Gabe shrugged. “It happened, that’s all I know. Delilah said he was in an insane rage when he called her. He must’ve trashed the place himself. Your husband’s a walking time bomb.”
“Don’t call him my husband.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t understand what happened to him. It’s like someone flipped a switch after the wedding and he turned into some kind of … I don’t know, tyrant or monster or something.” I averted Gabe’s eyes.
“He always was,” Gabe said. “It’s just harder for him to hide it now. He’s cracking under pressure. He has a lot of money, something to prove, and a lot of fucked-up shit going on. Dangerous mix.” He let go of my hands and returned to sitting next to me on the couch. It was all I could do not to slither my way on top of him and lay there. “It’s not just the Helene thing, or the fact that I’m back in town.” He rubbed the top of his head. “His business is going to shit.”
“How could all this have happened so quickly?”
“It didn’t. It’s been happening for a while. Ever since he got the Blue Note.
He had some investors helping him out, but over the past two months some of his biggest backers have bailed and it’s getting contagious. They see the numbers. The food quality has dropped. The service sucks. It’s not the place it used to be. Its reputation might keep it going for a few years, but as of now, it has a bigger threat.”
“What’s that?”
“Bells.”
“Bells?” If I wasn’t an emotional wreck, I would have laughed.
“Yep. Bells. That’s where two of his backers are right now, pouring in their money. The Blue Note’s becoming a shithole and Bells is becoming a high-class lounge. Live music, better food. Turns out, Uncle Jacks and I don’t make such bad partners. I even cleaned up my act so I could look good for all our other future investors.” He indicated his new haircut.
I studied his face for signs of mischief. That sly smile. Those gleaming, green eyes. He didn’t need a haircut to look good. He’d look good wearing a trash bag. “Why are you doing all this?” I asked. “Why, really? You never cared about opening a restaurant or any of that before.”
He leaned forward, his face serious. I smelled his cologne. Saw the hardened lines of his face. He spoke deeply, evenly, and with vengeance: “He married the woman I love.”
Blood rushed in my ears. “Yes,” I said, my voice cracking. “But that woman had to say yes first.” After months of telling me all the joys that I’d experience as Mrs. Cort Belrose, Cort had said, ‘Do it, Cat. Do it.’ And I said, ‘okay.’
I looked away. Don’t cry, Cat. Don’t cry.
“That’s true,” Gabe said. He placed his hand on my cheek. That warm, strong hand had touched every part of my body over the years and now that it was on my face again, I felt like melting at his feet. He turned my face back to him. “But I don’t blame her. I don’t hate her for it. I could never hate her. Every breath I have, every moment I live, is a testament to her. There is not a second that goes by that she’s not part of me, The fact that she said yes doesn’t change that. If I had been here—if I had never left—she would have never been asked, and she would have never said yes. Cort knew that. He knew I was in the way, and would always be in the way. He knew there was nothing he could do—nothing he could promise you—that would ever change that.” A shade seemed to fall over his eyes. There was something in that look that was more than anger or vengeance. It was hatred. A look of pure hatred as his mind shifted back three years. “That’s why he had to get me out of New Orleans. That’s why he befriended your father. Got me kicked out of my piece of shit shack. Shut me out of jobs.”
When all this had happened years ago, he’d told me it was Cort purposely pushing him out of the way, and I hadn’t believed him. I even asked Cort. We were good friends then. He said Gabe was drinking too much, which he was, and that he was imagining things. Cort said he had better things to do with his time than to plot against Gabe and I believed him. Besides, Cort said, I’m planning to marry Rachel. Rachel was his girlfriend at the time. I found out later that Cort never planned on marrying her.
“If you knew it was Cort doing this, why did you leave me?” I asked, placing my hand on top of his. “We could’ve figured it out somehow.”
“I believe that now, Cat. But then? Then, I was lost. My mother had been taken by the streets and I was headed that same way. You can’t get a job here once someone like a Belrose shuts you out. Your father sure as hell wasn’t going to take me in and I wasn’t going to let you support me. No, you deserved better than that. You deserved better than a loser who was on his way to becoming a drunk.” He dropped his hand. Rubbed the back of his neck. “And after the accident … after that, I knew I had to leave. I thought it was the best thing.”
“Why was it the best thing? Why, Gabe?”
“You remember how badly I was hurt,” he said.
“Yes.” I remembered it well. Gabe, bandaged, bloodied and bruised. I remembered how helpless I felt, and how sorrowful. Our world had been slowly collapsing and it seemed the hospital was the climax of it all. He’d been groggy and fuzzy from medicine. He was in pain, and Gabe was rarely in pain. He didn’t look like himself, but it wasn’t just the bruises. It was something else—something unnamable. After that, he left me.
“The doctors told me something on my second day there,” he said, his voice tense and guarded. “Something I never told you. Actually, there are a couple of things about that accident that I’ve never told you. But I want to tell you now.”
I took a deep breath and felt my heart thud, thud, thud.
“Tell me,” I said, practically breathless.
