“Never,” I say before shutting her up in the only way I know how to right now. I can’t stand hearing those words come from her beautiful, full lips. Tara is stiff and rigid against me, her lips unmoving under mine. She is fighting what is between us, but that’s okay because I love a good fight, and she is worth fighting for. I gently bite her bottom lip, and a small sigh comes from her. Her lips turn pliant, and she finally starts kissing me back.
Her hands latch onto my shirt, and she pulls me forward. We tumble onto the bed, and the springs groan under our combined weight. I didn’t come here to fuck her, so when she tries to take my shirt off, I break the kiss and hold my weight off of her. “Gabe,” she pouts, and I can’t help but smile at the sight of her under me.
“Are you done running from me?”
My question takes a second to break through the lust that must be consuming her because she just stares at me for a second before her eyes slide close. “I’m not running from you per say. There is just so much hurt between us. Plus I have to do?—”
I move fully off her and sit back, but I wrap my hands around her calves and pull her until she is straddling my lap. “You are running from me. Last night–”
Her blue eyes narrow. “Last night meant nothing. I took back something that was stolen from me. I might trust you with my body but my heart… That’s another story.”
Hearing her say that what happened between us last night meant nothing kills me. “Princess–”
“You hurt me, Gabe. What they did to me that night was horrible and painful, but what hurt the most was seeing you look at me the way you did.” A single tear falls from her closed eyes, and the sight of it kills me. It steals the air from my lungs and restricts my heart.
“Princess, I’m so fucking sorry for the way I acted that night. I told you that I had a shitty ex, but I never told you what happened.” I take a deep breath before telling her about Lindsey. “Lindsey and I were together for three years. We met when she hired us to install her security system for her. I fell fast and hard. I wanted to ask her to marry me by the end of our second date, but she always talked about how she had planned out her life in detail. Meet someone, wait four years to get married, then have kids. She spoke about her dreams, and I wanted to make them all come true. So I waited.
“I thought we had the perfect relationship. Hell, everyone thought we had the perfect relationship. Until one night when Lindsey wanted to go out to some club that had opened in Matthews. It was some hot, upscale club where you had to be invited, and Lindsey scored two invites somehow. I really didn’t want to go because we had just finished a tough job and I was exhausted, but I agreed anyway. Before I continue, there is something you need to know about me. I have a brother, well half brother. He is a few years younger than me.”
Tara’s eyes fly open. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a brother?”
My jaw locks when I grind my teeth at the thought of him. “Because out of everyone in the world, he is the one person I hate more than my mother. His name is Chase. Helen had him when I was four years old. When I found out about his existence, I asked Grandmama if she knew. Of course, she didn’t. The year Helen had him she disappeared, and no one knew where she was. Unlike me, Chase had a good father who gained full custody of him right after he was born. He didn’t know Helen had another kid either.”
Tara’s hands rise to cradle my face. I’m sure she sees the pain that Chase and Lindsey’s betrayal caused written clearly in myeyes. “You don’t have to finish the story. I can figure it out. I just don’t?—”
I shake my head. “No, I do. The night we went out, I lost Lindsey in the crowd and spent thirty minutes trying to find her. When I finally did, she was pressed against the wall in some dark hallway fucking some random guy. I pulled him off her and proceeded to beat the shit out of him. The cops were called, but I was the only one arrested. Nick bailed me out, and when I got home, I found the same guy sitting on my couch. Luckily, Nick was there and kept me from killing him.
“It turns out that Chase had shown up two months prior to all of this like you did with Reed, but I never knew because I wasn’t in town. Lindsey said she invited him to stay and wait until I got home. She said she didn’t mean to fall for him, but she did. I had no clue that they had been together for those months. I stood there completely silent as she told me she was leaving me and marrying him the next day. She had already planned their whole wedding while still living with me.”
Tears are racing down Tara’s face, but it’s also hard as stone showing how pissed off she is. “It took me a while to see all the clues that I was too blinded by love to pay attention to before. The biggest one is that we hadn’t had sex during those months. I thought it was because they were the busiest for our business, but now I see the truth. She didn’t want to cheat on him but had no problem leading me on. I sold the house and lived with Reed until I was able to build our house. So when I came out of the bathroom and saw that guy with his arm around you?—”
“You saw her. It doesn’t make the words you spoke to me that night go away or lessen their hurt, but I understand. Gabe. I just don’t know how to trust that you won’t see her again when you look at me.”
“I’m so fucking sorry, Tara. My love for you is a world apart from what I felt for her. I just freaked out because the thoughtof losing you…” I pause and take a shaky breath. “Losing you almost killed me. Please let me help you make this right. All of it. My actions. Their actions. Everything you went through that night. God, I love you, Tara, and don’t want you to push me away like I did you. I’ll do whatever you need me to do in order to prove that I will never look at you and see her again.”
I hold my breath and pray that she says she loves me, too. That she loves me and that I can stay by her side for the rest of my life because if not, I don’t know how I’m going to survive.
Chapter
Eight
TARA
Fuck it.
Fuck it all.
The hurt.
The pain
The voices telling me to pull away.
That I have to do this all on my own.
When I was little, this was what I wanted. Someone fighting for me. Someone begging to stand in my corner. Did I want it to come as a result of what happened that night? Hell no, I wouldn’t wish what I went through on Valarie. But it is what it is, and I can’t change it. What I can change is the uncertainty and self-doubt swirling in Gabe’s deep eyes. We both know that once trust is broken it’s not easily fixed. But he is sitting here begging me to try. To give him the opportunity to fix it. If Dean and Ned never came into my life the fight we had wouldn’t seem so big. Dean and Ned aren’t Gabe’s fault. What they did to me isn’t his fault. It’s not my fault either.
Truth be told, I have loved this man with my whole heart for two years, but I’ve let my need to see the people who hurt me pay keep me from being with him. Like I said last night I’m sick and tired of letting what happened hurt the people I care about.
