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"She doesn't mean it."
"Maybe, but we need to stop making excuses for her. It's time for you to tell the truth."
"What?" He blinked hard. "No. We have an appeal. Gabriel will--"
"No, Gabriel won't. Not for her. Even if he did, freedom is far from a guarantee. I want a guarantee. For you."
"Your mother . . ."
"There's more." I told him what she'd done: ordering James's death and framing Gabriel.
When I finished, he seemed to have aged ten years, his face sagging, his eyes dark with pain.
"I know that in some twisted way she was trying to protect me," I said. "But she killed someone I loved and tried to destroy someone else I care about very much. There is no justifying that."
He dipped his head in a slow nod.
"I know you feel you owe her, for what she did for me, but I think you've repaid that. You've repaid it and repaid it, and even if you still love her, you don't owe her a thing." I crumpled the remains of the tissue in my hand. "And I want you back. I really want you back."
He tore his gaze from mine. "I will tell the truth," he said. "But first, I need to let Gabriel work his magic, try to free me without turning on her."
"What? No. Gabriel's good, but I want guarantees, Dad. I need a guarantee."
"Even my telling the truth doesn't guarantee anything, sweetheart. If the appeal fails, I'll do it. But you need to give me this chance, Liv. Whatever she's done, I need to try it this way first."
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Gabriel never told me why he'd taken so long to answer my calls for help. He had come, eventually, and I guess to him that was enough. Which told me what I needed to know. That he was there for me, in his way and on his time. I needed to come to terms with that.
I was there for him, no matter what. He did not need to reciprocate. Those were our choices, and I wasn't going to change mine because it didn't match his. He had come for me. He'd come in the middle of the night, with a wrinkled and misbuttoned shirt and the wrong shoes. The commitment was there, even if it didn't match my own.
I did bring it up once, in the few days that followed. We were at lunch, and I said, "About that night, on the beach, with Tristan," and Gabriel tensed fast. I said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Gwynn sooner," and he relaxed, brushing it off with, "That's fine."
"No, it's not," I said. "But I wasn't sure how to broach it. Ricky found out by accident, and then we discussed it, and he agreed with me that you might not take it well."
"Which I did not."
"We weren't going to hide it forever. Just until we figured out how to handle it. We agreed that if there was a chance you'd find out, though, we'd tell you. With Tristan, I tried to get you out of there to explain. It didn't work. So I apologize."
He stuck his fork into a piece of sausage and pushed it across his plate before answering. "I would have liked to hear it from you, but I understand your reasoning, and I believe my reaction showed that your presumptions were correct. I handled it poorly." He cleared his throat. "What I said about the visions, that you were hallucinating. I didn't mean that. I--"
"I know."
He nodded. More sausage pushing. Another throat clearing. "The rest. When you said we were friends, and I laughed. I was angry. We are. I hope you know that."
He didn't say We are friends. Just "We are," as if the word itself was too difficult. But it was enough, and I nodded, and he changed the subject quickly, as if relieved to push past and move on.
We were friends. I've always said that being more than friends with Gabriel would be a very bad idea. That I was certain other women had hoped to break through his wall, and I wouldn't fall into that trap. That I'd be happy with friendship. But there's a difference between knowing a thing and accepting it. Now I accepted it.
--
The police dropped the charges against Gabriel. They'd lost Jon Childs when he vanished from jail a few days after being arrested. He hadn't escaped. He'd been "dealt with," as the Cwn Annwn promised. But his incarceration, however brief, had been enough for the police to decide Gabriel wasn't responsible. They'd even dropped James's assault charges--a little hard to pursue now that their chief witness was dead. So Gabriel was free and on his way to overturning Todd's life sentence, which meant business was booming, with a dozen new client hopefuls for every one he'd lost.
--
Two weeks later, I was getting ready to leave work early. I wore jeans, an old T-shirt, and an equally old denim jacket. Even my new ankle boots, while gorgeous, did not make the outfit business-friendly, or even business-casual. I'd only popped in for some job-tidying before Ricky picked me up for our trip.
Gabriel and I had come up with a "schedule of availability"--times when he could contact me on my vacation. Telling him not to wouldn't work. As I waited for Ricky's arrival text, I showed off my tattoo to Lydia, having just removed the bandage that morning. I had my foot up on her desk as she inspected it.
