by Andre, Bella
Gabe ignored her, crushing her to that rock solid chest with one arm as he retrieved a drinking glass from the cupboard where Estelle had always kept them with the other.
“If you knew what that wiggling was doing, you’d likely stop.” His voice was mild, but the words froze Ellie in her tracks.
Surely he didn’t mean…
Setting her down on the counter then turning on the tap, Gabe let the water run for a moment before placing the cup beneath the stream.
Ellie dared a quick peek at the front of his jeans.
Yes. He meant exactly what she thought he did.
Her mouth grew dry as, rather than offering her the cup, he pressed it right to her lips, tilting until she felt the kiss of cool liquid.
“Drink.”
Narrowing her eyes, Ellie contemplated refusing, just to be stubborn, but the fact was that the water felt like heaven on her dry throat.
“When’s the last time you ate?” Planting himself firmly across from her, Gabe crossed his arms over his chest and glared disapprovingly.
“I can feed my own damn self.” She snapped, though she continued to sip at the water. She was off balance by all the changes in the last few days, that was all. She wasn’t softening toward Dominic Gabriel. It would be a cold day in hell before she did. “It’s the heat, that’s all. I’m not used to it anymore.”
Gabe nodded, even as he tilted his head to look at her, contemplation written in his features. Ellie was bracing herself for him to bark another order at her or, worse, make her something to eat that she might be tempted to throw in his face.
But what he did instead made her come almost completely undone.
Nudging her knees apart, he pushed gently between them, bringing them almost face to face. Her pulse stuttered, then beat anew with frenetic energy as she tried to back away, found herself pressed against the unyielding wood of the cupboards.
“What the hell are you doing, Gabe?” Damn it, her voice sounded like she wanted to be kissed. This man couldn’t kiss her. She wouldn’t survive it.
He didn’t reply, nor did he push closer with touches meant to seduce, to convince.
The frantic pulsing of her heartbeat became as light as butterfly wings, brushing against the soft skin of her temple, as Gabe took one of her wrists in his hand. Her skin, a pale white compared to the gold of a man who spent a good deal of time outdoors, was threaded through with pale purple veins. The skin that stretched over top was nearly transparent, and looking at her big hand in his made her look fragile, though she knew she was anything but.
But when he traced the rough pad of a finger over the raised lines that striped her forearms, her wrists, Ellie felt brittle enough to shatter.
She tried to pull her arm away, but he locked his fingers around her wrist and held tight, even as he stroked her arm higher, tracing the crease of her inner elbow.
The way he was looking at her scars… it was an echo of an earlier time, someone with a solid family life wondering why on earth a young girl would tempt fate by sliding the tip of a knife into her flesh. Ellie felt her face heat.
The cutting… it had been a way to release some of the pain, the confusion of being abandoned by a father she barely remembered, then a mother who had never much wanted her, anyway. The grief at finding not a loving shoulder to cry on in her grandmother, but a brusque old woman who hadn’t had the faintest idea of how to deal with a young girl.
Compared with some of the things that fate had thrown her way later, her youthful angst seemed pale and insignificant. Like it had happened to someone else entirely.
“Why?” When Gabe finally spoke, his voice was low, not quiet loud enough to dispel the cloud of memories that had gathered. “Dad told me that you didn’t run away. That you were sent away. But for the love of God, Ellie, why?”
Ellie blinked. “Why what?” Of all the things she’d thought he might ask, she just couldn’t quite make this one fit.
Letting her go, Gabe wrenched away from her, his body language telling her that he was closing down. She could see the anger, a thin shield that protected who he really was.
“There’s no need to play coy, Ellie. Not after so long.” He smiled grimly, all traces of warmth gone. “Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”
Ellie felt her temper begin to rise, a hot pool filling to the brim, about to spill over. “You deserve an explanation? How in the hell do you figure that?”
She was… stunned. That was the only word for it. After his tenderness of the moment before, she’d been certain that he was about to tell her what had gone so wrong. To explain himself, even apologize, for his absence in her life when she needed him the most.
The way he was looking at her now, resentment and hurt radiating from his eyes… it set her off. How dare he feel hurt? Even if he now knew that she’d been sent away, that she hadn’t left of her own accord, where had he been? She’d still had e-mail. He wouldn’t have even had to try that hard.
“You have no right, none at all, to stand there and demand an explanation from me.” Ellie’s voice shook, the pent up emotion of a decade threatening to break through the dam she’d built, the one she’d thought was impenetrable.
All softness was gone. He had no idea, no idea, what she’d been through, and even if he’d wanted to understand, he wouldn’t have been able to.
“How can you say I have no right?” Gabe demanded, stepping closer to her, his face mere inches from her own. “You promised me, Ellie. You promised me that no matter how bad things got, you’d come to me, let me be your strength. I trusted you.”
Ellie froze in place, ice coating her rage, rising up in her throat, choking her.
“What did I promise you?” She knew what he was referring to… shortly after they’d come together, he’d made her promise, no, vow that she would never do anything stupid that would take her away from him. That she’d borrow some of his strength until she could find her own again.
But she was struggling to fit that promise into the demand he’d just made from her.
