Chapter 18

It was a strange thing to be having this conversation, Gabe thought. Not because of the place or time or even her, but simply because he’d never expressed any of this to a living soul.

Oh, he’d told his mother plenty of times that Evan hated him. Before they’d married even, he’d begged his mother to stay away from the man with cold eyes and cruel words.

She’d been lost somehow. Evan’s money or charm or sick ability to find the weaknesses in people and destroy them with it.

Destroy everything.

She cleared her throat. “Why did you… You were a boy and you… At a wed…” She shook her head as if she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

He almost wasn’t sorry for letting that part slip out. He wanted some of her horror directed at him. He might have been the injured party overall, but he was certainly no innocent victim.

“Why did I set a fire at my mother’s wedding?” he asked flippantly, but how could he be anything but flippant when he’d somehow confessed all these old horrible things to her? What was there to explain? He’d been angry, hurt, scared, and he’d lashed out in a way he still couldn’t fully remember deciding to.

“I guess you’ll have to save that question for another day, too,” he said, smiling blankly at her.

It didn’t provoke her anger as he’d hoped it would. She simply looked sad. The color had leached out of her face and her eyes looked impossibly blue. Impossibly…kind. But kindness didn’t last. Kindness, care, love—it all faded. Always.

He’d answered her first question, now he’d ask his two, and then he’d find a way to get out of here. Besides, what could this question really reveal about him if he told it right? “Have any experience with emotional abuse?”

“As a therapist, some,” she said softly.

“That’s what he did. He never hit my mother that I knew of, but he broke her down just the same. Changed her, manipulated her, until she was someone else. Someone who didn’t care about me. Because as long as she cared about me, she couldn’t give everything to him. And even then…he did everything in his power to get rid of me.”

Gabe tried not to catalogue the long list of things, and the way his mother had slowly and methodically withdrawn her support, her love, until he’d been left completely alone, used only as free babysitting and a target to blame anything that went wrong on.

But he didn’t have to give those pieces to Monica either. This wasn’t about all the things that led up to the worst, and it wasn’t even about the worst. He’d never, ever give her that part.

“When I was seventeen, I got into some trouble, and he used that. Said I had two choices, I could join the army or he’d make sure I was punished by the full extent of the law.”

Her pale eyebrows drew together. “But you joined the navy.”

“I didn’t have very many choices, but I wasn’t about to let him pick which branch of the military I went in. As fuck-yous go, it wasn’t great, but it was all I had.” He flashed a grin.

She clearly found no humor in it. “And your mother… She just…”

“She just stood by him while he gave me that ultimatum. She never said anything. Not even goodbye. He gave me the choice. I took my things and left. The rest is history.”

She swallowed, and he could tell it stuck in her throat. Her shiny eyes were a dead giveaway she’d been moved by his story.

Moved by pity. Which he wanted less than nothing to do with.

“It all worked out.” He rubbed his scarred shoulder. “Mostly.”

“Do you have any contact? Does she—”

He recoiled some, hated himself for the show of weakness. “I answered your one question, fully and wholly and with a few more details than I needed to. Your questions for today are done.” Why he sounded more raw than forceful he didn’t want to examine.

She bobbed her chin, then uncurled herself from her position in the corner of the couch and moved over to his corner. She slid her palms over his cheeks, gentle and… It felt like admiration. Like she was in awe of him.

A trick of the fading sunlight and the crackling firelight, surely.

Then she lowered her mouth to his and kissed him. It was gentle, sweet, and it said a million things words never could. He wanted to shove her away from him almost as much as he wanted that to last forever. Gentle kindness and care.

She slid into his lap, and he wanted to focus on that. Arousal only. But he was afraid if he let that take over, it would come to mean more than he could ever let it. So he pulled her back by the shoulders, ending the kiss.

“My turn.”

Again, she only nodded, still holding his face, still looking at him like she wanted to soothe it all away. As if it were possible.

“Did you love your husband?” He shouldn’t have asked it, but it had more power than his control, apparently, the need to hear the answer he already knew. If she said it, in his lap, looking him in the eye, then he’d know. He could eradicate all these horrible hopes out of his dreams.

“Yes,” she said in a whisper, fierce and so full of truth it felt like a stab. “I’ll always love him. He was a good man, and he’s why I have Colin.”

