by Rye Hart
“I don’t know,” I said. That thought hadn’t occurred to me yet, but I didn’t want to concentrate on it at the moment. “All I know is that I love him. I love Gabriel, and I didn’t intend for any of this happen, but it did. I want to be with him.”
“What the fuck?”
I jumped in surprise to hear Alyssa’s voice. She stood at the end of the hallway leading into the living room, staring at the both of us with a shocked expression. A cold fear rose into the back of my throat while I rose from the couch on unsteady legs.
“Alyssa,” I started.
She backed away from me with a shake of her head. Her eyes glittered angrily as she stared at me with disgust.
“Did I really just hear you say that you’re in love with my dad?”
I glanced over at my mother who sat rigidly on the edge of the couch. I didn’t know what to say, but I watched as the realization spread across Alyssa’s face. She took another step back from me in disbelief.
“What the fuck is going on?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – GABRIEL
The sound of Alyssa’s angry voice echoed down the hallway. Panic shot straight through me, and I quickly pulled on a shirt and rushed down the hall to find Alyssa backing away from the living room. She twisted around to look at me with eyes full of disgust and anger. Tears welled in there, too, as she shook her head at me.
“Please tell me none of what I just heard is true,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “Please tell me that the two of you aren’t--”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. I looked over to where Penny stood with tears streaming down her cheeks as well. No more lying. I couldn’t utter one more lie about my relationship with Penny. It only had hurt everyone around us in the process of trying to keep it a secret.
“Try to hear me out, baby girl,” I said as placidly as I could. “It happened. Neither one of us wanted it to happen, but things developed between the two of us. It’s true that we want to be together.”
Alyssa’s eyes fluttered shut while a horrified expression crossed her face. She twisted around to compose herself, and when I tried to reach out to rest my hands on her shoulders, she jerked away from my touch. My heart collapsed in the center of my chest at the coldness radiating off her. I knew the only reason she reacted like this was because something painful waged a war inside of her.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I said. “I know that it is, Alyssa. Just trust me when I say that Penny and I never intended for it to happen like this.”
“You both lied to me!” Alyssa burst out, turning to glare up at me. “You’ve never lied to me in my entire life, Dad. Why now? Why this?”
“We were trying to figure out what was happening and what we wanted to do about it,” Penny added, rubbing her hands together in agitation. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen between the two of us, so we didn’t want to tell you until we both knew for sure what we wanted.”
“So you wanted to figure out if you were going to keep fucking each other before you told me? Is that it? Oh my God, you two are so disgusting! You were supposed to be my best friend, Penny, and you have been fucking my father?”
“Alyssa,” I interjected when her voice raised a pitch. “Please, calm down. Let’s sit down and talk about this rationally.”
Alyssa swatted my hand away from her. Tears were dripping down her cheeks as she took a step back from me.
“No, I’m not going to sit down. I’m leaving. I don’t want anything to do with either of you right now.”
She yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind her. Footsteps hurried down the hallway before the ding of the elevator doors echoed.
“Oh my God,” Penny cried out, cupping her face in her hands. “I should’ve known things would go down like this. She hates us both now.”
“You need to talk to her,” Nikki said, rubbing at Penny’s trembling shoulders. “The both of you together. It might help to have you both calm her down because it’s a lot to take in. Trust me.”
My heart ached while I hurriedly grabbed my coat, in case I needed to chase Alyssa out into the dark night. Penny grabbed her sweater from the living room and followed me out into the hallway. She didn’t say a word as we hurried down the stairs to hopefully catch Alyssa before she disappeared.
I should’ve known this would happen. Shame intermixed with guilt while I hurried through the lobby, with Penny at my heels, into the dark, cold night. I spotted Alyssa pacing the curbside around the building with her phone in hand.
“Alyssa!” I called out. “Hold on a moment. You can’t just go running away from this!”
Alyssa looked up from the bright screen of her phone. “I can run away from this. That’s exactly what I plan on doing.”
“You need to hear us out,” I said, reaching for her hand. “I’m not kidding you, Alyssa. You need to be mature about this and talk about it.”
“Mature about this?” Alyssa repeated dubiously. “I just heard that my best friend is in love with my father. It makes sense now, all those weird interactions between the two of you. It’s fucking disgusting, knowing you two were sneaking around behind my back. The two people I trusted most in the world. I feel sick.”
“We’re both adults, Alyssa,” I said. “Nothing that happened between us deserves this sort of behavior from you. Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m in love with Penny, too?”
Her eyes widened in visible shock at that. I glanced over at Penny, who was watching us with wide eyes as well. I reached out a hand for her to take, and she grabbed ahold without hesitation. The feeling of Penny’s warm fingers against mine soothed a bit of the ache lingering in me.
“We are going to see each other,” I said, turning to face Alyssa, who shook her head. “Yes, we are. I hope that you can come to accept it, but Penny makes me happy. The one person I feel like I can be myself with is standing right next to me.”