Slowly, Gabe’s sneer began to dissipate, and it was replaced with caution. “There was only one big promise between us, El.”
His use of her nickname made her heart thump, but she ignored it, tried to focus. “What… where did you think I’d gone?”
Gabe blinked once, slowly. “You tried to kill yourself. You took a bottle of pills. And once you got your stomach pumped, you ran away.”
Ellie felt the world tilt on its side, unceremoniously dumping her off into a free fall. Like a sheer drop on a roller coaster, her stomach just couldn’t quite catch up with the rest of her body.
“I never broke that promise. I’ve never tried to kill myself.” Her voice was soft, the word weighed down with disbelief. Of all the things that Estelle and Ed could have come up with to hide her tracks, this was what they’d chosen to dump on young Gabe?
No wonder he’d wanted an explanation. No wonder he’d been so furious. What they’d told him had undermined the entire foundation of the love that they’d once shared.
Just like his lack of response in her time of need had done to her. And Ellie found her knees buckling as she suddenly understood that that had probably not been his decision, either.
She looked at Gabe, saw the way the sunlight teased out a hint of softness in his face, made her see hints of his younger self inside. She should feel relief, she thought, relief that what she’d believed all of this time wasn’t true.
But all she felt was dead. Cold, empty inside a shell of ice. For a moment she considered just leaving it be, because really, what was the point of hurting him needlessly? And oh, how it hurt, even now.
But he had a right to know. And though each word scraped her throat, grated it raw and left her bleeding, she forced the hollow words from the empty body that she’d become.
“I didn’t try to kill myself. I was having a baby.”
Chapter Four
Watching the shock on Gabe’s face made Ellie
wish she could take the words back. What good could it possibly do now, anyway?
But it was too late. It seemed like it was always too late, at least for them.
“What?” Finding his voice, Gabe roared the single word. Ellie found herself retreating completely into herself, watching the emotions run riot over Gabe’s face as though through a thick pane of glass. “I… what… how?”
“Pretty sure you know the answer to that one.” Hugging her arms to her chest, Ellie felt a chill, wished for her sweater, but couldn’t move. Just like when her period had been late, and she’d stolen the pregnancy test from the drugstore, peeing on the stick in the cramped stall of Nina’s Diner.
They’d been careful, always. But careful wasn’t always enough. If they’d been older, had had a chance to mature, to have an adult relationship, she might have thought that that baby had simply been meant to be.
But she’d stopped believing in fate a long time ago.
Gabe still gawked at her. The disbelief, the confusion… it made grief stab through her, a wickedly sharp blade through her gut.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Having gone through a myriad of emotions, Gabe seemed to settle on anger. That, Ellie understood. In the face of confusion, anger was the easiest to use as a shield, bold and bright enough to burn reality away. “I… you should have told me.”
“I’d intended to.” Her voice displayed a calm that she didn’t even remotely feel. “But I’d just found out, myself. I’d stolen a pregnancy test from the drugstore.”
“Oh, no.” She watched Gabe suck in a breath, smiled grimly.
“Yep. Your dad caught up with me at Nina’s. Demanded I return what I’d taken. I was so stunned, I went right ahead and handed him the test. It was positive.”
Gabe shook his head, slowly at first, then faster, in full out denial. Ellie could well remember the feeling.
“But… you could have called. Something.” His hands fisted at his sides. Ellie felt like he was squeezing her heart in one of them.
“Your dad marched me straight back to Estelle’s. He showed her the test, told her his son wasn’t taking responsibility for a child that probably wasn’t his, anyway. That I was trash, and not worth ruining your life over.” The ice inside of her cracked right down the middle, giving way to a single, hot tear, which overflowed, scalding the skin of her cheek.
She’d never told this to anyone. She didn’t even like to remember it herself.
“But… of course it was mine.” Bewildered, Gabe ran a hand through his hair, paced one way, then back the other, trying to assimilate. “Why would he say that?”
“Oh, he knew.” Ellie smiled grimly. “But here, we’d given him the perfect opportunity to keep us apart.”
Rage surged through her, fresh and new at the injustice of it all.
“But… why did you go? I would have known it was… ours.” Stilling his pacing, right in front of her, Gabe reached out for her elbows, snatching his fingers away before he could hold her.
She ached for the touch.
“That wasn’t your dad’s fault. I think he would have been happy enough to let be ruined. To plant seeds in your mind that maybe I’d been unfaithful.” She’d been the one to take his virginity, after all, not the other way around. She’d earned her label as wild.
“Estelle… it was the last straw for her. She was done. She took my phone, my computer. Threw this tiny little suitcase on the bed and told me I could keep whatever I could fit in it. That night she dropped me off in front of a centre for unwed mothers in New Mexico. I had no money, nothing to contact you with. And then when I did…”
“You saw that I hadn’t contacted you.” The raw pain in Gabe’s voice was plain.
“Right. And then… I still had to try. I e-mailed. I called. I wrote letters. And after a while… I just knew you weren’t coming.” A second tear slid down her cheek. Damn it. Why did this pain never end?
“I never got any e-mails. Any letters. My dad. My mom, too, I guess.” Gabe’s eyes searched her face. “I… wow.”