She would always love another man, a dead man, the father of her child, and all Gabe could ever hope to be was peripheral. He’d come behind the memory of a good, dead man, and the needs and wants of a very much alive child who deserved everything his mother wanted to give.

“What’s your second question?” she asked softly, and he ignored the tear that had fallen onto her cheek. She was probably crying for the dead husband anyway. Why would she ever cry for him?

“Why me?” He hated himself for this question more than the first. The first was pathetic, but at least it was a reminder. This was that hope again, that little voice that whispered, Why wouldn’t she cry for you? “Why only me since him?”

“I’m not sure I have an answer for that, Gabe.” She let out a shuddery breath. “There was school, there was Colin, and a million armors I didn’t even realize I wore, but I guess more than that… I never argued with anyone the way I argued with you. At first, that was annoying. No, it’s still annoying, but it set you apart. You didn’t keep your distance. You challenged me. People had stopped challenging me a long time ago.”

“Challenging you on what?”

“I don’t know. People treat you differently when you’re a mental health professional. I mean, you should know that, you treated me like a scourge. But usually it’s more avoidance or a careful way of talking. People seem…afraid sometimes, like I can read into things, put things together, confront them with truths they aren’t ready to confront. It can be hard to have friends who don’t look at you a little sideways.”

He knew something about that. People were careful with wounded soldiers too. Even his mother called him on occasion now that he’d been hurt. She’d never come to see him, but she had reached out. All the people he’d met since he’d been in that accident had treated him differently than he’d been treated before. It wasn’t always a bad different, but it was different.

“Gabe,” she said, her voice a pained whisper.

He didn’t know what she was asking him for, didn’t want to know. The only thing he knew was that when she kissed him, he needed to end it. Stop this. It was going way beyond his control, and he needed to nip all of it in the bud, blizzard be damned.

He sank into it, into her, instead. This kiss, this sweetness, some unspeakable thing he’d never have the words for.

Comfort. Care.

No, it couldn’t be that. So he stripped off her shirt in a quick, rough motion, but when she returned the favor, her hands were slow, gentle. She lifted his shirt off of him like he was delicate glass.

What a bizarre joke.

He maneuvered them so she was straddling him, so he could move her against him. So he could increase the pace, the heat, lose themselves in something hot and edgy instead of all this soft sweetness.

But she wouldn’t let him move fast. She slowed everything down, no matter how hard he tried to fight it. She kissed him gently, lightly, and the minute he took it deeper, hotter, she drifted away, planting kisses down his chest.

When she reached the waistband of his jeans, she unbuttoned him, unzipped him, slow, tantalizing movements. She slid onto the floor and pushed his legs apart. She looked up at him once, only once.

Part of him wanted to look away from all that, but he wouldn’t be a coward. Maybe he couldn’t extricate himself from this like he should, but he wouldn’t look away.

She tugged at his pants, and he lifted so she could pull them all the way down and off, taking his boxers with them. She ran her palms up his thighs, still watching him. He watched right back.

If she thought a blow job was going to magically fix all the cracks inside of him, grow his heart three sizes, make him run through the town yelling shit about Christmas, let her think it. Let her be disappointed.

Then, every intelligible thought in his head died because she touched her tongue to the base of him and licked all the way up. The sound that escaped him wasn’t human as she took the length of him into her mouth on something like a sigh.

Maybe there was a heaven, and maybe it felt like hell and salvation combined. The slick slide of her tongue against him, the silky strands of her hair fluttering over his legs. It was all he wanted. The heat of her mouth, the smooth glide of her between his legs.

His blood pumped harder, his breath coming in spurts, and if he let her do this, finish this, she would have that power. She’d have done something all for him, and in this moment, the moment where they’d talked about things he hadn’t wanted to talk about…

He couldn’t let her have it. He pulled her off him and up against him roughly and it was worse, having her here, looking at him with those big, blue eyes still swirling with emotions he wanted nothing to do with.

“Take off your pants,” he ordered.

* * *

Monica considered the order. Part of her wanted to fight it. He did not get to tell her what to do, and she’d never let him. She immediately bristled at the thought of letting anyone tell her what to do.