-20-
“When I was in the hospital,” he began, “I thought I’d hit the lowest point of my life. My mother was gone. All I had was you, and I let you down. I wanted to take care of us. I wanted us to build a life together. I loved you—I love you still, you know that. All I cared about was being a good man for you, giving you everything you deserve in life. But I couldn’t find work. Your father was kind to me, but he’d remind me, every chance he got, that Cort was the better choice for you. I started to believe him.”
My father. Champion of the Belrose family. Hypocrite.
I bit my bottom lip to stop the tears.
I listened.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I drank. It made me forget. It was a coward’s way out, I knew, but I felt hopeless. Defeated.” He leaned forward on his knees and entwined his fingers. “Meanwhile, that motherfucker kept getting richer. I knew he was the one shutting me out. I knew he was the one who made me lose my place off Magazine. He was behind everything. He was always jealous. He wanted you. But not because he loved you. If you had chosen him when we were kids, he would’ve never given it another thought. He’s not capable of real love unless it’s love for himself.” His hands flexed. “He just wanted to win. He couldn’t stand the thought of a woman like you choosing someone like me, and he wanted to win. To prove himself. To prove he had a dick, I guess, since I had no problem reminding him that he didn’t.”
I thought of Anna.
The dickless wonder, she’d said.
“Then I was laid up in the hospital after getting jumped I figured, my luck couldn’t any worse. My life is getting lower and that pussy Cort Belrose’s life is getting better. And I couldn’t convince you that he was a prick. You felt bad for him. That’s how you are. You see the best in people. You always do. Even with this bullshit with Helene. I don’t know her that well, but I called her, told her that I’d help her however I could. She told me how you were toward her. I said, That’s my Cat.” He smiled, his face lit with sad nostalgia, then continued: “I couldn’t convince you that Cort wasn’t that sad little boy anymore, so I decided to give up—not on us, but on exposing Cort for who he really was. I made that decision in the hospital. I started to see things more clearly. Or so I thought. That’s when the doctors came in.” He paused. Looked at his hands. Rubbe
d the stubble on his face. “They said they wanted to talk about my injuries. I told them to fuck off, I already knew what my injuries were, but they said there was something else.”
Oh, god.
In a span of a few seconds I imagined a hundred horrifying scenarios: Gabe, with a bleeding brain that’s shortened his life; Gabe, with a fractured spine that could crack any second; Gabe, only months to live.
I wasn’t prepared for what he said:
“I can’t have children.”
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. From shock, maybe, or dumb confusion.
“What do you mean?” I said.
He was still looking at his hands.
“I can’t have children. The injuries. The beating. They were severe, all over my body. Everything healed, but you can’t heal that.”
I moved closer to him and put my hand on his back.
“I decided then, I needed to leave. Get out of New Orleans,” he said. “I needed to let you live your life. You deserved everything. You still do. You deserve happiness, riches, children, motherhood. I had nothing to offer you then. Nothing.”
He covered his face with his hands.
I laid my head on his shoulder. It felt natural. The way it should be.
“You should have told me,” I said. “I wouldn’t have left you. I never would have left you.”
“I know. That’s why I left. I thought I was doing it for your own good. It sounds so fucking patronizing, I know, but it made sense to me.” He uncovered his face and turned to me. His mouth was inches away. “I just wanted what’s best for you. I wanted to save you.”
“From what?”
“From me,” he whispered.
I felt like I could almost hear and feel his heart beating. It seemed like our hearts were beating together, in time. I inhaled all of him—his scent, his love. His mouth lingered there. All my other thoughts disappeared. The world faded into a passionate glow where there was only Gabe, loving me, wanting me, knowing me. Nothing else mattered. It was like I was sixteen again, only now we were adults and knew, with even more conviction and clarity, that our love could truly conquer all.
“I dare you to kiss me,” I whispered. I leaned forward. My lips brushed his. “Please.”
He wrapped an arm around my waist and slipped a hand behind my neck.
“You want me to kiss you?” he said. His voice was gruff and hungry.
“Yes. Please.”
His breath fell gently on my lips. My body erupted in lustful shivers. Everything inside me quivered.
“No,” he said. He pulled back. He released me. His face was flushed, so I knew he wanted it. “No.” He stood.
“Why?”
“Not like this. Not when you’re vulnerable. Not the same day that you left him. Sometime. But not now. The next time I kiss you, I want it to be just us. Me and you. No sad memories. I don’t want us to forget things together. I want us to start things.” He smiled. “And we will.”
“Yes.” For the first time in months—the first time since he left, actually—I felt uplifted and light, as if I had no troubles in the world, although I had plenty.
“Besides,” I said. “You haven’t finished.” I crossed my legs and leaned back, trying to ignore the fact that my body was warm and ready for him. “You haven’t told me why you came back, or how you got all that money.”
“Well.” That shadow fell over his eyes again. “After I left, I was in a bad place for a while. I wanted to die. I almost did. Then I found out some information that turned it all around. I found out Cort was the one who hired the men who jumped me that night.”
Cort.
That monster.
“They were hired to kill me, but couldn’t quite get the job done,” Gabe said. “Which is unfortunate for Cort, because once I found out he was behind it, I decided that motherfucker had to pay. Even if I died doing it, that man was gonna pay for everything—and then some. If payback’s a bitch, then I was gonna be the biggest bitch he’d ever meet.”
