by Vivian Lux
“That’s why?”
“I’m free.” She leaned forward, so close I could tell that she still used her same shampoo. “For the first time since you’ve known me, I am not beholden to anyone but myself.” She brushed her hand along her side. “This is me. The real me. And I miss you, Gabe.” A bright, fierce light danced in her eyes. “I miss us, and more than that, I miss what we could have been.” She slipped her palm into mine. “I want to start over again. The two of us. I want to have something real with you.”
“Noelle.” My tongue was thick.
“Please don’t say no, Gabe.” Her voice caught. Noelle had cried plenty of times when we were together, but for the first time I understood that these were her real tears. “Please don’t leave again. When you walked away without letting me explain, I wanted to die. I knew how badly I’d hurt you, and I am so sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, standing up. She shook her head, a mute no no no, and my heart wanted to leap from my chest. “Noelle, I want you to know I’m sorry too. For not keeping you safe when I should have.”
“Gabe. Gabe, please.”
I swallowed. The hurt from seeing her like that burned like fire, even years later. But her words hadn’t extinguished the blaze. Everly had.
I touched her hand, wondering if there was anything there at all, and when I had her little wrist closed in my fingers I felt it.
Nothing.
“Noelle, I am sorry—”
Her shoulders slumped.
“—but I don’t love you.”
“Gabe.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Thank you for giving me closure. Thank you for coming all this way to check on me.” I felt the corner of my mouth tug a little. “I always did wonder how you’d look in Crown Creek.”
She was crying freely, but she had a proud lift to her chin when she spoke. “How do I look?”
“Out of place,” I said. “This isn’t the place for you. I’m not the guy for you, either.”
“You always wanted me to come to Crown Creek. I came.”
“You came. I’m sorry, Noelle.”
“Where am I going to go, Gabe?”
“You’re smarter and stronger than you realize. You can go anywhere and you’ll be a huge success. You don’t need to ride my coattails, and you don’t need to listen to Bennett’s lies. You can do it yourself, okay?”
She sobbed and sagged into my arms. Her tears soaked my shirt as I held her stiffly but gently. As she cried, I made a list in my head of how I could help her, how we could take down Bennett together…but that would only give her false hope.
The only way she’d be free of Bennett was to be free of me as well. “You’re okay,” I told her, patting her gently. “You’re going to be just fine.”
She pulled back and smiled at me, wiping away her tears. I gave her an encouraging nod and then, out of habit, out of friendship, I reached up and brushed away a piece of hair that was sticking to her face.
That’s when I caught sight of Everly, standing behind Noelle, face white.
How long had she been there? Did she see us fighting?
Or had she only walked in during the embrace? Did she only see the moment I reached out and tenderly touched my ex’s face?
“Everly.” I stepped around Noelle and went to her. “You’re here. I thought you had your rotation tonight.” Fuck, why did I say it like that? It only made me sound guilty.
“Gabe?” Noelle spoke up at the worst fucking time.
“We’re done now,” I snapped at her over my shoulder.
Her face, which had looked calm and peaceful, crumpled. Fuck. I was fucking this all up. “Beau!” I called. “Can you take Noelle…”
My brother moved, but it was too late. Everly had heard me. “So that’s Noelle,” she said. Her lips were completely bloodless and her hands shook. She looked on the verge of an attack.
“Baby, no. It was nothing,” I soothed. “I mean, yes. That was Noelle, but she just showed up tonight. I had no idea—” Everything I said made me sound more like a cheating fucker. “Everly, baby, I love you.”
Her eyes glazed over. She hadn’t heard me. She was looking over at Noelle, staring, even, and as she did I watched my girl shut down. “I’m such a fucking idiot. You’ve been acting so weird, but I—” Her hands went to her mouth. “You guys were together when you were using, right?”
“Right, but that has nothing to do with—”
“It makes sense,” she said faintly. Her eyes flicked back up to me. Then she lifted a proud chin. “Liar,” she hissed, and made for the door.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Everly
It made sense. It all made sense. His stupid danger-junkie risks, the distance I’d felt from him.
I kept staring, freezing up. My brain wouldn’t work properly and my hands, my fucking hands, shook. If I didn’t get out of here, I was going to break down and have a full-on attack right in front of his perfect ex.
I ran for the door and yanked it open. The rain poured down in huge, lashing sheets that soaked me to the skin in a matter of moments. But I felt nothing. I was numb.
Which was why I didn’t feel his hand on my arm until he yanked me back to him. “Everly!”
“Get your hands off me!” Shock at how roughly he was holding me made me shout. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I’m trying to tell you it was nothing. It’s not what you’re thinking, okay? Nothing happened. She just came here. Fucking blindsided me.”
“I know what that’s like!” I yelled in his face.
“I was wrong about what happened.” His fingers loosened and his eyes drifted away from mine. He went somewhere inside of him. “With her. I had it all wrong.”
The tenderness in his voice hurt the most. The sympathy for this woman who had supposedly stomped on his heart. How could he sound like this if he…
If he…
I almost choked on my tongue. “You still love her.”
