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“Hope I don’t kill you?” He smirks.
“Not break her heart,” I say.
His smirk freezes, and his eyes crinkle at the corners as he assesses me. He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder, his eyes darting to Tanner and Dax.
“Boys. There’s the evidence. Lesson one is complete.”
I press the bell and stand back. It takes a minute but then she opens the door.
“Logan?”
“Gabrielle.” I smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t call first. I thought we could talk if now’s a good time?”
Her eyes roam over my face and then she nods softly as her shoulders drop. “Yes, we should talk.”
I walk into her house. It’s a smart, Georgian style London townhouse. Minimalist inside, but with large artwork on the walls and random artefacts specifically placed. I stop and look at a misshaped bowl on the hallway table.
“That was a gift from a little girl I helped in Nigeria. She made it.” She lifts it up, running her hands over its smooth, plain sides before placing it back down with a soft smile. “Come on through. Can I get you a coffee?”
I follow her into the large, light kitchen and take a seat at the island as she walks over to the coffee machine and places a mug beneath it. She makes it without speaking, and then turns around, placing it down in front of me.
“White, no sugar, right?”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
She turns back to make her own. I stare into my mug. We’ve seen quite a bit of each other over the years, so should it be a surprise that she knows how I take my coffee? I watch her make hers. White with one sugar. I wouldn’t have known that.
Dread creeps over me as I look around the room. Could Dad imagine seeing us here? Living together? Waking up and making coffee together? Visiting us in this house, or maybe mine, if she moved in with me? Who knows. Ice inches up my spine despite taking a sip of the hot coffee.
It’s wrong. Everything about this feels wrong.
“I can’t marry you,” I blurt.
Gabrielle drops her teaspoon on the counter and it clatters. Her shoulders tense and she takes a deep breath before she turns and faces me.
“I know.” She blinks at me, her eyes glassy. “And I’m grateful to you for being honest. But also for not shooting the idea down straight away when we met at the hotel.”
I shift in my seat. The idea never took flight long enough in my head to need shooting down. But telling her that is unnecessarily cruel.
“I can’t do it. It’s not fair on you. Or me. It’s not fair on anyone.”
She nods.
“You don’t want to either,” I say slowly, gauging her reaction. At the hotel, she said she was doing it to make her dad happy. Because Spencer is sick. She never said it’s what she wanted.
She pauses before exhaling a full breath.
“No, I don’t. I want to make my father happy. But… no amount of money is worth living your life as a lie. And that’s what we’d both be doing. I was willing to do it, though. For my father.”
“We do things for those we care about, make decisions… not always the best ones.”
My thoughts flit to Maddy.Sometimes, we get it so wrong when all we want to do is help.
Despite thinking of how I failed all those years ago, relief floods my body as Gabrielle looks at me.
“You look happy about it,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
