This office used to be his dad’s, and you’d think Gabe would have wanted to make it more his own when he took over, but he hasn’t changed a single thing. It’s still the same dark cherry desk and the same family pictures on the wall. He hasn’t even taken Jon’s name plate down.
Part of me thinks he’s still holding out hope that his dad will walk through the door and tell him to get his happy ass out of his office.
Gabe does a really great job with the club and the shop, but he has some big shoes to fill, and I think it’s eating him alive.
He leans back in his chair. “You know, I thought there’d be more.” Running his hands over his face, he pauses them for a moment to press his fingers into his eyes. “What the fuck is the point of any of this shit.”
He does this spiral from time to time.
“You need a break. You eat and sleep this place. It’s not healthy.”
He scoffs like that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard.
Crossing my legs, I sit up straight. “Wanna run away?”
He fights a grin, twisting his mouth to the side to bite the inside of his cheek. “Where to?”
“Wherever.” I shrug. “Pick a place and we’ll go.”
“What about Tucker?”
I don’t want to admit it to him because I know he’s about to see straight through me, but I mutter, “I think that’s about run its course.”
He gives me a sad smile. “Lil?—”
Throwing up a hand, I say, “Nope. I’m fine.”
“You’re not your mom.”
His words pierce my chest with a sharp, fatal strike. My smile falls. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
My real dad died when I was a baby. My mom met my stepdad when I was little. Before him she was a bright, free-spirited schoolteacher. She loved life—or at least that’s what everyone said.
He took that all from her. He didn’t want her to work, so she quit. He didn’t like her going with her friends, so she stayed home. He didn’t like the way she dressed, or how she did her hair, so she changed that too.
He watered down everything that made her who she was. I didn’t know it until she finally got away from him when I was fourteen, and she started finding herself again. I met a whole new Mom, one who smiles real, genuine smiles and sings along to the radio in the car.
I’ll be damned if I ever let a man take who I am away from me.
“The right man is gonna love you for who you are.”
I meet his stare with stinging eyes. A beat passes before I burst out laughing. “Are you actually trying to givemerelationship advice? You must have lost your damn mind.”
“You’re a pain in the ass,” he says.
Itiskind of funny; we have opposite problems. I keep running from anything that resembles love, and he’s been stuck wishing he’d held onto it—to her.
Sometimes I wonder if we should just build a life together, but I don’t think that’d satisfy either of us. I do love him, but not the way he deserves.
Or the way he needs.
He needs deep, soul-piercing love.What he had with her.He probably doesn’t realize that, though.
I stand and put my hands on my hips. “Alright, enough moping. Let’s go dance.”