“It’s not right, Dad,” she said. “I don’t care how much you two try to spin it, but it isn’t right. It won’t ever be right. Not to me at least.”
A taxi pulled up to the curb. Alyssa reached for the door, but stopped to look at us with cold eyes.
“You know, if the two of you would’ve been honest about this in the first place, it wouldn’t feel like so much of a betrayal. But you both lied to me. I’m not okay with that, and I won’t ever be okay with this, either.”
She pulled the door open to hop into the passenger seat. I attempted to grab the door before she could shut it, but the car pulled away a second later. Alyssa kept her face turned away from the us as the taxi drove by and exited the parking lot.
We stood together in the icy wind of the night with Penny huddled against me. She cried softly into my shoulder.
“What are we going to do, Gabriel?” she asked, her voice thick with tears. “First, my mom. Now it’s Alyssa. I don’t think she is going to be convinced as easily.”
“No,” I replied, smoothing a hand along her shoulders. “You’re right. She won’t be easily persuaded like your mom. She’s very stubborn, like me.”
“What do we do now?”
I noted the trembling in Penny’s shoulders. Rubbing at them, I steered us back in the direction of the lobby. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I knew that Alyssa needed a bit of time to cool off. My daughter, while short and sweet, had a temper when she felt threatened.
“We’ll give her some space,” I said, even though a part of me ached to hop into a cab after her. “She just needs to cool down for a little bit, is all.”
Penny glanced up at me as we entered the warm lobby to head in the direction of the elevators. “You aren’t going to go after her?”
“No,” I said, sighing painfully. “As much as I want to chase after her, I know that it will only make her angrier. She’s an adult, Penny. I can’t run after her to explain things to her every single time something happens that she doesn’t agree with. That’s just how it is.”
“I don’t want this
relationship if it is going to cause problems with Alyssa. I’m being serious when I say that, Gabriel.”
The elevator doors opened. Ushering Penny inside, I waited for the doors to slide shut before I turned to cup her face in my hands. I backed her up against the mirror hanging in the elevator to kiss her deeply, to feel a bit of something that made my heart warm over.
“I am not going to give you up,” I whispered when I pulled back to look into her eyes. “The world will have to accept it, and Alyssa will, too. That’s just the way it’s going to be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – PENNY
Despite what Gabriel believed, I knew that Alyssa wouldn’t be happy about any of this. No matter how indifferent he appeared while we walked back to the condo, I knew that a part of him hurt badly over Alyssa’s reaction.
My mother greeted us at the door the second she heard us coming down the hallway. She scanned the air behind us before pushing the door all the way open.
“No luck in talking to her?”
“No luck,” Gabriel said, stepping aside to let me in first. “I think she might need a few hours to cool down.”
“Perhaps I could talk to her,” Nikki said. “It might help hearing it from someone else.”
I glanced over at Gabriel while he closed the door. He turned to look at my mother while he weighed out the suggestion.
“You could try,” he said. “She might listen to you better than listening to Penny and me at the moment.”
“What’s her number?” she asked. “I can step in the kitchen to try and convince her to come back to talk to us.”
“Let me write it down,” Gabriel said. “I have a pen and pad in my office.”
The second that Gabriel stepped into the living room, I swept my mother up into a tight embrace. Tears filled my eyes with appreciation and relief as she hugged me back just as tightly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For everything that you’ve done, Mom. I really appreciate at it.”
“As long as you’re happy,” she said, patting me on the back. “That’s all I care about. But for now, I need to make sure Alyssa is all right. This is going to be hard, no matter what I say to her.”
“I know. She’s pretty upset about it.”
Gabriel returned from the living room with Alyssa’s phone number scribbled on the top of the notepad. He handed it over to my mother, who took it with a small smile. She disappeared into the kitchen with her phone to talk privately without either one of us listening in on the conversation.
“Let’s sit down,” Gabriel said. “This conversation won’t happen right away. I can guarantee that.”
“All right,” I said numbly.
I followed him down into the warm living room to sit in front of the fireplace. The heat of it washed over me when I took a seat with Gabriel’s arm draped over my shoulders like a protective cloak. I leaned back against his strength, and my eyes closed.
“How can you be so calm right now?” I asked quietly. “Your daughter thinks that we’ve betrayed her in the worst way possible. She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” he replied, rubbing my shoulder. “Alyssa does not have the ability to hate a single person in this world. She doesn’t even hate her own mother for abandoning her. I don’t know how I raised a kid to not have hate in her heart, but I’m pretty damn proud of that fact.”
“I just keep picturing the look on her face. She was so hurt. We did that to her,” I said, tears once again falling from my eyes. Gabriel pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “I know,” he said with a sigh. “And it kills me that I hurt my daughter like that. But I also know her, and I know that she will eventually come around.”
I tried to take comfort in those words, but it didn’t do any good. I wouldn’t feel right until I talked to Alyssa. I debated calling her myself, but I knew the call would go straight to voicemail. I had no choice but to sit and wait for whatever miracles my mother could work.
