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“Why did you kiss me then?” Kim demands.
The light turns green. “You kissed me.” I floor it down a one-way street. The wrong street if my goal is to get back to the hotel. I hit the steering wheel. “I made a mistake kissing you back.” A ten-minute mistake that bankrupted a four-year friendship. Six hundred seconds I can’t take back that are about to rip Jess away from me. My stomach jerks like someone’s tied it in a knot, then violently checked the tension.
“Come home. We can work us out.” Her words are wrapped in last ditch effort.
“There is no us.” There never has been. Why is she so determined to change that now?
“I hope your new hookup is worth what you’re giving up with me.”
“Jess isn’t a hookup.” I want more so much more than a horizontal hour with her. “I’m hanging up.” I take the correct street this time and head behind the hotel to the parking garage. “I’ll call you tonight.”
“Don’t bother.” Kim’s voice could chisel stone. “I’ll be too busy moving out of your bed and your condo.”
chapter 37
Jess
When T looks at me with his deep brown eyes, there’s something so real between us, I can’t move. I’d say I love him, but love doesn’t feel deep enough to describe what he’s become to me.
~ from the diary of Elizabeth Sara Thorne (age16)
Mental images of Gabe and Kimberly Kane tangled together hijack my head and double me over the seat. A few hours ago, he was kissing me on my bed, when he leftherwaiting in his. “Kim lives with you?”
“Not like that.” He barely slows enough to maneuver the Mustang through the narrow passage that leads into the parking garage. “I gave her my room and slept on the couch.”
I hug the door, giving him my back.
He heads up another level, nearly clipping a concrete pillar before he slides into a spot in the corner and turns off the engine. “A few months ago, this older guy massively messed with her head. She didn’t handle it well.” He flattens his palm between my shoulder blades.
“A few months ago, she was datingyou. I saw pictures.” Every single steamy one. Shrugging off his touch, I dive out of the Mustang.
He’s out of the car and in front of me so fast I barely have time to slam the door. “Kim is a line item in my contract. A gimmick for ratings. We’ve never dated for real.” Strain stretches his voice. “I don’t wanther.”
“She wants you.”
Instead of denying it like I expect, he says, “I know.” He rakes his hair back. “What happened with her the night I left was a mistake.”
I flinch. “Is that what I’ll be at the end of the week? Another one of Gabriel Wade’s mistakes?”
His muscles bunch under his shirt. “You aren’t Gabriel Wade’s anything.”
“Yeah. Got that.” I should be used to never being anybody’s anything, but his words carve deep. I turn to walk away.
He blocks my path. “That’s not what I meant.” He punctuates his frustration with jerky gestures. “I don’t want you to be Gabriel Wade’s anything, because I want you to bemine. Me. Gabe.”
Words I want to hear. Words I’m not sure what to do with. I lean my hip against the pillar next to his car.
He leans his hip against the pillar too and meets my eyes. “I never slept with Kim. It just took me longer to say no than it should’ve.”
“There’ve been other girls in your bed.” I’m not naïve enough to believe he hasn’t slept with anyone. Not with the way he knows how to kiss me. How to touch me. This isn’t something I’ve just figured out. But I didn’t really think it through until I heard him with Kim in the car.
“Not as many as you think.” He threads his fingers through mine, tangling my thoughts.
“One feels like too many.” I stare at the scuff mark streaked across the top of his white sneaker. I don’t know how to be with someone like Gabe. When I’m someone like me. “For me, there hasn’t been anyone.”
“I know.” Bringing my free hand to his chest, he presses my palm against his heart. “What I did before you doesn’t matter to me. Please don’t let it matter to you.”
I reclaim both my hands and step away from him. “So you didn’t care about any of those girls?”