But he’d softened her completely and she couldn’t manage the bristle, the worry over her own pride or whatever. All she wanted to do was give him what he wanted. Offer him some solace even if it was sex solace and he wanted to distance himself from it. From them.

In this moment, she wanted to give him whatever he wanted. Well, and some care, which he clearly did not want. But he needed it. God, she knew he needed it. He wouldn’t be so scared of it if he didn’t desperately want it.

Taking her time, she pushed down the sweatpants she’d changed into after they’d last done this. She didn’t feel self-conscious now, even in the daylight or what there was left of it. She wasn’t worried about herself, how she might look pudgy or unsophisticated or whatever. She only wanted to give him something. Anything he wanted. No. Not just what he wanted—what he needed.

He reached for the box of condoms, but she beat him to it, grabbing a packet and tearing it open carefully. Then she kneeled in front of him again, where he still sat on the couch, taut and beautiful. She rolled the condom on, watching his face harden as she made slow, slow work of it.

His hand curled around her upper arm, and she thought he was going to jerk her up again, but he didn’t. His grip was firm, but he didn’t move her, and when she moved her knees from the floor to the couch on either side of his body, he simply held on.

With her free hand, she cupped his face again, watching his eyes as she lowered herself onto him. She sighed at the now-familiar sensation of Gabe filling her, and she had the uncomfortable realization she would want this and him long, long after this was over.

Maybe in the future, she’d be able to convince herself the only thing she’d miss was having an adult around and sex, and any guy could fulfill that role, but here and now, she knew it was him—him alone that could make her feel this way. Jagged edges and all.

His dark eyes were their usual storm, his mouth its usual grim, blank expression. So she pressed a kiss to his lips, soft and gentle as she lowered herself on him completely. She stayed there, still, her mouth gentle against his, and thought about words. How could there ever be words to express what this gave her?

She kissed his cheek, the hard line of his jaw, and then his earlobe. “I love this,” she whispered, knowing it would hurt him. But sometimes words had to hurt before they could heal.

He stiffened, his hand dropping from her arm, but then both his hands clamped over her hips. Rough and hard as he pushed himself up into her.

She didn’t relent though, no matter what sizzling pleasure zapped through her at that movement. She slid her hand behind his neck, pressing soft kisses over his face even as he tried to make it fast. Rough. It was like a fight. A battle. He wanted fast and over, she wanted slow and relishing, but they both wanted the end result. Desperately.

“Fuck me,” he growled.

She pulled back, looked him right in the eyes as she lowered herself slow, raised herself slower. She might have relented to his pace if he’d asked, if he’d said anything, but this order wasn’t one she was going to follow. Not here. Not now. “No.”

He held her gaze, pushing into her again, his gaze all fury… Except, no. Underneath that glittering anger was something else. Something she recognized because she saw it so often in her work.

Panic. Bone-deep fear. She might not understand why he felt that, but she could see it.

“Fuck. Me,” he ordered.

“No,” she returned just as forcefully, refusing to let him change the pace. She moved against him slowly, gently, no matter how hard he held her or how much he ordered.

He let out a breath, rough and ragged. His grip didn’t loosen, but some of that panic, that desperation, faded into weary acceptance.

She hated to see him weary, but she’d use that acceptance for everything it was worth. She kissed him, all lips and tongue and a sweetness she could tell he didn’t know what to do with. He didn’t need to know. He only needed to accept it from her.

She whispered his name into his ear, smoothed her fingers over his hair, over his neck and shoulders, and she moved at this deliciously painful, leisurely pace. Till she was so lost in finding the edge and flinging herself over it she forgot about giving or receiving or anything other than the way his body fit to hers, the way she felt whole and perfect here in his arms. A swelling joy that twined itself in with physical sensation of bursting, pulsing pleasure.

She held on to him through the wave, murmuring his name, kissing his skin, scarred and unscarred inches alike. And still she moved against him, waiting for him to find that same moment, that same joy.

“Gabe. Gabe, please.”

He shuddered through his release, his arms smoothing from her hips up her back until he was holding her. He leaned his cheek against her chest, and she held him back, resting her cheek on the top of his head.

Something too big and wonderful moved through her—a realization, painful and perfect at the same time. She practically laughed because she’d somehow tumbled all the way in love with him, and neither of them were ready for that, even a little bit.