He snapped back to me. “That’s not true.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Gabe, why are you jerking me around like this? Be a normal guy for once!”
He looked pissed. “I thought you understood. I’m not normal at all. I thought we cleared that up.”
“Right.” I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself. I was freezing, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me shiver. I wasn’t going to let him see me as fragile and needing help. He was going to see me as I was.
Fucking livid.
“Right,” I said again. “It’s quite clear. You’re a danger junkie who gets off on stringing along the girl next door while secretly meeting with his famous ex. Was I just a way for you to feel like you were getting away with something? Did telling me you loved me raise the stakes high enough for you to get off on your little game?”
“Christ, Everly, cut the shit! You’re spinning out.”
“No, it all makes sense.”
“For the fucking millionth time, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Really? Tell me everything is okay, then. Tell me you haven’t been pulling away from me. Tell me you haven’t been taking stupid risks these past few weeks. Tell me I’m wrong about that.”
His nostrils flared. “I’m not fucking cheating on you with fucking Noelle. Christ, you know how I feel about her.”
“You just told me you were wrong about her,” I pointed out.
He clapped his hands over his face and dragged them down, distorting his beautiful face into a tragedy mask. “You refuse to accept a single thing I’m telling you, so how the fuck am I supposed to tell you everything is okay?”
His words hit me like a punch in the gut. “So we’re not okay?”
“I’d say fucking not!” he exploded. “Jesus, with this hellacious night—you know, Everly, you knew who I was from the beginning. Unlike you, I never hid my identity. I’ve been open from the beginning.” I took a step back, stung. He threw up his hands. “Yeah! I am who I am and
if you can’t handle it, go find someone else. Someone normal.”
I couldn’t get a full breath in my lungs. I was not going to have a panic attack, dear god not here, not like this. “You don’t mean that,” I pleaded. I wanted to take it all back. I was scared. I was hurt. I was— “You don’t mean that.”
He waved his hands, looking for all the world like he was washing them of me. Of us. “Yeah. I do.” His voice was hollow, empty. “Go home. Study. Pass your boards. Go live your life. Be normal, Everly. Without me.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Everly
One strange side effect of Gabe breaking up with me was the effect it had on Rachel.
She tiptoed around me, making as little noise as possible. I kept finding little gifts in the house—a new mug for my coffee, a new shirt hanging in my closet. But it didn’t feel like sweet kindnesses from a friend. It felt like desperation, and it finally pulled me out of the self-indulgent haze I’d been living in. “Hey,” I said, knocking on her doorframe. “You okay?”
She leaped off her bed. “Are you?” There was panic in her eyes, though I had no idea why.
“I’m getting there,” I sighed. I shook myself back out of the melancholy. “You’re being jumpy as hell. What’s going on?”
“I want to be sure you’re going to be okay.”
“I’m a big girl, Rachel.”
“Of course I know that, but I thought, after a big change like this, you might want to…maybe you’d go back to your family and—”
It slowly dawned on me what she was worried about. “Rach, I’m not going to move back home again.”
She exhaled a tiny, quick breath. Then the corner of her mouth twitched. “In my church, when a man sends a woman away, she returns to her family. I have to remember that’s not how it’s done out here.”
“Gabe didn’t send me away,” I huffed. “He dumped me.”
Rachel gave me a helpless shrug. “It’s sort of the same thing,” she sighed. A wave of sadness washed over her face and I realized how much about her I still didn’t know. But she mastered it and pulled herself visibly back under control. “Remember,” she said reprovingly. “I was there. Gabe was telling the truth when he said nothing happened. Every time that girl tried to touch him, he pulled away.”
I blinked and stared up at the ceiling. The tears fell anyway. “I know. I believe him. I was only mad for a second, but that second messed everything up.” Rachel gave me a sympathetic shoulder squeeze and I reached up to press my hand on hers. “He just dumped me. Just gave up. I—I never thought he’d let me go so easily.”
Rachel made a sound, but didn’t say anything.
I shrugged. “I don’t know whether to beg him to take me back or tell him to go fuck himself.” I stood up straighter. “Maybe I’ll flip a coin.”
“Just relax for now,” Rachel said, moving into the kitchen. “I’ll make us some dinner.” She busily opened cupboards, but peered into each one with a frown. “Oh, goodness. We’re out of everything.”
“Okay,” I said, heading over to the door to grab my shoes. “I’ll go do a grocery run.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Rach, you’ve been waiting on me hand and foot this past week. You need a break.”
I grabbed my purse and headed outside, consciously swerving around the Acura and heading to Grim. I assumed Chuck from the garage would be by to pick up his loaner soon. I slid behind Grim’s wheel and started him up, feeling a pang when he started smoothly. Gabe had been so good to me. How could he drop us like that?
In the five minutes it took to get into town, I swung from sadness to anger. Anger at myself for not believing him. For falling back into the old habit of assuming no one noticed me. Anger at him for giving up. Like he’d been looking for a reason to end it, and my foolish jealousy had given him the out he needed.
