Chapter 19
Gabe didn’t know how to describe the past hour or so. They’d extricated themselves from each other, gotten dressed in silence, and then started talking about the loss of electricity.
As if nothing before had actually happened or mattered. He tried to believe that, but Monica was quiet and withdrawn as they lit candles and collected blankets and figured out what to eat for dinner that wouldn’t require electricity.
They spoke, he supposed, but not really. You could speak to someone without ever communicating a thing, and that was definitely what they were doing.
Which suited him just fine. Down to the bone, in fact. Rather cut his tongue out than do more damn talking.
He slapped together a sandwich, though he didn’t feel hungry in the slightest. But all he’d eaten all day were cookies, and he was certain that’s why he felt hollow and unsteady. A man needed a damn protein in his life.
“Did Revival lose power?” Monica asked, he supposed in an effort to make stilted conversation that wouldn’t begin to change the fact things had shifted. Somehow. Someway. And they were stuck in this godforsaken Christmastime hellhole of a cabin.
“Don’t know.”
“You haven’t talked to anyone?”
“Texted about being stuck. Just asked if everything was okay up there.”
“And?”
He maybe knew what she was getting at. He definitely ignored what she was getting at. “They said it was okay.”
“What did you tell them?” she asked, eyes glued to her sandwich making.
“About what?”
“About where you were…” She trailed off, blinking down at the bread. “About where you are. Surely they’re worried.”
“Does it matter?”
She frowned at him, making eye contact for the first time since everything had grown decidedly weird. It was almost comical to think he’d once thought her cool and blank. Oh, she could pull that off, but there was always this…glimpse of her true emotions if he only looked. It all swirled there in her eyes. Pain, hurt, confusion.
He refused to give in to that. He was his own man, and her emotions were her own business. Seeing hurt there didn’t cut him to ribbons—he simply wouldn’t let it. So he held her gaze, then gave her a very deliberate smile.
He’d have been lying if he’d said he didn’t enjoy the way her face changed over to anger. He didn’t love that it was him angering her, but he loved that she had sharp, tough, near-violent pieces hidden under all that calm strength.
Just like him.
He bit into his sandwich, but it tasted like ash.
“Actually, it does matter,” she said, some strange tone to her voice. “If you’ve told them you’re here, you know what they’ll think.”
He shrugged, chewing and swallowing, no matter how tasteless the food was. “Maybe I lied.”
“Maybe you did,” she returned, all calm and cool, but something simmered underneath. Part of him wanted to make it boil. Oddly, it wasn’t the same part of him that wanted to get the hell out of here. They were like two confusing sides to the same ugly coin.
“But we should have our stories straight, shouldn’t we?”
There was something too sweet in her voice, too innocent. It made it a lot easier to pretend than it would have otherwise. “Guess we should.” He smiled at her again.
She fisted her hands on her hips, failing so hard at keeping all her usual calm that his smile turned a little more genuine.
“What did you tell them?”
Weird to be ashamed that he’d done both. Told a truth and a lie. Weird to be ashamed at all. What did any of this matter? Not a thing. There was no future here, and that meant any razzing they suffered at the hands of their friends would be short-lived.
“Told them I was here.”
Her hands dropped to her sides, her mouth hanging open for a second.
“I said I’d picked up a package in town for you for one of Colin’s gifts, came over to drop it off, waited for the snow to clear up, but it just kept getting worse and worse until I was stuck.”
She worked her jaw back and forth, and she managed that mask of distance for about a second before the swirling emotions were back. “You said all that in a text?” she asked, her voice rough.
He wouldn’t let that sway his tactic. “More or less.” Decidedly less.
“Do you think they’ll believe it?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What does matter, Gabe? Anything?”
He raised an eyebrow at her, standing there while her breath heaved in her chest, anger swirling around her. He didn’t understand it fully, but some sick, twisted part of himself that would never deserve her wanted to push her further. See her explode spectacularly.
“Maybe it doesn’t.”
“Oh, what utter bullshit.” She spun around, stalking into the living room. He thought for a fleeting second she was going to go down the hall and hide herself away in one of the two private rooms.
Instead, she whirled around again, pointing a demanding finger at him.
“I’m going to tell Becca, and Rose, for that matter. They’re my friends. The only friends I have here. Actually, aside from my mother, they’re my only friends period. I’m going to tell them. I have to tell them the truth, everything that happened, or I’ll go a little nuts. So…”
“So?”
“So? So I’m going to tell them!”
“Okay.”
“Don’t you have something to say?”
He bit into his sandwich, spoke around it. “No.”
“But—”
“You were the one who didn’t want to tell anyone,” he said, not wanting her anger anymore, because it was spurring his on. If he let his boil over…well, things could go wrong. All wrong.
Like earlier. Too much feeling. Too much want, and not the sexual kind.
“You agreed!”
He shrugged. “I didn’t care.”
