your balls?” Dax asks me across the booth of the bar we’ve all met in after work.
“Fuck.” Drew screws his face up. “Do not put my sister in the same sentence as his balls.” He jabs a finger in my direction and Dax throws his hands up in mock surrender as Tanner smirks.
“And you can quit grinning, dick. Just wait until your daughter starts dating. Then you’ll understand how this feels,” he says to Tanner, making us all break out into laughter together.
Mine dies off quickly. As nice as it is seeing the guys for a drink, I’d rather be at Maddy’s, talking to her. She hasn’t been home since I was last there. I’ve checked. And she was out at lunch when I went to her office today. If I didn’t have a meeting scheduled, I’d have waited for her. She got my flowers. Even if she won’t answer my calls or texts, at least she got the message in the card.
Tanner looks between me and Drew. “It could be worse. At least you know where he lives if you want to kill him.”
“Ha the fuck ha,” Drew mutters.
Dax tips his empty glass at me, and I nod. He and Tanner head to the bar to get another round in.
“You know I’d do anything for her,” I say.
“Doesn’t change the fact you fucked my sister,” Drew grunts. “Multiple times.”
“I did.”
“And lied about it.”
“Yep.”
His eyes slant over in my direction. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, dragging my hands down over my face. I’ve barely slept the past two days.
“You’re welcome.” His lips curl the tiniest amount beneath his grimace.
I smirk in response.
“Because of the business? The funding?” He quirks a thick, dark brow at me.
My smirk falls. “It’s shit. But no, that’s not it.”
“Do I want to fucking know?” he groans, tipping his head back and looking at the ceiling.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“On whether you want to know just how fucked up I am over your sister.”
He parts his lips.
“Yeah.” I blow out a breath. “Guess not.”
“Lay it on me.” Drew straightens and brings his dark eyes to meet mine. “Just don’t,” his face twists, “just don’t tell me anything like that. My sister’s a virgin for the purpose of all our conversations. You hold her fucking hand and that’s all, you get me?”
“Yeah, I get you.”
“So, what’s she done?”
“What makes you think it’s her?”
Drew laughs, his face splitting into a wide-toothed grin. “This is Maddy we’re talking about. Besides,” his grin falters, “if it’s not her and it’s you, then I will have to come to your place and kill you like Tan said.”
I snort, knowing there’s both humor and seriousness in his words. “I’d never hurt her. You know that.”
“Yeah.” He crosses his arms. “Lucky for you I do.”
“She told me we were never going to work. She wants me to marry Gabrielle.”
Drew nods. “Because that way, you’ll save the business?”
“Yeah. And she thinks she doesn’t deserve me.” I hang my head, the familiar pounding that’s been in there for days rearing its ugly head again and sending a tightening across my brow that has me cursing.
“So you’re telling me my sister told you to marry another woman because that way you won’t lose the lot? I’m not going to mention the not deserving you part, because we fucking know my opinion on that.”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.” He drops his head back with a groan.
“What?”
“It’s worse than I fucking thought,” he grumbles.
“Right? She’s lost her fucking mind,” I agree.
“Must have if she’s in love with you.”
“What?” The pounding in my head stops. I can’t see, hear, or focus on anything other than Drew’s eyes as he stares into mine.
He grunts, then slowly starts to chuckle, just as Tanner and Dax return with our drinks.
“What’s so funny?” Tanner asks.
Dax passes me a drink, his eyes bouncing between me and Drew. He and Tanner are still on alert for Drew trying to kill me. But I think they understand that a friendship like ours that’s seen so much can’t be destroyed. Shaken, sure. But we’re good. We will always be good. No matter what.
“Maddy told Logan to marry Gabrielle,” Drew says.
They look at me without speaking. Tanner takes a drink of his whiskey, and Dax cracks his knuckles.
“She said he needs to save the business… and that she doesn’t deserve him,” Drew adds.
“Oh fuck.” Tanner whistles.
“Shit,” Dax says.
“Exactly.” Drew takes his drink and knocks half back in one.
“She’s in love with you,” Tanner says.
“Yep,” Dax agrees.
“What the fuck? How do you assholes know that?” I stare at them.
“Years of learning about women’s minds from our beautiful better halves,” Tanner quips, clinking his glass against Dax’s.
I turn to Drew.
“Growing up with a sister who left girls’ magazines lying around,” he answers.
He narrows his eyes at all of us. “Don’t fucking say anything. Best education in those pages. I’m telling you. Once I get the future Mrs. Harper, she’s never going to want to be apart from me. I’m going to put you assholes to shame. Best fucking husband material right here.” He slaps his palm on his chest.
Tanner and Dax look at each other and laugh.
“Lawyer girl doesn’t know what she’s in for.”
“Fuck off,” Drew says to Tanner.
I’m staring into space as Dax claps me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. The pain’s worth it in the end.”
I turn to him. He went through nights of sleeping outside for Rose to get her back in their early days. Pined after her like a dog. And he swears it’s the best thing he ever did.
“Mads…” I look between them in bewilderment. “She said she hates me.”
“You’ve been fucking for weeks. You still believe she hates you?” Tanner snorts.
Drew throws him a murderous look. “Holding hands,” he hisses. “They’ve been holding hands for weeks.”
Dax coughs into his glass and pulls a neutral expression to his face. “Sure. Holding hands.”
“Well, all the holding hands and you really thought she still hated you?” Tanner tsks. “You have a lot to learn about women. They say one thing and mean another. All the time.”
“All the fucking time,” Dax agrees.