That thought struck me like a boot to the chest, doubling me over so that I needed the handle on the shopping cart to stay upright. He’d jumped to the worst-case scenario far too quickly for that to have been the first time he’d thought of it. I stood in the produce section, blinking at a mound of broccoli as everything slowly fell into place. His distance. Going out to bars without me. The stupid risks to piss me off and start a fight. He’d been angling for a way out and like an idiot I’d walked right into it.
I felt so low that it made sense to see her there, only five feet away from me. Her shining blonde hair, her startlingly pretty face. Of course. Of course Noelle St. Lucia was right here in Royal Groceries almost a week later. Why not?
She stiffened when she became aware of a person staring at her and looked up slowly. Then she executed a perfect double take. “You’re Gabe’s—”
“Not anymore,” I finished for her.
Her mouth fell open like she was about to say something, but she caught herself and looked down. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said formally.
Of all the absurd things that had happened in my life, running into my ex’s famous ex in the produce section of a small-town grocery store had to be the strangest. “What are you doing here?”
She sighed and smiled, and it was so arresting that I almost smiled with her. “I…I didn’t think I’d find him so quickly, so I booked a place for…” She glanced up at me with a new light in her eyes. “You said you guys aren’t together anymore?”
Hot anger spilled into my veins. “Yeah. I hear the same about you guys,” I snapped.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That was a bitchy thing to ask.”
I studied her. She was everything I’d ever taught myself to hate and resent, but I couldn’t muster those feelings about her. Not when she looked so sad. As I watched, a tear slipped silently down her cheek and she sniffed.
I took a deep breath. Then reached into my purse.
When I handed her the tissue, she seemed startled by it, like she thought I might be handing her a live scorpion or something.
“You need to move on,” I said.
She looked up sharply. “You have no idea what—”
“No, I don’t,” I interrupted. “But I know Gabe, or at least I thought I did. And right now, all I want to do is to tell you to back off because he’s mine, but he’s not. Not anymore. So maybe I’m telling you to move on because I need to do the same thing.”
Noelle nodded and let out a long, angry sigh. “I’m still hanging around here. How pathetic is that? I actually thought maybe I’d run into him here, or maybe one of his brothers.” She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “It figures I’d run into you.”
I sniffed in amusement. “When I saw you here, I figured it was about right for how my week was going.”
Her smile was tired. “I’m not a bad person, you know. I came here because when he was hurt I was halfway around the world on tour and I couldn’t get away until now. I wanted to come so much sooner. I had visions of helping him, you know? Driving him around.” Her mouth twisted into a leer. “Giving him sponge baths.”
“I did that,” I said, a possessive heat burning in my gut. “I nursed him and helped him and in return he helped me.”
“But now you’re not together anymore?” She sounded genuinely surprised. And more than a little concerned.
I caught her gaze. “No. But that’s not your fault.” Her shoulders slumped a fraction in relief as I went on. “It’s mine.” I held up my hand. “His and mine together.” I grabbed my cart. “Go live your life now, Noelle. I’m going to do the same.”
As I strode off to finish my shopping, I only looked back on her once. And I was relieved and strangely proud to catch her setting down her empty basket and striding out the door. Of course she’d remembered her umbrella.
When I got home, Rachel wasn’t there in the kitchen waiting to greet me and take stuff out of my hands. While I was happy she wasn’t hovering over me, worried I was going to leave and stick her with the rent, it was strange that she wasn’
t there with the water already boiling for the spaghetti I’d just bought. Rachel was a stickler about having dinner on the table at six.
“Hey Rach? Want me to start the water?” I called. When there was no answer, I went to her bedroom, wondering if she’d fallen asleep. She’d be pissed if I let her nap this late.
Her door was half closed, but I could hear her voice floating out from behind it. “—never been to a party.” She paused, and I realized she was on the phone. “I’ll definitely feel safe if you and Gabe are there, yeah.”
Was she talking to Beau? Wait. Gabe?
I heard her shift on her bed and froze, but she didn’t come to the door and catch me, so I was free to keep eavesdropping as she went on. “Is he doing—He is? Yeah, she’s been a little bit messed up this week but I think…Right, no, but I definitely want to. You know—” She giggled then and I ached to know what Beau was saying on the other end of the line. “I still haven’t tried every drink on the bar menu!” She laughed, a big full-throated sound I hadn’t heard from her before. “Maybe Gabe would know. I know, but he’d know something about what it would feel like, right? He used to take pills all the time.”
My heart thundered in my ears. Disgust made bile rise into my throat, but I swallowed it back down and forced myself to step away from Rachel’s door.
I knew she’d been cutting loose, and I didn’t blame her. I knew she felt like she had catching up to do, and I’d trusted that Beau would keep her safe while she did it. She could go to as many parties with him as she wanted, but why was Gabe going too? Bars were one thing, but going to a party where who knew what kind of drugs would be available…
What the fuck was he doing?
Fear made my hands shake. I watched them tremble with the anxiety that was building. Gabe couldn’t go to a party like that. He’d be risking two years of hard work. What was Beau thinking, letting him—
“No,” I said to myself. “This has nothing to do with you.”
I hadn’t realized I said it aloud until Rachel called out from her room. “Everly? How long have you been home?” She appeared at her door looking worried. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.”