She hefted out a breath, some mix of exasperation and some emotion he didn’t understand. Would prefer not to.
“I care,” she said, her voice grave, still standing all the way across the room.
“I know, hence the whole ‘let’s not tell anyone’ thing you suggested.”
“No,” she said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest, holding his gaze. “I mean I care. About you. About this.” She waved her hands up in the air. “I have an obnoxiously big and uncomfortable amount of care.”
The panic was back. From this morning when she’d been sleepy and beautiful and he’d had this idiotic flash of desiring all the things he didn’t want, perfectly imagined in front of him. As if he wanted them so desperately he could conjure them out of thin air.
“No,” he said, putting the sandwich down carefully.
“No?”
He lifted his gaze to hers because he needed to make his point. Once and for all, so she couldn’t keep needling him, getting under his skin, changing who he was. “No.”
“Gabe, that wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.”
“I reject it.”
“You can’t…” She threw her arms up in the air. “I could punch you.”
He spread his arms wide. “Go ahead.”
“I wish I could be like you,” she said on one of those whispers that ripped out his soul and stomped on it a few times. “So damn untouchable, aren’t you?”
“That’s me.”
She laughed. Bitterly. “Do you think I’m that dumb, or are you just that good of a liar? Or do you just lie to yourself? You don’t seem like the type to believe your own lies, but I’ve been wrong about you before. I could be again.”
He didn’t say anything, though he had to clamp his jaw shut to make sure he didn’t. She wanted to think him untouchable, well, he’d prove it. All night long, just like this if he had to.
He’d survived far worse hells than Monica looking like she was about to cry, saying shit about him that was probably true.
She stepped toward him though, one foot, then the other, and he didn’t feel as good about his chances. He might have survived a grenade, a crash, war, but Monica Finley with that soft look in her eye, desperate and a little lost, was somehow worse.
“How do you do it? Lock it all away? I wish I could do that.”
“Ignore it and it’ll go away,” he managed to croak. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with bullies?”
“Bullies, maybe. Emotional issues, not so much.”
“We don’t have to figure it out. Sometimes in life, you don’t figure things out. You just go on and nothing is figured out. That’s life.”
She paled and flinched as if he’d reached out and backhanded her.
She shook her head. “You have to figure things out to move forward.”
“No, you don’t.”
* * *
Monica could only stare at him. She wasn’t even sure what the hell they were talking about anymore, but…
She had to figure it out. She had a ten-year-old who depended on her, patients who needed her. She had to figure everything out, make sense of it, analyze it, and then decide on the best course of action.
Except when it came to caring about Gabe, loving him. God, she was an idiot for loving him, but she did. There was no best course of action here. A relationship with him undermined her role as therapist at Revival. It just did.
Added to the fact he didn’t want her. Not her or her care, and she wasn’t stupid enough to throw herself at a brick wall.
He wasn’t her father. There was no PTSD to cure, so she’d have the person she’d once known back. There were only all these impossible roadblocks.
She jumped when her phone rang. With shaking hands, she pulled it from her pocket. Mom.
She felt so perilously close to tears, but she had to answer. She had to hear how Colin was doing and talk to him herself and…
She swiped to answer the call and swallowed, realizing she had to keep the tears out of her voice. If she wasn’t careful, her mother would sense it. She’d demand to know what was wrong. What could Monica possibly tell her? I don’t know.
Not figuring something out sounded like her absolute worst nightmare and yet…here she was, not figuring it out. She had no answers, and the thing she wanted most in this world right now, to cry to her mother and ask for advice, just wasn’t possible.
“Hi, Mom. How’s it going?”
“Good. How are you?”
“Well, we’ve had a bit of a blizzard. Power’s out. I’m good on provisions and lots of firewood to keep me warm, but my phone is getting low, and I don’t know when… Just in case I don’t answer tomorrow, don’t get worried.”
“A blizzard? And you’re alone stuck in that cabin? With only firewood?”
She glanced at Gabe, standing there staring at her with that inscrutable gaze. No, she wasn’t alone, but a part of her wished she was. Alone was better than not knowing what to do. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
“Well, you save that battery for emergencies. We can talk more later.”
“Let me talk to Colin first.”
“Save your batt—”
“Mom. Please.” She needed to hear Colin’s voice. She needed something to remind her she was not the utter failure and fool she felt like right now. She needed someone who loved her. Someone she loved, and it wasn’t complicated at all. He was hers and always would be.
“Hi, Mom,” Colin’s voice said into her ear.
She nearly choked on a sob, but she kept it inside. Swallowed it down and turned away from Gabe, so he couldn’t watch her desperately try to keep it together. “Hey, baby. How’s it going?”
“Awesome. Grandpa took me to the shooting range, and I got to shoot his big gun. He said next year he’ll take me hunting.”
“Oh. Joy.” But it was normal—her father pushing the boundaries of what she wanted Colin to do. Normal and good. She took a deep breath as Colin kept talking.