“So she doesn’t want me to marry Gabrielle?”
“Oh, she does,” Tanner says.
“Yeah,” Dax confirms.
“Because she’s in fucking love with you, you idiot.” Drew knocks back the rest of his drink.
I stare between them all. Nothing makes fucking sense.
“So two nights ago when we—”
Drew glares at me.
“—held hands. And then she told me to marry Gabrielle, she was what? Telling me what she thought I wanted to hear?”
The three of them all groan at once, and Drew slaps me up the backside of the head. “Idiot.”
“She’s doing what she thinks is best for you,” Tanner explains, taking pity on my pathetic lost ass.
“Because she loves you,” Dax adds.
“God knows why,” Drew mutters.
“Is it too early to say because I hold her hand harder and better than anyone else?”
Drew’s hand curls into a fist and he growls at me. Fucking growls. I move back in my seat.
“Yeah, too early,” I mumble.
Tanner chuckles, and Dax snorts into his drink, his shoulders shaking.
“What do I do?”
“What do you think you should do?” Tanner asks.
“You do what will make my sister happy,” Drew cuts in.
“I do what she wants me to? I marry Gabrielle?” I stare at him. “How can I?”
“You do what will make her happy,” Tanner says, fixing me with a look like there’s a secret code I’m missing.
“You do the right thing. You already know what that is,” Dax says.
I look at Drew again.
“You’re going to hurt her either way,” he says.
My eyes widen. “Then how the fuck do I—?”
“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.”
She pauses, then laughs. “I’m not offended. Just relieved that you can still look at me after what my father’s done. He’s not a bad man, Logan. You know that. He’s just ill and scared and…” She comes and sits next to me. “I’ll do anything for him. But I can’t drag you into it.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’ll speak to him. Maybe there’s another way. One where you can still work together, help your dad, and…” She sighs. “And he’ll still be happy too.”
If only it were that simple. It’s what I’ve been working on ever since we came back from Italy. Spencer’s not backing down.
“Your dad wants you to be financially secure. He wants you to have a family. A legacy for him to leave behind. He won’t get both if we team up on Vex but don’t…” I can’t even say the word. Marry. Spencer won’t get what he’s been wanting this whole time. That’s why I’ve gotten nowhere with him. Those are his terms. Or no deal.
Gabrielle stares at her untouched coffee in silence.
“It’s irrelevant now, anyway. I’ve lost investors. The project’s underfunded. It can’t go ahead. My father will lose all he’s worked for. I was hoping I could save it. It’s got so much fucking potential. It could fix everything.” I curl my fingers into a fist.
“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle whispers. She reaches over and takes my hand, squeezing it briefly before wrapping both of her hands back around her mug.
“I told him I’d still find a way. Build everything back from scratch the way he did.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“It has to be. It might take me years but…”
She nods, then looks away blinking. Her phone pings with an incoming message on the counter and she looks at the name on the screen. Her lips lift into a pained smile.
“I admire you. Doing it for your parents. You’re driven by your love for them. There’s nothing stronger than a parent and child bond.” She strokes the phone screen. “I left Dad alone after Mum died. And now I’m going to lose him soon too.” She swipes a tear away as it rolls down her cheek. “I wish I could make him happy for what time we have left together.”
“I’m sure he’s happy just having you home.”
She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thank you for saying that. I love my job, and being away so much is a huge part of it. But I know he needs me right now. Only…” She picks up her phone and looks at it. “I really need to talk to him about what me staying means.”
She places her phone on the counter and slides it toward me.
I glance at her and then at the image on the screen.
“Who—?”
She looks at the screen, then back at me. “I should have told him the minute I got back. Earlier, in fact. But then I found his medication and everything has felt like one big mess since then.” She wipes away another stray tear. “I let myself get swept along trying to make him happy. I felt I owed him because I left. But I let my guilt side-track me.”
She studies the image on her phone. “This is something I’ve wanted for a long time. I’ve been making plans. Now that I’m back in London and have a fixed base, those plans can move forward. In fact, it’ll work better.”
I look at the image that’s making her smile with devotion in her eyes.
“You love your dad, Gabrielle. There’s no shame in that. We all make decisions based on what we think is better for other people sometimes. And we forget what it is that we want.”
My mind drifts to Maddy again. She doesn’t want me to marry Gabrielle. She wants my family to be okay. Because she loves me. My head’s still spinning on that one since last night’s revelations with the boys.
She loves me.
I told her she didn’t hate me anymore. But I never thought past that to what she does feel. I take a deep breath and look at Gabrielle.
“Who is he?”
“Someone Dad needs to hear about.” She gives me a wobbly smile. “Would you… come with me when I tell him?”
“Me?”
“It might change the way he sees things. We can hope.”
“Gabrielle, I can’t do that.” I look at her phone screen again. “This is for you and him to talk about. Don’t give me and my father’s business a second thought. This is about the two of you. Your family.”
“Then come because you’re my friend and I’m shaking at the thought of telling him.” She laughs a little and dabs at her eyes.
I search her eyes as she looks at me anxiously.
“Please, Logan.”
“Okay.” I give her a soft smile.
She stands, still not having touched her coffee. “Let’s take my car. Or you can follow me.”
“You want to go now?”
She swipes a final tear away and straightens, taking a deep breath. “I’ve waited long enough.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out.
Drew: Call me.
I slide it back into my pocket. A man of many words, as usual. I’ll call him after we see Spencer. After seeing that picture on Gabrielle’s phone, I think I’m going to have a lot to tell him too.
