Chapter Eighteen
Gabrielle
I still wasn't used to being back in my apartment. I knew that the whole reason that I had insisted on keeping it, even when I moved in with the brothers, was so that I could come back here whenever I wanted to. Yet now that I was here, I felt out of place. Over the last two and a half months I had been nomadic, never feeling as though I found a place where I could settle. The first place that I went after I left was back to the beach, wanting to rediscover the peace and calm that had been there. After three weeks, though, I knew that I wasn't going to find that solace. From there I moved on, traveling around to places that I had wanted to see but that hadn't fit into the lavish explorations that the four men had brought me on before I got pregnant. I felt like I was at once building on that concept, living each day to the fullest that I could, and preparing myself for the life that I was going to have once the baby was born, discovering things that I would want to share with her and readying myself for doing it on my own.
I had spent much of the time that I was away thinking about the type of mother I wanted to be to her. For as much as my mother pressured me and seemed to not understand what I really wanted out of my life, she never made me feel as though she didn't love me. I never once questioned if I was wanted or if I had value. Though there were times when I thought that my sister might rank a little higher than me because she was so much more what they thought of when they thought of the children they would have, they never made me feel like I didn't matter to them. That was something that I very much wanted to carry on for my daughter. I wanted her to know without even a moment's doubt or hesitation, that she was loved, adored, and valued.
I had thought that traveling would be good for me, giving me something to distract me from my thoughts, but in the last week I knew that it was time for that to come to an end. I couldn't run away from my life forever and now that there was less than a month until my due date, I needed to be close to home. I needed to start preparing the house for the baby and to be able to visit Nikki each week rather than every two weeks as I had been doing. I had thought that coming back here would feel comfortable, but after two days I was still trying to get used to moving through the space again. It almost felt as though I was visiting, like I had stepped into another life temporarily.
I stood in the kitchen, rubbing away a tightness in my belly and being rewarded with a few presses of the baby's feet. She didn't have enough room in there anymore to do full kicks and I was starting to worry that she was going to run out of space before her due date came. It already felt like it was getting cramped and I hoped that she wasn't getting too big. I was still measuring slightly larger than my due date would have warranted, but Nikki had been monitoring me carefully and said that I was still healthy, so I hadn't gone for any further tests, including avoiding another ultrasound. As much as I would have loved to see her little face, I couldn't imagine facing those memories again. She had warned me that in the last few weeks of the pregnancy I would start feeling Braxton-Hicks contractions and that I shouldn't panic if I felt them. They were just my body's way of starting to get ready for labor.
That's what I reminded myself of as I let the last of the tension ease away from my belly, and then straightened from where I leaned against the counter. I reached for a cup to make myself tea, hoping it would relax me, and gasped when I heard a loud knock on the front door. I knew that it wasn't Skylar. She would never knock like that and she would call me before just showing up at the apartment. I heard another, slightly different, knock and walked cautiously toward the door.
"Gabrielle, open the door."
Talon's voice coming through the door made me stop. I felt my chest contract and my breath catch in my throat.
"Gabrielle, come on," Jackson called. "We know that you're there."
"We saw your car in the lot," Lucas added.
"Come on, Gabrielle, open the door," Aiden said, rounding out the beseeching from the four brothers.
I hesitated, not wanting to open the door and yet wanting nothing more than to see them. Finally I stepped up to the door, knowing that there was nothing that I could do to make them go away. If I ignored them, they would just keep standing there, pounding on my door and calling in to me. The last thing that I needed at this moment would be Frank and Marie from next door coming out with popcorn to watch all of this unfolding. I opened the door enough to look out at them, but kept my body behind it.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"We want to talk to you," Jackson said.
"I don't have anything to say to you," I said, hoping that they couldn't hear the trembling in my voice.
"That's the problem," Talon said. "You seem to not have anything to say to us, but we have a lot to say to you."
My heart was pounding in my chest and I could already feel the tears starting to form in my eyes. Seeing them was so much harder than I had expected it to be. I knew that it would be difficult to see them, to be close to them, but I hadn't expected that it would take my breath away. All I wanted was to throw myself into their arms, but that was exactly what I couldn't do. Not anymore. Not now.