“And Grandma let me help make the cookies and didn’t get mad at me like you always do.”
Well, that one hurt.
“Good. I can’t wait to be there and see you.”
“Oh, and they bought me a bunch of books and I’ve read like three.”
“You…read three books.” She was forever trying to get Colin to read. She’d tried bribing and ignoring and offering a million incentives and…
With her parents, he was happily making cookies and learning to hold a weapon and reading.
So much for not feeling like a failure. “I miss you.”
“Okay, Mom. Grandma says I gotta go.”
“I love you.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.” She looked at the phone, the call already ended, and indeed her battery was at 20 percent, so she should save it.
He’d been with her parents for a day. One and a half days and he was someone else. More than happy without her.
The tears started spilling over, and she tried to breathe through all that. She was being silly. Overreacting. She tried to think back to those parenting handbooks she’d read a million times over. She tried to think about what she’d tell a patient who was having similar feelings about their parenting.
But she couldn’t think beyond the persistent whisper. Failure. Failure. Failure. She couldn’t find her rational center over this twisting stab of pain and guilt. She did always yell at him when they baked together because he never listened. She tried too hard to get him to read. If she’d been chill about it…
A sob escaped her mouth, and she slapped a hand to it, trying to muffle the sound. Trying to hide what an utter mess she really was.
“I’m just going to…” She started moving toward the hallway. She’d have her cry in Colin’s bedroom.
Another sob and it was hard to make her feet move. She should run and slam the door and hide and—
Gabe’s hand touched her shoulder. She tried to jerk away from it, but he simply turned her to face him and then pulled her into his chest. A hug. Firm and comforting.
This time, she couldn’t stop the sobs, no matter how hard she tried to breathe through them or swallow them down. She could only sob against the hard, warm comfort of his chest.
“Shh,” he murmured, stroking her hair.
She sucked in a halting breath. “He doesn’t need me,” she sobbed into his chest.
“Come on. He’s your kid. Of course he needs you.”
“He’s having more fun there. He’s…reading. He’s… I’m failing.”
Gabe’s hand kept stroking her hair, a slow, calming movement that somehow made the sobbing ease, even if her tears didn’t.
“He’s with his grandparents. Grandparents are always more fun. They’re probably stuffing him with sweets and never making him sleep. He’s having the time of his life. You can’t compare.”
She looked up at him. He seemed so…sincere. So genuinely trying to make her feel better. It wasn’t that she was surprised he’d try to make her feel better, because he was kind. It was just that she didn’t think it would come from words and hugs.
Still his arm held her to him, there in the entrance to the hallway, his other hand at her hair. “My grandma died when I was like eight or something, but she used to sneak me candy and let me watch things I wasn’t supposed to. Grandparents are the fun ones, the ones who make your kid resent you. That’s how the world works.”
She laughed at that between the tears. “My grandma used to let me put sugar on my Rice Krispies, even though Mom specifically told her not to.”
“See?” He let her go, but then he was wiping her cheeks delicately. His big, rough hands being unreasonably gentle. “No reason to cry.”
She wanted to cry for a whole new reason, but that would be fatal or something. It would just kill her.
“What if I can’t get out?” she asked. “What if we’re stuck here for weeks? What if I miss Christmas with him? I’ve never missed a Christmas with him. Never not been with him on his birthday or mine or Valentine’s Day or even Columbus Day. I have never, ever been away from him for even a day.”
Gabe shrugged, and his expression was all kind regret. “You’re doing it right now. You’ll have to do more than that someday.”
She frowned. “That’s a mean thing to say.”
“No, it’s a practical thing to say. If you don’t accept that time marches on, you can’t march with it, and then you miss everything.”
“That’s very wise.” She blew out a breath. “I haven’t cried in front of anyone like this since…” She shook her head. “I can’t even remember when. I was alone when I found out about Dex, and I always hid if I was going to have a jag.”
“Blizzards are a bitch.”
She managed a laugh at that too, and she took note of the way he was starting to edge away. His instinct might have been to comfort, but he wasn’t comfortable with that instinct.
It saddened her to think it had probably been beaten out of him, if not literally, then figuratively.
She made sure to look him in the eye even though she was embarrassed by her outburst. She was more grateful than embarrassed, or at least, she’d try to be. “Thank you.”
“It was nothing. Just a little sense to stop the hysteria.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know you’re trying to piss me off now. Please don’t. You did a nice thing. Just say you’re welcome and move on.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then they stood there, looking at each other, like a few too many other moments since they’d been stuck. Those sparks everyone had been poking at them over. Because it didn’t matter that her head hurt from crying or that she loved him and that was stupid. When she was with him, breathing the same air as him, she wanted him.
God, how she wanted him. “We still have two days,” she whispered.
He watched her, quietly and stoically for the longest, most horrible minute. “Wouldn’t want to waste it.”