She entered the living room ten minutes later with her phone and coat in hand.
“I managed to convince her to come back,” she said. “The only thing I could get her to agree to was to talk to me first, before coming up to talk to you two.”
I sagged in relief at that, and Gabriel let out a pent-up breath of relief as well.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, nodding up at her. “I really do appreciate it. Everything that you are doing, Nikki. You’ve always been a good friend to me. Too good of a friend.”
“You were a good friend to me, too, for a long time, Gabriel,” she replied, slipping into her coat. “And to my husband.”
I straightened up to move away from the fire when the fabric of my jeans burned against my skin. “What did you do for my mom that earned so much of her trust? Clearly it’s the only thing that is getting her to accept the situation.”
“After your father’s death, she informed me that most of his money was tied up in the bank because of old debts. She didn’t know how she was going to pay for anything, so I went to the bank to pay off the mortgage on your condo. It gave her time to figure out where she wanted to go.”
“You did that?” I asked, floored by the compassionate gesture. “My mom never said a word about that.”
“She was upset at the time over a lot of things. We worked it out in the end.”
This man continued to amaze me. I leaned forward to press a kiss against his lips.
His hands fluttered up to grasp my shoulders while he returned the kiss. I pulled back after a few minutes before it could go further.
“Did you really mean what you said?” I asked softly. “That you love me, and that you want to be with me?”
Gabriel’s eyes went tender as he gently brushed a hand along my cheek. “Of course, I meant it.”
I reached up to grasp his hand. Pressing a kiss against his palm, I relished the quiet moment between the two of us. It was near midnight when the door finally opened. I immediately dropped Gabriel’s hand. I didn’t think shoving public displays of affection in Alyssa’s face was the way to go right now.
Alyssa walked into the living room with my mother right behind her. She came to stand in front of us. Anger still glittered in her eyes as she swept a glance between the two of us sitting close to each other.
“I don’t like the fact that the both of you were sneaking around behind my back,” she said. “No matter what you say, it doesn’t excuse the both of you lying to my face about it.”
“It just happened,” Gabriel said. “We weren’t trying to hide it from you. We were trying to understand it ourselves before we talked it over with everyone.”
“And this is really what you want, Dad?” Alyssa continued, shaking her head at me. “Because you know how awkward this is going to be from this point on?”
Gabriel reached across to lay a hand on my bouncing knee. “It’s exactly what I want, Alyssa. I am happy with Penny. There’s nothing wrong with me wanting to be happy, just like how you want to be happy with Scott.”
Alyssa’s lips thinned.
“Then, I suppose I have to accept it for what it is,” she said. “I’m not going to stand in the way of you two if this is really what you want to do.”
“It’s what we want. Nothing is going to change, Alyssa. You’re still my daughter. As far as I know, Penny still wants to be your friend.”
“More than anything,” I added, staring up at Alyssa with pleading eyes. “I never meant to hurt you. I told your father that if this was going to cost you heartache, then it wasn’t worth it to me at all.”
“It’s just--” Alyssa let out a heavy sigh as exhaustion fell over her face. “It’s going to take some time to get used to it. I need some time to figure things out, is all.”
“Take all the time you need,” Gabriel said.
She nodded once before leaving the living room with my mother following behind. I turned to look over at Gabriel while relief shot through me fast and hard. My heart pounded as he returned the look as well.
&nbs
p; We no longer needed to hide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - GABRIEL
I woke to the sound of my alarm. Sunlight streamed in through the windows for the first time in a few days since the constant cloud cover of a snowstorm passing through. Despite only sleeping for a few hours at the most, I’d never felt more energized as I pushed back the warm sheets and blankets from my legs. Acceptance, even if it was hesitant, had lifted the weight off my shoulders.
Even if Alyssa and Nikki both hadn’t totally come to terms with the relationship, I still meant every word that I told them both. I loved Penny more than anything in the world, and this wasn’t an ego boost for me. Everything about Penny spoke to my soul in ways that I never felt before. I had no intention of letting that go. Ever.
I padded into the bathroom to take a quick shower and ready myself for another long day in the office. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit down at my desk for a few hours while I tried to concentrate on work instead of wanting to bury myself in Penny while I could. Now that there was no fear of anyone walking in on us or finding out, I felt liberated, which only fueled my desires even more.
Alyssa’s door was still shut when I walked by, but the guestroom door was wide open. The bed was already made, too, and the bedside lamp was still on. I continued down the hallway to the kitchen where Penny and Nikki were talking quietly to one another over their coffee. I stopped when they both turned to look over their shoulders at me. My heart swelled when a ghost of a smile tugged at Penny’s lips.
“Morning,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt the conversation. Just coming in to get some coffee before I head into work.”
“You weren’t interrupting,” Nikki said. “We were just talking about what Penny plans to do after she graduates college.”