Abruptly he turned, resumed his pacing. As his steps took him away, even knowing that he’d turn right back around, Ellie felt the echo of loss.
Steeling herself, she closed her eyes. She knew just what was coming.
She knew he’d circled back to her because she felt the heat radiating off of his skin. It wasn’t enough to warm her.
“Did you…” he hesitated, and Ellie blanched. “Did you have the baby?”
This… this was where the pain came. This was the memory she could never freeze out, never burn away with the white heat of anger.
She swallowed, but nearly choked on the lump in her throat.
“Yes,” she finally managed, her voice not even sounding like her own. “Yes, I had him.”
“Him?” The wonder that that one little word held made Ellie’s entire body clench. She tried to form the words, to cut him off before the potential for pain could grow any wider, but her mouth was dry, cottony, unable to form words.
Gabe huffed with impatience as she lifted her water glass to her lips, sipped, let the moisture pool on her tongue. “Ellie. Talk to me. We… what happened to him? Does he… does he know about me?”
If Gabe had been disgusted, if he had agreed that he might not be the father, if he had shown terror at the thought of a child that was part him, part her might be wandering around in the world, it would have been so much easier.
The hint of excitement, of disbelief that he showed instead… it was a new wound sliced right over top of the scar that never quite healed. Ellie parted her lips, and was barely able to force any words out.
“Yes. Him.” Her grief, her rage was too big for tears. It had been then, too. She’d stayed awake for days, staring at the wall, packed so tightly with grief she was numb.
And when the first shard of ice thawed, her entire being had cracked.
“Did you… was he adopted?” Gabe’s words were stilted, but the excitement she could sense beneath almost killed her.
“No.” Ellie swore she could feel her very soul tremble, and though she tried to control it, she found her arms wrapped tightly around her torso, rocking herself back and forth in search of some kind of comfort.
She knew, though, she knew only too well that the comfort she needed never came.
The blood drained from Gabe’s face, and in that second she knew that he understood. Still, she owed him the words.
“He died.” She closed her eyes; she didn’t want to see his reaction. For so long this pain had been hers alone, and sharing it now made it feel heavier rather than halved, as it should have been.
The sound of footsteps made her eyes fly open, and she watched helplessly as Gabe strode toward the door that would take him back downstairs, back out of the shop.
No, not helpless. Never again.
But it still hurt, to watch him walk away. And when he stopped, pressed his forehead to the worn wood, she was foolishly relieved.
Finally he turned around. Ellie wrapped herself in ice once again, eyeing him dully.
“I don’t know what to say.” He finally admitted, and disappointment drove the knife in deeper.
That was it? That was all he had?
Inhaling deeply, she reached for the cruelly edged anger that was never all that far away for her. If she paused for a moment, she knew she’d think about how it wasn’t fair to expect the same level of grief that she felt. He’d only just found out that their baby boy had even existed.
He’d never seen the tiny flutter of a heartbeat on an ultrasound. He’d never felt those little feet kicking against her ribcage, the discomfort almost a wonder.
He hadn’t been there that awful day, when she’d gone to the hospital, two days overdue and equal parts thrilled and terrified that she was due to be induced.
He hadn’t felt the disbelief, the shock when the doctor had sadly informed her that the baby had died in her womb.
He hadn’t been forced through the mind shatter
ing pain of childbirth, knowing that there would be no outraged howls as their son sucked his first breath into those tiny lungs.
And he hadn’t held that small, impossibly still form to his chest. Hadn’t looked at exquisite lips gone ruby red from lack of oxygen, or tufts of hair as dark as his own, or pea sized little toes that had curled inward slightly, as if he’d been fighting to get out.
He hadn’t wondered what he’d done, how he’d made a child die inside of his body. Hadn’t felt his breasts swell with milk that would go unused.
He hadn’t singlehandedly pulled himself out of the mire of depression and self- destruction single-handedly because time continues to march on.
“I want you to go now.” Ellie felt herself begin to shake. Whether it was because Gabe’s response lacked the intensity of everything she herself still carried inside of her, or because telling him had opened that wound again…
She couldn’t look at him anymore. He would forever be a reminder of that little life that had been lost.
And she was angry. So angry. He hadn’t had to go through all of that pain. And she hated him for it, much the same way she’d once hated other mothers for having healthy, living children.
“Ellie.” Gabe’e expression was unreadable. Probably he wanted to offer her some comfort.
But even though it hadn’t been his fault that he’d stayed away… it was still too little, too late.
“Go.” Turning, she pressed her hands to her temples, tried to will away her pain. She heard him step closer, hesitate, and then walk toward the door, the echo of his booted steps quieting the further away he got.
Numbly, she threw the deadbolt for the upstairs door, then made her way to the bathroom that had once been the only place she’d had any privacy at all. Turning the hot water on full, she added just a trickle of cold, and then in a fit of pique, tossed in a handful of the bath salts that smelled of the slightly musty talcum powder and perfume scent that Ellie would forever associate with Estelle.
She watched the water slosh against the stark white enamel of the basin, watched the steam curl around her. Suffocating her with memories.