"Fine," I said. "But you can only stay for a few minutes. I don't have much time."
The fact that I was standing there in my pajamas probably told them that I was lying, but they had the decency to not say anything about it. I opened the door a little further and they streamed into the living room. I noticed them all focused on my belly and my hands went to it protectively. Jackson stepped forward.
"Wow," he murmured.
He reached forward and rested one hand on my belly. I lifted my eyes to him and felt the familiar melting feeling inside me.
"Why did you leave?"
I looked over Jackson's shoulder at Aiden, who was looking at me intently. "Why did you just disappear?"
"I didn't disappear," I said. "I left you a note."
"Yeah, you left a note saying that you had changed your mind. How could that be? Everything was fine the day before."
I looked down at the floor, not wanting to look at them anymore. This wasn't the way that this was supposed to be. This wasn't how this was supposed to happen.
"I didn't think that you would care," I said.
Talon looked at me, his eyes wide.
"You didn't think that we would care?" he repeated. "How could you think that we wouldn't care when you and our child just left and we couldn't find you?"
I drew in a breath, trying to stay as calm as I could. I needed to stay strong. I needed to keep myself as under control as possible and just get through this. When the baby was born, they would understand. I would explain it all to them then.
"I told you that I would let you know when the baby was born. This is just something I can't do anymore."
"I don't understand," Lucas said. "What changed? How can you suddenly say that this is something you can't do?"
I knew that we had reached a point of no return. The fact that they were standing here in my living room changed everything. I couldn't hide from them anymore. I couldn't keep trying to pretend that I didn't feel what I was feeling, or that I would be able to just put all of them behind me and move forward. That wasn't going to happen. The love that I held in my heart for them was something that I would always live with, and that meant that I had to tell them the truth. I had to be honest with them so that they could understand why I had to pull myself away from them before I was hurt any more.
"I thought that I could handle this," I said. "I really did. I really thought that I would be able to just go ahead with the type of life that we talked about and be able to raise this baby with the four of you and stay the way that we were, but I thought about it, and I realize now that I don't have that in me. I can't pretend that I am OK with just raising a child with the four of you. That's not me, and the closer that I've gotten to delivering, the more that I've realized that. I need more. I need something that I said I didn't, and that's not fair to any of you. I'm sorry that this isn't what you expected, but I'm sure that we can find a way to work it out that will be right for all of us."
That was the truth, as much as I could tell them now. There was another half that I wasn't saying yet, but they would find out soon enough. Then it would be easier for them to walk away without feeling like they were doing something wrong. It was the least that I could do for them after all that they had done for me and how much they had changed my life.
"Gabrielle, you don't understand," Talon said, taking a step toward me. "And that's our fault. We told you at the beginning of this that this was just about the baby, that we just wanted to make sure that we had a child to carry on our legacy, but that's not the truth anymore."
"It's not?"
My heart fluttered.
"No," he said. "It's not. You said that you need something more than what we agreed to, but that's not a reason for you to leave."
"Of course it is. I've known from the beginning what you wanted from me. You wanted a child and someone to help you raise it. There was never anything else…"
"There is now." I looked at Aiden. He came toward me. "Gabrielle, you are more to us than you could ever know. But that's why we're here. You leaving shattered us. It's been hard just to get through each day and the only thing that has kept me going has been the thought that one day I would be able to make it right."
"We've been absolute idiots," Lucas said. "We admit that. We never told you how important you are to us. We want to be a family. A real family. We don't just want you to help us raise the baby, and we definitely don't want you to raise the baby yourself and have us just visit occasionally. This is what we want."
Jackson reached out for both of my hands and I rested mine in them. He lifted both of them and touched a kiss to each.
"I love you," he said softly. "I want to spend my life with you."
I listened, barely able to breathe, as the other three men repeated the sentiment, coming closer to me until I could feel them all around me. The world around me seemed to be closing in, buzzing and swirling. I felt suddenly dizzy and as though I couldn't form any words. The words that they had said felt incredible as they settled into my heart, but I felt like I couldn't accept them yet. I hadn't been honest with them yet. I drew in a breath to force myself to focus and started to speak, but a sudden pain stopped me.