gabe, when we were putting together a plan for a new job.
“Then we make it clear to my parents, and anyone else involved, that they aren’t allowed to interfere in our lives ever again,” he says, a dangerous note in his voice that makes my heart join in the fluttering.
Maybe the old Gabe and the new Gabe aren’t so different, after all.