The expression on his face chilled me. I wanted to ask how he found out it was Cort, but the question never escaped my mouth. Maybe part of me really didn’t want to know.
“I spent the next few years of my life making sure that payback was gonna happen,” he said. “And when I found out about the wedding, I decided it was time I came back to New Orleans.” He studied my face. “But destroying Cort isn’t the only reason I came back.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“For you, of course.”
The warmth from our near-kiss returned. I shifted on the couch until I was next to him again, close enough for him to ravage me.
I wanted him to.
Oh, I wanted.
“Then make love to me now,” I said, quietly. “Or kiss me, at least.”
His face turned serious. “I love you, Cat. I love you so much it hurts. I feel like you’re a part of me, like every time I take a breath, you’re taking one too. And I’ll make love to you, believe me. I want to and I will. But not because of sad memories. Only when it’s the start of something else.” He kissed my forehead and said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
When he left minutes later, I was still basking in those words, still drowning in the presence of Gabriel Augustine, still drunk on my passion for him.
When my feet finally landed back on earth, I realized something:
He never told me where he got the money.
-21-
I slept until mid-morning and only woke up because my cell phone buzzed under my pillow. I’d fallen asleep on the couch sometime after Anna left for her shift and apparently she’d spread a blanket over me and tucked a pillow under my head without me waking up.
I expected the call to be Cort – he hadn’t called once since I left, much to my relief and surprise – but it was Jules.
“Word on the street is that your life sucks right now,” he said. I could tell from the sound of his voice and the familiar hum of background noise that he was walking in the Quarter.
I rubbed my groggy eyes and sat up. It was ten-fifteen. Anna’s purse was on the counter. I was usually a light sleeper, but I’d slept through her shift and didn’t even budge when she left, came back or covered me with a blanket. That’s what weeks of crying and stress will do to a girl.
“Well,” I said. “You could say that.”
“So what are you doing? Crying into your pillow?”
“More like sleeping into my pillow.”
“Well, wake up, little Susie. It’s a new dawn and a new day and I’m taking you to brunch.”
I was about to protest that I wasn’t even dressed then I realized I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday, although they were crumpled from sleep. One good thing about the Quarter, though: Not many people cared about crumpled clothes.
We met a few blocks away at Pierre Maspero’s, which was crawling with tourists but still comfortable thanks to an unusually beautiful day—low humidity, mild heat, a nice breeze blowing off the Mississippi.
I told Jules everything, even though he’d already heard some of it. I didn’t ask from where. New Orleans was a small town in many ways, especially in the restaurant business, and even more so in the Quarter.
Jules watched me over his steamy cup of coffee and nibbled at a fruit plate as he listened with no judgment. That’s what I loved most about Jules. I could tell him anything and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash or think I was crazy. I could tell Anna anything—and I did—but there were times when she’d roll her eyes and tell me all the ways I was screwing up. That came in handy in a best friend, but sometimes I just wanted to vent and hear how I could make things better, without having to go through the whole I-told-you-so process.
After I finished my tale of woe, Jules leaned back and lit a slim cigarette. “Have you seen him?”
“No. I’m surprised, actually. Cort hasn’t called or shown up or anything.”
“I wasn’t talking about Cort,” Jules said, matter
-of-factly. “I was talking about him.”
“Oh.” I pressed my lips together. “Yes. He came to Anna’s yesterday to check on me.”
Jules raised his eyebrows.
“Nothing happened.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Except he told me why he left. He told me what a monster my husband was, although I should have already known. I wanted to kiss him and have him carry me away, but he refused. He’s a better person than me.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said, smiling.
“To be honest, I am. I figured the two of you would be on each other about two minutes after Cort was out of the picture. Not that I’d blame either of you.”
“Cort’s not exactly out of the picture, yet. There’s a lot to do between now and then.”
He nodded toward my hand. “You’re not wearing that ten-pound rock. That says a lot.” He took a sip of coffee. “When are you gonna start calling lawyers?”
“Soon. Today.”
“I’ll give you some names.”
Jules knew lots of lawyers in town, because many of them spent happy hours at the Blue Note, getting drunk and telling stories about nameless clients. Jules would goad them by guessing who their clients were, but the lawyers were tight-lipped. Old New Orleans attorneys with thick accents and thicker wallets, all ready to help some damsel in distress. Like myself.
“I don’t know how much I can afford, now that I’ll be Miss Martel again,” I said. “Miss Martel doesn’t have any money.”
“I’m sure there’s a fabulously wealthy suitor who would be more than willing to help you out.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m doing it on my own. This is about me and my mistake, and I want to correct it.”
“Fair enough, you little principled thing.” He paused. “So what did Gabe say?”
“He said he didn’t want to start anything until it was just me and him, without Cort in the background.”
“Have his feelings for you changed?”
I thought about the way Gabe had looked at me. “No.”
“I got a wake-up call for both of you, Cat—it’s always been just you and Gabe. Cort is a non-issue. He’s a little maggot in the circle of life.”
An Easy Dare Page 14